DR Kultur: DSO Berlin - Tame Sacre du printemps blots Tugan Sokhiev MD designate debut. Piotr Anderszewski, soloist. 26.11.10. Philharmonie, Berlin.

This marked Tugan Sokhiev’s debut as music director designate of DSO Berlin. Most prominent here wasa work Ingo Metzmacher also did his first season – out of his three with DSO – Le Sacre du printemps by Igor Stravinsky. Sokhiev, originally from Ossetia, just like his mentor Valery Gergiev, and continuing a little while longer as Orchestre Capitole de Toulouse’s conductor, is said to have close to decade long relationship with DSO Berlin as guest conductor. He also replaced Zubin Mehta on short notice during the Vienna Philharmonic’s fall 2009 Asia tour. More than I could have known, he has been serious contender to take Metzmacher’s place for months now – since Metzmacher suddenly announced resigning from DSO Berlin in March of 2009.

Musical qualities to Sokhiev’s work have surfaced – most notably on a Dvorak and Tchaikovsky program he conducted with the orchestra last season – and also for some of this program as well. He has an ear for the lyricism of the music he conducts, a decent ear for balances, yet there are other elements that perhaps are still lacking for position carrying the prestige of having been founded by Ferenc Fricsay.

This program opened with the Roman Carnival Overture of Berlioz. Benevenuto Cellini’s romance to Therese – here sung by English horn – received lovely warmth, ardor, and shape. Once bacchanale – choral during the opera (conducted by Gergiev at Salzburg recently) – began, spiritedly here, some flaccidity however in getting the shape of its tune and rhythms began to creep into the strings of DSO Berlin. In order to compensate for the lapse, urgent push forward gradually then surfaced. Such eventually left woodwinds slightly off ensemble wise, and then violins sounding strained, forced. Risk also began to emerge of conducting slightly ahead of the beat. Even with all carping above, all still ventured forth in a spirited manner and on reasonably secure footing.

Piotr Andrszewski proved consistently fine soloist for the Bartok Third Piano Concerto. The folk-like simplicity, earthy accents, engaged rumination over mystery infusing this music all got matched with limpid Mozartean line, plus secure engagement of quasi-Lisztian virtuosity some of the way therein. He was also very keen on listening to all going on about him as keen to accurately interact with such toward achieving optimum results for all. Sokhiev proved supportive, but one has to reckon tentatively so. The hushed mystery opening Adagio religioso from strings of DSO Berlin he assisted in making rapt and middle section of antiphonal bird call between soloist and solo winds in DSO Berlin had all color, piquancy, echo to resonate very effectively.

DSO Berlin strings sounded slightly thin, tentative at outset of the first movement – but with good sense of pulsation underneath evident – Andreszewski playing his opening bird-song lines with singing tone and deftly applied color – consistent from him with much to follow here. Making glib Bartok’s excellent rhythmic shape to opening lines, DSO Berlin strings made something curiously flat-line of their opening tutti – DSO winds then soggy toward sufficiently being able to color their lines. Andrswzewski continued unencumbered – then with good attempt to assist him from woodwinds – into shaping sprightly second theme with excellent brightness and lift.

Winds then dragged unison allargando line into the Development – canon between Anderszewski and them to follow belabored by tentative beat from Sokhiev. – but with all finally coming together well for quietly haunting segue into the Recapitulation. Qualities that dragged down earlier passages resurfaced again, but concertato winds with Anderszewski on the second theme lightly fed off the nuance he provided them and all eventually came to a light, heady close with Anderszweski deferentially accompanying solo flute. The rarefied, transfigured quality of how the ‘leave-taking’ Adagio religioso opened was again special here. Anderswzweski settled for playing forte as marked anguished chord progressions in the first A section of this, but strings as leaning on similar during return thereof lacked such perfect subtlety., followed by good despondency in making forceful response from Anderszweski, then to help bring all to, very rapt, a peaceful close.

PIotr Anderszewski proved most useful, in marking accents right to keep motion, pulsation flowing right, all calibrated as well as possible through the vigorous finale, different episodes thereof – albeit with first A section fugato more in Sokheiv’s hands than that of the soloist for most of it. Prredictably results were approximate, followed by clotting of matters toward its conclusion. After further muddying of several passages, awkward accenting of the last page of this, tricky in its own right, almost threw Anderszewski off, but all held on sufficiently to a completely vigorous send-off of the end of the concerto. Anderszweski always remained confidently engaged with in both the vigor and often also playful wit of this music.

Memories float back of hearing Helene Grimaud play Bartok Third with Metzmacher and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra – Grimaud who can be colloquial bull in the china shop on Schumann, Chopin, Ravel, even Rachmaninoff, but with the SFSO playing at previous DSO Berlin levels, all crisp, rapt, lightly intense through entire duration of this fine performance – Bartok Third that Grimaud had recorded already with Pierre Boulez.

If one accepts Rite of Spring as concert tone poem, nothing to offend then about how Tugan Sokhiev approached it. However, some listeners still reckon it deserves better. Consistent with making it mere showpiece, this was equally as tame as many performances of Rite arrive these days. Simplicity here felt put aside right away with a heavily nuanced opening principal bassoon solo. With careful anticipation of bar lines and getting mildly stuck on brief concertato of flues and English horn - things waited until right before ‘Augures de printemps’ to sufficiently gather steam. Adequately pulsated streamlined grip on proceedings took over from there. Excess legato from brass and several faulty entrances from winds apart, a secure grip on matters at last manifested itself. “Jeu de rapt’, featuring excellent rapid tonguing from flutes, gradually got weighed down by soggy accents.

Introduction and then climax and brass interjections to ‘Spring Rounds’ got underlined, smoothed out – remindful of a young Semyon Bychkov Woodwind descant first well limned fine steady pulsation underneath to get the main section underway. Reprise of intro was better - following odd pause inserted before rapid stretto coda to ‘Rondes’. Similarly gilded allargando defanged the opening to ‘Jeux des cites rivales.’ Marked grace note upbeats on woodwind got clipped and a few thereof misplaced; streamlined was the rest with which for Sage to make grand entrance. It took a good ten seconds for Danse de la terre - eventually tamed by numerous carefully anticipated downbeats and flat landing, rhythmically - to help weakly conclude Part One.

Shape altogether got abandoned for much savoring of texture, sonority for just about entire Introduction to Part Two – garden variety gilding of strings and horns amidst muted trumpet duo episode sup-par as usual here. Jansons on Concertgebouw live disc proved slightly more competent surface wise, but similarly insipid here. When will such Karajan-esque flaccidity – upon which Bychkov predictably picked up so well early on – be abandoned on this music for good? Perhaps good for it to remain around for shock occasional good performance of Rite will still provide. After DSO strings playing flat and dull entry to ‘Cercles mysterieux’, principal flute and clarinet led the ‘piu mosso’ therein well – compromise then to resurface for how all the first half to Part Two ended.

The great practically Tennessee Ernie Ford (I almost typed ‘Tennessee Williams’) style hitch to the git-along – as I put it - that a dismayed Stravinsky discovered from Karajan took over for Glorification de l’elue ‘, Sokhiev letting all go for it to risibly take on a life of its own for return of main section thereof. Semaphoring between brass and strings for ‘Evocation’ also sounded eccentric. ‘Action rituelle’ emerged fussy, indecisive, with silly curlicue to woodwind cut-offs, funny streamlined clipping of upper violin ostinati and then of brief episode of antiphonal gesture between winds/brass and strings. Only the climax to this truly significant portion evinced some genuine savagery – or real mystery.

“Danse sacrale’ started off promisingly, then for cross-accents between especially strings and timpani to start throwing Sokhiev off. Strings became phlegmatic, starting its main section. Sokhiev avoided overdoing slurring on slow stretto concluding first repeat of how main section opens – partly to compensate for damp accenting of strings attempting to forcefully begin the written out first repeat. Gilding of violins and flutes helped Sokhiev prepare carefully negotiating cross-rhythms opening extended coda. Underlined, gilded (!) rip up solo trombone very risibly ushered in final twenty-two measure loud sustained ritornello for the entire ballet. Sokhiev, trying to recover being incisive, scrupulized the codetta to ‘Danse sacrale’ - bass drum imitating timpani getting lost - all toward making a whimper of concluding Rite. Sokhiev has some invested spirit, musicality for this, intermittent bad use of judgment aside; like numerous others, some just only complacent, he lacks the sufficient technique - that is, on any major podium.

Metzmacher is still clearly the aesthetician with Rite, similar to Fricsay – very similarly with the London Symphony on this piece eight years ago. By his first season with DSO Berlin, he had developed a more individual voice for “Le Sacre’ and thus on his precise terms, the simplicity and pervasive primitivism of this score came across very alive and fresh – even leaving Fricsay slightly behind in several episodes. The new lift – while feeling slightly stifled for air – to reprise of main section to ‘Glorification de l’elue; was most arresting to the ear; equally heart-stopping was the quiet, very precisely pulsated ‘Action rituelle’, followed by a fraught ‘Danse sacrale’ – equally so to how ‘Glorification’, its main section had resumed earlier.

Piotr Anderszewski followed the Bartok Third Concerto out of which he had very confidently made chamber music with - as encore - Three Hungarian Folksongs from Csik (Sz 35). Slightly different from softer touch, rhythmically more delicate turns of phrase expected from a Hungarian pianist quickly became evident. Andeszewski slightly off-center interpretatively, drew out of the first two, slower portions of this a richly colored texture, illuminating the filigree written therein with rich overtones. Dynamics for such intensely lyrical playing may have gotten raised a notch. Gain in perspective was still had from everything through carillon style ringing tone on arpeggio chords for brief jubilation rounding out a most distinctive showing here.

DR Kultur: Brandenburg Konzert - DSO Berlin. Ingo Metzmacher, Alban Gerhardt. Inspiring nature evocative program. Erloeserkirche, Potsdam. 13.06.10

Ingo Metzmacher confidently and deliberately set the tone for all to follow with indeed a very special take on Debussy’s Prelude a l’apres-midi d’un faune. Thomas Hecker’s opening solo on flute was especially dark in color, heavily lingering in making the highly erotic ardor of his sinuous lines speak to open out very realistic profile ahead. While a slightly heavier touch with this then some, what Teutonic feel or accenting, overtly Romantic eloquence got set aside, through very precise placement of all sonorities and emphasis on how such handling of them opened the floodgates for new century ahead. This was no Afternoon of a Faun as passing phase, but instead the gateway as it was when first played and in all truth still for which is milestone. Should one have sought an Impressionistic picture of Afternoon of a Faun, something along lines of musical equivalent to Monet, for instance, one and in an equally Gallic sense for this piece got something with feel of a late Cezanne or approaching Gauguin instead.

Violins taking up slow languorous refrain introduced by woodwinds got placed just a little back to a bit controversially put throbbing two-note ostinato in the winds more forefront than perhaps is expected. Wei Lu’s deftly played solos to follow – to segue in deeper reverie - then made both greater formal and expressive sense than is the norm. Metzmacher was most idiomatic at imparting a very precise internal rhythmic (and formal) sense to all this music. Ever so free was all caprice across sylvan landscape within all coming alive – thanks in part to the excellence of DSO woodwinds. Nothing ever sounded harsh or even especially detached for the progressive character of this music – for time it was written - to simply speak forth. Conclusion to this was ideally pointed, warmly diaphanous (in muted horns), forward looking nearly all at once.

The Debussy, this approach to it, had merely prepared the listener for the Dutilleux to come. Here is music that might have found its Baudelarian text for inspiration after some of it had been written (just as with Debussy's piano preludes, many of them named after being composed as well) but that enfolds it through a variety of layers, from which it extends into being inspiration of a purely musical, equally allusive sense. What then can be pictorially suggested through the Baudelaire by Tout un Monde Lointain, Dutilleux's sole cello concerto (commissioned by Rostropovich) can then become free to suggest any particular imagery or dream landscape of the listener's choosing. Basis for much of the writing is dodecacophonic writing - writing to draw upon what distinctive intervals from the row are present for sake of what sonorities, coloristic possibilities Dutilleux can freely draw from them. As all precisely resonated, measured out (as one might find for instance in etudes of Messiaen) there is all this, plus hint of neo-primitivism we associate with pre-1920’s Stravinsky, with irregularly paced chant or cry from high winds of exotic intervals in Houles (third movement), offset by hammering ostinati from percussion and other instruments as such. Including hint of jazz riff or two, all is enclosed within solid classical frame, toward bringing this music within reach of mid-cult listening accessibility.

The flaw of many performances of this piece is that can so easily relegate Dutilleux to second-tier, which ever so incidentally in this concerto he still is. The worst approach is to treat this concerto as merely a solo vehicle. With its casual approach to rhythm, intonation, and calibration of other elements, the Rostrpovich/Baudo (EMI) falls short, even while carrying what imprimatur it may. From Ingo Metzmacher and Alban Gerhardt, we had here a veritable concerto for orchestra with very brilliant and highly insinuating cello obbligato - orchestral forces, soloists within DSO Berlin and soloist all spinning, sparring, feeding off each other at just about every turn. Alban Gerhardt's ballade shaping of numerous longer arched lines ensured this music a still very human dimension and individually noble profile - no less his sinuous descending lines in Regard (second movement). Metzmacher made often incisive sonorities in highly varied underpinning device very supportive and precise at once – in absolutely no self-regarding way whatsoever. One still could only be amazed.

Gerhardt found some earthiness to much of this piece, with for instance his playing very close to the frog toward the end of Houles (third movement) and the hard but solid tone for strummed pizzicati cutting through often thin laced textures of so much else about in the first. There was always foremost the view of the musical, even dramatic argument therein – of where all must go. All the often Bartokian shimmer of trills, termoli, repeat chord tremoli, for instance through Miroirs (fourth movement) was both overt and given precise placement within the music’s overall design – inculcating very precise hearing, engagement of the dynamics marked in the score. Precise back placement of bongo drums on their simply elaborate upbeats was acute, enhancing a ritualistic feel deep beneath atmosphere built upon much mystery and illusion.

There was even a considerable spirit of agon to playing this, seldom so well encountered elsewhere. Prime example was the double-stop stretto (as if to start a French overture) to open ‘Houles’ as almost retaliatory to the very arched and slightly overwritten climax to close ‘Regard’ - whereas Truls Mork and Myung-Whun Chung make the opening statement of Houles sound effectively as though to have organically emerged from what has just transpired. The seemingly mad gigue ensuing halfway through Houles, with its interlacing of rapid sextuplet arabesque between winds and soloist was as lightly fierce here as to have in mind just the most vivid musical imagery to derive out of it - all as offset by much engaged antiphony between syncopated clatter from light percussion and irregular repeat chord pizzicato stretto in the violins. It all moved inexorably forward with playful ease, as had just similar enough arabesque variation in the first movement. All that got missed here was anything redolent of tired cliche, just as had been the case with the Debussy – for instance of hazy, gauzy all wafting, dovetailed sonorities to all vaguely blend into one another. The tone adopted here instead was realistic – anything specific to be depicted here left allusive, even illusory - as to turn archaic any effort to make this music stuffy or sublime. Plaintive cries from high register flute plus exposed lines in the high violins in' 'Miroirs' openly bespoke something of the primitive to be engaged – offset by irregularly paced unison chorale in the winds.

The matching, interplay of much rapid fire flautando, half harmonics between Gerhardt and the strings sounded purely spectral. Single note spiccato tremoli from Gerhardt in the first movement carried such impact. The broad glissandi one also hears in the first movement emerged as a force of nature more than as anything being played. Much very subtle terracing infused the inner workings of the framing, quasi-French overture finale to the concerto, with even within the rapid-fire confrontation that occurs within, a very precise assessment of its sonorities in balance with very forthright rhythmic activity throughout. One possible litmus test of how effective a performance of Tout un monde lointain one has encountered is to what extent does the trill-tremolo from the soloist at its very end resemble a last dollop of virtuosic display, or as happened here, electrical current sizzling forth – as to freely aspire for reach beyond a truly limitless horizon.

Equal to the Debussy above in being an ideal in orchestral chamber music, of at once fecund warmth, sylvan caprice, and realistic clarity was the Beethoven ‘Pastorale.’ This was a ‘Pastorale’, the Beethoven Sixth Symphony, property neither of the aesthete nor the post-modern higher critic, with all irony, higher text criticism, condescending parody we freely associate with the latter, but instead, of the peasant, farmer, forester, shepherd, huntsman, whose voices with which this music simply, mirthfully, joyously speaks. It is hard to imagine anybody to improve upon taking it this way, outside Erich Kleiber on his classic 1950’s Decca recording with Concertgebouw, many virtues of which this Pastorale partook. Remembered most of all thereby are the roots of Beethoven’s inspiration being the two oratorios of Haydn to have not preceded this music by far. Backing off from enveloping sonorities here was not so self-conscious to have to crudely shave such off. Opportunity to envelope them just got allowed in so far, not to return this ‘Pastorale’ to other extreme of sitting urbane or at safe distance. There was nothing to prove here, other than great joy of making music together – in making the utter simplicity of Beethoven’s inspiration speak. – inspiration as learned from rural folk – of generally lower class than to whom Beethoven had to frequently defer.

A pervasive sense of narrative informed even the slow movement, at a convincing walking gait, with gentle rustle of cellos and violas with their leaning into it - giving treble voices and also high trills in violins from behind a very pleasant, relaxed lift toward all moving forward. Individual character of these voices, many of them among woodwinds emerged in very fine relief; the bird calls very close to the end of the second movement really did sound like birds – Metzmacher with all his experience in Messiaen just encouraging them to very openly call out precisely as such.

A fully open-air feel pervaded also the very opening of the symphony, at a moderately breezy pace. Violins played with limited vibrato; shimmer to fill in textures surrounding their lines and those of woodwinds Metzmacher limned only so far to animate his very supple handling of rhythm and make specific his characterization of melodic shape, and variety of harmonic color. Much repeat figuration in the Development section, given in Romantic sense for further sense of relaxation - ease with being outdoors - went far better here than expectation of simply streamlining it all. A bucolic and varied slight roughness with accenting it, through numerous modulations, made it all spring to life here. By then, very fine reminder of the classic Erich Kleiber recording became obvious, but as something thoroughly worked out, conceived on its own. Even quite incisively bucolic were the cellos in their leaning phrase under good spiccato in the violins to make retransition. The violins of DSO then soon thereafter reveled in reprise of the second theme with a most openly singing legato. Even slightly rough quality to opening the coda contributed too to so highly mirt imaginative an interpretation of the first movement.

Moderately rough, incisive vigor was made of strong dance that is the third movement, without having to stop to frame or envelope any of it. The Storm got played very incisively, with room made to imagine terrified reaction from peasants on ground below. A febrile sense of panic and dismay replaced this sounding as oppressively loud as possible, as though to depict metaphysical conflagration of sorts instead. Receding motion of the storm, with rumble of thunder underneath then was highly visceral, to prepare such evocative opening of thanksgiving song serving as finale to the ‘Pastorale.’

It was with much singing quality at literally all times that Metzmacher phrased the finale. It was so much so, that vigorous alternation between variety of bow stroke in violins making way into the recapitulation and then their even lighter pizzicato to accompany reprise of its opening theme, at slightly broad pace, always sounded full of life, never phlegmatic. Voicing of woodwinds on reprise of shepherds’ call emerged in full relief. Full tutti statements of opening theme and broad span through expansive lines to emanate thereof all emerged with plentiful light, shimmer through them all across full range of sonorities. With no hint of editorializing anything, last slower reprise of opening statement in the violins gently extended with great calm pause for benediction over the entire rest of what had transpired, with singing line maintained through brief reach through a refulgent, full final cadence.

The orchestra may not quite have been 1950’s Concertgebouw, but this performance alone, everything on this program actually made ringing endorsement for how next opening at the Concertgebouw for new man on podium there should be filled - for how Messiaen would then sound from there as well. Of course, it is unfortunate what turn of events in Berlin - from bad decision making from upon high there making this turn out to have been Metzmacher’s final subscription concert with DSO Berlin; there should not have been any provocation toward severing this invaluable relationship at all. Let us hope that - not in Berlin alone - the right people responsible for this to have happened will get held accountable. Alone on the minds of orchestra, soloist and Metzmacher on this occasion was just this one further opportunity to make great music – as though thoroughly untroubled by how recent chips have fallen.

BBC Proms 2010: Prom 34. Triumphant adieu to DSO Berlin for Ingo Metzmacher at Proms. Leonidas Kavakos. 10.08.10.

Certainly hallmark from Ingo Metzmacher lately has been his interpretation of the Mahler Seventh Symphony. Here we could hear it again from very different sonic perspective than from the very warmly reverberant Muiskverein Wien last spring. Differences between the two, suitably accommodating both halls, were subtle. Metzmacher too it seems, can sometimes be the least of anybody satisfied with his own results. With music so well-nigh perfect as the Seventh, perfection in how to approach it is and will always remain slightly elusive; there is the finale deemed so problematic – often inexcusably taken for granted. Metzmacher achieved still greater refinement with the Seventh in London – some of it taken slightly quicker than before.

It was a natural last March to capitalize upon the Musikverein’s warm acoustics as did DSO Berlin. Here one picked up Mahler from a more linear perspective. With how the Mahler played in Vienna, there was same goal in mind. In making overt the darker undercurrents in the Seventh, as more overtly, less subtly happened in Vienna, Metzmacher’s interpretation still distinguished itself from that of Michael Gielen. Whether heard in Freiburg, Berlin or L.A. Gielen’s interpretation ranks prominent to many Mahlerians. Placing music on the first half of this program of sunnier quality, greater kaleidoscopic variety than the Hartmann Kavakos played in Vienna also may have contributed to what subtle transformations occurred here for the Mahler.

Heard from London was drier, more stringent string section engagement of their grizzly sonorities, edge to figuration to start the first movement - together with still distraught tenor horn solo. Perception of being out over deep waters still registered, even if provided warmer resonance in which to wallow last March. Rhythmic markings in Vienna to begin the Exposition were more forthright, but very well marked here too. Noticeable improvement in London over Vienna was also most supple handling of the second theme, still with slight slow-down, yield into it, but played here on purpose as though to float a little more above harmonic underpinnings beneath - and with improved rubato now, to run Gielen very close. Arched leaps for high dissonances in the violins became more acerbic, making slight jerk back into main tempo more sharply characterized.

Metzmacher handled awkward transitions working their way into pastoral episode less emphatically - with inner lines better helping carry all forward. Spacing was slightly more distinct for the pastoral episode, approached again reticently, but with Wei Lu making starker contrast of his solo midway through it here. The ‘Sehr breit’ reprise of the second theme, so undercut by others by making too much retard on the second theme earlier, here in the cavernous space of Albert Hall floated more aloft in the violins, above ultimately better marked sonorities (seemingly) farther beneath. Metzmacher then handled remaining transition into the Recapitulation, avoiding better the trap with violins entering high to respond to extended brass cadence - that never achieves recovery of main tempo quickly enough – more distinctively now, with terracing of jagged fanfare stretto into the Recapitulation now more acutely realized – where ‘Leidenschaftlich’ indeed is marked. Neurotic current carried through inner voices toward making sharply coherent all upcoming awkward transitions, through finally very supple handling of recapitulation of the second theme, and searing, well marked sinister, (mock-) heroic ending to now a most fully realized first movement.

Sinister accents opening first Nachtmusik got less underlined toward subtler building of more suggestive feel for what may lurk beneath – and with less arched buildup toward long, freely rapid descending scale into horns here most warmly intoning principal march theme for this movement. First episode, characterization of what underpins it quite pungent before, was more subtly flowing over all that goes ’bump’ underneath. Feel for empty space all about with horn calls heard as from afar achieved better simplicity this time. Very stark pointing of trills in lower woodwinds was indicative, flagship for more lightly achieved, more flowing elfin feeling for the entire serenade – at surface.

Less of early unmarked slowdown was made of firm bass clarinet underlined segue into spectral, plaintive Wunderhorn second trio section. Klezmer feel for continuing march and forthrightly affirmative, very stridently woodwinds’ decorated reprise of the main march idea here helped confidently traverse all of the rest. More spectral and widely spaced was the brief episode answering klezmer cortege announced on light violin and harp tremolo on high B natural and then later on final concertato of winds spinning all off. All contrasts here got as incisively marked as before, where what fuss did occur was great fun; all became subtler, thus still more sinister in London.

At surface, with drier resonance, ‘Schattenhaft’ may have overtly spooked less here than in Vienna, but through this and the second and warmer Nachtmusik was at last what just got mostly achieved before. What must have impressed Schoenberg, even including the finale - carrying same trait forward - was the great achievement of linear counterpoint on Mahler’s part, where you have so many lines course through both clear texture, implicit overtones as though all free of harmonic moorings underneath. The art of making art out of the finale to the Seventh lies precisely therein. Icy shiver through the Scherzo contrasted then so well with wafting breezes through Nachtmusik II, the latter in reply to drowsy malaise on snatch of Traumerei as captured by Wei Lu, with no effort to underline anything. If anything, the Scherzo here brought with it a greater lingering effect on the psyche – as not quite fully been able to come to grips with which one has been struck until little stretch afterwards; stronger underpinning before of erratic rhythms produced oddball the more visceral effect.

Guitar and mandolin, with piquant irony, answered equally so by winds, tuned and strummed away disingenuously unaware of better places to land harmonically than Mahler has them. Singing ardor for Schumann-esque trio was still most supple, within pace slightly breezier for Nachtmusik II than before. Caught most ideally was the slight shudder, inhalations right at its conclusion – answered by long ardent exhaling line in low register clarinet – all as out of ‘Ich atmet einen Linden duft.’ There was even perhaps hint of Gallic feel – i.e. the extra airiness of texture for the cello/horn led middle section and contrast of pointed acrid winds therein - for Nachtmusik II’s neo-classicism that made so elaborate such fully infiltrated detachment and linear freedom here.

Rondo-finale merrily jostled forth, this Seventh again at slightly quicker clip than when played in Vienna. Now both Gielen and Metzmacher have made the argument that this rondo is no way inferior to other Mahler. It is just in being able to hear all of it that this is so. Hubbub, some blur thereof emerged in full relief, but with practically all voices, harmonic spellings, however awkward or eccentric, speaking through it all. Half ironic framing of chorale entrances by brass, calliope effects, operetta references and other parody resounded forth in full relief, with many lines running through it all - to be as sophisticated at play as informs the rondo-burleske in the Ninth Symphony.

First-movement caravan episode - less overt a shudder to it in London than in Vienna – became eerier for sensation of all interweaving lines through all preceding it arriving at such an encounter. For as notably revelatory a Seventh this was, the interconnected feel overall without any smoothing out was most unique. Remarkable was the greater sense
of play, frivolity with it here, with pointing of humor therein at one point – high and dry solo flute making widely spaced cadence to match Gielen – but truly risible now added a most besotted slurp of portamento up from violins during final ‘operetta’ episode. Lightly inebriated pointing within the brass right before ‘the caravan’ episode also caught one unawares. Most grotesque of all was this being Metzmacher’s final concert as in charge of DSO Berlin. There’s now one more story to tell from this rowdy finale bringing all to a close more than Mahler might yet have reckoned.

Drier acoustic of the more reticent Royal Albert Hall made delicate to more fleshed out Mahlerian and Schrekerian textures sound forth from DSO Berlin - as more illuminated from within - than at Musikverein or Kurhaus (Wiesbaden). Metzmacher made his debut conducting opera with Der Ferne Klang in 1988 (Brussels); it may have helped as well to conduct the Nachtstuck here, in wake of recent Zurich run with the complete opera – employing lyric voices for Fritz and Grete. It is hard to grasp how this music can achieve at once the most aesthetically true and pleasing results - as such avoiding trap of acoustical hedonism to which Michael Gielen has made reference.

Some greater repose at this music’s surface got achieved here, prevailed better than at Wiesbaden. Wafting sense of reverie through much arabesque, development thereof and interplay with repeat and development of the piece’s opening cortege motif for got provided better relief here. Such made jagged, sudden shifts and turns, for remote tonal centers, in such a way to intrude upon the psyche, more unsettling, disturbing this time internally or subconsciously – as most likely intended. Logic of what decisive turns occur then would lodge in memory as immersed in illogic – as even opportunity to reflect upon the character of the turns that take place in the opera’s narrative. Such notion reflects discourse less along lines of traditional morality and logic than along such to reflect varied mental states. Rationale for my calling Schreker impressionist may be loosely corroborated with Alan Lessem’s comments in his book on Schoenberg music and text (UMI Rsch Press 1973, pp. 71-72) on recurrent timbres reflecting new sensations, even perhaps a new spirituality - moreover suspending tonality - being that out of which is built formal cohesion, independent of motivic or thematic content.

The trick in interpreting the music of Schreker (and of Korngold) is being able to separate out emphasis on such sonorities, truly novel relationships between them from cliché, to which Schreker’s music can still easily succumb. The oxymoron is that in making too harsh or jagged or a clash where sonorities intersect or interlock will inadvertently lead one’s ear to naturally, devoid of any concept of spirituality, rely on its more suave harmonies, cadences, where Schreker allows a certain element of cliché – situation made worse by so much music since cheaply derivative of what have become very time-worn devices or crutches one finds therein. This latest take on Nachtstuck, following strong guidelines instead, made one at last yearn to hear more.

Oasis between tumult of the Schreker and Mahler here was the Violin Concerto of Eric Korngold, written post-war well after the traumatic (initial) phase of expressionism, even as persisted between world wars, was over. Most characteristic here was, within precisely tuned shaping thereof, strong emphasis on both the modernism and angularity of solo lines on part of Leonidas Kavakos. Such playing, without layering on any extra sentimentality, let in more probing air of nostalgia than is clichéd norm. Kavakos handled very masterfully the negotiation of runs in melodically awkward figuration, even through the double-stopping and then free swagger with which the ‘concerto’ finale come across. Kavakos and Metzmacher made well varied between them the numerous repeats of swaggering first theme of the finale animatedly with vigor. Kavakos’s spinning off arpeggios, decorated by so many dissonant or off-chord chord exotic intervals from main idea, was spectacular.

Most distinctive was the echt-Vienniese ardor with which so many elaborately rhapsodic lines were filled, from initial reach through wide span for eventual major seventh to help open the first movement. All got achieved by other means than infusion of artificial sweetener to bring out the ache in the sound, even an intermittent harshness of tone. One can achieve even a bitter taste with such nostalgia – here the sense of world lost far beyond what can ever be recovered, personal loss felt as well for home as it was before exile, without tastelessly going about it. Kavakos and Ingo Metzmacher both proved this as impetus for the lavish care they bestowed upon Korngold’s music here.

This concerto has so frequently become star vehicle for generous technical display – with orchestral accompaniment, so often reckoned pointlessly ornate, elaborate. Metzmacher proved ‘gold standard’ in picking up the Hollywood cliché, especially in the finale, with its ‘cowboy’ swagger - especially when reaching the horns - glittering strings above - in grand style on big sky, ‘big country’ theme that sends all the music wide-screen for good moment or two. Such was followed by fine drop-off highlighted by half-harmonics limned consequent by Kavakos, to riveting effect. Interplay between low trilling clarinet generated light obbligato in high winds to wide dissonant interval figuration in Kavakos’s part scintillated halfway through first section of the opening Moderato. Change from austerely realized long held trilled C-sharp following elaborate cadenza, to very bright clearing of the air for D Major opening to Recapitulation was acute – in part for backing off from softening up change occurring there.

The Andante opened atmospheric, toward preparing sweetly sung entrance by Kavakos. Quite pointillist, widely varied figuration limned exotically colored E Major ‘nocturne’ - coming off somber pause midway through, having all take on a neurotic tinge or edge underneath. Follow-through thereof of flighty alternation of caprice and deep yearning from Kavakos remained forefront. He then achieved over shimmer in vibraphone elegaically restful reprise of the main theme – to develop into making exotic, drug-induced his closing lines. All at high level of simplicity got cosseted by evocative spelling of so much from DSO Berlin forces right behind, making things seem all ready for the Mahler – yet with ‘cowboy’ rondo ahead instead.

http://thedavidsoperaworldblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/orf-dso-berlin-musikverein-mahler-7.html

DSO Berlin: Visit to Wiesbaden of thought-provoking clash, incongruities - Metzmacher, Tetzlaff - Webern, Mendelssohn, Schreker, Debussy - 26.08.09

Agon, battle for choice of aesthetic calling (applying also to how music is interpreted) between achieving precise formal rigor and sensual appeal – while taking on different properties, parameters, characteristics - still rages on. One became acutely aware of such incongruity with this program. Three works on the program here, written within space of eleven years, were composed on the dying breath of Romanticism - with what burgeoning Expressionism and Impressionism to develop alongside.

Such conflict was felt in how all this program got put together and music therein got interpreted. The most free, supple, even rhapsodic I have heard Ingo Metzmacher yet on the Passacaglia of Anton Webern is now as DSO Berlin played it in the very acoustically warm Kurhaus in Wiesbaden. How performances of this from the very same team have differed has certainly not been great. Pace at Wiesbaden was certainly slightly broader than six months earlier in Berlin. A week after Wiesbaden at the Edinburgh Festival, the Passacaglia was taken equally broad again, but approached in slightly more strictly hieratic fashion, as part of same quasi-Bachian program as got played in Berlin and Hong Kong last spring – with Berg concerto and Brahms Fourth Symphony. One here got in Wiesbaden the little extra space, beyond that of the highly linear, pushed forward go at it last spring. One relished here slightly more the inherent colors, nuance through process of being put through so many variations, over ground bass.

The diaphanous color of central episode in D Major received slightly more relief here than earlier, as did mirroring descant earlier of solo flute over bassoon. Febrile duet for French horns, playing in high register, was equally notable. The structural rigor so implicit in this music did not get undercut by freedoms taken here. Instead Metzmacher relaxed to make such internal rigor sublimated – approximated at best from anyone less well-versed at handling the language of later twelve-tone compositions. Ingo Metzmacher is clearly superior r among his peers, in his ability at making such repertoire and his intentions therein clear. There was also some risk-taking here in a few places, especially toward crest of the last loud tutti in the work, which excitingly became almost too propulsive this time. Culmination of stretto with seventh variation – similar enough moment - happened spot-on, variation with broken dotted rhythms in excellent stringendo fashion, as well. Pointing of colors, motif, last strands of activity in the passacaglia’s closing pages was deft and piquant. With solo work always exemplary, the Webern, though ironically, benefited the most by appearing on this program.

The Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, featuring Christian Tetzlaff as soloist, was nearly as successful. The headlong pace, with which this started, without grand-standing, was immediately arresting. The idea consisted predominantly of moving forward still well-delineated first subject of the first movement through well and incisively marked figuration as it builds up into the first orchestral ritornello. Freedom with rubato in shaping relationships between themes in the first movement was at once wide, open, and supple, all natural within the shape of the music. Though noticeably the lyrical second theme moving more broadly than the rest, Tetzlaff supported warmly by DSO winds maintained at once sufficient life and poised line running through it. The centrally located cadenza in the first movement and lack of break into the second movement certainly supports to some extent such a fantasia approach to shaping this piece. Tetzlaff and Metzmacher, however, only put at risk so far very inherent elements of classicism in the Mendelssohn. I was taken aback - referring to the classic Schneiderhan/Fricsay recording - to find less wide-ranging freedom in rubato therein than what Tetzlaff and Metzmacher very successfully achieved here.

The second movement, with expansively paced segue into it and beautifully moulded melodic line, very expressively caught one’s ear in its sub-mediant tonal relationship to the rest of the concerto. This is quite unusual - in place of the Adagio sounding as though to perfectly stand by itself. Matching of running tremolo during middle section under primary line in both Tetzlaff’s part and of DSO strings parallel to it helped keep one’s attention rapt to the melodic line.

While brisk, the elfin step through the finale elicited much more charm than it did empty show of virtuosity – it still in mind the conspicuously brisk treatment of passages and grandiose rhetoric (though with several strained acuti, pitch-wise) for nodal points from Tetzlaff during first movement as well. Some dust was sure to get blown off this warhorse, with it in mind how the two took on the Berg concerto during the same touring maestro and soloist did together last year. Astonishingly, Mendelssohn here got played with as much supple ease as would a fully traditional interpretation of the concerto.

The second half of this concert met with qualified success. Schreker’s music for Der Ferne Klang (‘The Distant Sound’ – loose translation) has often been alluded to as Impressionistic – comparative mention of Paul Dukas’s Ariane et Barbe-Bleue being more apt than of Debussy’s Pelleas. No doubt, however, Schreker is betterat being Impressionist than Claude Debussy. ‘Franz Schreker? Oh, I’ve never heard of him’ one can hear from near back of music appreciation class. Debussy, sublime classicist too he was, was the much better, more objective realist of the two. Debussy most certainly can be played overtly Impressionistic; except for isolated places in which it might be apt, it serves as good time to run for cover.

Schreker and Debussy do not normally work well adjacent to one another. Only to a qualified extent they did here. Getting past that, the virtuosity of DSO Berlin in playing this, and surplus of energy that they invested in Nachtstuck (Act 3 Interlude) from Der Ferne Klang, was something at which to marvel. With Metzmacher in this repertoire, thinking somewhat far ahead, one picks up perhaps a little more than the individual listener can digest of this music. Certainly a most dramatically relevant unnerved quality, anxious tone was felt throughout. It was more subtly the case than with Die Tote Stadt, last year, because that at full length is much longer than such expansive interlude (at 17 minutes) from the Schreker. The warmer, more pliant approach of DSO Berlin, compared with orchestra of Royal Opera in London, also fits much better.

In taking this on somewhat academically, Metzmacher unwittingly gave us a slightly two-dimensional perspective on this. He certainly knows his way through harmonic thicket present; we clearly hear the multi-faceted, interwoven enharmonic, tertiary and at tritone harmonic relationships infusing it. Mild intrusion of portentousness emanated through opening cortege in clarinets - built on triads, subtly buttressed by extra third beneath.

If however Metzmacher wanted to convey the fractured psyche of Schreker’s characters, Fritz and Grete in particular, the element of fragmentation he disclosed here was most apt. Place or two suggesting Act 3 of Strauss’s Frau ohne schatten had me surmise that any complaint made before about Frau being over-scored sure must be churlish. With such exemplary playing, it could hardly be Metzmacher alone who makes Schreker arduous listening. Having the stage picture in view, such as will happen soon in Zurich, should ameliorate matters. Whatever Daniel Herzog’s production offers, images via google of Peter Mussbach’s out of Berlin (conducted by Pedro Halffter) are very striking.

Hopefully, Metzmacher for complete opera in Zurich will rely more greatly on the power of suggestion – in place of making so much overt out of its innards, nooks and crannies. There was nothing near so crude here as the idea of appropriating equal weight to everything in this score. Certainly darker, more widely spaced moments, contrasting well too with fine tracery in the most delicate pages in Schreker’s writing, spoke in greater relief than in taking a lighter, more hands-off approach. Essentially, this music is not so much full of a plethora of ideas as music constantly in state of motion between, at a handful, different strands of material. So much often superficially seems in constant state of flux. One can very seldom keep attention to any one thing for more than ten seconds at a time. Such a superficial take on Schreker, you say, but there is some grain of truth to this – considering the glaring light up to which Metzmacher can subject this music.

Protagonist Fritz is seen just past where this music has finished playing, in final scene of the opera old and almost crashed out, so to speak, on a sofa. He is despondent over both his loss of Grete and failure to finish his own opera – project part of his sole obsessive quest on his own to find the ‘distant sound’ he can not identify until moments later right before the end of Der Ferne Klang. Not uncommon in Schreker, there is in the mean time much debauchery that has happened to Grete; such need not detain us here.

Anecdote out of biography of Richard Wagner is relevant – with as an aside some of Der Ferne Klang taking place in Venice. Wagner could not think of how to start composing the Ring until overnight cheaply lodged in La Spezia (on opposite coast) trying to sleep on a very hard sofa or couch. Output from the effect of his head swimming was the ‘water music’ to begin Das Rheingold – all for three or four minutes thereof stuck on chord of E-Flat Major. First hearing of Nachtstuck makes such notion inconceivable for Schreker – of composing music at all similarly. In mind of the diaphanous mists that momentarily occlude tonality in Das Rheingold, Schreker with no reason to doubt was a master impressionist - very apt at the power of suggestion, something that hopefully Metzmacher will tap into more when he soon conducts the complete opera.

‘Ls Mer’ reappeared from final concert of 2008-09 subscription series in Berlin (programmed then with Wagner, Mahler, and Strauss - Deborah Voigt giving eloquent voice to both Liesbestod and Four Last Songs). Perhaps to compensate for the Philharmonie’s diffuse acoustics, Metzmacher’s interpretation on that occasion seemed angular close to point of being stilted. Improvement, at Wiesbaden, in making more of the mystery and elusive qualities of this music, and more play of much arabesque through its textures was very notable. Strong delineation of this music’s proportions was almost too luxurious earlier last summer at home. Shifts in color, especially from the strings spoke at Wiesbaden with most subtle refinement. Truly achieved pianissimo from DSO violins with clear shimmer above the staff was very impressive - at restful moment halfway through ‘Jeux de vagues.’ Without self-conscious pointing of motif, the very opening of ‘La Mer’ formed out of beautifully probed recesses from the deep; all in supple proportions developed organically, very effectively from there on out.

Still there were moments in this ‘La Mer’, where Metzmacher might still mistake hard push forward for true animation that in French music must almost always emerge from within. One then can easily run risk of excessive reveling in how lavish, even svelte Debussy’s sonorities can be. When however such arrives as compromise to inner flexible rhythmic pulsation, upon which this music must rely to remain alive, cause for it all then runs risk of becoming lost. The only places where this here became an issue were two spots in ‘Jeux de vagues’ – one almost rescued by beautifully calibrated, light harp glissandi following it - and then always risky coda to the finale of ‘La Mer.’

Building of climactic stretto right before calm mid-point in the finale was impressive. Light bird-call descant in flute spoke very freely in open relief far above. DSO winds made the opening then to ‘Plus calme’ remote upon high all very arched and languorous - remote from high pedal in violin section harmonics and quiet undulation well beneath. It was from shaping this so, however, that playing turned phlegmatic, rough, for later accenting.

Metzmacher, granted, is not quite entirely to manner born to conduct Debussy –that putting him in good company. Precise pitching and calibration of numerous percussion effects throughout certainly belied the fact; there was still much here with which to be impressed. Play of waves through ‘Jeux de vagues’ and lusty appeal with shanty tune that starts from divisi cellos midway through the first movement all came across unabashed. Registration of most timbres, sonority throughout, best when informed by complete rhythmic sense, was clear. The elemental quality of this music - much of it so well breathed from within, spoke eloquently throughout.

In the fine acoustics of the Kurhaus, one got treated to lofty feast indeed of incongruities – program in hindsight not to be reckoned as having merely been thrown together. Even with what risks get taken, one is very seldom the loser to attend something like this, to become very confounded by the effect of it all.

DSO Berlin: Schumann Szenen aus Goethes Faust - in most holistic perspective - Ingo Metzmacher, Christian Gerhaber - Philharmonie 26.02.2010

One of the most unqualified triumphs that Ingo Metzmacher has had in the U.S. was his rendition of Der Paradies und die Peri with San Francisco in 2006 – work he repeated two years later in Berlin very successfully as well. That now makes it that I have heard very nearly complete both Schumann oratorios from him. No (other) conductor I can recall has recorded both oratorios. Giuseppe Sinopoli certainly would have found his way to Scenes from Faust, had he lived longer - having only instead recorded the earlier oratorio of the two – based on Persian Islamic morality tale of sorts.

I have yet to hear Metzmacher on any of the symphonies; a friend of mine in Florence heard him conduct the Rhenish with the May festival orchestra there last fall. Perhaps the most elusive among Schumann’s choral works, most aesthetically fulfilling too is indeed Scenes from Faust. It is intriguing how with dulled mind he suffered that Schumann accomplished – process disjunct over period of years – so very much in writing it.

What attempts there have been at Schumann’s Faust on disc have been curious thus far. Most eccentric in forcing conformism with personal model of historically informed practice, though on modern instruments, is Harnoncourt with Concertgebouw. Abbado, sensitive to other elements, impetus with this music, also ultimately comes across a little self-conscious this way too. Boulez, in 1973 from BBC, combines being literal minded with making a little extra special effort to indicate what progressive tendencies the music contains, in classic teleological fashion common during earlier (and more fiery) phase of his conducting career. Bernhard Klee, at least superficially, sounds most at ease with Schumann. Just about enlightened enough Kapellmeister to conduct this, Klee does so just about competently. He misses some elements of this score, that without Metzmacher today, we might not suspect are there.

Wolfgang Marx’s annotation for Abbado (Sony) raises several interesting points. Schumann first set to music the final scene of Faust and somewhat thus from the get-go had the theme of redemption, Marx explains, in mind as paramount. Schumann’s great respect for Goethe’s text is also cited. Starting off from just these two facts alone, our information about this piece will still most certainly be incomplete - of how to effectively approach it. Whatever mental lapse Schumann may have suffered during the late 1840’s, this work certainly must have given him both some respite and some hope. Very seldom in either pedantic or servile way does the music only serve the text. Marx speaks of the very through composed setting of the ‘Mater dolorosa’ scene for Gretchen. Metzmacher uncannily found way through rests, not missing them, of connecting disjunct violas' upbeats in introduction to overall orchestral line for this scene - very hard to hear achieved this well elsewhere.

A more strophic form setting of this scene would not have served Schumann’s purposes, toward adequately depicting the shifting psychological map that he explored in further revealing Gretchen here. Important too, the transfiguration scene, though this portion of it written before the fact, with subtlety cross-references back to early scenes of this oratorio. Schumann, though somewhat (Lutheran) tradition bound to even Christologize Faust at end of Part 2 with ‘Es ist vollbracht’ for Mephisto (quoting Christ's last words from John's Gospel), definitely had his mind too, in how he crafted this work, on the visionary qualities of Goethe's Faust. He clearly did set such genius to music in such a way that indeed would see ahead – and so subtly certainly partly succeeded in doing so.

Ingo Metzmacher is clearly who to seek toward getting get Schumann’s Faust in way that takes absolutely nothing for granted. In achieving such a fine interpretation of this (qualified) masterpiece, he has also avoided seeking any kind of personal stamp to place on it, to mark as anything belonging to him. He goes about it, keeping in mind very well the utter simplicity of some of the writing, with the same respect as has come from him before for Berg’s Wozzeck. It would be the easiest thing in the world to go about Scenes from Faust as being felicitously Biedermeier for much of it; Metzmacher just would have been the last person around to have stood for doing so.

The overture to Scenes from Faust was composed last, and derives sturm und drang elements from both Faust’s dichotomous, fractious scene in Part 2 of debate with the ‘superstitions’ and from example of composing the Manfred overture. At little more than half of Manfred’s length, Schumann did so in a perplexing compact manner. Metzmacher announced from the outset, without either compromising line or weighing the music down, much interest in reaching from just slightly beneath the lowest recesses of sonorities from amidst his forces for proper impetus to propel this music forward. He also thus gave sufficient weight to what framing Schumann's overall harmonic scheme and patterns thereby provides so well. He then was able to eschew having to overtly prove how supple a hand he has at making transitions between theme groups in this sinfonia.

Most notable therein was achievement of strong dramatic contrasts, i.e. two or three subito’s toward change of tempo that happened very effectively. Propulsion through violin section tremolo runs, abetted by flowing rubato through second theme group each time, carried forward to an elementally exciting conclusion to such perilous example of a Schumann overture. Warm glow throughout DSO Berlin remained confidently assured the entire way through this.

Finnish soprano Camilla Nylund, so experienced in heavier repertoire, was the Gretchen. Nylund conveyed very well the conversational tone in Schumann’s writing, very winningly during early courtship with Faust, and element of Gretchen’s self-doubt as well. Expansion, filling out passages of anxiety made for a little heavy going around a slightly tremulous break for her; working with such optimum cushion behind her from DSO Berlin, she fearlessly took on the high B-Flat at end of the ‘Mater dolorosa’ scene with fine assurance. The confidence she took forward from this with long rest in-between reassured Nylund an excellently achieved beseeching tone for Gretchen’s entreaties as Penitent (“Neige, neige”) in Part Three.

Werner Gura made a most confident Ariel, Gura a tenor whose voice can take on some hardness in its middle to upper reaches. He avoided all that, even in skillfully making Pater Ecstaticus’s Part 3 opening lines – and something incisive as well of depicting a fairy’s cramp-stiffened limbs within fresh naivete of Ariel’s music. Gura reveled in the warmth of Elysian atmosphere, sonorous plush all about (though with harps slightly obscured in Philharmonie acoustic behind strings and flutes). With spirit ears well tuned, Gura as Ariel greeted dawning of a new day with both lyrical and heroic assurance.

Mojca Erdmann made her sweet toned higher lyric soprano ideal in this cast of soloists, with only slight hint of acid to her sound as Sorge (Worry) - leading superstition vis-à-vis Faust at midnight. Such amounted to little more than just a fine, though sharply applied Vienniese accent to her diction and production. Making for foreign, contrasting color to more Northern accents all about, it worked ideally well. Georg Zeppenfeld made subtle, straightforward, case for nemesis to Faust. While showing himself always ready to stand his ground to Gerhaber’s Faust, he very prudently waited all the way to very close to end of Fausts Tod (end of Part 2) to show his fangs otherwise. He then provided fine sonority, introspective gravitas for Pater Profondus; his voice blending very well with Gerhaber soon thereafter. Ingeborg Danz provided steady hand and voice for supplemental mezzo parts, including Mater Gloriosa near the end – part to help one also recall the ethereally written similar moment in finale to the Mahler Eighth Symphony.

Any baritone, taking on Faust, is prone to look to Fischer-Dieskau as model. Christian Gerhaber proved hardly any exception. His is a lighter voice than that of Fischer-Dieskau – such to at times work somewhat to his advantage in some repertoire. Results for him for at least the first two parts of the Harnoncourt concerts in Amsterdam were curiously similar, very choppy, to those for Fischer-Dieskau (other than his fine Dr. Marianus) in 1973 with Pierre Boulez –only time I recall hearing these two artists together (as caught on reissued BBC air-check of this).

Gerhaber made very clear and welcome well inflected eager, ardent suitor of Faust to open this in Berlin. Taking in Alpine meadows, peaks and valleys in Faust’s midst filled Gerhaber’s voice with wonder and awe, following cushioned relaxation into Faust's opening lines. Like the Ariel right before, Gerhaber so freshly greeted the dawning of a new day. One hardly ever misses certain qualities from an often overbearing Fischer-Dieskau. Making recall of, as Queen Victoria assessed, Disraeli’s manner of addressing her, Bryn Terfel (Abbado) most certainly has done just that. Gerhaber, with der selige knaben round about, gently proved school-marmish as anybody else as Pater Seraphicus. It is curious that he must show up again moments later as Dr. Marianus, part which Gerhaber endowed mellifluously with fine legato and rarified sense of having acquired a higher level of wisdom than Faust could ever humanly know. His sensitivity to dynamics, simplicity of manner during Parts 1 and 2 was consistently highly assured.

In addressing the superstitions for 'Mitternacht', Gerhaber revealed a gift for scaling his voice way down to a vibrato-less pianissimo, while keeping his tone still alive - even again through very long held note at end of Part 2. Gerhaber made so clear Faust’s greater wisdom of distinguishing between what of superstition to shake off and then of what is valuable to be reckoned from it.

Through both stated and implied excursions through the Neapolitan, Schumann proves most subtly an adept player of opposites, vis-à-vis one another, in setting up modulation here for instance from B Minor to, tritone apart, F Major. This modulation is achieved at “Das war ich sonst” during 'Mitternacht.' Gerhaber made Faust’s finding rest to his soul, concerning what he should reckon, both benevolently reassuring and not. Other conductors who have recorded this pass over this transition as merely incidental. Metzmacher hears such a place as essential piece to the internal musical and psychological fabric of both this scene and oratorio at large. It also simultaneously became so clear here how much Gerhaber was committed to and giving the fullest sense I have encountered thus far of living the part of Faust, as set to music here.

Metzmacher made build-up to climaxes for “Hinaufgeschaut’ (within Faust’s Ariel scene monologue) turn out ideal. Metzmacher managed to deftly draw out so much color and find most aesthetically achieved and characterful placement of so much contrasting going on. One had DSO bassoons heard just a little above doubling basses and cellos – and also violins on yielding offbeats in mid-ground all just absolutely supple and succinct. Mendelssohnian filigree for strings starting ‘Mitternacht’ (with the superstitions) was perfectly light and incisive, to resemble flickering of light much more than mere note-spinning. Rundfunk Chor Berlin, including always fine choral and other soloists, was always euphonious and strong in rhythmic profile; childrens’ chorus (or seemingly so) varied ideally well from sounding on purpose raspy, mischievously so, to perfectly cherubic or seraphic only page different between such contrasts. Metzmacher found much spring and lift to what he took on as dance rhythms, even almost as well for his very forthright, swift pace through Dies irae’s in the cathedral scene.

Anything that sounded detached never detracted from dramatic argument overall There were several places that momentarily Metzmacher seemed to find no better solution than to understate the case, for good of the longer view or bigger picture. Such that did occur this way only turned out more the exception than the rule. Even so, in addressing there being an element of dance in Schumann’s oratorio, most obvious for instance in the scene with Ariel, but also in the transfiguration scene, one was not about to address a newly found ‘jolly Roger’ take on Schumann, such as with early Norrington or from John Eliot Gardiner - what is so frankly two-dimensional as such. The simplicity with which Metzmacher infused this certain extra lift to animated passages he did so unabashedly, unapologetically.

It was even to holistically achieved extent - what spiritually hieratic elements are in play - that Metzmacher even continued with such infusion of dance for extended episode or two in the Chorus Mysticus – all toward bringing it and whole oratorio to a most harmonious, internally restful close. Boulez, at other extreme from for instance Norrington, kept his perception to hieratically the worked out harmonic scheme to the final chorus, until accelerando toward climax right before the end. He thereby missed some of the overt joy or making heard satisfaction what goal musically and psychologically is achieved - in which Metzmacher and his forces indulged so very well.

Through substance of melodic motif, not yet leitmotif, and overall harmonic structure, and ever subtle layout of dualism in Schumann’s conception of Goethe, it is obvious this is music demanding some reading between the lines. It still seems almost miraculous that we can have ourselves provided such this well as have Metzmacher and his forces on this occasion. The quality of what ear and intellect was at play in taking on Scenes from Faust was very clear. What also became so evidently clear was the dualism in the inspiration of Robert Schumann, touching upon traditional spiritual qualities in both verbal and musical text vis-à-vis more progressive, futuristic qualities infusing it as well.

Here was indeed a veritable feast aurally laid out before us. There was something of the idyllic world to contrast with, yet informed by the demonic, the earthly and then also the spiritual or transcendent - all as though dialectically part of one and the same. It is all there to so richly unveil what it does indeed mean to be fully human. Scenes from Faust proves so very well a most satisfactory culmination to Schumann’s art starting back so far as the early piano masterpieces we know and love. Its relative neglect, even patronization, has been ill-founded for such long stretches of time until recently.

Whoever has even minimal interest in Schumann scholarship should join in calling for this to get released on disc; failure for positive outcome would certainly make for serious gap in what Schumann exists before us today. Such would be the least way this experience - encountered so recently over Deutschland Radio – www.dradio.de - could have been so valuable.

DSO Berlin/Metzmacher: 'Aufbruch 1909' orchestral concert - part 2 - Erwartung

Even if the Mahler on May 26th was mildly underwhelming, it would have been highly errant to have left the Philharmonie at the break, even if one had just come for the Mahler. The best was yet to come after the break and did so with a vengeance. I do not recall a more definitive account of Schoenberg’s monodram Erwartung than this, as sung by Angela Denoke and conducted by Metzmacher. One heard all the experimental, progressive aspects of Erwartung as hardly at all understated, but in a broader musical context, accepting in some of the romanticism of the score. In doing so, there was shed a little new light on the radicalism of it, as in a considerably broader but also very intellectually considered musical and dramatic context.

Erwartung survives very well, even flourishes, as interpreted in a well thought out clinical manner, when it indeed has been. The best example of such I have heard is probably one sung by Phyills Bryn-Julson with Michael Gielen conducting. Gielen is too sensitive an artist to have let things fall to limit the dimensions of such a work to account of quasi-catatonic or automaton driven utterances from a person of broken or disrupted psyche and string of orchestral gesture to mimic that.

In its sudden briefly held ostinati that sprout seemingly out of nowhere at times, disrupt train of thought, consistency of musical processes, proper sense of time and space, and also its intermittent pedal points, aching lyric line, and other allusions, the music seems to tenuously grope for somewhat of a tonal center. It may be D Minor a little more frequently than otherwise, with individual pitches and thirds a half step off often intrusive on the general sense at hand. If/when it is somewhat apparent, it is with plenty going on to occlude, disrupt too obvious a statement of a tonal center as such. If one should so emphasize the work’s color, romantic allusions, much of the intricate descriptive to manic activity often constantly going on can get coasted through and/or mildly submerged None of that happened at the Philharmonie.

In this interpretation of Erwartung, all that is disruptive in this score was clearly intended and able with utmost simplicity to be heard in what proved a tour de force performance by DSO Berlin. The tonal allusions therein were very sensitively articulated by placement where each strand of activity might best make its intended impact whether in rear, mid-ground or foreground. Even a major seventh glissando in the double basses for the space of two beats was clearly heard about five minutes in thus, mid-ground, in interaction with what was happening above.

Suggestion of forests, moonlight, hovering images of tree trunks and of other objects and elements of nature were made most evocative. Such suggestion alludes here to what goes on in the life of the psyche. All this happened however in just proportion - filled with color, ambience, light to hardly be romanticizing this music at all, but to make what one hears in this work sound both thoroughly three-dimensional and realistic in perspective.

Equally powerful a presence in this performance was soprano Angela Denoke. The derangement of ‘Woman’ was front and center - her tenuous grasp on ordered thought; reality was reckoned here in full, but without ever overdoing it. The humanity of the part, while serving the composer's intentions most faithfully was paramount. Denoke did project some expression of real warmth here. With state of such dissociation that Erwartung almost immediately dredges up, one could here still palpably empathize with its heroine. The context is one so jagged, remote, fragmented as to real location, state of consciousness, as to be completely unclear.
as correctly cognizant of all her environment, but never crossed that line.

Early on, one has the sensation of a gentle breeze through the birches set as in effect brief textural klangfarbenmelodie and ostinato movement in contrary motion of chromatic thirds in celesta conveying a mixed sensation of distant sound of crickets and/or beams of light from the moon cutting gently through the darkness, then all breaking down into chirped static smaller interval in celesta, staccato, for insect at closer range. This all, caught so poetically here, opened out a world of the power of suggestion in place of being illustrative.

With warm timbre, certainly feminine, Denoke did not miss a beat in intensely capturing in subtle hues and often more than that the rapidly shifting moods and fantasizing of a distraught woman. Such was a performance from both Denoke and Metzmacher that let the always frankly delineated modernism of this score speak both sharply and for itself; here it did so most eloquently. Denoke may have stepped to the line of perhaps injecting this music with excess opulence and portraying ‘Woman’ as correctly cognizant of all her environment, but never crossed that line.

Metzmacher, in the Mahler, Abscheid in particular, stressed the linearity of the writing, as one for instance picks up in chamber ensemble performances of it, and also (as supported by such transcriptions) as though a little more free of its tonal moorings than it actually is. His work with Erwartung behaved in what appeared to be a mildly restorative fashion, in capturing some sense of tonal hierarchy that as the diatonic system, had governed Western music for so long. He thus seemed off in a little opposite direction from how he approached the Mahler. He was thus out to more greatly reveal the by then shocking disturbances happening, erupting by means of Schoenberg infusing ever stronger elements of chromaticism into his music. Metzmacher also kept it forefront enough that Scheonberg with Erwartung still was s tenuously holding on to at least suggestion of a real sense of tonal hierarchy;. Ingo Metzmacher made it full circle in constantly keeping in mind and our ears attuned to picking up such crucial reference.

Angela Denoke, earlier this season on Wesendonck Lieder with Metzmacher, practically stretched the hopeless erotic, practically Tristan-esque yearning of this music to something suggesting mysticism, abetting similar means by Metzmacher thus. Just partly by way of contrast, such a line as ‘Oh der Mond schwankt” (‘the moon is swaying’) happened so intimately as just on the breath - under celesta/harp descant and then softly chromatic descending horn all over a sinister chord from the winds and rumbling from kontrabassi. Moments later over insinuating viola and violin obbligati, “Mein Liebe, mein einziger Liebling” went much the same way. Denoke’s range of expression would even include singing such a line as “drei Tage warst du nicht bei mir” - line soon after discovery in the forest.- all not self-consciously with dead tone – tone drained of all color and expression, over burnished sonorities of oboe and bass clarinet over divisi cellos.

Denoke certainly grasped in full the drifting in and out of lucidity, but most memorable of all was the humanizing of this part without adopting or taking on any form of grand or stately manner, as one has also heard occasionally with this music. The overt weeping on one lingering appoggiatura – ‘da, ich wuste’ early in Scene 4 was most affecting, and as much further down mimicked by febrile and vigorous sighing from DSO Berlin strings.

The air of distractedness brought up the idea of ‘memory and recurrence’ as mentioned in a whole different context and aesthetic field as the Shostakovich just recently reviewed; the concept itself hardly bears any resemblance to itself between these two pieces. Here, in Erwartung, the writing of course is so linear, that other than the shards of ostinati that break in, disrupting sense of time and space, there is hardly ever any stable sonority in play, at least for long.

How Denoke was so affecting was the shifting of tone between that of resignation, longing, regret, desperation to cling to something so dearly held onto before, and based on both distracted and distorted memory of a situation that seemingly psychologically and realistically has been floating in state of flux for some time. Metzmacher’s command of tone color and harmonic references, to summarize what has been said already, was such that would never crowd out or unduly understate the garish modernism of Schoenberg’s writing, but deftly highlighted it and brought all into again a most three-dimensional perspective.

There has been more, especially in terms of chamber music and piano/vocal music, including Metzmacher at the keyboard, to this mostly Schoenberg festival. It should be urgently put to Deutschland Radio Kultur and affiliates that it is a must-hear for both the network’s listeners both (here) abroad and at home – the festival in its entirety, not just the two orchestral parts of it – the other having been a concert of Schreker, Stephan, Busoni, and Reger played one week earlier.

If there was any doubt that Erwartung, in terms of the universals it expresses, is a great work of art, and that what we heard from Berlin was great music-making, Angela Denoke, Metzmacher, and DSO Berlin put it all to rest. May I put in a plea for, unedited, a digital download or compact disc of this performance? One, as attempting to write authoritatively here, as can anybody, can afford second and third helpings for sure.

David H Spence

DSO Berlin/Metzmacher: Beethoven PC 4/DSCH 11 - great ferry across Styx from Elysian heights

This delayed broadcast of Ingo Metzmacher and DSO Berlin playing Beethoven and Shostakovich (May 11th) arrived here somewhat brutally hard on the heels of that of a Korngold opera. The contrast in programming could have hardly been more acute. In a pairing of Beethoven and Shostakovich, there was certainly a sung quality to both the musical content and as well to the music-making by Brazilian pianist Nelson Freire. One had the bel canto of the Beethoven Fourth Piano Concerto and then revolutionary songs of the Shostakovich. The promise of Elysium and associated mirth preceded expression of much torment and pain far beneath across the stream.

Metzmacher tends favoring limited vibrato from strings in classical music, but never to go arbitrarily doctrinaire on us - as found elsewhere. A sense of hushed reserve - much anticipation of opening out to far horizons opened the concerto from both Freire and DSO Berlin. The romantic space so aesthetically required around the bridge theme with precise pointing of dotted rhythms registered in full. Freire played with constant sense of great power in reserve, tracing beautiful obbligato to orchestral line, without having to yield much his own musical profile or character to it.. He, both quietly, alertly supported by Metzmacher, opened an often slightly too overlooked moment in C-sharp minor anticipating re-transition in the first movement, facilitating expression of fine contrast between introspection of that moment and capricious re-transition tritone harmonically apart a moment later.

From reading allusion to Anton Webern's comments on Mahler’s Lied von der Erde, this it could have been who might have been impressed by such evoking of memory as is this small place. The legacy of what music-making was heard Sunday was that such could so eloquently emerge and did. Especially in the recapitulation, the extended spinning out of the line from the bridge theme was bel canto aspiring to most sublime heights. Freire turned perhaps to autographs by the composer in making a few alterations to the cadenza of both first and last movements - with only a second of stumbling over something he, as though on the cusp, had grafted in. His ascent on solo line toward end of first movement to reaching great heights with very secure support below was practically book, chapter, and verse on what is sublime.

The thumping about one is so accustomed to at start of the slow movement was so nonexistent I had to consult a score to find that Metzmacher was certainly not clipping, but playing it exactly as written - with beautifully weighted emphases, accents, shape to each line. Freire responded to all apparent despondency with tragic eloquence, only understating slightly the 'lion's roar' toward bringing this to a close.

The finale, taken quite rapidly - tempos throughout this performance one cut a little quicker than average - promised and delivered great bucolic mirth in as open, guileless a fashion as to recall Fricsay. Freire, in the aesthetic and spirit of everything that had proceeded up to here, wisely eschewed thumping the start of the cadenza, thus making succinct the round in octaves opening it. The second theme, over cello pedal, soared to such extent to make so briefly time seem on verge of standing still. In contrast to that, also true in middle of the first movement, agitato passages, internally so rhythmically, were fully in character. While equally observing the joyously witty, bucolic character of the music, DSO Berlin rustled through the coda with great aplomb and precision.

Just something, though mysterious, about the Beethoven prepared us for a 62 minute trenchant event of music-making that has been a little rare with piece in question for its fifty years of life so far. The piece was the Eleventh Symphony ('Year 1905') of Dmitri Shostakovich – never before any favorite of mine. How many performances of this that stop, have ceased at just giving us an even basically good garden variety depiction of what happened ‘bloody Sunday’ of January, 1905 in St Petersburg? The metaphorical, almost metaphysical power of this performance achieved far more.

Had it not been the composer himself who wrote, in regards to his Seventh Symphony, that if those people out there who have said silly things about his music had read the Psalms of David, they would not have said them? Ingo Metzmacher and DSO Berlin proved that it might take more than words to make the reproof complete, but how did they achieve it? Without having attended rehearsals, one can only speculate.

First off, all cliche, banality, underlining, sentimentalism, other crap we usually hear with this piece just about entirely got erased, thrown out. In its place was a different type of expression - usually heard, in effect just hinted at incompletely as underlined, pointed out to make an already obvious point too obvious while still somehow paradoxically missing it. Here, we really did indeed have something consummate, much more so instead. Only the flutes at near the start of the first movement on 'Listen' (revolutionary song) seemed to miss some placement and color. No such issue ever arose again. Flutes almost perfectly corrected themselves when offered reprise of the same tune to close the first movement. Piccolo and flutes on reprise of opening of the first movement two thirds through 'January 9th (second movement) together with other winds revealed how far DSO flutes had significantly caught up by then.

Without underlining it, with air of stillness at dawn felt, DSO Berlin strings almost levitated the opening of the first movement. The violins found pristine intonation in modal intimation of B-Flat Minor for a highly acute E natural. It became clear then that something was up. We were perhaps to get a pretty good urbane, cosmopolitan interpretation of Eleven, much and as well played one might expect from Haitink; here, played ‘live’, things even this early with Metzmacher were taking off for beyond that. The spacing of muted trumpets and equally muted timpani on 'Crowd motif' - all perfectly terraced - enhanced feeling of something indeed very ominous. Lower strings eloquently intoned broadly arched melodic line of “The Prisoner.”

After hushed close to the first movement, the scurrying motion in lower strings for the second movement got underway - so rapidly that even though one could tell on close observation that all the notes were there, it was no longer notes being played, but instead agitation to be depicted - as though all contributing to a natural process itself. After playing with Metzmacher for nearly two whole seasons, it was also as though his violins had forgotten how to indicate shifts. One could not hear any. For once, with this music, they are inaudible. Needless to say, one still kept moving on to the next thing before the shock of hearing this music so very accurately this way could collect time to register. The easy road is to wear one's heart on the sleeve and dig in; that was simply not good enough for this music this (or any) go at it. The toccata near the close of this movement was not given ‘that swing’, so fatal to it. It turned out, after all this time, so many previous times, really cumulative, terrifying - not ‘film score.’

‘Eternal Memory’, with introduction of very tense anticipation, was played with great solemnity, without anticipation of, past brief Intro, any downbeats. Metzmacher, to provide balm, had his violins just gloss the major key ‘invocation to liberty’ middle section with right amount of sheen to form halo aloft. Brass continued implacably forthright, absolutely precise in shape and rhythm to open ‘Tocsin’ (finale), starting inexorable trajectory toward symphony’s close, broken just once by English horn solo played with Shakespearean grandeur. Lower woodwind triplets were played with uncompromising accuracy, with no intrusion of false accents or ‘shifts’ (since it is music first ever heard in the strings), a moment, since played badly, cripples the Barshai/WDR Koln recording here, after so much on it had gone well.

How could there have been any dry eye in the Philharmonie? The whole thing seemed to end, from what I could remotely sense, with a shudder over the hall. It is highly unusual to hear this music played absolutely without shortcuts taken as to how to fully achieve what has been called the most Mussorgskian of this composer’s fifteen.

There has been talk of the Soviet squashing of the Hungarian revolt in 1956 having been rationale for writing this piece. Certainly the motif of memory and recurrence, as cited as referring to between the revolutions of 1905 and of 1917 (spawned by the former) is very important, but I think in certainly a psychological way more important than just the retelling of two events. Communism in Europe, well before 1956, had become institutionalized to a great extent (though it still could be called a form of communism then) as type of fascism - legacy certainly mostly of Stalin, but before that somewhat of Lenin also as well.

The way I heard narrative told Sunday is that there are universal truths here paramount instead. This is music to which one does not need necessarily to know the revolutionary poetic text origin of its melodies to be able to fully appreciate what one hears, though it sounds as though Metzmacher made his players learn them. It is to some extent just music. Metzmacher kept temperature to proceedings cool, but while ensuring our getting in place of the usually expected with Eleven a far greater intensity from within instead.

Metzmacher gave Eleven a stature to sit unapologetically next to the composer’s not first but last three symphonies. Part of this was in the quiet, but completely acute register of subtle harmonic changes, changes to minor Neapolitan in already the minor mode, and in same sense equally modal sense of progression to the minor mediant numerous times. It was also found very internally in this music’s rhythms and how they are generated. These are all small, very little things it is so extremely easy to overlook or get casually just about halfway so often. Should one miss what seem just like minutiae to any audible extent whatsoever in playing late-period Shostakovich, then you miss playing late-period Shostakovich, all then glibly oblivious then to emotional investment contributed or involved. There was even a somatic sense of pain, with anguish so great in the playing, for alone the acute sensitivity to hearing many very close intervals (also in mixing and contrast with open ones). One has never had to go about all this artificially.

Moments occur a little further on than being just introduced to this that one gets pounding dissonances with again very close intervals involved. The effect here for once was fully cumulative instead of bombastic; it certainly could not happen by how much racket DSO Berlin could make with such a passage. Instead, one had sense of a new mechanized form of violence, still somewhat new to that time (to extent it had developed), but still too new for it to be accepted for any time. In quieter moments, working with an inimitable combination of open or perfect intervals and very close ones, one had sense of something still barely moving but frozen – almost perfectly imperceptible movement within this state – however much is illusion or real.

The slow, none too obvious shifting reflecting and/or refracted night light or artificial light on the square over frozen surfaces of course is what might feed somewhat the inspiration of such aurally recreated illusion. It feeds too metaphor of how much this music is of memory and recurrence - even the still living threat of recurrence.

One can not limit or codify what this music means, to any specific historical incident, including the terrible purges that had already taken place. Shostakovich, especially with the inexorability of the last movement, and how the music progresses almost quite inhumanely through such, wrote the Eleventh as a warning. That much is clear. It is a warning for our own time, even to leading democracies in power (including one in which this performance took place) across the world, as well as to one or two former leading communist states, including one that still is very much so in name, but really hardly anymore. At least there is not there nowadays the wholesale murder of actively living human beings like a full generation ago historical records have recently revealed.

Preceding six weeks ago broadcast of an altogether fine interpretation of Mahler 2 - only several seconds of pause separating the two - was an equally excellent performance of Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna, Ligeti’s textural music, including his choral, is such that it is its sonorities that determine the form - similar to with the Shostakovich, working with very fine intervals. One thinks too of the music of Carl Nielsen, as so very influential on Shostakovich, in his music’s adoption of artificial scale patterns to thoroughly infuse its harmonic language.

Shostakovich was developing a part of his late style, albeit to less radical an extent than Ligeti in that sonorities started taking on formal properties. With the intense stoicism and anguish in the playing of DSO Berlin added to its other great virtues this time, DSCH 11 has never sounded more harrowing. Again, how often has this symphony sounded like ‘film score’ – even under Stokowski in Houston - and then how many times has it ever sounded anything like this?

Metzmacher has also conducted some Shostakovich with the London Philharmonic. To British falling over themselves over how wonderful the Korngold from Royal Opera sounded earlier this year writing in as though they could have missed something, the only sensible reply is ‘You Ain’t Heard Nothing Yet.’ This concert marked a late arriving epiphany for me, in regards to Shostakovich.

Nelson Freire, with equally impassioned lyricism, played as encore to the Beethoven, Melodie d’Orphee (Gluck/Sgambati). That started me thinking - enhanced by Janos Gereben sending me his review of Metzmacher conducting a near definitive Stravinsky’s Orpheus in San Francisco two seasons ago. Allow me just one last moment to speculate further. What if Orpheus instead had used any tune or melodic shard from Die Tote Stadt to indicate pathos? The shades would have then made the Hades resound with the loudest yawn heard within yet, then would have categorically the guardians sent him packing with message to ‘get a life’ clearly in tow. Forget Euridice.

Had Orpheus showed up however with the English horn solo, as played by unfettered Orpheus from among DSO Berlin double reeds to nearly close the Shostakovich, the weeping of the shades instead would have been so wrenching that guardians below would have, in addition to letting Euridice go, had to put all remaining boarders out at least on furlough. Nelson Freire had unwittingly served double duty for the rest of us as also Charon for new arrivals to ferry across the Styx. He, I am confident, would still graciously concede to DSO English horn.

This was my first encounter yet with Metzmacher on Shostakovich. DSCH 11 received its American premiere in Houston fifty-one years ago. After hearing this, can there be further doubt as to where Metzmacher belongs in whatever conducting echelon devoted to Shostakovich? This was not just personal vision of Ingo Metzmacher – not at all - too selfless an effort - but something to be reckoned positively apocalyptic.