Recently, whilst at the FRMS Yorkshire Regional
Group’s annual bash - its ‘Spring Musical Weekend’
- I had a cautionary experience. The story was related how, many
years ago, the chairman of one of the societies was wanting to
arrange a live concert. Having discovered that, not too far away,
there was a promising young string quartet hungry for performance
opportunities, off he went to offer them one. They suggested a
programme starting with Haydn, ending with Beethoven and in between,
‘We’d like to do Bartók’s Fourth Quartet.’
Our chairman thought this might be a bit, or even a lot, too strong
for his audience so, after a bit of discussion they compromised:
the centrepiece of the programme would be Saint-Saëns. Some
‘compromise’!
However, that’s not my point, and neither
is the fact that the quartet in question happened to be the fledgling
Lindsays. No. What was so cautionary was the reaction of the audience
listening to this story. A ripple of revulsion ran right round
the room. I was also horrified. Not, I hasten to add, at the mention
of Bartók, nor even at that ‘compromise’, but
at the realisation that even today poor old Bartók can
still visit panic attacks and palpitations on ordinary music-lovers!
Somehow it seems so unfair when you consider some of the excrescences
perpetrated in the name of music since Bartók’s day.
The music on the present CD is, as it happens,
relatively ‘safe’ ground. At least, so I thought until
I heard it, of which more anon. I first came across the Divertimento
through a desire for the complete Miraculous Mandarin - why anyone
would prefer the concert suite, which stops just as the music
really gets going, is beyond my comprehension. Back in the late
1960s, choice was limited, so the Philips LP of the BBCSO under
Dorati it had to be, and on the flip side there was the Divertimento,
just waiting for me to discover, and fall in love with it. Many
years later, with my first CD player sitting on the shelf, a CD
of the Mandarin was desperately desired. There was only one available:
Dorati again, this time with the Detroit SO. The ‘flip side’,
so to speak, was the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta,
which conveniently supplanted my old Turnabout LP, a more or less
execrable recording that was nevertheless considerably better
than nothing.
The back of the jewel-case modestly mentions
that this is the first recording of Bartók by Nikolaus
Harnoncourt, relatively speaking still a ‘new kid on the
block’ in BMG’s line-up. It begs the inevitable question,
‘So, can we take it that these are “authentic”
performances?’ That’s a tricky one to answer. Consider:
it doesn’t take a laser-like insight to realise that not
only does the difference between current and past performing practices
necessarily decrease as the date of composition approaches the
present, but also Twentieth Century performing practices have
the distinction of being well-documented on sound recordings.
This implies on the one hand that Bartók would be easy
meat for someone like Harnoncourt, but on the other that it may
not be worth the bother. The CD booklet, probably wisely, makes
no special point of it, yet it soon becomes clear that Harnoncourt
is, as ever, mindful of ‘authenticity’, and rightly
so.
Firstly, he went back to the ‘source’
to fix the size of his forces. Secondly, for the layout of the
forces in the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta he used
Bartók’s original sketch, which was apparently reproduced
wrongly in the published score. Thirdly, and perhaps most significantly,
there is the style of playing, which gave rise to my ‘or
so I thought’. Both these works hail from the late 1930s,
prior to the composer’s forced exile in the USA, and they
are contemporaneous with the Fifth and Sixth String Quartets,
and the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. They thus contain
nothing of the relative ‘romanticism’ of his last
works, written when he was lost and alone, and far from his beloved
home.
This last consideration mainly affects the Divertimento,
which has long been made to sound as if it had been written on
Uncle Sam’s side of the Pond. Although I’ve heard
plenty of others that perpetuate the ‘myth’, my old
Dorati recording - all snuggly-warm and cuddly - is a splendid
example of this tradition. With Dorati holding the reins, the
opening comes straight out of the ‘nostalgia’ stable.
Harnoncourt is having none of that. He cracks the whip over the
COE, setting the basses off at a jagged jog-trot straight out
of the ‘String Quartets’ stable - and he doesn’t
even bother to open the stable door! The music fair crackles with
a rude, earthy robustness born of bows hacking at strings and
vertiginous dynamic contrasts.
Everything is sharply-etched: even in the tender
moments Harnoncourt homes in on the open-air astringency that
lies within the notes. However, he is perhaps too consistent.
Take for example the approach to the development section, that
rare example of Bartók preparing a modulation. Dorati is
magical: it is like sitting outdoors with your eyes closed, and
feeling the sun emerge from behind a cloud. Harnoncourt, whilst
observing the relaxation, fails to register the heartening glow
that spreads gratifyingly through the sound.
This carries through into the slow movement,
where Harnoncourt’s sound possesses a keen-edged slenderness
bordering on the desolate, only here it is probably the more valid
approach, bearing in mind just when the music was written. His
sforzandi have startling impact, stark and maximally pungent,
underlined by carefully considered, and telling use of that sine
qua non of authenticists, ‘senza vib.’ Not that there’s
anything wrong in that: we have plenty of recordings from the
1930s amply illustrating that vibrato was used as a particular
expressive tool, rather than being slapped on all over like sun-tan
cream. The long central crescendo is both slower and more menacing,
utterly lacking any trace of the romantic warmth of such as Dorati.
Nevertheless I have to admit that the latter, softer-grained as
he is, controls the graduation with the surer hand, and is ultimately
the more satisfying in this respect.
The finale has an abundance of vigorous attack
and sonic clout. With the many stops and starts, it’s not
an easy movement to bring off. Harnoncourt takes the music by
the scruff of the neck, if anything accentuating the contrasts
of tempo. He is by no means wilful, taking the fugue pretty slowly
to avoid muddiness although, curiously enough, looking at the
work as a whole it is Dorati’s concertino group that is
the better differentiated. In the final analysis Harnoncourt’s
tempo changes are less well-controlled than Dorati’s, but
his far greater volatility and almost utter lack of civilised
manners mean that he comes up trumps when it comes to gutsy vitality.
Harnoncourt gives us a red-raw, full-blooded, ‘authentic’
Bartók.
The booklet note is by Lásló Somfai,
the Director of the Budapest Bartók Archives, who provides
a brief but informative background allied to a usefully perceptive
commentary on the music. What’s more, unlike the German
and French translations of the same note, as no translator is
credited I am pleased to say that his command of English is very
good indeed (of course, his writings may have been fettled, but
then a ‘translator’ would surely have been mentioned).
Particularly fascinating is the paragraph concerning Bartók’s
seating layout, for the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta,
which Somfai relates to the semantics of the music.
As I mentioned earlier, Harnoncourt religiously
observes this layout, and the dividends it pays are immediately
obvious. Dorati’s Detroit recording (on Decca), like many
others, approximates it, placing the piano and celesta in the
centre, as though soloists, and arraying the strings around them,
with the percussion deployed across the back. The composer’s
layout places the piano in the ‘soloist’ slot, arranging
the strings on either side in two completely separate, and completely
symmetrical, bands. From front to back: first violins, second
violins, violas, then cellos in the corners and double-basses
on the inside. Celesta and harp are immediately behind the piano,
with the percussion - in order of increasing oomph - lined up
behind them. Thus, the timpani are right at the back, sandwiched
between the two groups of double-basses.
If this sounds like a lot of fuss and palaver,
you should hear the results! It’s rather more than a simple
gain in linear clarity: we hear what Somfai described as ‘semantics’
at work. Bartók has gone much further than those who (dare
I say?) merely dabbled in stereophony, whether it be through off-stage
instruments, batteries of brass bands, or just opposition of first
and second violins. He has, in effect, added an extra dimension
to that branch of the pattern-maker’s art that we call ‘music’,
and then exploited it thoroughly.
Eye-opening as this might be, the performance
and recording have still to be good enough to justify any outlay.
On balance, I’d say, ‘Get your hands in your pockets’.
At 9'10 and 8'05 Harnoncourt’s first and third movements
are very slow, compared with Dorati’s far from rushed 7'38
and 6'17. As it happens, the two conductors differ only by a few
seconds in the fast movements. However, Harnoncourt’s control
of those slow tempi is sure, as is his attention to detail. Coming
off the first movement’s central climax, he makes much of
the string glissandi, and when the music is very quiet, the comparative
lack of vibrato brings an emaciated, fragile and spine-tingling
eeriness to the sound.
In the third movement, every jelly-wobble of
the pedal-timps is queasily present - if you suffer easily from
sea-sickness, this bit is not recommended listening. The spooky
alternation of up and down violin slides is under-cooked, but
otherwise Harnoncourt has everything on the front burner. The
textures are beautifully balanced, with all parts given their
due. In particular the percussion and harp, who are often relegated
to a ‘background’ rôle, find themselves contributing
on much more equitable terms. I find that Harnoncourt’s
scrupulous attention to fine detail suits Bartók’s
musical microcosms to a ‘T’.
As in the Divertimento, the fast movements are
fierce and volatile, but not simply in the sense of ‘hard
driven’ - there are some beguiling relaxations. For instance,
near the end of the second movement he winkles out a delicious
little lilt, and in the finale he’s alive to all the different
dance styles. The reappearance of the motto theme near the end
is spine-tingling: the theme comes, from the ghost it was in the
beginning, to all-too-solid flesh that melts, dribbles away, then
blossoms anew in the coda.
The playing of the COE is exemplary. Mention
is made in the booklet of Harnoncourt’s ‘coaching
a Bartók style . . . to young [string players]’,
and they certainly deliver the goods, right from scalpel-edge
pianissimi through to full-throated throbbing, and they can attack
sforzandi as though with hatchets, all with electrifying unanimity.
Keyboards and ‘kitchen’, even the timpanist, deserve
similar praise. I say ‘even’ because my stomach advises
caution in this case!
Now, the bad news. These are ‘live’
recordings. I’d like to say ‘as confirmed by the audience
shuffling heard between movements’. Unfortunately, you don’t
have to wait that long to become aware of this - the audience
seems to have been pretty determined to make its presence felt
during the music, in spite of the recording engineers’ best
efforts to minimise this intrusion through quite close miking.
I don’t want to make too much of this, as it isn’t
even remotely in the same league as the legendary (and in some
cases terminal) Melodiya ‘Mucus in Moscow’ crowd.
Still, if you’re hypersensitive to noises off, you have
a right to the ‘health warning’. However, it says
a lot for the skills of the recording engineers that the sound
itself is so very good, when it could easily have been hopelessly
hemmed in. Admittedly, it is a bit dry, but luckily for all concerned
that happens to complement the style of performance.
There’s more, in the form of a ‘bonus’
CD. This is little more than a 28-minute ‘promo’ freebie,
featuring what BMG hopes will be irresistible extracts from Harnoncourt’s
recordings of Haydn’s Die Schöpfung, Mozart’s
Requiem, and ‘A Workshop Concert’ about Bruckner’s
Ninth Symphony. The bonus on the bonus is a complete performance
of Vyšehrad from Smetana’s Ma Vlast. However, I don’t
suppose that this will sway anyone one way or the other, although
of course it does mean that you get a ‘free’ double
jewel-case.
These are valuable and individual additions to
the Bartók discography, offering fresh insights into two
of the Hungarian master’s finest works, and worthy of a
place on your shelf either in their own right, or as complements
to more traditional views of the music.
Paul Serotsky
Chamber Orchestra of Europe/Nikolaus Harnoncourt