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 KontarskyReview by: Gavin ThomasThe Musical Times, Vol. 135, No. 1812 (Feb., 1994), pp. 108-109Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1002990 .Accessed: 13/02/2014 16:02

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Musical Times Publications Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to TheMusical Times.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 168.176.5.118 on Thu, 13 Feb 2014 16:02:07 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

0

. * Reviews 0

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

This content downloaded from 168.176.5.118 on Thu, 13 Feb 2014 16:02:07 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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

This content downloaded from 168.176.5.118 on Thu, 13 Feb 2014 16:02:07 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Article Contentsp.108p.109

Issue Table of ContentsThe Musical Times, Vol. 135, No. 1812 (Feb., 1994), pp. 65-128Front Matter [pp.65-125]News [p.71]LettersCalling the Tune [p.72]... Still Calling [p.72]Regrettable Indeed... [p.72]More Purcell [p.72]... and Yet More [p.72]Tra-la-la-lee [p.72]Alfredo Campoli [p.72]And at Number One... [p.73]It's Really That Simple [p.73]Myths and More Myths [p.73]

Frst der Musik Aller Zeiten. On the 400th Anniversary of Palestrina's Death, Peter Phillips Goes in Search of the Real Composer behind the Myth [pp.74-79]Forgotten Frenchmen: Widor and D'Indy. Andrew Thomson Pleads for a Fuller Appreciation of Two of France's Forgotten Sons [pp.80-82]Heroic Motives. Roger Marsh Considers the Relation between Sign and Sound in 'Complex' Music [pp.83-86]Progressive Growth. Henri Dutilleux in Conversation with Roger Nichols [pp.87-90]Music ReviewsBorrowed Plumes [pp.92-94]untitled [p.95]

Book ReviewsMods and Cons [pp.96-98]untitled [p.99]untitled [pp.100-101]untitled [p.102]untitled [pp.102-103]untitled [p.104]untitled [p.105]untitled [p.106]Books Received [p.106]

CD Reviewsuntitled [p.107]

Bernd Alois Zimmermanuntitled [pp.108-109]untitled [p.109]untitled [p.110]untitled [p.110]untitled [pp.110-111]untitled [p.111]untitled [p.111]untitled [p.112]

Performance Reviews [pp.113-117]Summer Lovin'. Gavin Henderson Reflects on the Summer Schools Phenomenon [pp.118-119]Listings March 1994 [pp.126-127]Back Matter [pp.128-128]