Germany Musikfest Berlin 2024 [2] – Schoenberg and Ives: Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano). Kammermusiksaal, Berlin, 2.9.2024 (MB)
Schoenberg – Three Piano Items, Op.11; Six Little Piano Items, Op.19; 5 Piano Items, Op.23; Piano Items, Op.33a and Op.33b; Suite for Piano, Op.25
Ives – Piano Sonata No.2, ‘Harmony, Mass., 1840-1860’ (1947 model)
For many pianists, to current the entire (non-posthumous) piano œuvre of Schoenberg or to carry out Ives’s Harmony Sonata can be sufficient for a tricky but rewarding recital. To supply each, in twin homage to composers whose a hundred and fiftieth birthday is being celebrated this 12 months, is by any requirements a feat, not to mention to take action in such looking out and comprehending performances. However then, Pierre-Laurent Aimard has by no means been ‘most pianists’. Apparently, he had carried out the entire Schoenberg in a single recital solely as soon as earlier than, as a young person, adopted by the Hammerklavier Sonata.
Schoenberg’s piano music isn’t precisely absent from the recital corridor, although the variety of pianists who carry out it isn’t nice, they usually have a tendency to focus on the Op.11 Three Piano Items and the Op.19 Six Little Piano Items. One might need thought works that unquestionably modified the historical past of music – the Op.23 5 Piano Items together with the primary printed twelve-note piece, and the Op.25 Suite each together with Schoenberg’s first twelve-note composition and forming his first totally twelve-note work – may be heard slightly extra typically, however no. As soon as, one might need stated they have been extra written about and skim than heard; now, it’s troublesome even to make that declare. As for the 2 Op.33 items, this was, I feel, the primary time even I, as a Schoenbergian of affordable enthusiasm and dedication, had heard them in live performance. Provided that Aimard additionally carried out the Piano Concerto earlier this 12 months (overview right here), may we hope for a recording of that with the solo œuvre? We’re nonetheless removed from spoiled for selection in both.
The primary of the Op.11 Items registered with radical, removed from arbitrary, freedom, indicative of a few years’ internalisation. Right here was a fantastical Schoenberg, affinities mendacity as a lot with Robert Schumann as with Brahms, although by no means to be pinned down to 1 specific ‘flavour’. Certainly, kaleidoscopic vary, whether or not in dynamics or such reference, was not the least of this recital’s virtues. If that is ‘freely atonal’ music – one can register doubts regarding the label, while conceding it’s unlikely both to get replaced or bettered – then maybe this was additionally ‘freely atonal efficiency’. The opening of the second struck me as insisting much less on remnants of D minor than typically; that’s, till it did. By some means, that all-important determine insisted on its ostinato process as if all depended upon it, and in a means it did. Once more, all appeared to be in movement, in accordance with a distinctly Romantic sensibility that instantly prolonged past ‘mere’ Romanticism. The third piece was as livid and as capricious, and a lot extra in between, as anybody may hope for.
Within the Op.19 Six Little Piano Items, thinner textures have been instantly obvious; they might hardly fail to be. Likewise, Schoenberg at his most aphoristic. It was, although, his sheer single-mindedness that shone by way of the beautiful spinning of a near-single line, nevertheless a lot shadowed on both facet (pitch) and different sides (different parameters). The sheer magical high quality to the ultimate chord of the second, the virtually vocal eloquence of the third, and the darting will-o’-the-wisp motion of the fourth: none of it, for as soon as, required nice virtuosity, nevertheless it required the fiercest of musical intelligence, which is what we heard. A distinctly unsentimental studying of the sixth piece sounded recollections of the Mahlerian funeral bells; above all, right here as elsewhere, it sounded as music, programme or no programme.
The Op.23 Items gained tremendously from being heard on this context. One instantly sensed an impulse to constructivism, even – maybe significantly – on such elusive foundations. Kinship to different Schoenberg music of an identical time, in addition to to extra ‘freely’ atonal predecessors – the still-more-seldom heard 4 Orchestral Songs, Op.22, a living proof – was instantly obvious; so too have been the reinvention and reintegration of polyphony. With Schoenberg, as with Bach, it’s by no means both/or. Every bit sounded as a response to its predecessor, the second for example as vehement because it was protean. Aimard much less argued than demonstrated past doubt that this music mattered. The third was characterised by a wonderfully Schoenbergian mixture of obstinacy and whimsy; the fourth’s eloquence of utterance evoked Beethoven; and the fifth, after all, marked one other bridge, to the twelve-note music to return, reminding us as a lot of its dancing, its smiling, and its open-heartedness, as its rigour.
If I used to be introduced up sharply by the start of Op.33a, it was as a result of I had been anticipating the Suite. It was a pleasant jolt, because it was to return to the Suite for the conclusion of the primary half: an invite to pay attention in a different way. Schoenberg’s very specific combination of expressionism and the Bauhaus glowered and glistened. In its successor, Op.33b, from two years later (1931), we appeared to listen to an try to create a brand new centre, its abandonment, and a brand new freedom that resulted from each. In efficiency, as in work, music by no means went fairly the place one anticipated. One wanted to pay attention — and that was good.
The Suite, Op.25, emerged as fairly a reckoning with Bach: harmonic as a lot as in ‘fashion’. Everyone knows, in any case, that Schoenberg had little persistence with ‘fashion’ as a would-be substitute for Thought; it was definitely Thought we heard – and felt – right here. The white depth of the ‘Präludium’ and its Bachian ambition set out a brand new world earlier than us, enabling one to listen to this music as by no means earlier than and, once more, above all as music. Schoenberg’s want to speak and the sheer abundance of that communication got here to the fore within the Gavotte’ and Musette that adopted; so too did a way of pleasure, even of enjoyable, in addition to that trademark, ever-productive obstinacy. The Intermezzo, right here the work’s beating coronary heart, attained a well-nigh Mahlerian depth of utterance, with out forsaking an equally attribute sense of childlike delight. All of the whereas, by way of the Menuett and Trio, to the Gigue, line and improvement have been pursued as one, the latter signing off with an éclat to foreshadow and even to rival Boulez.
If one naturally heard passing resemblances, particularly harmonic, with Schoenberg in Ives’s Sonata – there are, in any case, solely twelve notes within the chromatic scale – it was extra the composer’s specific perception and integrity in his personal inimitable utterance that characterised what we heard. Aimard’s eloquence and understanding as information in flip enabled us as listeners to position better confidence in our personal listening — and thus to reap rewards in response. The start of the primary motion, ‘Emerson’, had a correct sense of mapping out of area to return, even when it may solely supply a foretaste at most. Acquainted melodies got here by way of, although right here that didn’t actually appear to be the purpose as maybe it generally might have been afterward. The multiplicity and obduracy already acquainted from Schoenberg took on new guise of expression and kind. Line is probably tougher to hint right here than in Schoenberg; it might once more not even be the purpose. With the ability to place such confidence in our information to this most singular of divine comedies was nonetheless at the least a part of the battle. Furthermore, for all of the craggy masculinity of utterance, there was tenderness too, nowhere extra so than on the shut of this motion.
‘Hawthorn’ was possessed of a really completely different character, heard with an unmistakeable sense of launch and propulsion. Clusters have been magical, even Debussy-like, to be savoured virtually in themselves, but rigour and battle finally remained the factor. The plain-spokenness of ‘The Alcotts’, constructing Romantic momentum in work and efficiency, and the newly enigmatic high quality to ‘Thoreaux’, nevertheless completely different its materials and implications would quickly show, appeared to talk of an virtually Joycean musical universe, albeit one rooted particularly, unmistakeably American transcendentalism. Summation appears reductive; maybe summa comes slightly nearer, if slightly ‘international’. Then, inevitably, all turned once more extra wayward. Like Schoenberg, Ives can by no means be pinned down. Why, certainly, would anybody strive?
Mark Berry