Wagner - Overtures and Orchestral Excerpts from Götterdämmerung

I am falling behind with the blog. Anyway, last Thursday we went to another live concert, the third after the Wagner Parsifal and the Mahler Seventh recently. This time we had the privilege to listen to the Budapest Festival Orchestra conducted by their trusted chief Ivan Fischer. We were lucky with the Hungarian presidency of the EU. The orchestra was only on a short European tour.

It was the third time I saw them live. First time was in the Brugge Concertgebouw with a Mahler Sixth and Bartok Music. Then, a few years ago, there was a genuinely memorable concert with a first Act of Wagner's Walküre. And so this time there was another full Wagner programme, consisting of the Siegried Idyll, the Tannhäuser Overture and Bacchanale, the Meistersinger Overture, Siegfried's Rhine Journey and Funeral March, and the final scene from Götterdämmerung. We were seated again in the 'logezetels' so that we had a very good view of the orchestra on the scene and Fischer conducting.

It was another truly stunning performance. Already from the very first bars into the Siegried Idyll it was clear we were going to experience something special.  Through a phenomenal control over dynamics and tonal shadings Fischer and his musicians created a diaphanous and evanescent cloud of music. Lines were most lovingly shaped. It was as if the music was dreamt rather than actually played. An amazing feat.

With the Tannhaüser Overture we moved into a more energetic mode. Here it struck me how this wonderful, 100-man strong orchestra exhibited a most wonderful poise and restfulness when seated on the podium. There is not a hint of strain emanating from this collective. And the same applies to Fischer himself, who appeared supremely confident but in the most natural and self-effacing manner. Quite impressive! And how different from our experience at the Mahler Seventh performance. One third into the Overture and Bacchanale I was thinking that a little more excitement might have been welcome. But I underestimated Fischer's uncanny handling of the long, long crescendo forming the piece's backbone. In the Bacchanale the roof went really of the Bozar's Henri Le Boeuf hall.

The rest of the evening was a veritable feast which I witnessed misty-eyed and awestruck: a rousing Meistersinger Overture (echoes of the Mahler Seventh's Finale!), a wild and darkly romantic Funeral March, and a complex layered Götterdämmerung final scene (with Petra Lang as Brunnhilde). These are moments when I experience this level of music making as the pinnacle of civilisation, as the most perfect expression of a millennia long process of cultural accumulation and refinement. Elitist rubbish, maybe, but so be it.

What is so special then about the Budapest Festival Orchestra? As I said, there is unparallelled musicianship, with jawdropping perfection of execution (actually I was happy the lead trumpet had a tiny slip of tongue: at least they were human!). There is filigree precision, amazing clarity of layered voices, freshness and vivacity. The sound of the orchestra is rather lean and 'objective'. There's no fat, no ingratiating gloss, no oversaturated colours. It's like looking at an 8x10 contact print. And the music flows with unforced naturalness. What we hear also makes compelling musical sense! There is no doubt that Ivan Fischer and his BFO are one of the best orchestras around. Their modesty and lack of star appeal make them all the more adorable and admirable. Fischer has taken up a job in Berlin (Konzerthaus Orchestra, taking over from Lothar Zagrosek) but this will not compromise his work with his own orchestra. Let's hope we can look forward to a lot more of this fantastic partnership.

Wagner - Parsifal

 

Yesterday I was able to attend to a live performance of Wagner's Parsifal thanks to the generosity of HVC who was kind enough to pass on a ticket to me. It is certainly one of my favourite operas. My first encounter with it, more than 25 years ago, was one of the defining epiphanies in my musical narrative. On record it is the Karajan version which has left such an indelible mark. I find it a noble, spacious, even grandiose reading, but it does not collapse under its own weight. Superb orchestral playing, exquisite dramatic pacing and beautiful voices: it leaves nothing to be desired. Some find the sound to be somewhat in-your-face. It is true that this early digital recording is not of the subtlest, but it does not detract from the stupendous qualities of the whole. 

So any live performance has formidable competition to my ears. I saw a live version in Berlin, a little less than 10 years ago, directed by Christian Thielemann but I remember precious little of it (apart from the fact that I arrived at the Deutsche Oper completely drenched in sweat as my flight into Berlin was late). So now then a new production at the Brussels Munt, with the house orchestra directed by Hartmut Haenchen, and directed by experimental theater maker Romeo Castellucci. An overview of international reviews of this production can be found here. The NYT review is here.

After all this ink has been spilled - pro and contra - it is unnecessary to go into great detail. Suffice it to say that this might have been a great Parsifal, if not for two major (musical) shortcomings: Jan-Hendrik Rootering's monochrome rendering of Gurnemanz, and the similarly colourless support from the orchestra. With respect to the former, most reviewers seem to agree that Rootering's interpretation is not great. By the time of the long monologue in Act III one has thoroughly tired of G's bland recitations. As a result, the architecture sags. Haenchen's conducting seems to be evoke very different responses (ranging from 'ordentlich' to 'great'). I won't say it is entirely without merit. It is true that Haenchen conducts a very brisk Parsifal but he does that in a very subtle way. There is certainly room for the music to breathe, and a lot has a chamber music-like qualities. But what the music misses is muscle tone, liveliness, mystery. The orchestra sounded wooden and uninspired, in the louder passages sometimes even coarse. The rather dry acoustics of the Munt certainly add to the challenge of sustaining the long lines. So that was major disappointment. Maybe my ears have been spoiled by the (unnaturally?) luxuriant 'cadillac ride' of Karajan's BPO ... 

However, that being said, the production was saved by a number of very commendable voices (Anna Larson as a grave, husky Kundry, and the young American tenor Andrew Richards in a lithe, introspective title role) and by Castellucci's poetically suggestive and thought provoking production. Throughout the listener is tickled by striking and beautiful images that raise all sorts of philosophical questions. But I've also been asking myself whether it is the point at all of going to an opera to solve intellectual riddles whilst listening to some of the greatest music ever composed. Maybe, to really to do justice to music and production, one would have to go and listen not once but twice or even three times. Now that I have seen this Parsifal, I could use a few days to mull it over, try to make sense of the puzzle that Wagner/Castellucci throws at us. And then in a subsequent audition it would be easier to concentrate on the whole thing without being distracted by puzzling details, as to why the German sheperd or the snake or the three guys in working clothes that storm the scene in the first act. 

Tenor Andrew Richards has a charming blog in which he reports on his experiences during rehearsal and performance of this Parsifal with disarming candidness.

Wagner: Tannhaüser Ouvertüre/Tristan Liebestod

My listening diet has dried up to a trickle stream. Which does not mean that my musical life is uneventful. Last week, on Thursday, on an impulse I played two short pieces in sequence: the 4th dance from Bartok's Wooden Prince and Wagner's Tannhäuser Overture and Bacchanale music. There is indeed a certain resemblance between them in the combination of that typically yearning Wagnerian chromaticism and a rather frenzied, eroticised dance-like episode. I find that 15 minute section from the Bartok ballet an impressive piece in itself. A pity, maybe, that Bartok never turned it into an autonomous, rounded composition. I am quite sure it would have secured a reputation similar to, say, Bax's Tintagel, Strauss' Tod und Verklärung or Rachmaninov's Island of the Dead, to name just a few examples of tone poems where this late romantic opulence flares up in impressive clair-obscure.

The Wagner disc I selected is a late Karajan recording, dating from 1984. It's a favourite of mine. This is what the Gramophone Classical Music Guide (2009) writes about it: "When, in modern times, have you heard from Berlin (or anywhere else) such long-drawn, ripe, intense, characterful, perfectly formed and supremely controlled Wagner playing? Not from some other sources with the Tannhäuser Overture, whose Pilgrims are less solemn and whose revellers produce less of Karajan's joyous éclat. Moving on a few minutes, and the passage where Karajan's Venus succeeds in quelling the riot finds him effecting a spellbinding sudden diminuendo (from 4'41", track 2), leaving us with the enchanted eddying of the orchestra. It must surely qualify as one of Karajan's 'greatest moments', if the seemingly unstoppable tidal wave that preceded it hadn't already done so." And so on.

This is indeed a great recording and it led me to dig into Youtube to unearth that documentary that I saw on television more than 20 years ago. I didn't recall a lot about it, only that the ageing Karajan rehearsed the Tannhäuser Overture and that at a certain point he lets the trombones play the main theme by themselves to conclude that "this was how he had heard it in his dreams." (or an exclamation to that effect). It was not so difficult indeed to rediscover the "Karajan in Salzburg" film (taped in 1987, never released in Europe on DVD) with its many moving and interesting sequences, amongst them the Tannhaüser rehearsal (here and here), the Liebestod rehearsal with Jessye Norman,  and the final Liebestod concert. Particularly against the background of that fateful and drily uttered "Fini" at the beginning of the sequence, the concert is a very poignant testimony to the unconditional love for the music that impregnated likely every fiber of Karajan's being. That combined with his masterful professionalism and his unconditional quest for perfection is something that continues to inspire me.

Friday evening I fell ill and Saturday and best part of Sunday I spent in a slumber, with fever peaking up to 39°. I know from experience that in cases of illness, music can have a healing impact. (I still remember listening to a Mahler 6 (Maazel version) 25 years ago when I was struck with a mysterious illness I had caught in Switzerland. There was at that time no better tonic for me than that music). But now I hardly listened. I just put on a single disc, sotto voce - the Fabula Suite Lugano from Christian Wallumrod and his ensemble (ECM). The wrong choice, however, as this is a musica povera of the most uncompromising sort, unlikely to infuse anyone with a boost of energy. But meanwhile the music was going on relentlessly in my mind. Predictably I fell back on the Mehldau/Tokyo disc I had listened to earlier in the week. But also Gershwin's An American in Paris popped up, surprisingly. And the Tannhäuser, of course. On Sunday I was a little better, and I tried to listen to the second half of the Karajan disc: the Meistersinger Act III prelude (this only is worth a lot) and the Prelude and Liebestod. However, my mind was too unfocused: I could hear the sounds but could not follow the music. No way I could grasp the larger structures but the gorgeous orchestral sound in itself made a deep impact.

All this amounts to precious little music, however. The combination of greater listening discipline and lack of time has reduced my exposure to music significantly. So one gets used to silence as well. I can sit for hours in silence without needing music. Likely the pendulum will swing the other way again quite soon. But for the time being, it's a good experience.