Intermezzo

Daniel Barenboim gets up and gets down

Daniel Barenboim / Laura Volkwein / Claudius Popp / Hanno Müller-Brachmann  - Staatsoper Unter den Linden Berlin, 8 March 2009

Mendelssohn Sonate für Violoncello und Klavier B-Dur op. 45
Frühlingslied op. 47/3
Auf Flügeln des Gesanges op. 34/2
Wanderlied op. 57/6
Sonate für Violoncello und Klavier D-Dur op. 58
Neue Liebe op. 19a/4
Der Mond op. 86/5
Reiselied op. 34/6
Andres Maienlied op. 8/8
Trio für Violine, Violoncello und Klavier d-Moll op. 49

How does Daniel Barenboim do it? Get up in time for an 11am concert on a Sunday, that is. I could barely wrench myself out of bed. Staatsoper colleagues Claudius Popp (cello), Laura Volkwein (violin) and Hanno Müller-Brachmann joined him to celebrate Mendelssohn's 200th birthday in front of a packed-out Staatsoper.

Popp's aggressive, muscular playing fitted the Barenboim mould perfectly. Anyone who'd expected a genteel Sunday morning's music-making would have been severely disappointed. This was not chocolate-box Mendelssohn, but something far more raw and meaty.

Evidently recovered from Friday's Parsifalthon, Barenboim matched every ounce of his much younger partner's energy. Here was a glint of how he manages to maintain his punishing performance schedule. There's nothing forced about it - he simply loves what he does and summons up a kind of natural caffeine to fuel it.

Hanno Müller-Brachmann too gave it everything he'd got. The Staatsoper is not a venue that invites subtlety, and it suited Müller-Brachmann's full-on approach better than the Wigmore in January. Here he can let go. His attention to colouring of the text is remarkable; his only chink an inability to sustain a note cleanly. What's more, even in lieder he's a compelling stage presence and a natural actor, able to extract every nuance of a song and play it all the way to the back row.

The remarkable empathy of this little team was underlined in the closing trio - so powerfully and joyfully delivered it generated spontaneous applause after the second movement.

Parsifal in Berlin - Domingo flubs it

Parsifal - Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Berlin, 6 March 2009

This Parsifal has the distinction of being the worst production ever mounted at the Berlin Staatsoper, according to my local source. At its 2005 premiere, normal etiquette was inverted - there were apparently so many boos that the handful of applauders were shamed into silence.

On this showing, I didn't think it was that bad. Incompetent, yes, idiotic (a la Barrie Kosky), no. It was movie producer Bernd 'Resident Evil' Eichinger's first (and so far only) venture into the world of opera - and who knows how the Beverly Hills-based millionaire got the gig? Predictably, his Wagnervision incorporates extensive use of video back projections - technically beautifully executed (by Möller and Hinrichs aka fettFilm). The stage is uncluttered, there's no extraneous detail. So far so good.

It's the content that's the problem. A spinning Earth is projected over the first scene, where the squires are hydrocephalic aliens, the main characters your regular medieval types. Then the grail knights appear as ancient Egyptians (possibly - my history's not that good) in a shattered temple. Klingsor's garden is a bare stage, but a window later reveals a sub-aquatic vista - have we dropped beneath the sea?

The last act opens in a 1940's New York park (hyper-realistic, mums with prams, etc) - but then the knights reappear as a Mad Max biker gang on a climbing frame. Evidently time travel is indicated - but why? And why stop at those specific points?

Eichinger goes some way to redeeming himself by getting a few things absolutely right. 

When the bleeding corpse of the very realistic swan he has just shot is presented to Parsifal, he understands the consequences of his actions, that he has taken a life, in a way that no limp hanky or ceramic bird (just a couple of the other productions I've seen) could ever achieve.

And the image of the swan's death-wound is echoed in the posture and flowing white robes of Amfortas. The grail ceremony begins with his heart - rendered in gruesomely accurate form - which he tugs out for communion-style distribution amongst the knights. The connection with Christian ritual is made explicit. Kundry's transformations are simply but effectively indicated with costume changes. It's just the bits in between that are the problem......

It was certainly baffling, but rarely irritating (though the delicious and deceptively alcoholic himbeer bowle I enjoyed at each interval may have affected my twerp-tolerance), and if there were any boos for the production this time round, I didn't hear them.

The only boos (and there weren't many) were directed at Plácido Domingo, possibly here to compensate for pulling out of a couple of earlier stagings. He looked totally unrehearsed, needed a prompter throughout the second act, and missed, cracked or whispered every highish note. And, even with bad light and squinting, there's no way he could pass for a day under 60. But - but - close your eyes - and the voice (or most of it) is still there, burnished and ardent. And the presence is undeniable. The third act, where in this production Parsifal is older as well as wiser, showed him at close to his best though. Despite all his faults, it was an impressive showing.

Waltraud Meier's Kundry, horridly curdled top aside, was unassailable. Her face, strangely inexpressive in recent months, seems to have relaxed and regained its life along with its wrinkles. An all round lack of direction/rehearsal enabled her to craft the part around her own skills. This incoherent production became Kundry's opera by default.

With Rene Pape suffering from some unspecified long-term ailment, Matti Salminen was drafted in at short notice to play Gurnemanz. Wearing his years even better than Domingo, he provided an authoritative anchor, sage and stately. Even if his singing is not the smoothest or loveliest, that's hardly a big drawback in this part.

The standout performance came from an unexpected source. Hanno Müller-Brachmann has an unusually light and lyrical voice for Amfortas, but the flexibility and the range of colour made his physical and spiritual torment devastatingly real and his vulnerability desperately touching.

And of course Daniel Barenboim was reliably unreliable, his graveyard-pace Vorspiel no clue to the abrupt and idiosyncratic tempo shifts he was to apply later on. But somehow it flexed and breathed organically, even if the gear changes were a little too obvious in places. The Berlin Staatskapelle played marvellously for him, and the translucency of sound, the sheer detail, were just astonishing. I look forward to their joint visit to the Royal Festival Hall at the end of the year.

 

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more curtain call photos over teh page..................

Hanno Muller-Brachmann and Andras Schiff at Wigmore Hall

Hanno Müller-Brachmann / András Schiff - Wigmore Hall, 8 January 2008

Schubert Willkommen und Abschied; Versunken;
An Schwager Kronos; Meeres Stille; Prometheus
Mendelssohn Variations sérieuses in D minor Op. 54
Busoni 5 Goethe Lieder
Wolf 3 Michelangelo Lieder
Brahms Four Serious Songs

Encores: Schubert Der Musensohn   Brahms Wiegenlied

How do you fill the house for a Wigmore Hall debut by a little-known singer? Simple. Hanno Müller-Brachmann may not be a big name, but András Schiff doesn't share the stage with just any old singer. Result - a capacity crowd.

Some may have been aware of Müller-Brachmann from his frequent and highly-acclaimed appearances in his native Germany - though I suspect many were simply curious about this seeming unknown who nevertheless bears the Schiff stamp of approval.

But judging by some of the disparaging comments I heard in the interval, not to mention the number of glaringly empty seats for the second half, a fair few were disappointed. 

For like Fischer-Dieskau before him, Hanno Müller-Brachmann is not afraid to chop up a musical line or two in service of the text. The result, from a purely sonic perspective, can be forceful and disjointed. Not at all pretty.

Schubert suffered but Goethe gained from Müller-Brachmann's almost conversational delivery. The tunes were rendered unwhistleable but the diction was immaculate, each syllable precisely weighted, each word considered. Even the languorous line of Meeres Stille was translated into a deliberate and disturbing recitative. An Schwager Kronos galloped; Prometheus thundered. Schiff took something of a back seat, his usual tendency to pick out and accentuate inner voices nowhere apparent. Here his contribution was muted, faster passages often lightly smudged, cushioning the vocal line rather than framing it with precision.

The Busoni selection - more Goethe - showed a a genuine comic sensibility, without resort to any silly effects.

The second half's Wolf and Brahms displayed a few chinks in Müller-Brachmann's armour, with their greater demand for smoothness of line. A slight wavering on held notes and a dry tone lacking in true luxuriance were the main drawbacks, though his lowest bass notes were admirably rich and chocolatey.

The programme was put together by Schiff, and his immaculately-constructed reading of Mendelssohn’s Variations sérieuses punctuated the first half. A little something for those unconvinced by Müller-Brachmann.