SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival 2009 - Beethoven and Wagner Die Walküre (Closing scene) : Budapest Festival Orchestra; Petra Lang (soprano), Juha Uusitalo (bass-baritone), Iván Fischer (conductor). Music and Congress Hall, Lübeck 16.8.2009 (JPr)


The Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival is in its 24th year: it was founded in 1986 by Justus Frantz, the German pianist and conductor. This is one of the largest music festivals in the world and concerts are given across the most northerly of the German states, Schleswig-Holstein, found at the base of the Jutland Peninsula between the Baltic and North Seas. To the North Schleswig-Holstein borders Denmark of course but if my visit to the picturesque Hanseatic port of Lübeck is anything to go by, the place remains quintessentially German and uninfluenced by any close neighbour. Sadly,  WWII saw Lübeck as the first German city to suffer a mass attack by the Royal Air Force and on 28 March 1942 a firestorm caused severe damage to the historic centre. The bombing destroyed three of the main churches and much of the built-up area. Subsequently Lübeck's centre was restored and became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987.

This programme had already been put on at Hamburg the previous evening and the venue in Lübeck was the Music and Congress Hall, a  functional white building completed in 1994 with a typically modern front-of-house.  The auditorium has clean lines of wood panelling and a bright acoustic reminiscent of the rejuvenated Royal Festival Hall in London.

It is often said that nine symphonies from any composer will include one neglected by more familiar  others with  greater exposure. However if the composers are Mahler or Beethoven this fact can be something of surprise given the number of concerts of their music scheduled annually throughout the world. With Mahler it is only the sheer forces involved that limit performances of his Eighth Symphony (‘The Symphony of a Thousand’) but it is the Seventh that we do not hear live as often as the others. Beethoven’s least known – and therefore least performed – symphony is the Fourth. He wrote it during the late summer and autumn of 1806 dedicating it eventually to Count Franz von Oppersdorff at whose palace he was staying at the time. The 4th symphony  was given its première at a private concert in Vienna on 5th March 1807 along with the first performance of the 4th Piano Concerto with  and the Coriolan Overture with the composer as piano soloist. It seems to have been well-received at the time but remains in the shadow of the Third and the later, Fifth and Ninth Symphonies. Robert Schumann described it as ‘a slender Grecian maiden between two Norse giants’.

This symphony in B flat major is clearly a masterwork of Beethoven's  post-Eroica period and has the composer challenging  the prevailing perceived ideas of what a symphony should be, by means of his particular use of rhythm and harmonies. He employs a slow introduction once more -  after not using it in the Eroica  -  with stabbing dissonances that develop before leading to the richly melodic Allegro vivace. The Adagio is an exuberant E flat major rondo. The third movement (Allegro vivace) brings together scherzo and minuet elements to playful effect and has the trio section played twice to create a five-part structure instead of the usual tripartite form. The symphony ends with a constantly moving and optimistic Allegro, ma non troppo that foreshadows the Pastoral Symphony and seems to be influenced by Haydn, Beethoven’s former teacher.

Any notion that this might be  a somehow inferior composition was dismissed by the superbly played performance from the excellent ensemble that is the Budapest Festival Orchestra under their co-founder Iván Fischer. From the delicate pianissimo opening,  the genial Fischer then held on to the tension and inner pulse of the music and relaxed his grip only slightly at the start of the exuberant Allegro vivace. All the musicians seemed at one in their purpose of revealing how the music develops from the beginning of every movement through to their ends: together they produced a warm, reverberant sound with just the right hint of brightness in the woodwind tone to give the work an almost ‘authentic’ sound. There were several examples of virtuosity throughout an almost 40 minute performance from the accomplished musicians but the clarinet, and surprisingly the  timpani, solos in the second movement stood out particularly.

After the interval,  the orchestra was expanded and we were privileged to hear the richness of the BFO  sound in some of the most characterful and emotional  music  that Wagner composed for his Ring. Here in the final scene from Die Walküre Act III,  Fischer and his orchestra, most notably led by the silky strings, brought a grandeur to this scene which was totally appropriate to Wagner’s richly-layered creative musical vision.

Central to the triumph of the second half of this concert was the contribution of the two soloists; Petra Lang sang the part of the errant Valkyrie, Brünnhilde, and Juha Uusitalo was her father, Wotan. Pride makes Wotan punish his daughter at this point in the plot  but his farewell to her is also a ‘farewell’ to his own divinity. Even so,  he must do what he has to do and remain a god while he does it. Juha Uusitalo portrayed this perfectly and revealed every possible emotion from rage to paternal affection through intelligently dramatic use of his dark-hued, powerful, yet nuanced bass-baritone voice which is also capable of carrying well in Wotan’s more quiet moments.

On the other side of the podium from him Petra Lang was an all-too-human Brünnhilde. She began with the stern look of a warrior maid but showed all of the human side for this character that Siegmund’s love for his sister has awakened in her. When she came to the Barbican with the same orchestra and conductor to sing this scene with John Tomlinson in 2004, her performance was very good but perhaps her voice didn’t really seem completely suited to Brünnhilde as it does now. In the interim she has firmly cemented her place as one of the world’s finest Ortruds,  a role  which demands a  similar vocal range to that of Brünnhilde. This  seems to have helped extend the top of her voice while she retains her signature rounded – almost contralto-like – chest voice. There is now evenness between this and her head voice that is ideal for this part of the Ring … at the very least. Her voice now has all the necessary resilience to meet the challenges of her dignified final lines when she pleads to be awoken only by a hero on her flame-encircled rock,  and her dramatic abilities – even in this concert setting – helped keep the audience totally sympathetic to her plight.

Together,  soloists, orchestra and conductor displayed a clear passion for this music that became almost overwhelming. Yet it was the BFO’s accompaniment that was especially rich in intimate detail but spacious enough for the audience to be able to savour the brilliance of Wagner’s orchestral writing more clearly than in the opera house:  with the ‘Farewell’ sounding as heart-wrenching as it could possibly be and with the beauty of the concluding Magic Fire music particularly, being almost beyond words. What an orchestra this is! All concerned deserved the extended ovation they had from the packed audience and which only ended when Maestro Fischer signalled his musicians to leave the stage.

Jim Pritchard