Germany Musikfest Berlin 2024 [4] – Ives, Kloke, Mahler, and Dvořák: Anna Prohaska (soprano), Mahler Chamber Orchestra / Antonello Manacorda (conductor). Philharmonie Berlin, 5.9.2024. (MB)
Ives (arr. Eberhard Kloke) – Seven Songs from the collection ‘114 Songs’ (world premiere)
Kloke – The Answered Question, Op.131 (world premiere)
Mahler (arr. Kloke) – Seven Early Songs
Dvořák – Symphony No.9 in E minor, Op.95, B.178, ‘From the New World’
Musikfest Berlin’s focus on the Charles Ives sesquicentenary continued with two commissions from Eberhard Kloke, one an arrangement of seven Ives songs for soprano and chamber orchestra, the other ‘an alternative experimental arrangement’ of Ives’s The Unanswered Question, ‘in which a differently posed question from Ives’s work is answered anew’. Kloke’s compositional activity, long focused on existing music by other composers – as conductor and composer alike, he considers himself above all an ‘interpreter’ – here also took in his arrangements of seven early songs by Mahler, dedicated, like those of Ives, to Anna Prohaska.
In all three cases, ‘originals’ drifted in and out of consciousness: sometimes straightforwardly present, sometimes changed (whether by arrangement or otherwise), sometimes as underlay, and sometimes as a starting point for other music by either composer. Ives’s own mysterious piano opening to ‘Thoreau’ prefaced, as in the original song, the spoken voice, ultimately leading to our first hearing of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra’s wind, directed by Antonello Manacorda, melodrama turning into song. Here, as elsewhere, Kloke’s orchestration proved sympathetic for voice and original material, musical and verbal. ‘Élegie’ offered a taste of Ives in French, both composers seemingly responding in kind, Kloke’s use of cello pizzicato almost more harp-like than the also present harp. His chamber writing permitted Prohaska to scale down her voice in singing of great subtlety that could also soar to climax — and did. Sharper-edged sonorities and harmonies in ‘His Exaltation’; a keen sense of the waters in ‘Grantchester’; and a jaunty, unmistakeably Americanism – accent to match, spoken and sung, with and without microphone – in ‘Charlie Rutlage’ were among other highlights, leading us to the closing question, already familiar from the encore to a song recital a few nights earlier (review here): ‘Is life anything like that?’
Other questions, actually posed and might-have-beens, emerged in The Answered Question, partly submerged by a barrage of audience coughs. The MCO’s performance drew one in to listen, as did the spatial arrangement: two trumpets above, winds below, a further group (flute, oboe, clarinet, piano) at the back of the latter, as if in limbo. Questioning was questioned, as indeed was that questioning of question, in what came across as a post-transcendentalist refusal to accept easy answers, and accompanying unease as a result. Manacorda’s balancing and reconciliation of the instrumental parts proceeded with an ease belying the difficulty of his task, patient direction amply rewarded.
For the Sieben frühe Lieder, title echoing Berg and perhaps Berio too, cowbells appeared: a temptation doubtless too difficult to resist. Here, Kloke offered quotation, allusion (thematic and timbral), and perhaps also illusion from Mahler’s Wunderhorn symphonies, already closely related to his song output, to produce a work I should guess extended to about twice the length of the songs alone. As the work progressed, memory, accurate and faulty, increasingly played a role of its own. A ‘Bruder Martin’ introduction to ‘Nicht wiedersehen!’ albeit with celesta and harp alongside double bass (first solo then duo) set the scene, the klezmer music of the First Symphony’s third movement joining later, surfacing in a way not dissimilar to that of the Mahler material in Berio’s Sinfonia. Saxophone was but one of the other instruments to be heard, all beautifully, expertly played by the musicians of the MCO; just as welcome, Prohaska treated the songs throughout as songs, not as would-be arias. The posthorn solo from the Third Symphony unsettled ‘Es ritten drei Reiter’. A purely vocal, folksong-like opening to ‘Ich ging mit Lust durch einen grünen Wald’, elicited a sly instrumental response again evoking the First Symphony. Sleighbells from the Fourth framed ‘Das Mägdlein trat aus dem Fischerhaus’. The idea of resurrection, capitalised and otherwise, helped shape ‘Selbstgefühl’. It made for an unexpected, fascinating journey, and a surprisingly apt bridge between Ives and Dvořák.
Hearing the ‘New World’ Symphony from a chamber orchestra is different; it would be idle to pretend otherwise. In a well-conceived performance such as this, hard-driven at times but with undeniable drama, losses were surprisingly few. There was, moreover, unquestionable advantage in the Claudio Abbado-like sense of an orchestra of soloists coming together. Contrasts, as in the first movement introduction, were in some ways greater; nothing was prettified; and there was no doubting the symphonic integrity of the whole, whether as work or performance, a welcome change from an incoherent Mahler Sixth two nights earlier (review here).
Manacorda’s single-minded determination made for a concise, not un-Beethovenian experience, the first movement seemingly over almost before it had begun. In the slow movement, that solo and others were magically taken as if heard for the first time, nothing taken for granted. (An extended cadenza for mobile telephone was less welcome.) Songful, soulful, yet never sentimental, the music spoke more of Bohemian words than an imagined ‘America’, and was all the better for it. Bubbly and boisterous, the Scherzo teemed with life and not a little fury. I was less sure about the solo-string transition to the trio, though whether it was a strangeness too far is more a matter of taste than anything else. It had me listen, though. The finale sometimes had me miss a greater complement of strings, but the better course of action was to value what one did hear here, vehement, direct, and gripping. There was heart-rending exhilaration to the second group too, born of the material rather than imposed upon it. The struggle, once more, was unquestionably symphonic.
Mark Berry