ORF: DSO Berlin - Musikverein Mahler 7 - a wild, rocky road of it. Ingo Metzmacher. Dmitri Kavakos (Hartmann Con Funebre) - 12.03.10 - Wien

Ingo Metzmacher in March toured Europe with DSO Berlin, carrying with them Beethoven and Brahms concerti, Stravinsky’s Firebird complete and this program heard in Berlin five nights earlier, then again during this visit to the Musikverein. Metzmacher got called last fall to replace Kirill Petrenko on short notice to conduct a production at the Staatsoper of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. It unequivocally became a great personal triumph. He has also programmed with the Vienna Philharmonic Nono, Messiaen, and for coming summer at Salzburg, a major Wolfgang Rihm world premiere, ‘Dionysos.’

Violinist Leonidas Kavakos helped open with the Concerto funebre by Karl Amadeus Hartmann – Metzmacher leading exponent of Hartmann’s music. Based on Hussite chorale – put through considerable transformation - this music was written partly in reaction to news of Hitler’s rape of Czechoslovakia – tragic event earlier the year this was written.

I only tentatively heard over the air the March 7th performance of this from Berlin. Between this and one at the Musikverein, it somewhat seemed the less direct, more ruminative – in contrast, for instance, with excellent broadcast on disc from Munich with Wolfgang Schneiderhan and Kubelik, openly informed by spirit of protest, but making use of the best musical rhetoric possible to get message across. Kavakos found slightly stronger profile for his often long-breathed rhapsodic lines during visit to the less diffuse Musikverein, with strings of DSO Berlin acutely sensitive, firmly supporting him. While tempos were still a little slower in Vienna than with Schneiderhan, Kavakos achieved very nearly as much. He prudently eschewed excess of vibrato - not to interfere with achieving fully specific expressivity for this music. Such was also true in making broad ascent to suspensions above the staff; his reach for numerous harmonics likewise exuded confidence.

Two simple chorale movements frame the twenty-minute concerto - the first a very brief, simple recitation of the Hussite chorale; the latter, to elaborate ascending obbligato by soloist, for string orchestra sounds –– very close (but embellished slightly) to ‘Eternal Memory’, of which Shostakovich made use some sixteen years later. In-between in character is the melodic line that frames the longer, slow rhapsodic second movement.

Kavakos very capably etched much repeated note writing and double stops with sharp, clean bow strokes through both the scherzo toccata and his freely spun out brief cadenza. He also allowed fine slack to open out fantasia in much of the rhapsodic and also frequently angular writing in the second movement. There was no sense of making empty display of the challenges to technique this writing holds forth. Hartmann’s good ear for what trends were occurring all about – the stringent classicism of Hindemith, the bi-tonalities and lush sonorities built upon them in the music of Bohuslav Martinu - was clear. Fleeting hint or two emerged here of jazz influence common to music by all three composers. Kavakos, sensitively supported by Metzmacher and DSO strings, gave this music a most eloquent voice.

Austrian Radio then unleashed the performance of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony to follow. Several minor lapses in ensemble, tentative accents occurred with this music in Berlin five days earlier, as though (after listening to how this got played in Vienna) DSO Berlin might have just undergone an intense dress rehearsal – thus vitality for repeating things so having become lost. A little more subtlety with dynamics seemed to be true in Berlin. Here in taking quite an angular approach to the Mahler Seventh is someone with a very thorough knowledge and mastery of what lies within - just slightly short on having fully internalized it all. The most subtle I have heard yet is Michael Gielen, from whom thirty years ago we could have expected an equally angular approach to this music.

This was a Mahler Seventh turned gently on its dark side, complemented by pairing it with the Hartmann concerto.. Metzmacher has too much fire in him to have settled for heavy wink and nudge on what, if left at that, can be the empty banalities of some passages in the Seventh. Neither was shortcut of characterizing each of its five movements as simply standing on its own, apart from all the rest, going to do either. One heard all in this piece of what prefigures what happens in the Ninth and Das Lied von der Erde - and thus what characteristics of the Seventh strongly attracted Arnold Schoenberg to it as well. Re-listening to Sinopoli (DGG), it seems he had nearly same idea in mind as Metzmacher, but brought things to fruition instead through, so to speak, the back door – by taking the deconstructionist path.

In making any capital over the dissonant language in middle to late Mahler, both Metzmacher and Sinopoli both eschew making anything two dimensional out of this music. With neither is found any hatchet job nor untoward asperity with Mahler’s chord structures, harmonies - as learned from Juilliard, period movement, or elsewhere. Sinopoli at times goes out of his way to bask in some of this music’s most lush sonorities, at times as to make this music sound detached this way - almost as though about to float out in space. Metzmacher maintains the better simplicity in his approach. In reaching far beneath this music, yet without ever distorting rhythm or form, Metzmacher consistently made one hear well many deep overtones emanate.

Even at clearly forward moving pace, Metzmacher revealed greater interest from the outset than just taking on the Seventh in merely a linear modernist way. The doleful character of tenor horn playing his opening solo with deep tone made this readily apparent. Metzmacher made anticipated steep transition into the Exposition - heroic in stance - with alternate broadening and tightening of thirty-seconds in the heavy equine dotted rhythms, between strings, including their accented, grizzled trills on downbeats, and brass making their way throughout all this. The slowdown into the ardent second theme stopped short of becoming conspicuous; rubato reliant upon wide arpeggi in lower strings beneath sounded mildly inhibited. With Metzmacher only taking risk of excessively breaking apart overall line, development of material from here on out sounded stressed as to working out much of the figuration therein - up to the very still, quiet pastoral interlude evocatively reminiscent of similar in the Sixth Symphony.

Metzmacher purposefully made this interlude sound curiously earthbound, then on high flutes making marked anticipation of flowing episode (‘Sehr breit’) - at last expansively opening out the second theme. A little much was then unexpectedly made out of jagged descent in the violins, as always is. The marking of ‘a tempo, fliessend’ for this seldom gets picked up as soon as indicated. It denies the power of Mahler’s ‘leidenschaftlich’ marking primarily for violins a page later to speak. Metzmacher however made up very well for the faux pas by avoiding obvious trap of bringing this music to a full stop right before final push through the coda, where only one measure of slowdown is marked.

Though making transitions during the recapitulation exaggeratedly arched, disjunct, such risk-taking made for a very adventuresome feel for highly driven narrative on display. This, having come off for ninety percent thereof not sounding affected, made things very clear that DSO Berlin had things starting off in highly exemplary fashion.

Nachtmusik I opened, consistent with all happening before, ominously in solo french horn, with jagged sectioning off of woodwinds’ concertato to follow. The concertato just missed ultimate subtlety in contrasts of dynamics - French horns then warmly, resonantly introducing main march theme to this movement. DSO Berlin achieved fine ardor for Schumann flavored first trio section with flexible expanding out of sonorities where needed and subtle infusion of angst well underneath its surface. Such angst became overt in the ascending line for violins during later reprise of this - consistent with the very precise pointing of dissonances and equally on purpose misplaced accents from especially lower instruments in preceding march. Dissonant intrusions into simple melodic allusion to village marching band and folk idioms helped make for - through such intervention - how Mahler, quasi-Ivesian, points the way ahead for very progressive trends to come, even in simplest of contexts. Much plaintive and spectral was then made out of the brief second trio section. In and out of shadows the rest of this inexorably and steadily moved along, through klezmer march in strings with malevolent obbligato triplets in high descant clarinet to dovetail off – plus much else.

Very purposefully on less steady footing was ‘Schattenhaft’ (‘shadowy’), the truly menacing scherzo and central movement to palindrome before us. It became clear to anyone in the know that Metzmacher had complete grasp of how center of gravity is in pacing this; he just had to make entirely sure that it would be hard for anyone listening in to sense it. Even from Sinopoli, I am not sure I have heard a more sinister take on this than what got heard on this occasion. Push on timpani in getting into this, without so obvious lilt that one gets elsewhere, was very sinister. Discreet, but eerie separations were made between many strands of running triplets in dry-toned violins. Inebriated step in solo viola was very cleverly, subtly anticipated just past opening of the naïve sounding start to the Trio - to destabilize everything ahead of time.

Common refrain in D Major throughout was played light - disingenuously so as though not sensing that whole context was anything but. Icy glissandi down in violins, copied then in lower strings were allowed plentiful space to all be clearly heard, making for most unusually disturbing effect. Seemingly wind driven tentative viola solo and following triplet runs in the strings during lightly scored but very dark reprise of outer section made vast empty infernal space out of it all. What humor exists here still received its due; it just had to throw everybody out of their comfort zone for none of it at all to be underlined; none of it was.

One found mild measure of relief during Nachtmusik II, but with Metzmacher uninhibited to clarify melodic writing therein for it to sound consistent with what would spin out into the linear counterpoint of late period Mahler and Schoenberg. Varied color of mandolin and guitar, combined, contrasting with other instrumentation, enhanced this virtue. DSO cellos ardently poured forth start to this serenade’s middle section. Proceeding forth, it eventually filled out with heavy angst only threatening to weigh things down. Consistently moderate pacing throughout this made a difference. Angular shape was made of agitated violin section stretto anticipating final gentle reprise of first theme without the playing losing resonance by making edge too sharp out of cut-offs to any of its strands. Asperity got saved for brief duet of mandolin and muted solo horn that unwittingly could have been mistaken for muted trumpet – a most surreal effect. In atmosphere of saturated but never sentimentalized melos, this serenade ended with full reception of its vernally fresh sonorities sustaining all to a highly fragrant close.

Spinning this Seventh forth toward dizzying conclusion was the robustly handled finale. After having had to traverse over numerous rocky precipices, being sent out into remote places, and also spun madly about in especially the scherzo to the Seventh, Mezmacher offered no reassurance at the Musikverein of being about to be treated to any safe ride through this mock-grandiose among Mahler finales. Urban hubbub in now harsh relief of the simple light of day, with robust rhythmically tight handling of interlocking episodes, became mildly oppressive, but. with energy left in check for searing handling of the visitation of macabre caravan from the first movement. Metzmacher especially in Vienna made harsh and fully resonant at once this passage’s searing dissonances.

Blend and clash of pan-diatonic buildup, immersion of sonorities - framed by euphonious chorales from Byzantine toned DSO brass - highlighted unapologetically the continual stream of progressivism driving so much here. Witty references to Der Meistersinger and Lehar spoke for themselves, as did forthrightly rough peasant dance and frolic. Spun forth trills in operetta mode high violins ending on cadence in carnival like solo flute provided fleeting moment of wit; most deliciously enfant terrible was the very light pointing of solo divisi violins back in operetta mode, coming off the ‘first movement caravan’ episode, as though so little had just transpired. Metzmacher brought the coda to euphonious close, but as after having covered much steep terrain, very prudently matter-of-fact. Clear lines had been maintained through such vortex - underneath the surface much of the Seventh is – toward an enthralling conclusion.

A few subtleties missed - optimum gradations of dynamics included - in this Mahler was ultimately small price to pay for what transpired here. Metzmacher will find the lighter touch for the Seventh as his interpretative powers grow more seasoned over time, such as with Gielen’s on disc (Hannsler) - most highly recommended. Risk-taking, wild adventure, providing meager comfort zone to fall back on, spoke very loudly indeed. Making anything stilted or cheaply two-dimensional out of Mahler’s all-encompassing vision here got avoided as well. It all spoke eloquently in multifaceted colors of a very unique encounter with this piece - unlikely easy to soon replace by anyone else doing this. Even the Philharmonic can not surpass this.

Cleveland Orchestra: DVD promo on NPR - Franz Welser-Most's Guide Away From Strange Places - Bruckner Ninth Symphony

Here was the presentation of one of the two crowning masterpieces among the Bruckner symphonies that proved fairly much a consolidation of something interpretively that is just simply not quite there yet.

One could admire today a certain tightness of ensemble that Franz Welser-Most was able to draw out of the Cleveland Orchestra on this venture into late Bruckner – replacing what at times has been at times from him kind of an internally shallow-depth linear/rhythmic flaccidity he has now aspired to replace with tighter control, as though to achieve greater musical profundity, interpretative depth this way. He has instead achieved here, especially in something so multi-layered as the Bruckner Ninth, a more gaping hollowness and so much empty bombast.

I debated whether or not I should post this review here; the performance under review dates from Fall 2007 and dvd release from the following year. In addition though to there being the dvd release, the Cleveland Orchestra has picked up a residency at Lincoln Center to do four of the Bruckner symphonies there this summer, paired with a selection of American works to straddle right beside them - plus lectures to help explain it all.

One missed in this Bruckner a certain suppleness of line and thus flexible enough negotiation of the vast architectonics of the Bruckner Ninth Symphony. The vestiges of a strong interpretation of the Bruckner Ninth Symphony are certainly in the employ of Mr.Welser-Most – what he has been able to draw from the cultural feeling he brings to the podium and his experience, including in conducting Bruckner, for a number of years now. It, though certainly preventing disaster in approaching such a summit or valediction as this, is just simply not quite enough.

It seems in taking on this score so directly that Welser-Most was intent on eschewing his concept of performing Bruckner as being too tied to the past, tradition of the past. If so, he was found here to be very self-conscious in the way he has gone about it, even if conspicuously so to only those of us intimately familiar with the work at hand. Christoph von Dohnanyi, when he recorded the same music in Cleveland a little over twenty years ago – his Bruckner conducting debut on disc – he also was tuned into by and large the progressive tendencies of this music. In order to avoid rigidity, any notion thereof, he is also found to employ a very apt degree of rubato at times, such as is placed in highly exemplary fashion and in such a way that avoids eschewing modernism stated therein in full relief – what Dohnanyi would subtly make focus of our attention.

Welser-Most appeared to be trying to take some of what Dohnanyi brings to it another step or two further. He has aspired toward something more strictly classical than Dohnanyi in what sound he requests out of Cleveland, less diaphanous for instance for passages of lyricism therein. What has resulted here are numerous passages, especially in its outer two movements, that move in hard chunks, partitions of sound. What has resulted also makes something a little wonky out of a number of transitions between sections, to at times quite curious effect indeed. It is all even perhaps according to a painstaking literalism, such as Dohnanyi avoids partly out of fear of compromising what he does, and that, as an aside here, Hans Graf took to almost absurd lengths with his Schubert Ninth in Berlin last month.

The first movement of this sounded certainly a little rushed ieven also a little into the incendiary breath that fuels at least somewhat the pulsation that in the best Bruckner Ninths is heard indeed to get under way immediately. By rushing into things, overlooking others, the air of mystery and incendiary impetus to this music can get short-circuited, as it did here. All this was achieved without coarse breaking of the line – comical attempt at Bruckner Nine with Eschenbach and Pittsburgh immediately comes to mind - but the laendler accents to violin consequents to introductory statements by brass only enhanced what sounded here to be certainly the start to a very earthbound journey through this piece. Hard plucked pizzicati from the violins moments later excessively understated the variety of dynamics written in the score and varied placement acoustically vis-à-vis winds and brass that usually make for so much subtlety here. As an aside, Christoph Eschenbach was heard again eleven years later on Bruckner 9, as played by the New York Philharmonic, no natural at playing Bruckner either; it especially being so, he halfway succeeded, if still a little eccentrically, at conducting it.

Especially for how it got played in the Exposition, the Tristan-esque second theme group ambled by almost entirely lacking in any sensuality or hint thereof, even with Cleveland string section certainly still sounding cohesive, solid enough. The third theme group, after transition to it (highly interesting place in the Exposition as such) just going acceptably enough, basically went past as just one faceless chunk or block of sound. What idea really dominates it lacked all shape.

The Development, with oboe's reprise of the Introduction, soon thereafter pressed urgently forward. With the exception of keeping ensemble firmly together, for what strands interweave the oboes from the strings, all came across again as entirely lacking in character. Contrasts got minimized for the rest of the section; rushing downward strings for opening of the Recapitulation sounded impressive, but impressive practically in just their own right alone – as quite detached from the overall musical argument. Transition into the harrowing and here understated real (secondary development) climax in F Minor came a bit untethered; both dynamics and weary tone of descending strings off an immensely terrifying chord got entirely missed, in making transition to where reprise of the second theme is due.

Welser-Most also let the pianissimo markings in the violins to just simply go unnoticed by him for opening of the coda after aptly paced, otherwise unremarkable transition into it. Enharmonic spellings in violin section’s strife in achieving one last harrowing cadence before the coda section might have as well been more conventionally spelled by Bruckner for how so few of them got heard. It may be remarkable to point out such a subtlety as this, but long by this point, it had become remarkable to me how much I was becoming reminded of the late 1970’s DGG late Beethoven by La Salle Quartet – while also technically adept, how very hollow, two-dimensional, interpretatively inept, albeit with clearer goal in mind than here.

Mystery and even the demonic quality to opening and also spinning out of the scherzo went by the sidelines in self-consciously hatcheted, even almost clipped attacks by Cleveland strings through so many pizzicati, then especially through the following chord progressions. Equally vain as heard on 1970’s DGG Berlin PO/Karajan, the allmahlich in Allmahlich Bewegter for overt accelerando instead in both, was so little as to no longer be allmahlich in either (i.e., transition into scherzo recapitulation). With too much swinging lift from strings on phrase endings and flute and clarinet principals - flute most brutally rushed through his arpeggi - the trio of this scherzo went by simply too fast - disproportionately so.

After non-focused, slovenly start to the Adagio, much of it went better than the two earlier movements. Welser-Most was found to be especially cozy with the second theme group, with what bucolic accents it offers therein. Arch over huge crest in the line in first paragraph of the Adagio went surprisingly well, given how things had started for it. Cleveland horns proved the very paragon of warmth in making very long legato out of long phrase endings to transition out of first theme group. Strings, attempting any similar warmth later on, rustically proved almost cross between Elgarian and Ivesian in attempting similarly fine rhetoric – enough to please John Adams (see below)- to have aspired to anything Ivesian. Adams occasionally has made himself self-proclaimed devotee of the music of Charles Ives.

Welser-Most handled transition back to first group with just about enough good spacing, but then pedantically scrupulizing it so and rendering it flat; reprise of the first theme and spinning out from that improved from how such transpired earlier. Welser-Most conducted trumpet led inversion in B Minor of the first theme with allargando offbeat string accents supplementing it in such a routine manner that all placement, purpose for it got lost.

A bit too self-conscious to make anything of the on purpose psychologically negating deterioration, decay that Bruckner imposes upon his material, much of the rest of the Adagio proceeded just about as routinely as possible. It also missed proper perspective for the sublime strands of vainly continuing to develop previous material, even forcing me to check score for dynamics on the long weary descent by the strings over brass making cadence into finally achieving E Major. Such is of course the key of the Seventh Symphony, first theme of this with which the coda to this Adagio closes. Welser-Most framed it lovely enough, but by then - too late.

One might rather hear a Bruckner Ninth that fails with panache. I fail to make it more than a minute into the Adagio when such occurs – place where I tuned out on Eschenbach/Pittsburgh so long ago. Still, if the better can be the enemy of the good, so perhaps can the failure with panache be the enemy of the mediocre – the truly mediocre such as this. I just so happen to love the Adagio too much, but have to ask, where was the love here? Where was also the courage of the Cleveland Orchestra and Welser-Most’s convictions in not programming for this broadcast of the Bruckner – not to mention the dvd producers who shortchange us in truly same odd way - John Adams's Guide to Strange Places? Neither has included John Adams’s twenty-minute guide on with the Bruckner Ninth, played alongside it at the Musikverein at end of October, 2007. After all, Welser-Most in statement previewing his Lincoln Center Bruckner this summer has called John Adams the musical grandson of the Austrian master. Indeed, Welser-Most really may have achieved something, in having provided us such sanitized Bruckner.

In order to further shoot themselves in the foot, Cleveland Orchestra broadcast producers pulled out of archive a 2003 Sibelius Fourth with again Welser-Most and Cleveland, that is in places quite a terse statement as this piece is or can be indeed. Welser-Most at the time certainly allowed less room for error than in the Bruckner here. He and his forces were found here more supple, expressive - all of the Scherzo to the Sibelius and wonky accent or two aside, much of the finale closing it too that went very well indeed.

The first movement proved in Welser-Most’s pacing of it only intermittently prolix and diffuse, but not enough to detract attention from overall line – in part too making something diaphanously, gently impressionistic out of the mysterious tremoli that take over during the Development. The tragic slow movement was good, but lacking sufficient space to envelope a few lines therein sufficiently, if as proved perhaps apt preview for the Bruckner. Welser-Most is hardly known as more to the manner born for doing Sibelius than Bruckner, but no matter. Such has been just as it has seemed as of late.

As for recommending a dvd of the Bruckner Ninth, there is Karajan/VPO on DGG also from the Musikverein paired with his Linz cathedral also VPO Bruckner Eighth - the august Austrian maestro at the height of his powers. As guide away from strange places – with as someone buying on Amazon commented, hard chunks of sound hurled at Messieanesque birdsong in the flutes therein for the unheard Adams on this broadcast (for which I had to refer to the Robertson/St Louis on Nonesuch) – this Bruckner Ninth in all quite narrow perspective filled the bill indeed - and as the work of musical, spiritual mentor, or whatever, to John Adams indeed. John Adams should indeed be very proud. After all, this is the new music director (replacing a considerably finer and quite vastly underrated Brucknerian in Seiji Ozawa – whose Bruckner at times has been better than his Mahler) of the Vienna State Opera conducting Bruckner.

Here was however a Bruckner Ninth, to contradict Nikolaus Harnoncourt, never but barely touched by any portion of asteroid, space junk, or by matter anywhere outside of Earth’s atmosphere at all – ‘moon rock’ that Harnoncourt said imaginatively enough to have found the piece – ‘moon rock’ that the more senior Austrian master certainly himself would have found Harnoncourt’s interpretation of his Ninth Symphony.