PROM 52:
Gruber, Weill, Eisler, Daniel Norman (tenor), Daniel Hyde (organ), BBC
Singers, BBC Symphony Orchestra, H K Gruber, (conductor/chansonnier), Royal
Albert Hall, 22.8.06 (AO)
You
couldn't invent someone like HK Gruber. Nothing,
I suspect, pleases him more than discomforting the pretentious.
He shakes up complacency. If he goes way over the
top, so be it: the challenge is what matters, not easy
answers. I love the motto "Life is too important
to be taken seriously". It could certainly
be Grubers, because under the mayhem, there's purpose.
He revives a Viennese activist tradition that used inventive,
anarchic satire to make a point.
This
was the UK première of his latest work, Hidden Agenda,
given its first hearing a few days ago in Lucerne. It
started as fairly straightforward tonal music, but soon
a veneer of chaos smeared over it, bending the notes as
far as they could stretch. Lush romanticism,
subverted, yes, but not quite what I'd expected of Gruber.
Maybe he's proving yet again that you can't take him for
granted.
The
BBC programme called this Prom "A night of
musical subversion". Perhaps, then, Weill's Kiddush
(1946) subverts the liturgical character of the prayer
by inserting elaborations from jazz and Hollywood?
The Albert Hall organ played passages that sounded like
good old fashioned Wurlitzer. Perhaps there's a
reason for this but it still escapes me.
Hanns
Eisler's setting of Brecht's Liturgie vom Hauch is clearer
in üintent. The poem is unyieldingly didactic.
Even its ironic quote from Goethe "Über allen Gipfeln
ist Ruh" wears thin repeated again and again.
Eisler varies the refrain the quote appears in.
At first it's set lyrically to balance the staccato death
march of the first verse. Later it's screamed violently
by the male voices. The BBC singers were able to
evoke the sound so close to a broadcast of a Hitler rant,
which chilled far more than the fairly obvious text. Both
Eisler and Weill have set Zu Potsdam unter dem Eichen,
and here we had Weill's version. It is far better
known in its solo voice setting because solo voice gives
more room for individual interpretation. The BBC
Singers are perhaps "too" good for this kind
of street fighting militancy. The poem may depict
a funeral but it's also an intense anti war protest.
The combination of slower tempo and beautifully balanced,
trained voices dimmed the impact.
Eisler's
Ferner Streiken: 50,000 Holzarbeiten was rather more successful,
as the stronger writing propelled the interpretation forward.
Brecht relentlessly repeats "Fünfzig tausend….fünfzig
tausend": the lines organically evolve into
a march. What makes the song really interesting,
however, is the way Eisler varies the line, especially
in the second verse, making it far more interesting as
music. The choir also caught the subtle, but important
change of emphasis to "Rucksack"
and "Pritschen" at the end. This had an
emotional effect, as the composer intended. The
Proms audience went wild with applause.
The
most important reason for attending this Prom was Gruber's
Frankenstein!! It is an event, a piece of
theatre as much as of music. It needs to be experienced
live. One day Gruber will be too old to create the
spectacle afresh, and it will exist only in memory.
This was a special occasion.. Frankenstein!!
was first performed nearly thirty years ago, but
is still fresh and vivid. The Frankenstein story
epitomizes the morbid "gothic" seam of Romanticism.
Horror movies celebrate it and parody it at the same time.
Gruber's Frankenstein!! parodies the entire genre
and throws in Robinson Crusoe, Goldfinger and John
Wayne for good measure. Images flash past
so quickly they barely register, but that's part of the
effect, which Gruber calls pan- demonium, at once referring
to the anarchy of Pan worship and to demonology.
There are snatches of oompah band and of lullaby, an elegant
horn solo that wouldn't be out of place in a "proper"
symphony, and, in true Gruber style, lots of toy instruments
and whirring noise tubes. He conducts,
sings and plays at the same time, of course. Frantic
energy is part of the package. It wouldn't be quite
so manic without tiny, tinny saxophone or good old fashioned
alto Melodica (bright red, of course). This performance
was in English, which made it even more surreal.
He murders syntax and distorts lines still further. Howls
and screams seem quite mundane. He affected an extremely
heavy accent, exaggerating the kitsch mitteleuropean ambience
so typical of Frankenstein movies. Think Bela Lugosi
on speed, performed by Brahms, whom Gruber vaguely resembles.
(I'd love to see Knussen try this piece!)
This
madcap romp through images is hilarious, but there's,
disciplined method behind it. Rhythms and counter
rhythms cross and converge. As with the horn solo,
there is nice intricate scoring for percussion.
Random as the images may seem, cumulatively they have
an effect. The orchestration is tight and spare.
Lurking behind the humour there's something dark.
"Frankenstein is dancing…with the test tube lady…my
daughter dear, it's you!" Batman and Robin
in bed together… well, Batman 's "ill bred".
Crusoe visits a new island where cannibals live… And a
little girl visits a doctor to fix her doll Caspar.
"Good medicine is practiced here, with minor aberrations."
So Caspar gets the brain of a criminal. "Thank
you, thank you" croons Gruber in falsetto.
"Now my Caspar can walk again...and chase pretty
little girls".
The
programme will be broadcast for a week on the BBC's Listen
Again facility. Whether it will capture the intensity
of the live performance, I don't know. But I'd certainly
recommend Gruber's recording "Roaring Eisler",
where he sings the better-known Eisler militant songs.
Ernst Busch, Eisler's friend and comrade, sang them with
intense conviction. But Busch lived them - he endured
ten years in Nazi concentration camps for his beliefs.
No modern singer has that background. Gruber comes
surprisingly close, though.
Incidentally,
Gruber is a distant descendant of the Gruber who wrote "Silent Night, Holy
Night. Make of that what you will!
Anne Ozorio
