Germany Schoenberg: Soloists, Berlin Radio Refrain (refrain director: Gijs Leenaars), Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra / Kirill Petrenko (conductor). Philharmonie, Berlin, 25.1.2024. (MB)
Chamber Symphony No.1 in E main, Op.9
Die Jakobsleiter
Gabriel – Wolfgang Koch
One who known as – Daniel Behle
One who protests – Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke
One who struggles – Johannes Martin Kränzle
The chosen one – Gyula Orendt
The monk – Stephan Rügamer
The dying one – Nicola Beller Carbon
The soul – Liv Redpath, Jasmin Delfs
150 years on from the beginning of Arnold Schoenberg, we could possibly be forgiven for lamenting this world nonetheless doesn’t know what to do with him and his music. Crucial of twentieth-century composers, he languishes revered but for probably the most half unperformed. The muted tones by which even this, his anniversary 12 months, is being celebrated – if not now, then when? – are such that it may readily be missed altogether. There are exceptions, not least my mates and colleagues at Vienna’s Arnold Schönberg Heart; I’m referring primarily to the world of musical efficiency—and listening. And simply maybe right here additionally in Berlin, second of Schoenberg’s three main cities. (Los Angeles, alas, has lengthy appeared a misplaced trigger.) Not a lot within the metropolis as an entire: we search in useless for contributions from its opera homes – absolutely issues would have been completely different, have been Daniel Barenboim nonetheless on the helm of the Staatsoper – and certainly from most of its orchestras, but within the Philharmonie, residence to the Berlin Philharmonic, we at the very least see within the lobby somewhat exhibition, mounted together with the ASC, and right here we now have now additionally heard the primary of a number of contributions deliberate from the orchestra.
In the event that they proceed even to method the extent of this instalment, all is not going to be misplaced. The First Chamber Symphony provided a splendid method to begin. It was the primary dwell Schoenberg I heard, travelling down as a schoolboy to London on the coach from Sheffield for my first Promenade; I feel it was truly the primary piece on the programme, so the primary notes I heard on the Proms, on the Royal Albert Corridor, certainly in London, have been Schoenberg’s. An try at comparability can be pointless: I can’t keep in mind a lot apart from that, even then, it impressed me vastly. However that is due to this fact a piece with which I’ve lived for some time, and of which I’ve heard numerous high-quality performances since that CBSO Promenade with Simon Rattle (and Maurizio Pollini), one subsequent door on the Kammermusiksaal included (from members of this similar orchestra, because the Scharoun Ensemble, and Pierre Boulez). At present’s Berlin Philharmonic and Kirill Petrenko have little to worry from even probably the most exalted comparisons, however it’s higher merely to think about their efficiency by itself phrases.
In some methods probably the most conservative – within the correct moderately than the debased, modern sense – of revolutionaries and absolutely probably the most revolutionary of conservatives, Schoenberg stands Janus-faced, that historic place readily conveyed right here in immanent, performing phrases. For a piece so sunny and life-affirming, it’s haunted by ghosts, lots of whom cheerfully partook of this explicit feast. First up, within the opening bars, was Richard Strauss, already balanced by a heightened sense that this was as a lot chamber music, a gathering of soloists, as symphony (or certainly symphonic poem). Brahmsian creating variation, Wagnerian melos, passage of transition that owed a lot to each, and naturally Lisztian formal inheritance have been to the fore, however by the actual materials and character of this piece; it by no means felt like something apart from itself, although there was to be heard one thing of a extra conventional, darkly ‘German’ sound and heat to the ensemble than would possibly typically have been the case from Petrenko’s two fast predecessors, Claudio Abbado and Simon Rattle, albeit with out sacrifice to readability and stability. So assured was the latter that one would possibly virtually have forgotten what an astonishingly troublesome feat it’s to deliver off (as Herbert von Karajan, Abbado’s predecessor, freely admitted). Illuminating element – sepulchral, Alberich-like enjoying from violist Diyang Mei, a snatch of Pierrot-laughter from Kilian Herold’s clarinet – was current to an extent typically troublesome to imagine, however at all times inside a certain and malleable sense of the entire. The event actually developed, exhibiting Schoenberg as inheritor to Beethovenian wrestle. The ‘lightness’ of the start of the ‘gradual motion’ provided a stunning presentiment of the ‘air of one other planet’ quickly to be skilled in Schoenberg’s Second String Quartet, previous to well-nigh Mahlerian ‘deepening’. No efficiency of this complicated piece could be excellent; it comprises greater than can ever be achieved in a single efficiency. This got here nearer than most.
True revelation, although, got here with Die Jakobsleiter. So seldom is that this extraordinary work heard that I can’t have been the one viewers member listening to it dwell for the primary time. I had thought I knew this incomplete oratorio effectively sufficient, but such have been the power and all-round excellence of this efficiency that I realised I had hardly identified it in any respect. Certainly, not the least of my realisations was that one can’t actually start to realize it apart from by dwell efficiency. Recordings, nevertheless wonderful, can barely counsel the spatial dimension – right here the corridor got here into its personal as a lot because the performers – nor, extra vital nonetheless, the overwhelming energy and conviction inherent within the work and any efficiency worthy of it. One felt the work’s constructivism from the off, its opening cello hexachord so clearly, powerfully generative of what ensued: musical expression first, phrases from Wolfgang Koch’s Gabriel subsequent. ‘Whether or not proper or left, ahead or backward, uphill or downhill’: one felt, harmonically, motivically, conceptually the multi-dimensional Schoenbergian Concept. Simply as vital, its colors, not solely orchestral (although the inheritance of the 5 Orchestral Items, op.16 was thrillingly obvious) however vocal too, not least from the souls of the Berlin Radio Refrain, particular person and as a mass. Instrumental traces, as if generated by the Chamber Symphony and additional developed right here, contributed equally to the composer’s hyper-expressivity and the sense of its absolute necessity. It was relentlessly dialectical, relentlessly communicative, already pointing to components of the world of Moses und Aron. A well-nigh flawless forged of vocal soloists had been assembled and exceeded expectations. Once more, the number of colors and expressive gestures inside a single efficiency, be it that of the more and more Wagnerian Daniel Behle, the darkish, wealthy Gyula Orendt, Liv Redpath and Jasmin Delfs’s souls in vocalise, or anybody else needed to be heard to be believed. Schoenberg’s vivid imagery – or is that too representational a characterisation? – was introduced nonetheless extra vividly to life that was each fleeting and aspirant to the everlasting.
All of the whereas, we moved, after Swedenborg, upwards, heralded by the sweetest of violin solos from above, devices and voices surrounding us as if actually from the heavens. This was much less the air of one other planet than of one other dimension, music and post-Wagnerian, post-Mahlerian redemption above, past, round us. This was a magic not like something I had but heard. A part of our world, then, does know what to do with Schoenberg and his music. Might it serve for example to the remainder.
Mark Berry
