In media res, the pleasure of finding Alice Coote and Julius Drake in Winterreise (uncorrected proof)

A full canvas and an unlimited palette : the pleasure of finding Alice Coote and Julius Drake in Winterreise

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28 January

A full canvas and an unlimited palette : the pleasure of finding Alice Coote and Julius Drake
in Winterreise, D. 911 (uncorrected proof)

In media res, the pleasure of finding @AliceCoote and @juliusdrake, on @BBCRadio3, in a December performance of Winterreise, D. 911, and - as rightly described, later, by @MannGeorgia as spell-binding - waiting in the car for the concluding 20 minutes ! :https://t.co/ZHHKI84JS4

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 29, 2020

Hearing barely the latter sixteen* numbers, one could :

(a) not only at first not place it - was it necessarily even Schubert, and not actually Dichterliebe, or Frauenlieben und Leben ? - but, as the libretto, once more, unfolded, that unease / dis-ease to be longer than one needed in those Straßen in den Städten [oder in den Dörfern ?] ; but also

(b) 'caught' how supremely sensitive to the text and its affective pulls and hesitations, doubts and despairs, these players were :

With freedom used both for vocalist to float or extend lines, and for Julius Drake, as pianist, also to sing, in many ways - fully resonantly ; sometimes as an almost metrically resigned hymnal, acting as a kind of 'foregrounded background' commentary ; in defiant / strident tones, usw.


From mezzo-soprano Alice Coote, free and sure use of collatura, slurred notes, selective vibrato, and - equally with the pianistic ones - variations in dynamic force, note-duration and stress.

At times, in the closing numbers, we had the sighs or deep breaths of weariness, lost hope and love, and of abandonment, all of which - ultimately, with the inevitability of as much the Dona nobis pacem of Bach's h-moll Messe, BWV 232, as Totentanz - preparing us for and taking us to dem Leiermann, so folkloric, haunting, öd und leer, and einfach da :

Beethoven's Muß es sein ?, answered by Es muß sei. It 'just is' so.


This disintegration in and of the hurdy-gurdy man is essentially one with the inexorable, slow transformation of the Singer-Poet into a degenerated form - witnessing no longer in a glass, darkly, but [...] face to face, and - having been thrust out of some Eden - der Welt abgekommen ?

Moving music**, movingly and beautfully brought to us from a Wigmore Hall that, clearly, hesitated to stir in the moments at the end !


End-notes :

* From memory, are there 32, 24 or maybe 26 texts in this Liederkreis ?

** Even without knowing what proofs / fair copies Schubert was checking in his final illness...


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Did Hewitt succeed – or did The Art of Fatigue intervene ?

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29 April

This is a review of a concert performance, given at the Faculty of Music's concert hall in West Road in Cambridge (@WestRoadCH) and in conjunction with CRASSH (The Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities), of Bach's The Art of Fugue by pianist Angela Hewitt

It was clear from what Angela Hewitt said in what was billed as a Symposium yesterday* that she has approached Bach’s The Art of Fugue (Die Kunst der Fuge, BWV 1080) as a problem, which therefore implied that it needed to be solved**.

The nature of the problem being that she thought that, without adjustment in playing (she did not name anyone’s recordings), it can sound (or does sound) boring, a word that she must have used at least half-a-dozen times to describe a straight way of playing a passage as written, as against what she preferred (and which she then demonstrated).

In fact, the problem described may only exist because of attempting a performance, from start to seemingly unintentional finish***, in one go : if one did not try such a thing (as it is no more self-evidently desirable than with Book I or II of The Well-Tempered Clavier (Das Wohltemperierte Klavier, BWV 846–893)), would there be a problem ? A recording is one thing, and one accepts its limitations – unless the quality of the recording itself deteriorates, it is invariably the same. Yet there are not a few who like that feature of a recorded symphony or concerto – and, knowing one recording of a work, are disappointed when a concert sounds different.

That accepted, certain things had emerged from, or been confirmed by, the Symposium (and by clarifying a point with Butt that had arisen in an answer to a question at the end) :

1. We do not even know for sure (because programmes for, for example, the concerts of the Collegium Musicum, in Leipzig, do not survive) whether Bach ever gave wider performances of either Book of the Well-tempered than those reported to have taken place in a teaching context : as Butt agreed, he may have done, but we do not have documentary proof. What we do know is that, after his death, they were not published for another fifty years, around the beginning of the nineteenth century.

2. We do know, however, that the mighty achievement of writing the Mass in B Minor (BWV 232), another two hours or so of glorious music, did not lead to the opportunity for Bach to hear it realized – indeed, we do not seem to know for sure why he wrote it, although scholars have speculated about that question, as well as identifying earlier music that he adapted to the task and revised for the purpose.

3. There is accordingly a pattern of lengthy works, all of which were assembled over the years (as was the case with both Books of the Well-tempered), and part of the answer about why Bach wrote / revised them lies in this : he died at the age of 65 (in 1750), and must have been all too aware, throughout the preceding decade, of that principle of putting his house in order.

Coming back to performance, both knowledge of life-time performances (which we know definitely in some cases, such as the two Passions) and Bach’s expectations about how The Art of Fugue and the Mass in B Minor might be received in the future (and the debt that we seem to owe to Mendelssohn that we still have the latter), we probably know even less in the latter case than in the former, but the obstacles to mounting a concert rendition of one work (whether with a huge choir, or a voice to a part) are different.

With The Art of Fugue, if one sticks to one keyboard instrument, whether clavichord / harpsichord, organ, or piano (or even fortepiano, one supposes), the obstacles are different, and they came to the fore in seeking to proselytize about this work in events either side of the weekend – different from those if one arranges it, as, say, wind quintet Calefax’s saxophinist Raaf Hekkema did with his group, for an ensemble, and different from if one breaks the work with an interval.

In Cambridge, in this same venue, Richard Egarr (director of the Academy of Ancient Music) has certainly played a Book of the Well-tempered (on the harpsichord) in an evening’s performance, and also a selection of three of the six Partitas (BWV 825–830) in a lunchtime concert, but maybe not with much of a pause between the first and second sets of twelve Preludes and Fugues.

Can it be argued that inherently, if one wants, as here, to perform The Art of Fugue on a piano, there must be no break ? If, as Hewitt suggested, one is proselytizing, which one was not solely doing****, the needs of those new to this work – whatever the overview(s) have given to them – do not obviously require a very lengthy period of uninterrupted fugal and canonic writing.

For one is also preaching to the converted, who have come not to be persuaded so much, but to appreciate an interpretation, and not to wish to find fault, with global or specific matters. Having said which, Hewitt used (as she previously had) the word ‘swing’ to describe her approach to Contrapunctus 2, and, in full, the effect was more that of Jacques Loussier than of Johann Sebastian – with which one could cope as an aberrational belief that adding (accentuating ?) syncopation is the only way to play this part of the whole, although it seemed rather unlikely.

This performance at eight o’clock to-night ended at a quarter to ten (it had been preceded by a short version of the overview, for those who missed the Symposium) : by the time that Hewitt came to play the four Canons, which she had placed before the final Contrapunctus (and in her own order), she was, regrettably, very clearly flagging, because there were slips and stumbles in her playing.

That said, Hewitt did not let herself be put off, even by a significantly askew sequence of notes in the right hand that jolted one into full attention. Yet the test of endurance, of ninety minutes of playing, that she was making of herself must put the viability of the endeavour in doubt, for she really seemed to need the support of the front edge of the piano when she took applause :

That objection is not answered by Hewitt building up stamina yet further, but by stopping to question the purpose of playing through without a break. As the ancients said, but for a different reason, Cui bono ?

Here, it is the law of diminishing returns that tends to apply, because, if the audience can tell that the performer is tiring (and Hewitt, understandably not wanting the tensions of a page-turner, nonetheless seemed let down by her technological solution*****), he or she gets their sympathy for the feat attempted, if not their patience and toleration for the faults. Here, they were not just slips, but places where Hewitt sounded lost as she played what she read.

The opening of Contrapunctus 7 seemed wholly undigested (before its resemblance to fugues around 5 to 7 in Book I became apparent), whereas, in Contrapunctus 3 and 12, it felt as though the performance was suddenly on the hoof : in performance, Egarr has given notice, with his very expressive face, that something in Bach’s score has pulled him up, but not that it is any more than a pleasant surprise, rather than conveying musical uncertainty as to where it is going next.

At the end of the work, something seemed really awry. It eventually became clear, after the event, that the part had been reached where, in the MS, the music runs out without the Contrapunctus otherwise concluding. Before that, it had been clear enough when Hewitt started the first of the Canons, yet, in between, there somehow seemed to be too much material to account for four Canons and the closing Contrapunctus******.

As Bach’s end that is not an ending was awaited, one Canon or Contrapunctus finished in a way that other members of the audience could be heard saying had sounded like an attempt to improvise a conclusion in Bach’s style – whatever happened, it seemed out of place, and was perhaps the result of the technological aid.

Until we reached the Canons, and passing over the question of Contrapunctus 2, Hewitt seemed on course to manage what she had set herself. Necessarily, one did not always agree with her other choices. However, the whole concert could have been so much better but for the feeling that she was weary (and that two glasses of water had proved insufficient), and that the sense of the weariness (and the mistakes attributable to it) was passing itself over, to disrupt one’s own concentration.

A noble enterprise to perform The Art of Fugue straight through – but can one believe that even Bach required it ?


End-notes

* In fact, an introduction to the work and interview with Hewitt by Bach scholar John Butt, followed by Hewitt’s overview, with examples.

** And even revealed that she had initially been using a swear-word to refer to it, surely The Fart of Fugue, or The Art of Fuck (although she did not actually say what).

*** Then closing with the Chorale Prelude that Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach added to his father’s work when it was published under his direction, Vor deinen Thron tret’ich hiermit (BWV 668).

**** Some of us have known recordings of this work for more than thirty years (even if, in the light of the Symposium, it can be understood that a recording such as that on Deutsche Grammophon's Archiv label, by Kenneth Gilbert, is of the work before Bach’s revision for the press).

***** In the Symposium, it was all too clear from what Hewitt said that she temperamentally could not have tolerated a person turning for her, and she said that the complete score, with her markings, was on her iPad®, with a pedal to change pages.

****** Unless, maybe, Hewitt had actually announced that, in departing from the order given in the programme, the Canons would come after Contrapunctus 12, and thus Contrapunctus 13 and 14 followed them (and with an arithmetical error in thinking that the part before the Canons had been Contrapunctus 13.


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Performance in proposal: Bach's Mass in B Minor

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10 August

I heard much of the re-broadcast Prom in which this work was given at the weekend.

There, they took a break after the Gloria, and resumed with the Credo, but this afternoon proceeded with only a few words from the presenter folowing the applause at the end of what was its first half.

But, as I queried recently in an informal chat with one of the directors of a festival (which had done likewise), it may be the organizers' and the audience's idea, after around one hour of music, to resume after tea, wine, cake or strawberries, but is that best for the work?

I think not: I think that the Mass in B Minor (BWV 232) builds, and that, if people can turn up for a play and find that the performance runs for 90 minutes to 2 hours without an interval, they could and should with this work, rather than interposing the trivial things entailed in an interval.

With the St Matthew Passion (BWV 244) (I have a posting called Meditations on Matthew), however, I do not think so, because it is in two Parts, and anyway runs to longer than 3 hours - having heard it without a break, I would not wish to do so again, even if that means I am faint hearted: by the standard of Bach's day, I certainly am, where complaining that a sermon was longer than 20 to 25 minutes would have been ludicrous, and the Passion itself would have had worship, too, before, between and after each Part, plus that full-length sermon.


Elsewhere, I complained that Stravinsky's Mass, when - for once - it was broadcast live (or at all), had interpolations from the seventeenth century. For me, having an interval in Bach's masterpiece is alike unnecessary.


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Who gets diagnosed - and where are the psychiatrists when this is happening? (2)

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12 April

It's Mozart's Rondo in A Minor, K. 511. In a minor key and it sounds sad, so Mozart must have been depressed at the time.

No evidence of which I am aware except the internal temperament of the piece for this proposition: he must have been depressed, because - amongst what we have - it is unusual amongst his works to be in this key / a minor key.

Could someone not, as a patron, have commissioned Mozart to write such a piece? A Duke Orsino, from Twelfth Night, would have desired to hear such a thing, and, when David played to Saul to soothe him, whose mood was he fitting?

For we do not impute to Bach, in those other-wordly passages in the Crucifixus of the Mass in B Minor (BWV 232) the state of mind / soul at the time of composition that the music portrays, before the sudden triumph of Et resurrexit, do we?


To be continued


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Thoughts arising from a programme note for the Dante Quartet

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20 November

I have not found a source, which means that I cannot put these words in context, but Dvorak (the accent on the ‘r’ will not reproduce, so I have also left that on the ‘a’) is often quoted as having written (and seemingly in English, as the form of the words does not differ):

To have a fine idea is nothing special. The idea comes of itself, and if it is fine and great, then that is not because of the person who has it. But to develop the idea well and make something great of it, that is the hardest part – that is art!


Well, obviously, for all the apparent modesty of saying that there is no merit in having ‘a fine idea’, there is an immense amount of self-congratulation in being able to employ ‘art’ in order ‘to develop the idea well’. (Besides which, Dvorak envisages the idea being ‘fine and great’ without that conferring any merit on the recipient, but then envisages, of the already great idea, ‘mak[ing] something great of it’, by ‘develop[ing it] well’: so is the idea great already, or is something great made of it?)

Dvorak seems also to miss out some other points in his enthusiasm for this argument that stresses art, i.e. his art as a composer:

1. Ideas may – indeed, I would say, are more likely to – come more often, or more easily, to someone who is or has become receptive to them. And if, which he must, as he is talking as a composer, he means musical material, then the notion of everyone being an equal participant in ‘hav[ing] a fine idea’ just does not stand up to inspection. I wager that it is not that members of the public in general are regularly having musical themes come to them, but simply then do not have the art to develop them and make them great – no, they do not think compositionally at all, and do not have such ideas.

2. If I am right, then having an idea is, after all, something to do with the person who has it. Whatever that receptivity may be, or consist in, it is not that people as a whole are having fine ideas all the time, but that they will probably come more often to those who make use of them – and whether they have made use of them well or ill may fall to be judged by someone else, even in Dvorak’s case.

3. In the case of the Diabelli Variations (or, properly, 33 Variations on a waltz by Anton Diabelli, Op. 120), I cannot believe that anyone will seriously contend that what Beethoven did with what Diabelli composed did not transcend the original so as to make it inconceivable that its origins could have been so slight. Likewise, there are (not that the only great works are in variation form!) parts of the Goldberg Variations (BWV 988, published as ‘an aria with diverse variations’) in which Bach transforms the source material, as if alchemically (Arnold Schering’s thesis that the aria is not the composer’s own theme appears discredited). Certainly support for the notion that ideas might come to those not best placed to develop them, but lesser musicians than Beethoven and Bach might still record them in cases where, if fine ideas came to all and sundry, they might be more likely, if we conceive of ideas in general, to die stillborn.


Dvorak is also recorded writing the following, in which I see scope for, if not necessarily antithesis, then synthesis:

As for my new Symphony, the F major String Quartet and the Quintet (composed here in Spillville – I should never have written these works ‘just so’ if I hadn’t seen America.


If there is something antithetical, it is in acknowledging that experience – here, having visited America, and, in particular, this enclave of immigrants from Czechoslovakia – has shaped the reception of ideas (unless Dvorak just means that his art of developing them was what was influenced), which appears at odds with saying that ‘To have a fine idea is nothing special’, and, I would say, supports arguing that receptivity may vary immensely, and also may well be capable of being cultivated.

There may be a capacity to have a fine idea, there may be a capacity to do something great with it – whether those capacities, on all occasions, are the same person’s may depend, but, almost certainly, it will be the judgement of others that may determine whether something great has been achieved, and will be a significant (but not the only) influence on its survival for other generations to value in their turn. (I am thinking, as I do so often, of Mendelssohn’s important championing, in his time, of works of Bach’s such as the Mass in B Minor (BWV 232), which, along with others that were rediscovered, we would now take for granted as being great, if not necessarily to our taste.)


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