Wien Modern III
Luigi DALLAPICCOLA (1904 - 1975) Piccola musica notturna (1954)
[6:35]
Iannis XENAKIS (1922-2001) Keqrops for piano and orchestra (1986)
[16:48]
Paolo PEREZZANI (b 1955) Primavera dell’anima (1990) [11:00]
Hans Werner HENZE (b 1926) Boulevard Solitude - Sinfonische
Intermezzi (4) (1965) [13:57]; Manadenjagd (1965) [3:29]
Roger Woodward (piano)
Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester/Claudio Abbado
rec. live, Wien Konzerthaus, 1992. DDD
DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 447 115-2 [52:45] 
Although first released in July 1997, after a delay of five years, this typically
luxurious DG modern anthology recorded live in front of an audience has missed
our attention until now.
Dallapiccola provides the oldest piece here. A Scherchen commission, based
on a warmly idyllic poem (Summer Night) by Antonio Machado, Piccola
musica notturna is almost Delian with only a few desultory
vituperative outbursts to disturb the parallel. It reminded me of Henze in
his warmest Mediterranean mode.
The Xenakis is the only piece here in which Roger
Woodward appears. Keqrops is an antidote to all that cannabis-mist
and lotus-eating in the Dallapiccola. It buzzes and shrieks with a ragingly
eruptive orchestra which is in turn pummelled by fusillades from the piano.
The derivation traces back to Stravinsky but one has to trek back rather a
long way – still one is clearly encountering a composer who has taken on an
impress from Le Sacre. It feels a bigger and more ferally barbaric
piece than its 16:48 might suggest. It ends in repose. Keqrops refers
to the Greek hero who entered into mystic communion with Athene and was in
turn worshipped in serpent form. It is the third of Xenakis’s works for piano
and orchestra: Synaphai (1969) and Erykhton (1974). Keqrops
was written for the redoubtable Woodward who premiered the work with Mehta
in New York in 1986. Woodward has held fidelity with this aspect of the avant-garde
where others have fallen away as fashion has broadened its fickle affections.
He plays more Xenakis at the Flaneries Festival in Reims in July 2011: Paille
in the Wind (with Rohan de Saram) and Keqrops (with Orchestre National
de Lille and Arturo Tamayo, a veteran of the Timpani Xenakis cycle) (13 July),
Mists (16 July) and Akea (Piano Quintet) (18 July) with the
Jack Quartet of New York.
Perezzani’s Primavera dell’anima speaks of a composer with a
fine and fragile yet richly populated style. The pulse is very fast but the
textures are fine and diaphanous, violent yet intricate rather than seismically
splenetic in the manner of Xenakis. This was the winning entry in the Vienna
International Composition Competition (1992). It would be good to hear more
from Perezzani.
We end with two stage-derived works by Henze. The four movement Sinfonische
Intermezzi are drawn from his opera Boulevard Solitude - a
different slant on the Manon Lescaut story. The intermezzi can be likened
to the Grimes Interludes. The world inhabited is Bergian, far from
cool, shimmering yet with outbursts and emotionally grim. Manadenjagd
(Hunt of the Maenads) is from The Bassarids (1965) – a one-act
opera to words by W H Auden and Chester Kallman around The Bacchae of Euripides.
It has a breathlessly surging flinty edge – a dash through thorny thickets,
whipping barbed tendrils raising welts and slashes. The metallic unforgiving
quality of the orchestration can be compared with that of Othmar Schoeck’s
opera Penthesilea.
There’s fascination to be found in these masterful scores.
Rob Barnett
There’s fascination to be found in these masterful scores.