Beethoven, Adès, Mahler: Scharoun Ensemble Berlin; Thomas Adès piano, Simon Keenlyside baritone, Barbican Hall, London 17.04.2007 (JPr)

 

Scharoun? I wondered to myself …where had I heard that before? Not only had I heard the name, I had written about it in the article about my recent visit to Berlin. The Scharoun Ensemble Berlin was founded in 1983 by members of the Berlin Philharmonic. They take their name from the architect of the Berlin Philharmonie, the orchestra’s home. In the programme notes they describe the hall as containing ‘space for making music in the spirit of conveying tradition and innovation, increasing communication and developing understanding’ and that ‘The musicians continue to explore Scharoun’s legacy in their artistic commitment to the rich heritage of music of the past as well as meeting the challenges of the present and preparing for the future.’

This is a traditional octet (clarinet, horn, bassoon, two violins, viola, cello and double bass) and for their Barbican concert they performed music both ‘traditional’ by Beethoven and ‘innovative’ by Thomas Adès, with Mahler’s ‘Songs of a Wayfarer’ in a 1998 arrangement by Andreas N Tarkmann somehow bridging this great divide.

Adès attests to an eclectic mix of musical influences, and with regard to the ‘classics’ he is quoted as saying ‘I've stopped believing in the past. You have to think of the great composers as your friends. They might be frightening friends, but still friends anyway’. His compositions seem to have assimilated both past and present, regurgitating music less angular and eccentric than you might expect in 2007 due to a rhythmic fingerprint and sonority that is handled mostly with great inventiveness.

Whether all this cleverness adds up to much is probably best left for the individual listener. His Piano Quintet at 20 minutes seemed too long, and his Court Studies from The Tempest at 10 minutes far too short. The Quintet was driven forward by the composer himself at the piano with the chamber group of Berlin Philharmonic players bringing accomplished individual virtuosity to the work, astringent and nuanced by turns. Mentioning turns, I would have like someone to talk me through the score they played from as I have never seen to much page turning back and forth during the performance of such a short piece. As for the music itself it had harmonies of the past among many a stop-go moment through, as described in Paul Griffiths’ programme note ‘a rise in broken chords and a falling scale fragment’.

The ‘Court Studies from The Tempest’ was a bit like Wagner producing a composition from the Leitmotifs from one of his operas and the miniature thematic fragments were over before they began. Here the grouping of instruments was different and apart from Adès at the piano, there was clarinet, violin and cello.

Thomas Adès began the evening with a respectful nod to one of his antecedents with Beethoven’s ‘Ghost’ Piano Trio, Op.70 No.1. It is given its ‘nickname’ because of the tremolos in the middle movement, the Largo. I thoughts the players were a bit detached at the start of this movement and I found the violin and cello sounded particularly thin. This was my first experience of chamber music at the Barbican and the trio seemed lost on the vast platform. I wondered whether some sort of sound baffling behind the players would have thrown the sound forward rather more. Adès seemed to working hard at the piano to minimal effect at least from where I was in the stalls.

The evening ended with Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen. The programme note told us that a version for 10 players was first produced in 1919 for Schoenberg’s Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen. In the adaptation by the German, Andreas N Tarkmann he uses the full Octet. This was a very faithful and discreet reflection of Mahler’s accompaniment to the ‘Wayfarer’s’ high hopes and lost love.  All the postludes were most affecting, the intrusive oompah band moment in the first song, not so perhaps!

I liked the way Simon Keenlyside sang from in the middle of the players and attempted to give the songs a certain theatricality rather than sing them still and coldly. To my mind he went a little too far and had a sort of overweening unctuousness and portrayed the youth as somewhat effete. And the voice … well I often consider baritones to be lazy tenors. In Keenlyside’s case he seems to be a lazy bass. The bottom of his voice was warm and resonant, however at the top, such as when singing ‘allerliebsten’ in ‘Die zwei blauen Augen’ it ventured towards a crooning falsetto that cannot have been right. Being at the top of his vocal game (sorry!) probably wasn’t helped by sitting out in the auditorium during the first half of the concert.

I did hear people remark how wonderful it was to see the hall so full and how well this reflected the sophisticated musical tastes of London’s concert goers. Unfortunately it appeared to me that the upper balcony of the hall was closed and people moved down, as well as, there being a strong indication that the appreciative applause, however well-deserved, was partly the result of some judicious distribution of free tickets.

Undoubtedly I found Adès the performer more engaging than Adès the composer on this brief acquaintance as his music did not provoke any real emotion within me: undoubtedly at 36 years young he will continue to be hailed as the classical musical genius of his generation … or at least until the next one comes along.

 

Jim Pritchard