Berliner Philharmoniker / Claudio Abbado / Anna Prohaska / Maurizio Pollini - Philharmonie Berlin, 13 May 2011
Friday night at the Philharmonie marked the start of Berlin's Mahler Week, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the composer's death on 18 May 1911. But the generous two hour programme wasn't Mahler all the way - just the Adagio from the unfinished 10th Symphony. As two years of Mahler saturation drip to a close, that was plenty enough for my well-sated palate.
With Gheorghiu-like prescience, Maurizio Pollini has cancelled his 29 April Royal Festival Hall recital due to "a virulent strain of flu".
Scheduled months before the royal nuptials, the concert began to look problematic as soon as road closures in the surrounding area were announced. I can't be the only one who is grateful Pollini has timed his health problems as immaculately as his Chopin.
The concert is rescheduled for 28 June 2011.
No, he's not making a shadow bunny.
And tobacco? Advertising? No way. You can't flog fags on the Underground any more, not even with a picture of some supercool silverhaired oldster lighting up. Strictly forbidden.
But it seems if what you're selling is some dead composer's 200th birthday party, then you're in the clear.
Maurizio Pollini - Queen Elizabeth Hall, 31 October 2007
Arnold Schoenberg 3 Pieces for piano, Op.11
Arnold Schoenberg 6 Little pieces for piano, Op.19
Alban Berg 4 Pieces for clarinet and piano, Op.5
Luigi Nono ...sofferte onde serene... for solo piano and two-track magnetic tape (1976)
Luigi Nono Djamila Boupachà for soprano (1962) from Canti di vita e d'amore
Luigi Nono A floresta é jovem e cheja de vida for soprano, three actors’ voices, clarinet in B flat major, magnetic plates and tapes (1965-1966)
The younger the music the younger the audience, and there were plenty of under-30s in the sell-out crowd tonight for this instalment of the Southbank's ongoing Luigi Nono series.
Although billed as a Maurizio Pollini concert, he in fact appeared only in the first half. Most of this was taken up with a lucid exploration of Nono's musical roots, in the form of some early Schoenberg followed by Berg's perhaps most Schoenbergian work, the 4 Pieces, for which Pollini was joined by clarinettist Alain Damiens.
The sense of time arrested and fragmented in these forbears was echoed in Nono's ...sofferte onde serene..., inspired by Venetian bells and written for Pollini. Here he was accompanied by a pre-recorded tape of his own playing, amplified and lightly distorted. The two layers merged, drifted and echoed, filling the hall in a dreamy, introspective evocation of the misty grey light of Venice reflected in its lapping waters.
By the way, someone asked me why Pollini might have needed music for the Berg and Nono but not for the Schoenberg. It's possible of course he simply hadn't committed them to memory (the Schoenberg is less complex). Or like many pianists, when not performing solo he may have preferred to have the score to hand to check what his musical partner was (supposed to be) doing at any given moment.
After the interval, Barbara Hannigan brought her criminally perfect porcelain soprano to the brief and unaccompanied Djamila Boupachà, then it was on to the main piece of the evening, A floresta. Schlagquartett Köln were ranged across the back of the stage, each with an arrestingly huge copper sheet suspended from a frame, and a variety of implements to whack it with. Fronting them were Barbara Hannigan and Alain Damiens, joined by three singing/speaking actors and conductor Beat Furrer.
The work is dedicated to the Vietnamese Liberation Front, and although the texts it incorporates, some live, some taped, are uncompromisingly fierce, they were mostly shattered into fragments of sound, just syllables and murmurs. The force behind the words was evoked by keening vocals and sparing but ear-shattering percussive interventions. Not so much protest songs as protest sounds. A floresta has been (rather unsatisfactorily) recorded, but like ...sofferte onde serene... heard earlier, this work needed the ambience of the live performance space to produce its direct but strangely dislocated effect.
The only event in London's second annual Open Rehearsal weekend that I managed to attend was this (free!) session with Kurt Masur, the LPO and Maurizio Pollini, preparing Beethoven's Emperor Concerto and Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony for their next-night concert in the Royal Festival Hall.
I arrived a few minutes early for the 2.30 start, and was surprised to be followed into the Henry Wood Hall by Pollini himself, who quietly hung his jacket on the piano (photo left) and tootled around a little while the audience and the other musicians drifted in, ignoring him. At the appointed start time, Pollini toddled out again unobtrusively, leaving the orchestra members to chat and practice.
For some reason that wasn't made clear, Pollini didn't reappear until 3 o'clock, this time with conductor Kurt Masur. And it was straight down to business. This wasn't to be a straight run through the piece. Instead, they spent an hour or so working on key sections, Masur halting proceedings frequently, going back for repeats.
Pollini, though playing from memory himself, had a little reduced score tucked inside the piano, and he leapt up eagerly with it at nearly every halt, ready to offer his thoughts to Masur. Of course I was straining to overhear, but with Masur's back to me, I caught almost nothing.
The hall's splendid acoustics showcased an exuberant, almost abandoned approach from Pollini, a million miles away from his restrained platform manner. On stage, you could balance a book on his head. Here, he was bouncing and sliding around the stool like Jerry Lee Lewis, and playing to match. The phenomenal crystalline technique was of course there, but Pollini seemed to be having unaccustomed fun. I wonder what the Royal Festival Hall audience can expect?
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