Intermezzo

why you no like Schoenberg

A new book by Philip Ball, The Music Instinct, suggests that audiences can find atonal music difficult because they can't recognise the patterns in it.

And new research indicates that the part of the brain that interprets patterns responds faster in people with musical training.

Of course atonal music contains patterns, though they're rooted in rhythm, timbre and, particularly, melody, rather than tonal harmony.

Dr Timothy Jones, deputy principal at the Royal Academy of Music, told the Telegraph that, "I would question how much of the familiarity with the music of Mozart and Bach has to do with culturalisation rather than an innate cognitive inability to understand the music of composers like Schoenberg. Certain people can learn to appreciate it."

Certain people like musicians, perhaps? And could that be why they demonstrate more enthusiasm than civilians? Not just taste, or familiarity, or open-mindedness, but hard-wired ability to comprehend?

Barenboim teaches London a lesson - Beethoven Concertos 4

Berlin Staatskapelle / Daniel Barenboim - Royal Festival Hall, 1 February 2010

And so Daniel Barenboim's brief London residency ended not with a bang but a lecture. He joked, "I'm not going to talk for long because I don't want you to tell friends tomorrow 'I heard Daniel Barenboim last night' and for them to reply 'Really, what did he say?'." 

In the end, his introduction to Schoenberg's Variations for Orchestra took longer than the work itself, with the Berlin Staatskapelle there to illustrate musically the many appearances of the principal B-A-C-H (B flat, A, C, B natural) theme. Barenboim's talk certainly clarified the structural basis of the work, but the impact was dimmed by an ingratiating and even apologetic tone that insinuated it's OK to find Schoenberg's music ugly and difficult.

A shame because the clarity and urgency of the performance itself, when it came, spoke for itself. It was enough to win anyone over. But Barenboim couldn't stop himself apologising for Schoenberg yet again before launching into a Strauss encore, Unter Donner und Blitz. Barenboim's talks are generally illuminating, and I'd been looking forward to this one, but in retrospect I'd have enjoyed the evening more if he'd kept his gob shut.

At least Barenboim didn't feel any need to build up Beethoven by knocking him down. In the third piano concerto he found grace where others find stolidity, heroism where others find pomp. A work that can sound routine and declamatory came alive. A brief rehearsal extract can be heard here (terrible sound quality I'm afraid, but that's the BBC for you).

 

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Barenboim's secret plot revealed - Beethoven Concertos 3

Berlin Staatskapelle / Daniel Barenboim - Royal Festival Hall, 1 February 2010

Although Daniel Barenboim's flying visit to London has been billed as a Beethoven series, it is becoming ever clearer that the support act lies at the heart of his programming decisions. His four Schoenberg selections - tonight the Five Orchestral Pieces, op.16 - trace the composer's journey from high romanticism to serialism in a not-quite chronological but musically intelligent order. The Beethoven concertos have simply been draped around them. In excluding Schoenberg's immediate forebears and descendants from the programmes, Barenboim is allowing the composer's development to speak for itself.

Five Orchestral Pieces lies at the heart of this exercise, at the critical juncture between Schoenberg's early and later styles and at the very limits of tonality. The structural integrity of Barenboim's reading made it accessible and his meticulous eye for detail and balance brought its rich and complex textures alive. Scoreless, as he has been for the entire series, Barenboim seemed to inhabit the work as much as conduct it.

Two of Beethoven's concertos flanked it. No.2, the earliest of the bunch, is in many respects the least interesting - certainly the least purely 'Beethovien'. But an extraordinary, extended and harmonically daring first movement cadenza (presumably Barenboim's own) convincingly hitched its classical simplicity to the world of the later Beethoven, capping a bright, exhilirating performance.

No.4 ended the evening. Despite a similar level of technical difficulty, here Barenboim was much more clearly in control than he had been with the previous evening's Emperor Concerto. The odd finger slip disappeared into the texture of the piece, played by Barenboim with a heroic swagger that emphasised its similarities of form to the later work. The Berlin Staatskapelle were here at their peak, their enthusiasm for the dancing rhythms and flourishes so infectious that the standing ovation seemed an inevitable reaction to the performance and not, for once, just its guiding personality.

 

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Barenboim's second coming - Beethoven Concertos 2

Berlin Staatskapelle / Daniel Barenboim - Royal Festival Hall, 31 January 2010

 

The second of Daniel Barenboim's four Beethoven concerts at the Royal Festival Hall was capped with a near-unanimous standing ovation. But what exactly was it acknowledging? Probably Barenboim's quasi-superstar status as much as the performance itself, but the fact is that the former enabled the latter - a brave, bold and often risky assault on the daunting Emperor Concerto that no other performer on earth could have got away with.

Fistfuls of misplaced notes rendered the bravura opening recognisable only by rhythm; pedal abuse couldn't quite smooth over jagged runs and gap-toothed arpeggios; a memory lapse at the start of the final movement almost brought the whole thing crashing to a halt.  But who cared whether Barenboim could play all the right notes in the right order in a performance this rivetingly alive?

Here and there the Berlin Staatskapelle dutifully reproduced a few carefully-tutored corners pencilled into their scores. Strings dropped to a whisper or swelled to a neatly arced crescendo, just so. But mostly they, like Barenboim, were flying by the seat of their pants, flexing with his unpredictable rubato, snapping crisply to his abrupt tempo shifts. Intuitive though their mutual understanding was, it sometimes seemed the orchestra were hanging on in there in spite of Barenboim's presence rather than because of it. Playing and conducting at the same time is not easy, demonstrably so in this case. Barenboim's struggle was heroic and it rescaled this titanic and sometimes bombastic work down to human dimensions.

The first half's precisely weighted and balanced Verklärte Nacht was a well-judged counterpoise. The programming for this series may look simple, but it's anything but thrown together. Carefully spun-out phrases and neatly bound forms made sense of the work's wilder details. Nothing was arbitrary. The responsive Berlin Staatskapelle strings offered colour and substance to Barenboim's clear and compellling narrative.If it wasn't quite as transporting an experience as the previous night's Pelléas, that's probably in the nature of the work itself.

standing ovation:

 

on your box soon? One of two TV cameras:

Barenboim's back in town - Beethoven Concertos 1

Berlin Staatskapelle / Daniel Barenboim - Royal Festival Hall, 29 January 2010

It's telling that, in contrast to normal billing etiquette, the conductor/soloist's name appears above (and in some cases, without) the orchestra's for this series of four concerts. Yes, Daniel Barenboim is back in town, and those guys hanging around behind him are his home orchestra, the Berlin Staatskapelle.

In his last appearance in London, two years ago, he of course summited that pianistic Everest, all of Beethoven's piano sonatas, back to back (I was there for all them). The press are clearly still sore at having missed out on 'the classical music event of the decade' (not one of the critics managed all eight concerts, whose legend-worthy status only emerged halfway through the series). So they've been desperately pimping this year's Barenboimathon, the five Beethoven piano concertos, despite the fact that tickets sold out months ago and anyone lucky enough to have one hardly needs any further persuading.

But there's no denying that compared to the sonatas, this year's task is of more Ben Nevis-like proportions. Less virtuosic, less physically demanding and most would say artistically lesser works, they are nevertheless a challenge, particularly when combined with conducting the orchestra. Barenboim could have completed his programmes with anything, but with capacity audiences, press tonguebaths, Radio 3 broadcasts and a rumoured 'making of' BBC documentary in the works he has bravely and delightfully decided a dose of Schoenberg is what the atonality-averse British public needs.

But it was Beethoven he chose to begin with, and though he's not performing the concertos in publication order, he started with No.1. Seated at a lidless grand, his back to the audience, his increasingly minimal conducting style was reduced to few airy arm-waves in between the keyboard passages. But it was clear from the cohesion of the orchestra that the concerto had been well-rehearsed, with a few extreme dynamic shifts impeccably and unanimously executed, and Barenboim's teasing rubato readily accommodated. Much of the physical direction in fact came from the orchestra's gesticulating concertmaster. The modestly-sized orchestra seemed to respond to Barenboim on a more intuitive, chamber-like level, conversing in purely musical terms.

Barenboim's hands-on Beethoven expertise, gained as soloist, chamber musician and conductor, is unrivalled. One of the greatest revelations afforded by his sonata series was his considered contextual placing of each sonata within the composer's body of work as a whole. He showed the sonatas not just as self-contained pieces, but in relation to each other.

That same approach was immediately apparent in the first concerto, played with a throwaway formal clarity that belied its classical roots, not quite Mozartian, though with no more than a hint of the romantic freedoms Beethoven was yet to take. Even the abrupt harmonic gear changes had a propriety which suggested playful experiment more than iconoclasm. I didn't recognise the first movement's cadenza, which leads me to believe it might be Barenboim's own - he certainly played it with a precision he couldn't always achieve in the scored sections.

The greater achievement of the evening though was the second half's Pelléas et Mélisande, labelled a tone poem but in reality a voiceless opera. Barenboim's beloved Schoenberg, here in his unscary post-Brahmsian chromaticist clothes, was displayed as a storyteller of powerful yet economical means. The massively enlarged orchestra, almost bursting off the stage, provided a dense, bottomless thicket of sound, through which the keening winds and muted brass wove. Barenboim's heavy deliberate tread, filigreed with telling detail, underlined the inexorability of the lovers' fate. The Berlin Staatskapelle, not the tidiest of players but certainly amongst the most committed and purely musical, responded as one.

 

 

Barenboim and West-Eastern Divan Orchestra end their summer in Paris

 West-Eastern Divan Orchestra / Barenboim / Meier / O'Neill / Pape - Salle Pleyel, Paris, 25 August 2008

Schoenberg Variations for Orchestra, Op.31
Wagner Die Walküre, Act I

Just a few days after the Barenboim/Divan Proms, I was in Paris for second helpings - quite literally in the case of the Schoenberg Orchestral Variations, a repeat of the lush, expansive London performance. 

The Parisian audience, totally starved of music for the last month (when they say everything shuts down in Paris in August, they mean it), lapped it up. Despite charging double the regular Salle Pleyel prices (and ouch, that rampant Euro really hurts these days), the concert was a sell-out. A long and over-optimistic returns queue snaked across the entrance as I arrived. A few enterprising punters even waved banknotes hopefully at the incoming ticket holders. Was it really just because there was nothing else on that night? Or had it become, despite low-key publicity, a bit of an Occasion? It was reported that Barenboim had paid Sarko a visit earlier in the day, an encouraging sign. Can you imagine Gordon 'Arctic Monkeys' Brown owning up to having even heard of Daniel Barenboim?

Barenboim's Wagner is of course legendary, and I'm sure Die Walküre and its starry trio of soloists were the main attraction of the evening for many.

Although this was a concert performance, there were no seats and no scores for the singers.

Of the three, Waltraud Meier proved most able to take advantage of this, ignore the surroundings and throw herself into her role, despite the conductor's podium separating her from her Siegmund, Simon O'Neill.  Her ever-unpredictable intonation firmed up as she progressed, and her voice seemed as agelessly smooth as her forehead (compare and contrast if you will with a violinist half her age, left).

O'Neill's sound, clean and hard-edged, is not the biggest voice, but it cut through the orchestra like a laser. A long-breathed "Wälse!" that left him purple-faced was one of several moments that tested his limits, and he looked less at ease with the compromises of the concert format than Meier.  Good Wagnerian tenors are in short supply, and he's definitely in the top drawer. But I find the voice simply efficient, like bleach scouring a blocked drain, and hard to warm to.

Rene Pape was his usual laconic self. Added to this, the part of Hunding lies a little low for him, so it was a less than jaw-dropping performance, but the natural beauty of his voice shone through.

Almost inevitably though, Barenboim was the real star, teasing a thrilling performance from the orchestra, even if it lacked a little of the weight and refinement customary in his Wagner.

I don't think I've ever heard applause quite as shattering and prolonged as what followed. There was an almost instant standing ovation, and few audience members left, even though Barenboim took his time going round each orchestra member thanking them individually. He hugged, he kissed, he shook hands. Another first - I've never seen him smile so genuinely or respond so warmly as he did to the young musicians of the orchestra.

There was to be no encore though - just a speech (in perfect French).

Barenboim started by explaining his extended individual congratulations - it was because it was their "last concert". Leader Michael Barenboim almost jumped out of his seat, then sank back as his father corrected himself "that is, the last concert of the summer".

He went on to say that each musician had shown enormous courage in coming to play in the orchestra.

"It's not a political project, but a third way. We think only that there's no military solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We want to learn to live together".

 

 

Daniel Barenboim's Divan returns to Proms

Proms 38 and 39: West-Eastern Divan Orchestra / Barenboim - Royal Albert Hall, 14 August 2008

Haydn Sinfonia Concertante in B flat major, for oboe, bassoon, violin, cello
Schoenberg Variations for Orchestra, Op.31
Brahms Symphony No.4
Encore: Wagner Prelude, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

Pierre Boulez Mémoriale (... explosante-fixe ... Originel)
Stravinsky L'histoire du soldat

The surgical-gloved bag checks at the door and the deliberate omission of orchestra members' names from the programme were jolting reminders that for there's more to this mixed Arab-Israeli orchestra than music.

It is I suppose inevitable that the incredible feat of simply creating and sustaining a cross-divide orchestra tends to overshadow the purely musical successes. But gradually, Barenboim has shaped this assortment of musicians - professional and amateur, experienced and novice, young and even younger - into an outstanding orchestra. The fact that tonight's brass section included a few ringers from the Simon Bolivar Orchestra doesn't diminish that achievement.

What is really special about this orchestra is not just that Israeli and Arab sit side-by-side, but that it mixes such a wide range of experience. Tonight one of the Israelis was concertmaster of the Berliner Philharmoniker, Guy Braunstein, and sharing his stand was a ten year old Palestinian prodigy.

When leader Michael Barenboim bust a string in the Brahms, Guy Braunstein, sitting back in the third row, was the one who proffered a violin swap. Playing the last movement on three strings, using every spare moment to unpick the broken string so he could swiftly replace it with the spare in his pocket before the encore, he gave his junior partner a lesson in crisis management he won't forget for a while, on top of all the musical stuff. Where else could a ten year old, however talented, get that sort of training?

And why don't we have something similar in Britain? Bringing together warring nations may be beyond the scope of British orchestras, but putting together a group from mixed musical backgrounds could rejuvenate the approach of the professionals as well as giving the youngsters the sort of practical training they could never receive from any youth orchestra, however good.

They gave Haydn's Sinfonia Concertante an elegant, hard-edged workout, if rather short on charm. Barenboim, with the slightly disdainful air of a man obliged to hold his wife's handbag, occasionally stood back to investigate his pockets or swab himself with a handkerchief. Perhaps he was just demonstrating that the orchestra and soloists were well-enough rehearsed to motor along without his hand at the wheel.

He swung back to full-attention mode and Schoenberg's Variations for Orchestra emerged in luxuriant bloom, at once precisely delineated and expressively glowing, a scorching rebuttal to anyone who claims that twelve tone music is automatically incomprehensible or devoid of all feeling.

A short-breathed opening belied an expansive reading of Brahms' Fourth Symphony.  A balance weighted more toward the formal than the expressive element was perhaps to be expected, and Barenboim's sculptural definition securely contained its romantic sweep. I found myself impressed rather than moved.

It was a shame the enthusiastic applause and cheering had to be accompanied by an undercurrent of booing  - no doubt directed at the political rather than the musical element, but grossly unfair on the musicians.

Having commented that he's usually asked to say what's wrong with the Middle East, Barenboim claimed "you've just heard what’s right with the Middle East” before baiting another tiresome faction of his opponents with a rousing encore of Wagner’s first Meistersinger prelude.

More cheering, more booing, and I wasn't sure if the Palestinian flag unrolled in the Arena was a gesture of support or criticism - either way, it struck a jarringly divisive note next to the hugging and handshaking of the orchestra members.

Most of the orchestra finished for the night at this point, leaving just a handful to return an hour later for the late night concert. This began with the brief shards of Pierre Boulez's Stravinsky tribute Mémoriale (... explosante-fixe ... Originel), followed by the surprise appearance of the composer himself on stage.

Then came another living legend, this time actor/writer/director Patrice Chéreau, reading all the speaking parts in Stravinsky's L'histoire du soldat. This work has too many words and too little music to be improved by such an economically-textured approach, even when the performer is as distinguished as Chéreau. And of course the condensation of all roles into one performer limits spontaneity and removes one layer of engagement. Although Chéreau's performance was powerful and charismatic - or maybe because it was - the music took on the character of interludes to a monologue, illustrative asides. This was far from Stravinsky's intent. It's a difficult work to pull off, and while this performance displayed the content effectively enough, it didn't communicate the essence.

 

 

Boulez back at the Barbican with Bluebeard

LSO/ Boulez - Barbican, 11 May 2008

Though the Royal Opera House may now be charging £19 just for a standing place, it's still possible, amazingly, to experience world-class opera in London for under £6 - and that includes a seat. That was the starting ticket price for this LSO concert, the second of two guest-conducted by the legendary Pierre Boulez.

The centrepiece of the evening was a superbly balanced and exquisitely nuanced reading of Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's Castle - a concert version of course, but losing little from the format. Dispensing with the optional prologue and narrator gave it an immediate impact, and Boulez maintained perfect dramatic pacing throughout.

Michelle De Young, nearly a foot taller than Boulez in her heels, looked a little bizarre at his side, but her Judith had great human warmth and clarity, with an absolute mastery of line.

Peter Fried is not a familiar name to me, but he has apparently made a specialty of the role of Bluebeard. He doesn't have the biggest voice, and it disappeared under the orchestra now and again, but the world-weary tone was spot on. And it was a pleasure to hear Bartók sung in undeniably faultless native Hungarian for once.

Peter Fried was also the barely-heard but effective soloist in Schoenberg's Die glückliche Hand, the 20 minute mini-opera which opened the evening. The multilayered orchestral parts emerged with perfect clarity, even the crude circus-like offstage band, though the contributions of the BBC Singers weren't perfectly coordinated.

In between the Bartók and Schoenberg was sandwiched the UK premiere of Osiris, by German composer Matthias Pintscher, fitting so seamlessly into its surroundings that it could have been designed round them, a chink of daylight between their nightmare extremes.

Following a formal process of dispersal and reconstruction, Pintscher explores novel sonorities in glittering fragments. The boosted percussion section looked particularly taxed (and what was that vertically-bowed instrument?), but muted trumpet and bass clarinet got their rare moment in the spotlight too. The LSO executed the complicated writing with laser accuracy, and Boulez brought a sparkling clarity to the dense layers. Unlike many contemporary works, which look limp placed side by side with time-tested classics, this truly seemed to hold its own.

Sadly I won't be around when the LPO perform Pintscher's Towards Osiris on 25 May but I'd suggest it's worth checking out.

Peter Fried passed a rose he was given to an amused Boulez (his first smile of the night), who in turn presented it to LSO Leader Carmine Lauri:

Boulez at the Barbican

LSO/Boulez - Barbican, 30 April 2008

Bartók's Concerto for Two Pianos and Percussion is such a rarity on the London schedules that it's welcome no matter who's performing it.

But having been promised Lang Lang and Hélène Grimaud, I was a little disappointed to find them substituted without warning or explanation by Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Tamara Stefanovich. Aimard is a great favourite of mine, he excels in Bartók, and his performance with frequent partner Stefanovich was predictably exemplary. But I still itch to hear what the man who said "If you like hip hop, then you will like Bartók" would have made of it.

The percussion soloists, the LSO's own Neil Percy and Nigel Thomas, were immaculate and unflashy, and Pierre Boulez pulled the whole thing together tautly. If it didn't have the impact of the pared-down Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion from which it is drawn, that's wasn't down to the performance, but to Bartók's sprawling arrangements, which tend to grab ideas out of the hands of the soloists only to lose them in the orchestra. That Boulez got a far warmer reception on his entrance than he did at the end of this piece reflects entirely on the material.

Boulez's thoughtful programme placed more piano work rearranged for orchestra, his own Notations, at the end of the evening.

With orchestration these become almost unrecognisable, expanded in all directions. The tablecloth size of the conductor's score, running at about two bars per massive page judging from the manic speed of Boulez's flipping, evidenced the intricacy of his arrangements.

The orchestra too was massive, extra percussion and all hands on deck, but every detail was crystal clear, and there was all the focus and momentum the Bartók lacked.

Notation II was the brief and explosive finale, reprised scrappily but even more exuberantly as an encore.

In between these blockbusters came Schoenberg's Five Orchestral Pieces, sounding almost cosy in Boulez's affectionate reading and Stravinsky's Le Chant du rossignol, light-footed and sparkling, with stunning, perfectly judged flute, violin and trumpet solos.

Boulez returns to the Barbican on 11 May with Michelle De Young for Duke Bluebeard's Castle and Schoenberg's Die glückliche Hand - not to be missed.

Prom 45 - a lot of notes

Prom 45: BBCSO/Oliver Knussen/Leila Josefowicz - Royal Albert Hall, 17 August 2007

Schoenberg Five Orchestral Pieces Op.16
Oliver Knussen Violin Concerto
Hans Werner Henze Sebastian im Traum Stravinsky The Rite of Spring

You'd probably rather look at a photo of tonight's winsome soloist Leila Josefowicz than the ursine charms of conductor Oliver Knussen but sadly she moved too quickly to get a decent shot in. Anyway, I can report that she wore a stunning loose white spaghetti strapped dress with a blue ombré bodice and a wide brownish sash tight around her waist.

She gave a poised and delicate reading of the appealing Knussen concerto, which allows the soloist barely a second's breathing space. From mid-arena, her instrument had a surprisingly small sound, though this is not apparent on the Radio 3 recording (available for 1 week), where the sound balance emphasises front of stage.

Before this, Knussen gave a typically meticulous and detailed reading of the Schoenberg, all the subtle changes of balance and texture carefully drawn out.

Henze's Sebastian im Traum was a UK premiere. After a sparsely-textured first section where tiny slivers of ideas pop up then slip gently away, it explodes into an intense core before returning once again to a more fragmentary style and an inconclusive ending. Knussen's modest and functional conducting style, all clean movement, kept it on an even keel. It was very well received by the sizeable (and much younger than usual) audience, prompting Knussen to raise the score in the air for some applause of its own.

The Stravinsky was taken at a blistering gallop, and not entirely free of errors, but it was a thrilling performance, making up in excitement for what it lacked in textbook precision. This too got plenty of applause, including a round for the score Knussen raised in his hand. Once again though, I feel the Radio 3 recording is unbalanced in favour of the front of stage.