Henze - Barcarola/Dessau - Meer der Stürme

I relistened to Henze's Barcarola. I mentioned Mahler and early Schoenberg as reference points, but the very beginning of the piece - with its fading wave of dark, undulating strings - brings another iconic work to mind: Sibelius' Symphony nr. 4.  There is maybe not a lot of Sibelius in the remainder of the Barcarola, but it is such a strong and evocative gesture, and Henze alludes to it again in the final bars, that it continues to echo long after the music had stopped. The Barcarola strikes me as a superbly crafted, varied and complex piece of symphonic writing of a predominantly martial character. The work is expertly scored too, with some startling effects that seem to come right out of a scifi movie. The basic theme seems to be disjointed waltz - likely, a barcarole - that imaginatively winds its way through the symphonic fabric. Henze builds patiently towards a manic, fantastic climax. Then again those dark strings, morendo. Luftpause. And a mysterious, glittering coda, ppp, brings the work to an end. Henze himself provided some programmatic pointers when he said that the music might depict a dying man crossing the Styx, or perhaps Odysseus weathering a stormy night and arriving at last in Ithaca. It was written in memory of the composer Paul Dessau. The wikipage on Henze lists a very extensive and varied oeuvre. Seems this could be the start of long exploration. We'll start with the 10 symphonies.

Paul Dessau ... Who was this again? I had to look it up: a prominent and controversial DDR composer. Convinced communist (as was Henze) and dodecaphonist, engaged teacher and public figure.  Only this week I purchased a box set ('Nova - East Germany Symphonies' on Berlin Classics) in which two works of Dessau were included. I listened to Meer der Stürme (Orchestermusik nr. 2, 1967), a 14 minute symphonic meditation on the Soviet space programme's success in landing the unmanned Luna 13 on the Moon's Oceanus Procellarum. The score was dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution. Despite the overtly propagandistic programme, it is a surprisingly angular and abstract work that will have caused headaches with many a party functionary. Likely this is another case in which private motives and public smoke screens are indissolubly intertwined. Meer der Stürme is a fairly loud piece, and not very subtly scored. So in a first audition it can come across as rather coarse. But one senses a disciplined and acute musical imagination. It certainly warrants repeated hearing. The recording by the Rundfunk-Sinfonie-Orchester Leipzig conducted by Herbert Kegel is satisfactory. I'd love to hear it in the hands of a more capable ensemble.

Hartmann - Adagio/Henze - Barcarola/B.A. ZImmermann - Symphony

Hartmann's Miserae set me on track towards another one of his enigmatic compositions: his single movement Symphony nr. 2 - Adagio for large orchestra, from 1946. A strange work, indeed, and I don't know what to make of it. The title suggest a broadly flowing Brucknerian adagio but it is not. The piece adheres to what seems one of Hartmann's fondest formal principles: a fast movement (or section) flanked by two slower ones. We had that in the Fourth Symphony and in the Miserae as well. Dibelius tells us there are less than 20 bars in this work that really bear the adagio tempo marking, at the beginning and at the end, respectively. Formally he sees it as a Rondo with a theme that comes back in various guises and more freely composed sections in between. There's quite a bit of Ravel in this piece, both in its formal layout (La Valse) and in the odd, orientalising shape of the main theme (Ma Mere l'Oye?). But then this seems to mix uneasily with Hartmann's undeniably teutonic idiom. I listened to Metzmacher's reading and was unconvinced. Then the Conlon version with the Gürzenich Orchestra and this fares hardly better. The vision is different, to be sure. Consistent with his take on the other works on this CD - the Fourth and the Concerto Funèbre - Conlon takes a very broad approach in the outer sections so that the overall impression is not one of progressive quickening and intensification but of a very loud allegro outburst in a sea of relative calm. Here too I remained rather unimpressed. I don't think this is a work I will return to particularly often. But I still need to listen to Kubelik's version in the Wergo set.

Then onwards to another icon in post-war German symphonic history: Bernd Alois Zimmermann's Symphony in One Movement, from 1951. This too is a short, dense piece of symphonic writing, in an abrasive, ruthlessly expressionistic idiom. It has seen very little recordings. I am happy to have a version included in the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie's Jubileum Set. It is, remarkably enough, conducted by Witold Lutoslawski. And he seems to ride this whirlwind very capably.

Zimmermann was 33 years old when he wrote the Symphony and his own notes have been inserted in the CD's inlay booklet: "I wrote my Symphony in 1951, after much deliberation with regard to symphonic form. This is not a work which strings together several movements, played through from beginning to end without a break (in contradistinction with the traditional symphony) using intermediate linking structures. Instead, it is a musical structure out of whose basic material a basic form is developed and which in this way undergoes a process of expressive transsubstantiation. The single-movement quality of the form is postulated by the monistic tendency of the musical structure. Here, unlike the traditional symphonic form, thematic material is not expounded from the start but, in conjunction with various forces, develops from the amorphous state of the musical germ, from the seeming chaos of this basic cell to the organic structure of the whole. It does so in sweeping arcs, vacillating from apocalyptic menace to mystical absorption and being, in this process passing through all the stages of musical development, subject to fierce dynamic evolution until, at the end of the work, the 'thematic' conclusion is drawn, repeatedly breaking through in ever new ways during the course of the symphony and, in the middle of the work, for the first time reaching a climax after deriving impetus from an extensive preparatory build-up."

I'm hearing here echoes of Webern's Urpflanz-theory, Schoenberg's 'developing variation', of Bartok's musical germ-driven monothematicism, of the modernist avant garde's preoccupation with 'hidden themes'. But then what? Beyond classical sonata form we are at sea, it seems. Anything goes. What I would like to see, if it exists, is a typology of beyond-sonata-formal-solutions to help navigate this complex territory.

The Zimmermann piece is quite stirring. The atmosphere is charged, gothic even. The basic Gestalt is that of an über-Mahlerian, frenetic march. Glissandos, strings sul ponticello, muted trumpets, blaring brass and pounding percussion make the day. But nothing we haven't heard in Bartok's Mandarin! However, the Symphony deserves to be better known than it is. A symphonic spectacular if there ever was one. I would love to hear it in the concert hall. As far as I can see, there is currently one version readily available: a 1987 recording as part of Hänssler Profil's Wand Edition. That must be good. But I'm very happy with the present version where the JDP, predictably, play their heart out under Lutoslawski's stoic baton.

The most impressive part of this post-war German symphonic trilogy is Henze's Barcarole per grande orchestra, from 1979. With 21 minutes it's also the longest piece. It's a lusciously scored, unabashedly Romantic symphonic poem, drenched in glowing, dark colours. Amazing piece of music which, again, deserves a much more prominent place in the catalogue and concert programmes. This connects back to late Mahler, early Schoenberg and, in a concert, would make a perfect complement to a Pelleas und Melisande. I have been listening to the 1992 live recording by Rattle and the CBSO which is superb. I've heard it only twice and plan to return to it very soon.