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Dutilleux, Wagner Parsifal Act III: London Symphony Orchestra; Tim Hugh (cello), Valery Gergiev (conductor). Barbican Hall, London 12.3.2009 (JPr)


Strange programming this,  pairing a work from the 1960’s by a living composer, Henri Dutilleux, with Act III from Wagner’s Parsifal.

Henri Dutilleux's work Tout un monde lointain (‘A whole far-off world’) for solo cello and orchestra lasts nearly thirty minutes and is clearly a concerto even though the word does not appear on the score. It is inspired by Charles Baudelaire's cycle of poems called Les Fleurs du mal. The title Dutilleux (born 1916) chose comes from the poem La Chevelure. The line that is printed in full on the title page in the score is: ‘Tout un monde lointain, absent, Presque défunt’ or ‘A whole far-off world, absent, all but dead’. The composer did not attempt to convey Baudelaire's word-images in music but gives us a personal response evoked by the respective verses in the five movements. Dutilleux provides not only quotations from Baudelaire, as well as, brief descriptions of his own. For instance the first movement is called ‘Enigme’ (‘Enigma’), and carries this quotation from Poème XXVII: ‘… Et dans cette nature étrange et symbolique …’ (‘… And in this strange and symbolic nature …’). Dutilleux marks the tempo Très libre and writes: ‘A cadenza-like introduction by the soloist punctuated by chords—or “chord-themes” that serve as transition-motif — precedes a movement related to a scherzo. The orchestra is treated in a sectionalized, pointilliste fashion.’

It was written for Mstislav Rostropovich who gave the première at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in July 1970. Rostropovich edited the solo part and the score was published with his fingerings. He championed the work and in the intervening years it has been taken up by other cellists and performed and recorded. A lot of it is in the high register yet there are several slides across the octaves which provide a lot of its soulful sound ; at times almost like a lamentation. There are outbursts when strings are plucked by the soloist or the string players, there are intrusions from various percussion instruments such as cymbals, side drum or xylophone and there is a raucous almost discordant explosion of sound in the fifth movement. Otherwise it is a meditative, lyrical work that ebbs and flows from the quiet opening recitative for the solo cello to the ending which poetically just fades away.

Tim Hugh, London Symphony Orchestra’s principal cellist, is an experience performer of the work and he appeared to cope well with its fearsome technical demands. Perhaps the dream-like quality of much of the music does not lend itself naturally to bravura, but I would have like it played with more of this; I imagine Rostropovich would have imbued the music with heightened intensity compared to Mr Hugh. Also, in the rather cool and understated accompaniment by his LSO colleagues guided by Gergiev’s toothpick and quavering fingers I felt it was music with which the players were not overly familiar. In support of this though,t one of the violinists turned to her colleague at the end and mouthed confirmation that indeed it had been a ‘hard piece’.

After the interval there was more of a buzz in the near-capacity audience as they anticipated the Wagner and certainly most of the orchestra had warmed up because of the Dutilleux work. Parsifal is better than some of Wagner’s operas in concert because of its large stretches of story-telling which are not related to any obvious action. Commentators may wish to comment on the story's misogyny, hints of anti-Semitism or quasi-religiosity, yet perhaps thoughts on this work are best left to the composer who wrote in 1880 that ‘When religion becomes artificial,  art has a duty to rescue it. Art can show that the symbols which religions would have us believe literally true are actually figurative. Art can idealise those symbols, and so reveal the profound truths they contain’.

The final moments of Parsifal, as in all the best Wagner, are something that  bypasses conscious thought anyway, and takes a physical grip on the listener’s body; more so in concert than in the opera house because then we only have the surtitles'  word for it that there is a spear or the Grail to be seen. Nor do we see Kundry wash Parsifal’s feet or the communion; or the dove that supposedly floats over Parsifal’s head at the end. On the one hand,  you lose this theatricality in a concert performance but to counter this the audience is not subjected to any directorial interpretation of Wagner and has nothing to do but let the sumptuousness of this emotional music envelop them. We are left with opera as oratorio and with a performance as great as this was, that is no bad thing.

Sergey Semishkur from Gergiev’s Mariinsky Theatre was a lyrical and impassioned Parsifal though  sometimes he  did not bring over the German text clearly enough -  at moments of his character’s agony such as ‘Und ich, ich bin’s, der all dies Elend schuf!’ for example. Evgeny Nikitin, also from the Mariinsky, was an anguished Amfortas though he would seem vocally more suited to Klingsor. Gurnemanz was to have been René Pape,  but he was ill and he was replaced at short notice by Robert Holl. He is vastly experienced in the role and sang with strength, musicality and nuance, interpreting every note with the expressiveness of the world-renowned lieder singer that he is.

Praise is due too for the men of the London Symphony Chorus who were on stage and who from the ominous tolling bell onwards, collectively sang with poignant somber despair. The off-stage female choir also made an important contribution to this Parsifal’s transcendental ending. One of them, Genevieve Cope, was on stage to sing the only contribution Kundry makes to Act III; ‘Dienen … dienen!’ (‘To serve … to serve!’).

The intensity and feeling that Gergiev, still with his toothpick, elicited from the superb LSO players during this performance began with the Act III Prelude and did not let its grip slacken at any moment. The strings were luminous and the woodwind mellow and it was all potent with grandeur, mystery and tension,  balancing anguish and salvation perfectly. After the last notes rose and dissipated Gergiev kept his hands raised and the audience savoured the silence. Fleetingly I felt I was in church - but more realistically, the gesture was made in order not  to prematurely spoil the incandescent moment.

Jim Pritchard


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