Gottfried von EINEM (1918-96)
Der Besuch der alten Dame (1971) [135.35]
Chorus and Orchestra of Vienna State Opera/Horst Stein
rec. Vienna State Opera, 1971
ORFEO C930182I [74.17 + 61.18]
Philadelphia Symphony, Op.28 [16.23]
Geistliche Sonate, Op.38 [15.50]
Stundenlied, Op.26 [35.59]
Ildikó Raimondi (soprano)
Gábor Boldocki (trumpet)
Iveta Apkaina (organ)
Singverein der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde Wien
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra/Franz Welser-Möst
rec. Great Hall, Musikverein Wien, 2009-16
ORFEO C929181A [68.12]
Insofar as his reputation in Britain was concerned,
the highpoint of the career of Gottfried von Einem was the presentation
of his opera The visit of the old lady (in English translation)
at Glyndebourne in 1973, two years after its triumphant première at
the Vienna State Opera. I recall a broadcast relay from those performances,
and the clear delight with which the audience welcomed a score which
had moments of both comedy and pathos which communicated itself readily
to listeners. Not that there was much that was whole-heartedly comic
in the plot of the opera. An old and rich woman returns to the village
of her birth, from which she was driven many years before when she was
found to be an unmarried mother. She seeks revenge on the man who caused
her shame, and in order to achieve this she has purchased and deliberately
ruined all the businesses which are the source of the town’s prosperity.
She now offers a billion dollars as an ‘endowment’ to the
villagers if they will murder her ex-lover, and a television crew arrive
to film the resulting debate (carefully neutered as to content). The
villagers, who had previously recoiled in unctuous horror from her proposal,
now unanimously agree to it and the opera concludes with their macabre
dance of triumph and rejoicing, as they cover up their part in the murder
by the mayor’s declaration that the victim “died of joy”.
The relevance of the play by Friedrich Dürrenmatt is obvious to any
generation who lived through the hypocritical denial of German
and Austrian citizens during the Nazi era, and their deliberate closing
of their eyes to the evil that was swirling around them. This makes
it all the more surprising that the playwright allowed the filmed version
of his play to emasculate the ending, with the old woman triumphantly
passing off the whole escapade as a practical joke. Maybe the dramatist
was not responsible for this; at all events he temporised when von Einem
approached him with a view to the operatic treatment of his play, and
when he agreed (and indeed enthusiastically participated in the conversion
of his dialogue into an operatic libretto) the original ending was reinstated
in all its gory splendour.
I did have a recording of sections of the BBC broadcast of the opera
from Glyndebourne, which I played more than once with pleasure but the
tapes were later damp-damaged, and at the time of writing this review
I had not heard the score for many years. I do recall that the Glyndebourne
cast was serviceable rather than stellar, although their diction was
very clear in the relayed sound but the recording on these CDs, taken
from the Viennese world première, boasts a roster of soloists of the
very first rank, such as few operatic composers nowadays would ever
hope to achieve. It is true than von Einem had already established a
formidable reputation in German-speaking territories with his earlier
opera Dantons Tod, but the casting here was something truly
exceptional and the opera achieved a run of 39 performances before it
vanished from the repertory. I seem to recall at the time that the critics
were less than wholeheartedly enthusiastic; however one bon mot
accused the composer of near-plagiarism with the phrase “Nicht
von Einem, doch vom anderen” (Not from his own pen [the awful
pun is pretty well untranslatable] but rather from others). I would
hazard a guess that much of this malice arose from sheer jealousy, envy
that a new work written almost as a deliberate snub to the increasingly
fashionable work of the avant-garde had not only been given
such an auspicious send-off but had also established itself as a work
on the verge of popularity. And after the mid-1970s the opera seems
to have vanished from the stage for many years until a belated revival
in 2010. It deserved better, much better, even if it might have proved
difficult to mount a new production with a cast to rival that of the
original. A recent revival was mounted in Vienna in March 2018, with
Katerina Karneus in the title role but the names of the remainder of
the participants don’t have the cachet of those on display here.
This recording originally appeared on DG and has resurfaced a couple
of times over the years; it now appears on the Orfeo label as part of
an edition of the works of von Einem issued to commemorate the composer’s
birth. I cannot discover whether the original LP set from DG contained
texts or translations, but certainly all the later issues have been
restricted to a synopsis of the action. This cannot help the listener
who does not speak German to follow the details of the plot, let along
appreciate the touches of black humour. To take one example: after the
public meeting at which the villagers debate the old lady’s proposition,
when the condemned man realises that they mean to kill him he comes
out with a heartfelt cry of “My God!” This is then reduced
to utter bathos when the director of the television crew who have been
filming the meeting asks them to repeat the final section of the debate
because they have been experiencing “lighting problems”.
The mayor is initially reluctant – “What, all of it?”
– but finally acquiesces whereupon the director laments the fact
that “it is a pity that his final cry of joy ‘My God!’
was lost – it would have made a marvellous shot” (I paraphrase
what I recall of the Norman Tucker translation used at Glyndebourne).
The synopsis here entirely sidesteps the irony: “The ceremony has
to be repeated because of a camera-breakdown.” Those who do speak
German will be gratified by the clear diction of the cast – and
indeed it seems that this may well be a deliberate feature of von Einem’s
treatment of the text (Christa Ludwig comments on this in an autobiographical
booklet note). Nonetheless the recorded sound, getting on for fifty
years old now, is close-miked and boxy, relegating the sometimes brutal
orchestration to the background, and I don’t recall that the BBC
relay from the dry old theatre at Glyndebourne was much better although
the instrumental detail was crisper.
To comment on the singing would be fatuous at best (we are never going
to hear the like of this cast again) and presumptuous at worst. Suffice
it to say that a line-up of soloists headed by Christa Ludwig and Eberhard
Waechter is bravely supplemented by the likes of Heinz Zednik, Emmy
Loose, Hans Beirer, Manfred Jungwirth, Hans Hotter, Alois Pernestorfer,
Karl Terkal, Kurt Equiluz and Hans Braun to pick only on the more stellar
names. Horst Stein, the chorus and the orchestra give the score plenty
of bite and indeed panache despite some scrawny string-playing. Given
the fact that this recording derives from a single live performance,
it is of course not devoid of errors of pitch, rhythm and balance which
a studio recording would have rectified but the atmosphere of an occasion
when, the booklet tells us, the audience applauded solidly for twenty
minutes, comes through in spades. The booklet gives notes and synopsis
in both German and English, as well as the aforementioned reminiscence
by Christa Ludwig, and is well illustrated with photographs from the
original production.
Another disc in this von Einem retrospective from Orfeo furnishes us
with three much more recent recordings including one studio broadcast.
This is of the Philadelphia Symphony, once available on a Decca
LP bizarrely coupled with Schubert’s Unfinished, but
here given a new reading conducted by Franz Wesler-Möst. This symphony
had a rather unfortunate beginning a commission by Eugene Ormandy for
a short piece commemorating his orchestra produced an unexpectedly substantial
neo-classical score which the conductor was initially reluctant to accept.
In the event the symphony was not performed in Philadelphia until a
year after its première in Vienna with Georg Solti conducting. Some
of the critics were less than enthusiastic – one complained that
“an audience that regards Shostakovich as a great composer will
not deny Einem some recognition” – and the Penguin Guide
were decidedly offhand about the Decca recording under Zubin Mehta,
describing the work as “remarkably unmemorable”. Well, comparisons
with Shostakovich are certainly wide of the mark, and von Einem’s
symphony is more genially enjoyable than any of the Russian master’s
essays in the genre closer parallels should be drawn perhaps not with
Haydn (a favourite model of the neo-classicists) but with Beethoven.
The bouncy rhythmic material that forms the central section of the slow
movement comes very close indeed to the scherzo from the Choral
Symphony, and the driving impetus of the finale also echoes Beethovenian
models. Perhaps the Penguin Guide were closer to the mark when
they described the score as “effective” and “well-wrought”
although one might possibly be inclined to ascribe the authors’
lack of enthusiasm to Mehta’s performance (which I have not heard).
Another alternative recording, made in 1978 by the Austrian Broadcast
Symphony Orchestra, also appears to have sunk without trace; the Decca
LP did make a short-lived appearance on CD back in 2006 as part of a
massive six-disc Mehta retrospective, and was reviewed for this site
by Ateş Orga. The new recording is a mere six seconds shorter than
the old one.
At the other extreme comes the Geistliche Sonata for soprano,
trumpet and organ. If the forces involved might suggest something on
the lines of Burgon’s famous Nunc dimittis, forget it.
The ‘sacred sonata’ is a severe and heavily contrapuntal
exercise, beginning with a movement for trumpet and organ alone and
then proceeding to three settings of Biblical texts. The writing for
the voice is often quite strenuous – Ildikó Raimondi is clearly
stretched to her limits – and although the final movement, moving
from a solemn hymn to a dramatic peroration, has a sense of forward
movement and presence, the rest of the music lacks any of the sense
of the immediate attractiveness to be found in the symphony. The Biblical
texts are provided in German only, but those with a smattering of the
language and a knowledge of the scriptures will find their way round
the words easily enough.
Which is more than can be said for the Berthold Brecht’s lyrics
for Das Stundenlied, a series of meditations on the nine hours
of the Crucifixion set for chorus and orchestra. It is clear that Brecht’s
text has some serious political points to make about the events he describes,
but his often colloquial German is not readily comprehensible to those
without a good knowledge of the language, even with the printed German
text that is provided. The otherwise comprehensive booklet note by Otto
Biba clearly seems to have expected an English translation to be supplied,
since his description of the music completely shuns any explanation
of the meaning of the words except to note (without explanation) the
“central importance of…death-inducing love” –
whatever that may mean. This is all the more aggravating since the work
is one of von Einem’s most impressive utterances. He strongly
espoused the cause of Brecht, even at one stage proposing an operatic
setting of The Caucasian chalk circle, and he was apparently
dismissed from the board of the Salzburg Festival because of his perceived
over-attachment to the promotion of the maverick writer (although this
is not mentioned in the booklet notes). Both choir and orchestra enter
enthusiastically into the sphere of the music, and indeed this CD is
a valuable addition to the promotion of von Einem’s music which
is evidenced by Orfeo’s series of issues over the years, comprising
both reissues of vintage performances as well as new recordings.
Acknowledgement is given to the “Gottfried von Einem Musik privat
Stiffung” who presumably have supplied some of the original tapes;
it only remains to lament the fact that the presentation of the issues
has fallen short of the extra mile needed to enthuse non-German-speaking
audiences. Those who can overcome those obstacles will find much to
enjoy here. They may also care to note that the Orfeo recording under
Lothar Zagrosek of von Einem’s ‘other’ opera Dantons
Tod does come with a complete libretto and translations into both
English and French, which goes to show it can be done.
Paul Corfield Godfrey
Cast list for Der Besuch der alten Dame
Christa Ludwig (mezzo-soprano) – Claire Zachanassian
Eberhard Waechter (baritone) – Alfred Ill
Hans Beirer (tenor) – Mayor
Manfred Jungwirth (bass) – Preacher
Hans Hotter (bass) – Teacher
Siegfried Rudolf Frese (baritone) – Doctor
Alois Pernestorfer (bass) – Policeman
Heinz Zednik (tenor) – Butler
Erich Trachtenberg and Klaus Peters (spoken roles) – Toby, Roby
Fritz Sperlbauer and Karl Terkal (tenors) – Loby, Koby
Wolfgang Peschel (spoken role) – Husband No 7
Elmar Breneis (tenor) – Husband No 9
Emmy Loose (soprano) – Ill’s wife
Ana Higueras-Aragon (mezzo-soprano) – Ill’s daughter
Ewald Alchberger (tenor) – Ill’s son
Hans Christian (bass) – Station-master
Hans Braun (baritone) – Train-driver, Cameraman
Franz Machala (tenor) – Conductor
Wilhelm Lenninger (spoken role) – Reporter
Laurence Dutoit (soprano) – 1st woman
Margareta Sjöstedt (mezzo-soprano) – 2nd woman
Kurt Equiluz (tenor) – Hofbauer
Harald Pröglhöf (bass) – Helmesberger
