These discs are available separately, but unless you
have very exclusive musical tastes, the price advantage of the box makes
a strong case for acquiring all five. So, as I hope to indicate below,
do the performances. Hänssler provide exemplary packaging, with
detailed and original notes by Paul Fiebig on each work as well as Gielen’s
own pithy and invaluable insights.
93.056
Gielen’s view of Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony as ‘full
of wrath and repressed violence and without a hint of merriment’ is
not one many listeners will share, especially if they are used to performances
by Beecham and others which bubble over with Rossinian froth, but it’s
one I find completely convincing. The symphony appears to me to belong
to the world of the late quartets, and I have long thought patronising
the nostrum which regards it as an intermezzo between the grander schemes
of the Seventh and Ninth - so, evidently, does Gielen. The tempi are
faster than Klemperer or Furtwängler (though never controversially
so), but all three interpreters invoke complete seriousness of purpose
in their articulations of the obsessive rhythmic cells which dominate
each movement. Maelzel’s metronome (or Beethoven’s parody of it) ticks
along mercilessly in the second movement; Gielen shows that variety
of colour and contrast between legato and staccato phrasings (even a
whiff of portamento on occasion) are enough to characterise the movement
within a completely strict tempo. Those who bought the conductor’s iconoclastic
set of the complete symphonies on EMI will be pleased to find that this
is a different performance - conceived within the same expressive parameters
but better played and recorded. If there’s a finer modern Eighth on
disc, I’d like to hear it.
Though Gielen is given generous credit to Stefan Litwin
in the notes, it’s difficult to believe he himself had not conceived
of the C minor Piano Concerto in this tense and often abrupt way before
the pianist came along. Their ideas about the piece mesh well judging
from the sympathy with which soloist and orchestra accompany each other
in turn. Sometimes Litwin could have allowed himself more time in the
outer movements to avoid blurring figurations, but his clear-sighted
sense of the direction of each note, phrase and movement is more than
ample compensation. Typically of Gielen and Hänssler’s combined
efforts, far more wind detail is audible than usual, more so even than
in the period-instrument performances with which this performance has
more in common than the Romantic musings of Kempff or Barenboim. Litwin
recreates in Beethoven’s standard cadenzas the bizarre juxtapositions
between romance and violence which had its first audiences so puzzled.
The whole disc seems to recreate Beethoven both in
his own time and through very 21st-century eyes - in the
process bypassing the Romantic tradition of performances first immortalised
by Wagner. Nowhere is this more forcefully communicated than in Gielen’s
own arrangement of the Grosse Fuge. Klemperer and Furtwängler
again come to mind as the two most successful previous arrangers of
this masterpiece of dislocation, but, as might be expected, Gielen’s
treatment is very different. He distributes the melodic material between
several smaller ensembles and soloists not just phrase by phrase but
sometimes note by note, recalling Webern’s treatment of the Royal theme
of Bach’s Musical Offering in his arrangement of the Ricercar
a 6. Liberal use of sul ponticello and ‘snap’ pizzicatos
heighten what are already confrontationally modern harmonies and phrase
structures; the perky second theme is given an air of entirely false
and even menacing jauntiness. Klemperer’s contrapuntal monolith has
broken into shards of instrumental mutterings and exclamations - reflecting
rather more closely the way most quartets perform the work.
93.057
Furtwängler gets a mention from his one-time pupil
Gielen in the latter’s reflections on Schubert’s ‘Great’ C major
symphony, but only in a passing excoriation of the traditional habit
of making the first movement’s Andante introduction a ponderous
preface to an overexcited allegro - or so Gielen’s later teacher,
Josef Polnauer, thought. Those of us who treasure Furtwängler in
this work don’t have to agree to find Gielen’s alternative almost as
compelling. If you think the Introduction will take some getting used
to at Gielen’s breezy two-in-a-bar, wait until the coda to the movement,
taken entirely a tempo - not even Norrington blows such a startling
raspberry at the work’s performance history.
In other respects, the tight sound and flowing feel
to the whole symphony reminded me very positively of a recent performance
conducted by Sir Roger Norrington, also in London (at the 2001 Proms),
with another German radio orchestra, from SWR Stuttgart. Their tempos
for the second movement are almost identical (with more emphasis on
the con moto than the andante), except when Gielen cranks up the tension
towards the apocalypse (from 7’30" onwards) in a thrilling and
entirely unmarked accelerando. Neither conductor trivialises
the music; indeed at 5’ there is a moment of genuine pathos as the horn
calls, and only the lower strings answer. In all four movements, the
tempo is only so fast as that which allows the moving line to ‘speak’
properly; nothing is gabbled or rushed.
Given his continually fascinating way with the many
tricky corners of this work, I wish that Gielen had allowed us to hear
them more than once: he is very parsimonious in the matter of repeats.
Here too reside my only objection to the recorded sound in this series.
The trombones ascending arpeggios at the climax of the first movement
are disappointingly recessed and the brusque final statement of the
theme is hardly any louder, indicating some serious dynamic compression.
None of the other recordings in this series suffers from the same fault,
and I am inclined to believe that Hänssler acquired the tape from
BBC Radio 3 (though I don’t know if Radio 3 broadcast the concert) given
that station’s distressing and ever-increasing propensity for interventionist
miking and engineering for the dubious benefit of those listening on
car stereos.
Rant over; if you can live with FM broadcast sound
(and those of us who listen to Furtwängler and Kna in this work
put up with worse) this Great C major is one to both challenge
and enjoy. The Strauss encore is utterly captivating without recourse
to sentimentality; Gielen remarks that one can pull them around a bit
in concert, and he proceeds to do so, though the famous Viennese delay
on the second beat is never exaggerated, and he creates the illusion
of stretched time most successfully by turning a careful ear to dynamics
- the strings and flutes die away note by note at the end of the first
theme, a piccolo adds a carefully balanced counterpoint to the second.
If Boulez ever deigned to pay homage to the ‘Waltz King’, this is what
it would probably sound like.
93.058
Just as late, dance-inflected Schubert and Johann Strauss
strike interesting sparks off each other, so too do Bruckner (in his
least well-known mature symphony) and Bach, in the finest arrangement
of any of his works for orchestra. Only Robert Craft is faster, in the
earlier of his two recordings of Bach’s most expansive organ work, but
Gielen makes the fugue’s counterpoint tell at least as well as most
of his rivals on disc: the clarinet phrases the first statement with
especial love. He is, however, rather flat-footed in the double-dotted
French Overture of the Prelude, where Salonen, Rozhdestvensky and Scherchen
all swing the rhythms with terrific verve. Gielen opens out to a glorious
rallentando at the very end of each movement, but there are plenty
of moments he refuses to take his time over the easing from one section
into another and denied himself the chance to explore the poetry and
fantasy of Schoenberg’s arrangement. That said, he is never less than
scrupulous in allowing all the many voices to be heard at whatever speed
they move (where Slatkin for one fails conspicuously). This is at the
least an honest performance, which will serve its purpose if it introduces
listeners to what is a colourful and very moving meeting of minds.
The Bruckner is rather more than that. Like Haitink,
Gielen steers a sane middle course between the Romantically relaxed
readings by Karajan and Celibidache and a constant momentum engineered
by Wand and Skrowaczewski. Gielen doesn’t have the richly blended sound
of the Concertgebouw to call upon, unlike Haitink, but the SWR orchestra
play with greater rhythmic steadiness and give a superbly coherent account
of the slow movement. Bruckner’s wonderful marcia funebre third
theme (at 5’) has an even heavier tread than usual when the preceding
themes are presented less indulgently, as here. The first clarinettist
continues to excel him or herself with eloquent solos; the underpinning
of the return of that third theme is magical.
Not even Gielen’s lucid sense of musical structure
can resolve ‘the finale problem’ in this work which plagued Bruckner
perhaps more than any other great symphonist. Even Robert Simpson in
an otherwise staunch defence of the work implies that the composer’s
bold juxtapositions of material tend to sap tension rather than build
it. Gielen pretty much plays it straight, using three tempos that largely
interlock harmoniously (save for a very sudden return to Tempo I at
8’38"). Wand and Klemperer effect more subtle solutions: but I
am still waiting for a definitive Sixth. Having attended one of the
concerts from which Sir Colin Davis’s forthcoming recording on LSO Live
is taken, I have high hopes that it is not long in coming.
93.059
Those who do know Gielen’s work will already be familiar
with his personal but idiomatic and exciting takes on the central Classical
and Romantic repertoire which the first three albums in the series demonstrate.
But Scriabin? It’s hard to suppress a chuckle when you read that he
regards the Poem of Ecstasy, ‘a favorite (sic) of kapellmeisters…
as primitive as popular music’, considering that his contemporary and
musical confrere Pierre Boulez, who has himself engaged very selectively
with Scriabin, will present that work with the LSO in November 2002.
I’ve always thought the two men shared many musical sympathies and standpoints,
and sure enough, Gielen conducts an entirely unhysterical performance
of the Third with much the same clear-headedness that I imagine will
distinguish Boulez’s Poem. All the same, Gielen clearly doesn’t
have that much time for Scriabin’s overheated language; this recording
derives from only his seventh appearance with the SWR orchestra, in
1975, and one imagines that had there been a more recent performance
to call upon, Hänssler would have done so.
Don’t look here for the nervous intensity engendered
by Golovanov and Kondrashin (a stunning Concertgebouw live performance
which I last saw on Etcetera). Scriabin’s lush harmonies and apparently
improvisatory manipulation of the tiny cells that generate whole movements
give off far more light and heat under these two than Gielen allows.
That said, the steadier tempo for the second movement, Voluptes,
reveals interesting kinships with late Wagner; Kundry and her flower
maidens are just around the corner. This 27-year-old recording is marginally
more recessed than the more recent SWR engineering, but it still boasts
impressive dynamic variety and allows Gielen’s keen-eared balancing
of forces to speak for itself.
The Ravel and Busoni fillers bring that strength to
the fore as the series moves into the repertoire for which he has always
been acclaimed: Une barque in particular rocks with captivating
menace and an unprecedented level of detail.
93.060
The value of this disc resides principally in bringing
together three vocal works - one each from the ‘members’ of the Second
Viennese School - which are central to their respective composers’ outputs,
yet are more often talked about than heard. All three are predictably
and ferociously difficult to perform, though Gielen interestingly insists
that the musical language of the first of them, Schoenberg’s Die
Gluckliche Hand (The blessed hand) is if anything regressive compared
to the freer style of the monodrama Erwartung. I’m not sure that
the score’s marked lack of points of repose or consolidation will strike
most listeners that way and if anything, Gielen’s fluid account eschews
the moments of lyricism that Pierre Boulez brought to the piece in his
CBS recording. This twenty-minute, four-scene ‘drama with music’ deals
with the acts of creation and rejection in a symbolical fashion, but
the autobiographical element (the artist struggles to make something
new and beautiful from the past and is rejected for his pains) is only
barely veiled. Without the composer’s painstaking directions for lighting
and movement (which make Wagner’s instructions look positively laconic)
the music is the main thing, and it’s no less confidently played and
sung here than under Boulez.
Der Wein is rather easier to place within its
composer’s output. Berg wrote this concert aria after three poems of
Baudelaire while in the middle of writing Lulu, and boy, does
it show. The soprano’s first line comes straight out of the opera, saxophone,
horn and strings weave long, aching melodies that could only have sprung
from the pen of Lulu’s creator. Melanie Diener’s diction and feel for
the jazz-meets-Wagner rhythms is unimpeachable. Wishing that Gielen
might occasionally relax his tight rein over the accompaniment, is,
you will have gathered by now, rather pointless; it’s not his style.
Christiane Oelze leaps and bounds with even easier
agility over Webern’s setting of texts by Hildegard Jone: Gielen notes
that ‘The music is as beautiful as that of Debussy… Although the First
Cantata lasts only eight minutes, you have the feeling you are listening
to a grand piece, for which others would need 35 minutes … in a perfectly
chiselled jewel-cutting setting.’ All I can add to that is that the
facets of that jewel are all the more various and bright for Hänssler’s
spacious recording, which places individual instruments within their
own sound space and greatly increases clarity of listening and understanding.
Should you wish to follow the text for any of these (I’d call it a necessity),
you’ll have to visit Hänssler’s website, http://www.haenssler-classic.de
or write to them at kerstin.haenssler@haenssler.de
Steuermann is probably the least familiar name on these
discs. He was a pianist for and acolyte of Schoenberg; Gielen (his nephew)
describes his style as having ‘Webern’s brevity and compactness and
Schoenberg’s expressive mood’. These Variations for Orchestra date from
1958, and I think later developments in atonality must also have influenced
Steuermann, for although their instrumentation bears an Austro-German
character, something of the rhythmic freedom of Boulez also pervades
them, to their advantage.
Gielen’s own 25-minute Pflicht und Neigung is
a harder nut to crack, though I have greatly enjoyed trying so far.
The title means ‘Obligation and inclination’, but Gielen, so concisely
helpful elsewhere, declines to discuss why. Like so many composers,
he evidently finds it easier to conduct expositions of others’ music
than his own, but I wish Hänssler had paid someone else to try.
The instrumental groupings (including one of electronic organ, tuba,
contrabass clarinet and percussion) and emphasis on non-repetitive rhythms
are evidently influenced by 1950s and 60s Darmstadt, the alma parens
of avant-garde German music. I think there’s an individual
language here, but as with other conductor-composers (Klemperer and
Furtwängler again), it’s difficult to tell due to the range and
quantity of others’ music they have absorbed.
These discs range so widely in scope, a summary can
hardly do them justice. Most importantly, however, there isn’t a single
ill-thought-out or badly played performance among them. If that implies
that they command more respect than enthusiasm, I’ll make myself clearer:
I found them a joy to listen to from beginning to end.
Peter Quantrill
SWR
Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden und Freiburg/Michael Gielen