Cello Concerto, Oboe Concerto, Trumpet Concerto, Canto di speranza by Heinrich Schiff;

Heinz Holliger; Hakan Hardenberger; SWF SO Baden-Baden; Michael Gielen; Prsence;

Intercomunicazione; Perspectives; Monologues by Saschko Gawriloff; Siegfried Palm; Alfons;
Aloys Kontarsky
Review by: Gavin Thomas
The Musical Times, Vol. 135, No. 1812 (Feb., 1994), pp. 108-109
Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1002990 .
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Bernd Alois Zimmnermran
CELLO
CONCERTO,
OBOE
CONCERTO,
TRUMPET
CONCERTO,
CANTO DI SPERANZA
Heinrich
Schiff,
Heinz
Holliger,
Hakan
Hardenberger
SWF SO Baden-Baden/Michael Gielen
Philips
434 114-2
PRISENCE; INTERCOMUNICAZIONE;
PERSPECTIVES;
MONOLOGUES
Saschko
Gawriloff, Siegfried Palm,
Alfons and
Aloys Kontarsky
DG 437 725-2
Revolutions have a
nasty
habit of devour-
ing
their own,
and their victims can
include not
only
the cannon-fodder of the
would-be-fashionable
epigone
but also
those otherwise talented individuals who
had the misfortune to find themselves in
the
wrong place
at the
wrong
time. Born
in
1918, Bernd Alois Zimmermann had
already
reached what should have been the
threshold of his artistic
maturity by
the
time at which the
postwar
musical revolu-
tion of Darmstadt hit town. And where
near
contemporaries
such as Lutoslawki,
Tippett
and Carter had the
advantage
of a
few extra
years
and a
geographical
dis-
tance from events in central
Europe (and
even then all three were
notably
late
developers),
Zimmermann was
pitched
firmly
into the middle of the
fighting.
As it
was, for Zimmerman, Darmstadt
was
probably
not
just
a revolution too late
but also one revolution too
many.
Working
first within the ambience of
German
symphonic romanticism,
later
absorbing
elements of
neo-classicism,
it
was not until the Violin Concerto of 1950
that he
began
his belated
struggle
with the
earlier revolution of
Schoenbergian
12-
note music. At which
point (and
the rest,
as
they say,
is
history)
the world moved
suddenly on,
his
younger colleagues
pulled
the
carpet
from under his feet and
left him to start all over
again.
But start
again
he did, progressing
with-
in little more than a decade from
Schoenberg
and
Stravinsky, through
Webernian abstraction and on into a
high-
ly personal
world of serial
constructivism,
I
I' I
ZIMMERMANN: REVOLUTIONARY HABIT
microtonal
experimentation
and
polystylis-
tic
allusiveness, culminating
with the Cello
Concerto of 1966 in a work of
heady
fanta-
sy
as
strange
and remarkable as
anything
from the
period.
It's a
story neatly
docu-
mented
by
the works on these
recordings,
one which
begins
with the Oboe Concerto
of 1952. Here are two rather
heavy-handed
neoclassical movements, aspiring
to
Stravinsky
but
sounding
rather closer to
Hindemith, enclosing
a wonderful slow
movement full of
extravagant
instrumental
colourings
and dramatic
gestures (although
Heinz
Holliger's
toneless
delivery
does
precious
little for
it). By
the time we reach
the Canto di
speranza
for cello and orches-
tra of 1953/57 the
point
of
departure
has
become Webern rather than
Stravinsky,
but
again
there's an odd contrast between the
sober serial machinations of the
opening
and later
episodes
of
swirling
harmonics
and an
extravagently sculpted
cello
line;
sudden cloud-bursts of colour and theatri-
cality
which sit
strangely
in their surround-
ings. They're
works which
already suggest
how Zimmermann's
special gifts lay
not in
purely
abstract concert works,
but in a sort
of
quasi-programmatic
music of fantastic
and mimetic
posturing.
One doesn't listen
for the
fugues
and
sonatas,
but for the
(to
use Zimmermann's own favourite
metaphor) 'imaginary ballets';
the hidden
scenarios with their
quirky plots,
sudden
eruptions, inexplicable borrowings.
And
what is
fascinating
about
subsequent
works
is not their
increasing
formidable
array
of
compositional strategies
but the
impurities,
the
transgressions.
It is
precisely
these
impurities,
this raid
over the borders of art music into the world
of
jazz,
which makes the exuberant
Trumpet
Concerto of 1954 such a
delight,
with its
smoky
blues sound, building
from
a
marvellously brooding opening
into a
spirited
riff
(complete
with drum
kit)
before
resolving
in a set of variations on
the
negro spiritual 'Nobody
knows the
trouble I see'. Not that Zimmermann was
the first, or even the
last, composer
to turn
to
jazz,
but whereas for
Berg, Weill,
Krenek et al.
jazz
was
essentially
a
populist
genre
to be absorbed and classicised,
Zimmermann is content to
accept
its differ-
ence,
and to write a
piece
which is
stylisti-
cally open-ended; almost, one
might say,
contaminated. And it's the curious contra-
diction between the continual search for
abstract
compositional techniques
of ever-
greater
refinement and hermeticism on the
one
hand,
and a
stylistic
trawl which
drags
its net ever wider and more
promiscuously
on the other, which is
perhaps
the essence
of Zimmermann's later music.
The
story
continues with the four cham-
ber works on the DG
dis, and it's difficult
to believe that the first movement of the
two-piano piece Perspectives
dates from
only
a
year
after the
Trumpet
concerto.
Here, suddenly,
we're a million miles from
the extrovert
pluralism
of the concerto and
apparently
well and
truly
in the
mythical
land of
Darmstadt,
all
angular
melodic
lines and chromatic clusters. Or at least
that is one's first
impression
until one
notices the care for
sonority
and dramatic
cogency,
a certain sense of
rhythmic
and
formal
periodicity,
a
feeling
that the music
is
being
cast into
intelligible paragraphs;
even, heaven forbid, the occasional octave.
It's the first instalment in Zimmermann's
response
to that
quintessential challenge
of
early postwar
music: how to
develop
a
per-
sonality strong enough
to survive and shine
through
even the
methodological
fervour of
high serialism,
with its almost irresistible
tendency
to make
everyone
and
everything
sound
exactly
the same. For Zimmermann,
survival was ensured, paradoxically, by
The Musical Times 108
February
1994
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Reviews Reviews
twisting
the
system designed
to
guarantee
absolute musical
purity
and
pastlessness
on
its head and
allowing
it to
encompass
a
subversive
range
of
stylistic
references. In
Monologues
of
1964,
also for two
pianos,
we find allusions to Bach, Debussy,
Beethoven, boogie-woogie,
sometimes
half-hidden,
sometimes inscribed brazenly
into the middle of
complex
serial
textures,
while in the
piano
trio Presence the deter-
minedly
abstract textures of the second
movement are
suddenly
and
inexplicably
invaded
by
a
hedonistically
romantic
Straussian
quote.
For Zimmermann the
issue was not
style,
but time, and such
quotes
were for him a
way
of
evoking
the
simultaneity
of different
epochs.
I doubt
whether
many people
will find it
possible
to hear this music is such
idealistically
simple terms, but as an eccentric counter-
revolutionary
brew it is
oddly convincing,
and as a
prophetic example
of
stylistic
montage
it is
post-modernist long
before
it's time.
Perspectives
is cast as an
'imaginary
bal-
let', while
Presence,
a 'ballet blanc en
cinq
scenes',
evokes the
imaginary
encounters
of the
improbable
trio of
Ubu, Don
Quixote
and
Molly
Bloom. The Cello
Concerto,
'en forme de
pas
de trois' (and I
could almost kiss
Philips
for
having finally
brought
this
gorgeously improbable
work
on to
CD)
is
yet
another
dance-inspired
work which welcomes us to
Pierrotesque
world full of the brittle and
glacial
sounds
of
glass harmonica, celesta, cimbalon and
string harmonics, plus
that
ubiquitous
drum
kit. Classical concerto
priorities
are aban-
doned in favour of an
open-ended,
suite-
like succession of five balletic
set-pieces
in
which the
alternately plangent
and
quixotic
cello solo is
just
one voice in a scenario
full of instrumental
role-playing,
a voice
finally
reduced almost to the status of a
silent onlooker
during
the
meandering
solos -
cimbalon, electric
guitar, jazz piano
plus
bowed
cymbal among
them - of the
last movement. One could
hardly imagine
a madder or more irresistible cocktail.
There's a lesson here,
I think: the
truly
subversive do not
just
survive revolutions,
they
create their own.
GAVIN THOMAS
twisting
the
system designed
to
guarantee
absolute musical
purity
and
pastlessness
on
its head and
allowing
it to
encompass
a
subversive
range
of
stylistic
references. In
Monologues
of
1964,
also for two
pianos,
we find allusions to Bach, Debussy,
Beethoven, boogie-woogie,
sometimes
half-hidden,
sometimes inscribed brazenly
into the middle of
complex
serial
textures,
while in the
piano
trio Presence the deter-
minedly
abstract textures of the second
movement are
suddenly
and
inexplicably
invaded
by
a
hedonistically
romantic
Straussian
quote.
For Zimmermann the
issue was not
style,
but time, and such
quotes
were for him a
way
of
evoking
the
simultaneity
of different
epochs.
I doubt
whether
many people
will find it
possible
to hear this music is such
idealistically
simple terms, but as an eccentric counter-
revolutionary
brew it is
oddly convincing,
and as a
prophetic example
of
stylistic
montage
it is
post-modernist long
before
it's time.
Perspectives
is cast as an
'imaginary
bal-
let', while
Presence,
a 'ballet blanc en
cinq
scenes',
evokes the
imaginary
encounters
of the
improbable
trio of
Ubu, Don
Quixote
and
Molly
Bloom. The Cello
Concerto,
'en forme de
pas
de trois' (and I
could almost kiss
Philips
for
having finally
brought
this
gorgeously improbable
work
on to
CD)
is
yet
another
dance-inspired
work which welcomes us to
Pierrotesque
world full of the brittle and
glacial
sounds
of
glass harmonica, celesta, cimbalon and
string harmonics, plus
that
ubiquitous
drum
kit. Classical concerto
priorities
are aban-
doned in favour of an
open-ended,
suite-
like succession of five balletic
set-pieces
in
which the
alternately plangent
and
quixotic
cello solo is
just
one voice in a scenario
full of instrumental
role-playing,
a voice
finally
reduced almost to the status of a
silent onlooker
during
the
meandering
solos -
cimbalon, electric
guitar, jazz piano
plus
bowed
cymbal among
them - of the
last movement. One could
hardly imagine
a madder or more irresistible cocktail.
There's a lesson here,
I think: the
truly
subversive do not
just
survive revolutions,
they
create their own.
GAVIN THOMAS
SINFONIA
SERENA;
DIE HARMONIE DER WELT
BBC Philharmonic/Yan Pascal Tortelier
Chandos CHAN 9217
ORCHESTRAL WORKS VOLUME 6:
PITTSBURGH
SYMPHONY;
CONCERTO
FOR ORCHESTRA
Melbourne
Symphony
Orchestra/Werner Andreas Albert
CPO 999 014-2
Students of
20th-century
music have
long
been aware that Paul Hindemith
composed
much wild and
energetic
music in
1920s,
and that in the 30s his
style
underwent a
drastic
period
of revision and
simplifica-
tion, leading
to such
austerely
beautiful
works as Mathis der Maler and the ballet
Nobilissima visione. But concert
promoters
and record
company
executives alike have,
in the 30
years
since his death, kept
the
musical
public very
much in the dark as to
what
happened
next. Word was that a
promising angry young
man turned into a
dull old
professor, endlessly churning
out
'useful' (and boring)
sonatas. As usual
with
stereotypes
there is some truth, but
more that is
misleading
in this
picture,
and
it is
good (at last!)
to be able to welcome
some fine new
recordings
of some of his
best later music.
The listener
coming
for the first time to
the
aptly
named
Symphonia
serena is
likely
to be struck
by
the music's sheer
geniality (not
a
quality
much in evidence in
the
early
Kammermusik series, and
perhaps
a
product
of the
composer's
American
years).
The sound of the
opening
is both
spacious
and
deliciously airy,
while here
and in the finale, with its
long-drawn-out
clarinet
melody,
this
performance
is won-
derfully
successful in
revealing
the music's
warmth, and the touch of
gallic lightness
brought by
Tortelier is all to the
good.
In
the more
obviously
Teutonic Die
Harmonie der Welt
symphony
he is less
successful. The
composer
himself
brought
greater weight
to the first movement in
particular,
and the BBC Philharmonic
seems rushed here,
even if
they generate
considerable excitement. But the
nobility
of the slow movement, with its beautiful
coda for solo
strings
and
glockenspiel
is
SINFONIA
SERENA;
DIE HARMONIE DER WELT
BBC Philharmonic/Yan Pascal Tortelier
Chandos CHAN 9217
ORCHESTRAL WORKS VOLUME 6:
PITTSBURGH
SYMPHONY;
CONCERTO
FOR ORCHESTRA
Melbourne
Symphony
Orchestra/Werner Andreas Albert
CPO 999 014-2
Students of
20th-century
music have
long
been aware that Paul Hindemith
composed
much wild and
energetic
music in
1920s,
and that in the 30s his
style
underwent a
drastic
period
of revision and
simplifica-
tion, leading
to such
austerely
beautiful
works as Mathis der Maler and the ballet
Nobilissima visione. But concert
promoters
and record
company
executives alike have,
in the 30
years
since his death, kept
the
musical
public very
much in the dark as to
what
happened
next. Word was that a
promising angry young
man turned into a
dull old
professor, endlessly churning
out
'useful' (and boring)
sonatas. As usual
with
stereotypes
there is some truth, but
more that is
misleading
in this
picture,
and
it is
good (at last!)
to be able to welcome
some fine new
recordings
of some of his
best later music.
The listener
coming
for the first time to
the
aptly
named
Symphonia
serena is
likely
to be struck
by
the music's sheer
geniality (not
a
quality
much in evidence in
the
early
Kammermusik series, and
perhaps
a
product
of the
composer's
American
years).
The sound of the
opening
is both
spacious
and
deliciously airy,
while here
and in the finale, with its
long-drawn-out
clarinet
melody,
this
performance
is won-
derfully
successful in
revealing
the music's
warmth, and the touch of
gallic lightness
brought by
Tortelier is all to the
good.
In
the more
obviously
Teutonic Die
Harmonie der Welt
symphony
he is less
successful. The
composer
himself
brought
greater weight
to the first movement in
particular,
and the BBC Philharmonic
seems rushed here,
even if
they generate
considerable excitement. But the
nobility
of the slow movement, with its beautiful
coda for solo
strings
and
glockenspiel
is
tenderly
and
warmly brought
out and for
those that can allow a
passacaglia
to have
relevance even in 1951 there is a
glorious-
ly
Brucknerian
glow
to the
closing pages.
The Hindemith series recorded
by
Werner Albert with various Australian
orchestras has been
partially upstaged
not
only by
the BBC Philharmonic but also
by
some
prestigious
new records of the San
Francisco
Symphony
under Herbert
Blomstedt. All the same this Volume 6 is
well worth
buying,
if not for the
dully
recorded
early
Concerto for
Orchestra,
then
certainly
for the
splendid Pittsburgh
Symphony,
which demonstrates how won-
derfully
rich Hindemith's late
style
can
be. The work is a
homage
to the
Pennsylvania
Deusch
(or 'Dutch')
as well
as to the steel
city,
and it
manages
to
incorporate homages
to Ives,
to Germanic
folk
song
and even to
Schoenbergian
chromaticism. In the end this last is swal-
lowed
up
into some academic festival fun
when the tune
'Pittsburgh
is a
great old,
Pittsburgh
' carries all before it! The CD
also contains a
deliciously quirky
late
March and the
inventive,
humourous and
delightfully
eccentric Sinfonietta in E
whose four-movement
pattern
is the
work's
only
conventional feature. How
strange
that such warm-hearted and bril-
liantly
woven music has been
ignored
for
so
long!
RICHARD DRAKEFORD
tenderly
and
warmly brought
out and for
those that can allow a
passacaglia
to have
relevance even in 1951 there is a
glorious-
ly
Brucknerian
glow
to the
closing pages.
The Hindemith series recorded
by
Werner Albert with various Australian
orchestras has been
partially upstaged
not
only by
the BBC Philharmonic but also
by
some
prestigious
new records of the San
Francisco
Symphony
under Herbert
Blomstedt. All the same this Volume 6 is
well worth
buying,
if not for the
dully
recorded
early
Concerto for
Orchestra,
then
certainly
for the
splendid Pittsburgh
Symphony,
which demonstrates how won-
derfully
rich Hindemith's late
style
can
be. The work is a
homage
to the
Pennsylvania
Deusch
(or 'Dutch')
as well
as to the steel
city,
and it
manages
to
incorporate homages
to Ives,
to Germanic
folk
song
and even to
Schoenbergian
chromaticism. In the end this last is swal-
lowed
up
into some academic festival fun
when the tune
'Pittsburgh
is a
great old,
Pittsburgh
' carries all before it! The CD
also contains a
deliciously quirky
late
March and the
inventive,
humourous and
delightfully
eccentric Sinfonietta in E
whose four-movement
pattern
is the
work's
only
conventional feature. How
strange
that such warm-hearted and bril-
liantly
woven music has been
ignored
for
so
long!
RICHARD DRAKEFORD
HINDEMITH HINDEMITH
The Mltsical Times The Mltsical Times
February
1994
February
1994 109 109
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