Alemania
Musikfest 3: Appropriations
Luciano Berio, who would have been 100 this year, has been one of the featured composers at this year’s Musikfest Berlin, and audiences have already had the chance to hear experience such works as Requies, his brief elegy for Cathy Berberian, and Rendering, his reimagined version of Schubert’s incomplete tenth symphony. However, the festival’s most ambitious Berio programme came courtesy of the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, who paired Debussy’s La Mer with two of Berio’s most important scores from the 1960s: the enchanting suite of Folk Songs, and the Sinfonia, one of his indisputable masterpieces. With exciting performances from the orchestra under the direction of Daniel Harding, and the versatile vocals of Magdalena Kožená, the evening was charming and invigorating in equal measure.
Theft
has been a reasonably common musical practice for almost as long as music has
existed, and there are probably few composers who haven’t lifted something –
ever if only accidentally – at some point in their career. Of course theft can
take many forms: Rossini regularly cribbed from himself; Mozart, in the final
scene of Don Giovanni, lovingly credits his sources, turning the act of
chicken-stealing into a kind of hommage; and, for all we know, the similarities
between Hans Rott’s Symphony in E and certain later passages in Mahler
may have been mere coincidence. Even before the advent of sound recording
hastened the crystallisation of a canon, composers could drop witty references
to other well-known works; but it was only in the post-war decades that notions
of appropriation, reconfiguration and recontextualisation started to be
discussed as legitimate artistic practices (in literature and architecture as
well as music).
Berio’s
Sinfonia, written in 1968 and updated with a new final movement a year
later, may not have been the first work to employ appropriation as a musical
strategy, but the third movement, constructed from the spolia of Ravel,
Debussy, Stravinsky and, most prominently, Mahler, offered a provocative
challenge to the notion of authorship that remains fascinating – and
occasionally bewildering – more than half a century after its first
performance. The fact that Berio surrounded his centrepiece with a magnificent
frame of post-war modernism only heightens the overall effect. The Sinfonia
mixes passages of exquisite beauty with moments that can make one laugh out
loud; it is a work that defies you to take it seriously, but then, paradoxically,
rewards those who do.
The
Sinfonia has been reasonably well-represented on record, and it would
probably be more of a concert hall favourite were it not for the resources
necessary for performance. In addition to an enlarged orchestra – featuring
saxophones, multiple electronic keyboards and a vast array of percussion
instruments – it calls for an eight-piece vocal ensemble capable of
considerable dexterity in three languages (the work was originally written with
the strengths of the Swingle Singers in mind). On this evening, however, the
combined forces of the orchestra and the London Voices, all under the exacting
direction of Mr Harding, had no trouble immersing the audience in the work’s
volatile charms.
The
first two movements sit comfortably among the most forward-looking works of the
1960s and, in the opening bars, Mr Harding was able to coax playing of great
precision and immense dynamic contrast from the large ensemble (the woodwinds
and, especially, the enlarged flute section, were on consistently fine form). Against
an orchestra that alternated between moments of extreme calm and sudden violent
eruptions the voices served a primarily textural role, blending with the other
instruments rather than attempting to make their presence felt. It was only in
the second movement that the relationship between voices and orchestra
developed into something more adversarial: the stillness of the singers
intoning the words ‘O King’ (as in Martin Luther King, whose assassination had
taken place months before the Sinfonia’s première) was punctuated by
jagged stabs of orchestral malevolence.
Even
these two relatively combustible movements could not prepare one for the barely
controlled chaos of the third: a sudden crash from the orchestra subsided to
reveal the fluvial opening of the third movement of Mahler’s Second
symphony (itself borrowed from one of the Wunderhorn songs). Yet the
flow of Mahler was continually threatened by distorted quotations from other
familiar pieces (including Debussy’s La Mer). What made the performance
extraordinary was Mr Harding’s ability to emphasise the disruptive quality of
Berio’s wide-ranging references without losing the propulsive momentum that
holds the movement together. And despite the immensity of the orchestral
activity, Mr Harding ensured there was room for the theatricality of the vocal
performances to thrive. The stream of narration that runs in parallel with
Mahler’s river was full of well-wrought line readings that occasionally emerged
from their surroundings as moments of sudden clarity.
The
performance had such anarchic energy that it was impossible not to surrender to
its irreverence. And when the fourth movement began, the sudden arrival of relative
stasis was surprisingly moving. Some of the third movement’s animation returned
in the fifth and final movement – along with a handful of carefully plundered
musical phrases – but the freewheeling spirit seemed to have been replaced by
something more subtle: if the referential barrage of the third movement is the Sinfonia’s
obvious showpiece, the performance on this evening suggested that the final
movement was not far behind in its musical invention. Indeed it seemed to show
Berio searching for ways in which originality and appropriation could be
combined into something greater than the sum of its parts.
The
Sinfonia was a hard act to follow, and certainly Berio’s Folk Songs,
which opened the programme’s second half, operate on a much more intimate
scale. However the cycle of eleven songs, originally scored for an ensemble of
seven instruments but later reworked for a small orchestra, were given such
varied performances from Magdalena Kožená that they were, in their own way,
equally beguiling. Admittedly the first two songs sounded somewhat reticent: Ms
Kožená’s delivery had impeccable rhythmic drive and an understated
theatricality, but her tone sounded constrained, as though she was withholding
the full power of her voice. As a result both songs emerged as downcast and
somewhat autumnal.
After
this tentative beginning the sudden transformation that occurred in the third
song was all the more striking: ‘Loosin yelav’ was delivered with majestic
fullness and a lyrical warmth that nonetheless made space for an undercurrent
of sadness; and the following ‘Rossignolet du bois’ was even better,
absorbingly rich in tone and effortless in phrasing. Yet Ms Kožená’s mode of
delivery rarely remained in the same place for long and the strength of her
performance was her ability to find a just expression for the varied moods and
themes of the songs, ranging from the slight bitterness of ‘A la femminisca’ to
the affecting simplicity of ‘Lo fiolare’. The orchestral support was
unfailingly sympathetic and the strings were superb throughout.
Debussy’s La Mer is one of the many works cited in Berio’s Sinfonia and, for the final offering of the programme, we were given a chance to hear it in full. Although the strings introduced the first movement with appropriate shimmer, it became obvious that Mr Harding’s reading was less concerned with Debussy’s capacity for amorphous drift than in the work’s propulsive undercurrents. Without sacrificing the work’s oceanic qualities, Mr Harding drove the piece forward with a vigorous sense of purpose, and the orchestra responded with highly articulate, magnificently detailed playing. If there were a handful of moments in the second movement that sounded a touch mannered, the final movement was suitably awe inspiring. And while no one could have possibly demanded more from the evening, the orchestra nonetheless capped off the concert with a rousing version of the Prelude to Verdi’s La Forza del Destino, an unashamed crowd-pleaser that did its job extremely well.
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