It snowed in London on 2 February 2009. I wasn’t there,
but heard reports of how it had affected audience numbers and
reviewer attendance at the concert from which this recording
of Tilo Medek’s
Cello Concerto No.1 was taken. By
chance, I had only recently written in glowing terms of Medek’s
organ works on the Cybele label (see
review),
and the family had been in contact to thank me for my positive
response. So it was Tilo’s daughter Clara, the artist responsible
for the cover art of this release, who pointed me in the direction
of Bob Brigg’s
review of
the piece - the only one written apparently, and one which was
damning in the extreme.
Admitting to an understandable bias, Clara’s opinion differed
from that of Bob Briggs in her perception of the concert. To
be fair his criticisms were almost solely on the quality of the
music and not in doubt as to the commitment of the players, soloist
or orchestra. I won’t go much further into this almost
inevitable divergence of opinion, but have to admit the whole
affair did stimulate my interest, and I’ve been looking
forward to hearing this recording and making up my own mind ever
since.
I had said I wouldn’t go further on the subject, but I
do have the feeling the difference between fighting one’s
way to a concert through “adverse weather conditions” and
finding the music falling short of one’s expectations may
have had a different effect to receiving a CD like an unexpected
gift and listening to it in the comfort of one’s home,
especially when the first breath of spring has already turned
the chill sky into a potential ally, and the first shoots and
flowers are reluctantly showing that winter will have been beaten
once again. Recordings have a way of flattering a performance
as well, and should by their very nature provide an ideal sonic
picture which will almost certainly be better than that of even
the most expensive seats in the auditorium. Once can reflect
on a recording and re-play it, allowing the music to take a more
intimate hold on one’s memory, rather than keeping it pegged
to the associations of a single experience, positive or negative
- and this
is a piece I would feel the need to hear more
than once before being able to pass considered comment. All I
really want to say is that the subjective variables between Bob’s
experience and mine are immeasurable. Nothing I will say need
discount his comments, and as far as I am concerned there is
no conflict.
The literary titles for each of the four movements of the
Cello
Concerto No.1, far from providing a source of mystification,
in many ways hold the secret to approaching this piece. As Andreas
Dorschel says in his booklet notes to this release, “Medek
liked to keep his music poised between absolute music and programme
music .... one could speak of ‘poetic music.’” Without
hammering out an absolute programmatic plan, Medek’s idea
is to allow the imagination to play with literary images as well
as the more abstract content of pure music. Once you have the
idea of a narrative, the cellist and orchestral soloists in story-telling
or conversational mode, then we’re away, and this rather
vast canvas can take on the qualities of an opera as well as
those of a cello concerto. Yes, there are numerous moments where
the music of other composers is brought to mind: Hindemith, Stravinsky
... my favourite moment is the quasi-Mahler slow opening to the
final movement, but I am a sentimental old softie at heart. No
doubt other ears would hear more or different composers, but
this is not particularly derivative music. It teases, asking
us of what we are aware, or whether we believe the composer is
conscious of the associations with which he is playing. This
can be an irritating element in a piece, but I can’t help
feeling Medek is completely in control: inflaming our senses
with a similar kind of sardonic wit to that which both Shostakovich
and Malcolm Arnold used to poke pomposity with a sharp stick.
After years of censorship and hindrance from the East German
state, Tilo Medek was finally forced into exile in West Germany
in 1977, and there is a sense in which this 1978 concerto seems
to be finding its feet, as if the composer was still settling
into a new life, and still on a search for a sense of stability.
There are some moments in the piece where we seem in a permanent
state of transition, or where the sense of drama sails close
to a kind of dangerously unsettling banality, but each time I
go back and listen I can’t quite put my finger on ways
one might change things. Yes, you could probably cut the piece
by a good 15 minutes or so, but
where - what are you going
to lose, and what would you be left with after your Brucknerian
tinkering? No, take it or leave it, this is a piece which will
take you on a journey, and not one I find particularly over-long
or tedious. The road on which you travel might not always appear
equally interesting, but each time you stop off and get out of
your Trabant to look closer there is always something rustling
away in the hedgerows, elusive and sometimes infuriating, but
always on its way somewhere.
The other two pieces on this disc are for cello solo, and are
far more than mere ‘fillers’.
Stele, an ancient
Greek word
meaning ‘column’ or ‘pillar’,
is a kind of memorial for Bernd Alois Zimmermann, who had committed
suicide in 1970. Rather than a straight elegy, the piece is a
kind of struggle, ‘difficult’ in a technical sense,
but also in the resistance one feels, the material emerging,
flowing, sometimes flying, but always with a sense of a dragging
weight and an undercurrent of solemnity and desperation.
Schattenspiele or ‘Shadow
Plays’ is another nod towards pictorial imagery without
specific references, and the title has us noticing echo effects
and theatrical gestures, and perhaps calling to mind the wistful
and sometimes violent narratives of the silhouetted figures which
form the tradition of shadow theatre from China and beyond. There
are five of these short and fascinating
Schattenspiele,
each exploring different aspects of the cello and different dramatic
and musical effects.
In conclusion, this, in my opinion, is a very worthwhile disc
indeed. The live circumstances of the
Cello Concerto No.1 add
to the energy and edge-of-the-seat feel to the performance, while
also revealing a few places where the ensemble of the orchestra
only just hangs together. The rewards in this music are those
which probably yield more over time rather than hitting one between
the eyes with promiscuous precocity, but this is true of much
contemporary music and not necessarily a reason for ejection.
What brave members of the audience made it to the concert were
clearly hardy folk, and there is hardly any extraneous noise
in the auditorium, the acoustic of which is a bit boomy, but
the well engineered recording transcends any minor quibbles.
The WDR solo cello recordings are exemplary, and Guido Schiefen
is a characterful performer: perhaps more on the lighter and
lyrical side of music which might yield a shade more to some
extra passion and weight, but one senses he feels a unity with
the music which is hard to criticise.
Dominy Clements
Guido Schiefen (cello) 
