SCO, 31/01/2020
Mozart : Idomeneo - Overture
Alma Mahler (orch. Matthews) : Six Songs (Karen Cargill, mezzo-soprano)
Mahler : Symphony No. 4 (Karen Cargill)
Scottish Chamber Orchestra
Kensho Watanabe
Idomeneo is generally considered to be Mozart's first major opera. It is far from the first - there's a good dozen or more preceding it - but it does represent a significant step forward in terms of quality. Commissioned by the Elector of Bavaria for some court festivity, the subject was quite probably chosen by him, so the opera does still belong to the Metastasian format of opera seria. As such, the overture is quite a grand affair, though short, with a prominent brass section as well as timpani. In concert, it's not entirely satisfying, because it appears to end inconclusively; in fact, it leads straight into the first act, like the Don Giovanni overture. There are ways of playing it so that, despite the apparently incomplete cadence of the conclusion, it's clear that the piece has come to an end, and Kensho Watanabe (stepping in for an indisposed Mark Wigglesworth) didn't quite pull it off, but otherwise it was a bright, confident reading.
Inconclusive or unsettling endings turned out to be a bit of a thing in the Alma Mahler songs too. According to her autobiography, she began dabbling in composition early, but it became something more serious for her around the turn of the century when she began taking lessons from Zemlinsky. It is true that Zemlinsky was infatuated with her, nevertheless he was a very important and gifted teacher, and it seems unlikely that he would have devoted any time to a completely incompetent student. However, like many another woman married to true genius, Alma found herself having to subordinate her own creative aspirations to support Mahler's work. As a result, we have 17 songs, and a clutch of incomplete sketches, mostly songs and piano pieces, much of which is difficult to date because she never indicated a date on her scores, but most of which certainly comes from around 1898-1902.
There have been several orchestrations of various (if not all) of Alma's songs, but probably the best known are the seven orchestrated by Colin and David Matthews in 1996. Quite why we only got six of these, without the seventh, I don't understand, unless it was a matter of time. Without any actual orchestral music by Alma herself, it's clear that the Matthews had to imagine a result based on comparable music of the same period, including that of Mahler. They did, however, manage to avoid making that link too obvious; if I heard anything of Mahler in the orchestra, it was closest to Das klagende Lied, which was composed some twenty years earlier but which Mahler was still in the process of revising right up to 1901.
As for the songs themselves, there's certainly some interest there, with that unsettled tonality that's fairly characteristic of the fin-de-siècle Austro-German aesthetic, and lush harmonisations. (There's an interesting recording on Decca of some of these arrangements of the songs - again, minus one, though a different one - alongside Zemlinsky's Eine florentinische Tragödie, which is a rather spectacular example of what a good composer and excellent orchestrator of that period could do with the orchestra.) However, it's music that will take a few hearings to really settle into the ear, and the most obvious example of its weaknesses is the setting of Dehmel's Waldseligkeit. This was a popular poem in its day, and there are many musical settings of it, but the best known is certainly Richard Strauss's, also from 1901, and compared to the hushed, ecstatic rapture of that version, Alma Mahler's seems quite insignificant. Karen Cargill deployed her warm, vibrant timbre persuasively in favour of these songs, and you do wonder just what might have been had Alma been able to continue developing her compositional skills.
It's a darker voice than one usually hears in Mahler's 4th, and although she delivered the last movement with limpid and graceful simplicity, exactly as required, something of the innocence a brighter soprano timbre usually brings to this music was missing, which perhaps undermined the message slightly. On the other hand, I've rarely been so conscious of the looming shadow of the 3rd Symphony so clearly as in Watanabe's reading, so perhaps it was completely intended that way. Along with the 1st, the 4th is possible Mahler's most accessible symphony, one of the shortest and most lightly scored, which puts it within reach of an orchestra like the SCO. There's a transparency to the music, and it brims over with popular dances, the rhythms of the ländler and rustic polka cropping up at every turn, while the final movement is ostensibly a child's view of heaven, all wide-eyed wonderment and contentment. It's a child that was once in exigent circumstances, however; Das himmlische Leben has a pendant in the folk collection from which it comes, Das irdische Leben, also set by Mahler, in which the child starves to death. That dark shadow was what Mahler was exploring in the 3rd Symphony, and echoes permeate the 4th.
Although the (slightly) smaller scale of the 4th permits a chamber orchestra to undertake it, you cannot reduce the wind and brass, and I did find that the balance was tipped a little too far in their favour. Fortunately, as is to be expected from the SCO, the playing from those sections was exemplary, and it was certainly no hardship to hear their contribution so clearly, but there were moments when I wished for a few more strings. Watanabe chose not to emphasise the grotesque aspect of the scherzo, opting for something more like the cheerful off-key playing of a well-intentioned but not entirely competent village band, rather than the danse macabre it often sounds like. The Adagio began in an Olympian serenity, with strong undertones of Beethoven, and its climax, that astonishing jolt into E major, preparatory for the final movement, was beautifully delivered.
[Next : 2nd February]
Alma Mahler (orch. Matthews) : Six Songs (Karen Cargill, mezzo-soprano)
Mahler : Symphony No. 4 (Karen Cargill)
Scottish Chamber Orchestra
Kensho Watanabe
Idomeneo is generally considered to be Mozart's first major opera. It is far from the first - there's a good dozen or more preceding it - but it does represent a significant step forward in terms of quality. Commissioned by the Elector of Bavaria for some court festivity, the subject was quite probably chosen by him, so the opera does still belong to the Metastasian format of opera seria. As such, the overture is quite a grand affair, though short, with a prominent brass section as well as timpani. In concert, it's not entirely satisfying, because it appears to end inconclusively; in fact, it leads straight into the first act, like the Don Giovanni overture. There are ways of playing it so that, despite the apparently incomplete cadence of the conclusion, it's clear that the piece has come to an end, and Kensho Watanabe (stepping in for an indisposed Mark Wigglesworth) didn't quite pull it off, but otherwise it was a bright, confident reading.
Inconclusive or unsettling endings turned out to be a bit of a thing in the Alma Mahler songs too. According to her autobiography, she began dabbling in composition early, but it became something more serious for her around the turn of the century when she began taking lessons from Zemlinsky. It is true that Zemlinsky was infatuated with her, nevertheless he was a very important and gifted teacher, and it seems unlikely that he would have devoted any time to a completely incompetent student. However, like many another woman married to true genius, Alma found herself having to subordinate her own creative aspirations to support Mahler's work. As a result, we have 17 songs, and a clutch of incomplete sketches, mostly songs and piano pieces, much of which is difficult to date because she never indicated a date on her scores, but most of which certainly comes from around 1898-1902.
There have been several orchestrations of various (if not all) of Alma's songs, but probably the best known are the seven orchestrated by Colin and David Matthews in 1996. Quite why we only got six of these, without the seventh, I don't understand, unless it was a matter of time. Without any actual orchestral music by Alma herself, it's clear that the Matthews had to imagine a result based on comparable music of the same period, including that of Mahler. They did, however, manage to avoid making that link too obvious; if I heard anything of Mahler in the orchestra, it was closest to Das klagende Lied, which was composed some twenty years earlier but which Mahler was still in the process of revising right up to 1901.
As for the songs themselves, there's certainly some interest there, with that unsettled tonality that's fairly characteristic of the fin-de-siècle Austro-German aesthetic, and lush harmonisations. (There's an interesting recording on Decca of some of these arrangements of the songs - again, minus one, though a different one - alongside Zemlinsky's Eine florentinische Tragödie, which is a rather spectacular example of what a good composer and excellent orchestrator of that period could do with the orchestra.) However, it's music that will take a few hearings to really settle into the ear, and the most obvious example of its weaknesses is the setting of Dehmel's Waldseligkeit. This was a popular poem in its day, and there are many musical settings of it, but the best known is certainly Richard Strauss's, also from 1901, and compared to the hushed, ecstatic rapture of that version, Alma Mahler's seems quite insignificant. Karen Cargill deployed her warm, vibrant timbre persuasively in favour of these songs, and you do wonder just what might have been had Alma been able to continue developing her compositional skills.
It's a darker voice than one usually hears in Mahler's 4th, and although she delivered the last movement with limpid and graceful simplicity, exactly as required, something of the innocence a brighter soprano timbre usually brings to this music was missing, which perhaps undermined the message slightly. On the other hand, I've rarely been so conscious of the looming shadow of the 3rd Symphony so clearly as in Watanabe's reading, so perhaps it was completely intended that way. Along with the 1st, the 4th is possible Mahler's most accessible symphony, one of the shortest and most lightly scored, which puts it within reach of an orchestra like the SCO. There's a transparency to the music, and it brims over with popular dances, the rhythms of the ländler and rustic polka cropping up at every turn, while the final movement is ostensibly a child's view of heaven, all wide-eyed wonderment and contentment. It's a child that was once in exigent circumstances, however; Das himmlische Leben has a pendant in the folk collection from which it comes, Das irdische Leben, also set by Mahler, in which the child starves to death. That dark shadow was what Mahler was exploring in the 3rd Symphony, and echoes permeate the 4th.
Although the (slightly) smaller scale of the 4th permits a chamber orchestra to undertake it, you cannot reduce the wind and brass, and I did find that the balance was tipped a little too far in their favour. Fortunately, as is to be expected from the SCO, the playing from those sections was exemplary, and it was certainly no hardship to hear their contribution so clearly, but there were moments when I wished for a few more strings. Watanabe chose not to emphasise the grotesque aspect of the scherzo, opting for something more like the cheerful off-key playing of a well-intentioned but not entirely competent village band, rather than the danse macabre it often sounds like. The Adagio began in an Olympian serenity, with strong undertones of Beethoven, and its climax, that astonishing jolt into E major, preparatory for the final movement, was beautifully delivered.
[Next : 2nd February]