Barbara Hannigan and Quatour Diotima in Berg, Schoenberg and Alma Mahler

24/01/13
Queen Elizabeth Hall

Another concert in the Rest is Noise series, and we're still talking turn of the century music which is really my thing. The fascinating cultural, intellectual and artistic milieu of fin de siecle Vienna in particular is a rich subject for exploration and much has been written about its overripe, overwrought, indulgence, inspiration and eventual rot. Schoenberg's op.2 Songs, all of Alma Mahler's songs and Berg's seven early songs all were composed in this artistic crucible and reflect the sense of exploration and lack of assurance that characterises this period so strongly.

The early Schoenberg set feel like very traditional German lieder gone slightly askew with their tinkling piano figurations which occasionally open out unexpectedly into mystical evocations of rapt poignancy. Unfortunately Hannigan's very idiosyncratic singing did the music no favours - there was simply no legato to speak of - every single note was a lozenge shaped bulge, made even more uncomfortable by the occasional toothpaste like explosion of vibrato onto a sound that is 70% straight tones. Its a very light lyric voice and easily gets lost when quiet notes slip off the breath. One of Schoenberg's op.2 set I had just heard in Renée Fleming's recital at the Barbican last month and the comparison did Hannigan no favours. Neither did it Reinbert de Leeuw's pallid piano playing which rendered all of Schoenberg's complex harmony in drab watercolours, details hardly focussed in the haze.

Alma Mahler's songs have the atmosphere of parlour music, deliciously overlain by the schmerz of Wolf/Mahler songs to create touching little numbers that hint at an as yet incompletely realised compositional voice that may have developed into something really personal had she not been thwarted in this by her husband. Performance wise the same problems that beset the Schoenberg songs were present here too. Berg's Seven Early Songs are an achingly, luxuriantly, feverishly erotic set, the music of a young man trying to prove his compositional potency, and he succeeds admirably - its a set of miniature masterpieces that have understandably gained wider popularity than much of the music of this time. The musical lines are so strong here and colours so potent that it wrung more tone and line out of both performers, but this was still a constricted and frigid reading of a wonderfully indulgent and generous set of songs.

All this I found disappointing because Hannigan is so esteemed in contemporary music circles, and the clips I have heard of her in pieces by Boulez and other contemporary composers reveal a much fuller, more consistent sound, not to mention much more natural phrasing, at least with orchestra. Perhaps her technique changes dramatically for recitals, but it really came up short musically and artistically here. She barely smiled after each set during her bows so I wondered whether she was having an off day. I'm still hopeful about her appearance in the upcoming opera by George Benjamin Written on Skin at the ROH in a couple of months.

Finally we got Schoenberg's Second String Quartet which not so coincidentally features a soprano and is a key work in Schoenberg's transitioning between the lush late romanticism of the Gurrelieder say, and the atonal and eventual 12 tone phases that were to come. I have to say that I prefer its neighbours in Schoenberg's opus numbers list, but the last movement, the most "advanced", stands out as a wonderful inspiration. The Quatour Diotima have a very strange, brittle tone and ultra narrow vibrato, clearly deliberately cultivated as it's so consistent across all four players, but there's no bloom in the sound and little blend between players, with limited dynamic range, balance issues with the cello, and once again a severe lack of phrasing. As a result this was a rather ascetic reading of this already difficult piece, and only the last movement began to live a little more.

If Schoenberg and Berg are to ever gain greater currency they're going to need more passionate and beautiful advocacy than was proffered in this evening's music making. You can't win them all.

Renée Fleming Recital at the Barbican

9/12/12

with Maciej Pikulski at the piano

Programme:

Hugo Wolf: Goethe Lieder 
Frühling übers Jahr
Gleich und Gleich
Die Sprode
Die Bekehrte
Anakreons Grab

Mahler: Rückert Lieder
Ich Atmet einen Linden Duft
Liebst du um Schoenheit
Um Mitternacht
Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder
Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen

Arnold Schoenberg
Erwartung, Op 2, No 1
Jane Grey, Op 12, No 1

Alexander von Zemlinsky: Fünf Lieder auf Texte von Richard Dehmel
Vorspiel
Ansturm
Letzte Bitte
Stromüber
Auf See

Korngold
Sterbelied, Op 14, No 1
Das Heldengrab am Pruth, Op 9, No 5
Was Du mir bist, Op 22, No 1
Das Eilende Bachlein, Op 27, No 2

J Strauss arr. Korngold
Frag mich oft, from Walzer aus Wien


Encores:
Strauss Zeuignung
Delibes Les filles de Cadix
Korngold Marietta's Lied


A very brave and enterprising programme this, with half the items virtually unknown, and the Mahler and Korngold only occasionally lapsing into crowd pleasing territory. All of the repertoire centres around the boiling cultural milieu of fin de siecle Vienna, with Wolf and Mahler at its neurotic peak, Schoenberg and Zemlinsky capturing its bloated decline into overripe decadence, and Korngold it's final wheezing descent into total kitsch and overwrought, indulgent luxuriance. This makes it sound like I don't like this period of music, but actually it is amongst my favourite times of all, and with the exception of Zemlinsky, I love all of these composers along of course with Strauss, Berg and Schreker. So much intensely beautiful music was being written in this part of the world at that time, though there is a spiritual sickness at the heart of a lot of it which is surely a part of its fascination.

Fleming has performed Mahler's Rückert Lieder quite often over the past decade and like so much of what she sings, has now really made them her own. As ever her attention to the text is intimate, multifaceted and multicoloured, but she also fed Mahler's music with a soaring sense of line and purpose. I think she's much more suited to Strauss temperamentally and vocally, but this was a very lovely performance.

Before this came the set a set of five Wolf songs from the Goethe Lieder which she bravely chose to open the concert with. These didn't suit at all. Fleming declaimed the text with minute detail but at the expense of long line, she never sang above a mezzo piano, and her use of portamento severely got in the way of the music. I usually don't mind and actually like this last aspect of her singing that offends some people so much, but here it really happened far too often for comfort.

Fleming has recorded a disc of music of this era already - and here we see her as a Klimt painting

Luckily things picked up after the interval. It's hard to imagine which other major international singer would programme Schoenberg in a song recital, and Fleming's two selections were revealed as beautiful grey pearls, Fleming finally singing with real freedom, a truly full bodied tone and passionate commitment. More like this please! I was reminded of her CD of Berg Excerpts with Levine (Marie, Lulu), her first big budget recording, one of her least known and one of her finest. (There is also a much more recent and truly exceptional reading of Berg's 7 Early Songs with Abbado that provides yet more evidence for the ideal match of singer of epoch.)

Zemlinsky's Dehmel songs are rather anonymous creations, brooding, darkly chromatic, ugly ducklings, well dispatched by Fleming, though she had to stop and cough heartily in between two songs, humorously encouraging the audience to follow suit. She was struggling with a cold she said, and quietly continued to clear her throat for the rest of the recital (I was sitting very close) - sometimes even snatched between the endless arching phrases in the Korngold songs - a wonder that she got through it, and only one note seemed slightly off kilter as a result.

The Korngold songs played to Fleming's strength of delivering an apparently endless line of yearning legato. They are schmaltzy but the famous Sterbelied from the op.14 Abschiedlieder suited perfectly, as did the rapt love song Was du mir bist ("dedicated... to his mother!" Fleming delighted in telling us) which Korngold recycled in his Suite for Piano left hand, two violins and cello, one of the most beautiful of all his slow movements.



Maciej Pikulski made a deft and sensitive partner, never covering the voice, and always supporting Fleming's rubato. He let Fleming take centre stage, and occasionally it might have been nice if he had seemed more of a collaborator than an accompanist, though his playing in the postlude to the final encore was poetic and beautiful.

(EDIT: Someone has videoed the encores and uploaded them to youtube so I have linked them in the text below. The fuzz of the audio quality allow the ear and brain to "fill in" what one expects in the details of the aural texture, and the sound is compressed giving a false sense of volume, so it maybe sounds a bit plusher than it really was, but it gives a good idea, and the soaring phrases I mentioned are ably captured. The first one has zoom noises, but the other two don't.)

In the encores we finally got some Strauss: Zueignung in a superb performance - this music is absolutely in her bones, and suits her so well - it's not just interpretively that things improve, but amazingly the sound of the voice - I think it probably has to do with muscle memory and relaxation. The same was true of all the pieces that she was more familiar with and has had in her repertoire for a while - the voice actually sounded fresher, more immediate and freer. I wished she had sung some more Strauss, rather than the Wolf or Zemlinsky perhaps, but Fleming has said herself that she doesn't like to repeat things, and is always wanting to try out new repertoire and new projects.

"We've had so much Sachertorte!" Fleming announced before her next encore: Delibes' Les filles de Cadix which was dispatched with shining vocalism, some of the finest I've heard from her over the last year (amazingly this is the 8th time I've seen her live since last year's Four Last Songs with Eschenbach at the RFH). Her legendary trills have largely deserted her along with the gleaming surface of the sound, but this was still vocalising to cherish, and a couple of phrases here soared like the classic Fleming we all know and love from the late 90s recordings. As she said just before, this was a new piece to her, and at one point she started singing the wrong verse, bailed out, made light of it, and completely got away with it - even getting a round of applause during the song. She was on charming form throughout the evening, bantering with the audience about her dress ("I realise it's a bit much. I just wanted you to get the Klimt connection" [see Intermezzo here for pictures]), and introducing each set of songs in the second half with some background information, something which I think is always appreciated and I wish more artists did. (Susan Graham did this in her recent Wigmore recital too).

Finally, Korngold's Marietta's Lied from Die Tote Stadt. This is a Fleming classic, and made a glorious end to a very good recital.

A lovely evening of lovely singing - I was worried in the Wolf that she was having an off day, but each selection she seemed to get stronger, and I really feel that the lieder recital is where her strengths now lie. She got a standing ovation and seemed quite genuinely touched.

Chamber delights at the Wigmore hall

Stephen Kovacevich 70th birthday concert
Wigmore Hall
25/06/2011

Such great programming here, so it was a shame to see that the hall was only half full. We were spoiled by the artists here too - all of them truly extraordinary players.

First was cellist Truls Mork who joined Stephen Kovacevich for Beethoven's last cello sonata (op.102 no.2). It hardly needs to be said that this late work (1815) coming from his last period is one of the finest in the repertoire. The quiet poetry of the second movement, one of Beethoven's great late cantilenas, and the first true slow movement composed for cello and piano, came across particularly well here, Mork's tone focussed and rapt and finding a purpose that hadn't quite settled in the first movement. Mork is one of the world's greatest living cellists, his playing direct, unmannered, beautiful, technically immaculate, the tone burnished and full whilst never seeming strained.

The pair were then joined by violinist Philippe Graffin, not a name I recognised, but maybe the most impressive performer of the evening. Really brilliant violin playing: gutsy, full toned, stylish, passionate and so clear in intent and effect. Playing like this puts the listener completely at ease - there's never a question that anything will go wrong, and if it does, it's completely irrelevant. Indeed, one might say the same of Mork. Together they performed Brahms' Piano Trio no.3, a terse and wonderfully intense work, playing it as if it was the younger brother of the approximately contemporaneous double concerto - wonderfully energetic string playing, accompanied and cajoled by the stormy pianism of Stephen Kovacevich - a trio of players to savour.

After the interval, Philippe Graffin returned with a new pianist, Claire Désert for the fiendish Phantasy by Schoenberg, a late work from 1949. Again, Graffin played as if possessed, the violin lines pouring out with such ease and elan and with a rare passion that seemed to suit the music to a tee. If only Schoenberg was played like this more often, he might have a few more followers! At the end even he seemed surprised by his own playing staggering backwards as he did after the last note had sounded.

Next was Schoenberg's Kammersymphonie no.1 op.9 in Webern's arrangement for piano trio plus flute and clarinet, here provided by Juliette Hurel and Chen Halevi respectively, again both players of the highest calibre. This is an arrangement that requires true virtuosos, all parts being excruciatingly difficult, the playing here immaculate with the ensemble blending beautifully, especially in the gorgeous slow section. The playing was perhaps a bit unremittingly intense - a sensory overload from start to finish, and maybe a bit more contrast would have been welcome, but this is cavilling when the standard of the playing was so high. I'm not sure how worthwhile this arrangement is - it's certainly impressive and often very beautiful, but how often are five such able musicians really going to be assembled to do it justice - it becomes a bit of a herculean exercise in virtuosity. Finally Kovacevich rejoined the group along with another pianist, Marisa Gupta, Kovacevich this time playing chimes in a reduction of Debussy's Prélude a l'apres-midi d'un faune by David Matthews. Lovely as this was, it really did feel like something was missing this time, and the chimes were a bizarre and distracting addition. Even so, it was a lovely end to a magnificent evening of chamber music.