Germany Rihm, Bruckner: Vida Miknevičūite (soprano), Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra / Simone Young (conductor). Livestreamed from the Berlin Philharmonie on 7.12.2024 and available on the Digital Concert Hall. (GT)
Wolfgang Rihm – Das Gehege – A nocturnal scene for soprano and orchestra
Bruckner – Symphony No.2 in C minor (First version of 1872, ed. William Carrigan 2005)
Wolfgang Rihm was to be the Composer in Residence for the 2024-25 season at the Berlin Philharmonic – his death in 2024 altered the project to become a dedication in his memory. His IN-SCHRIFT was performed during Musikfest Berlin in September alongside Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony under Kirill Petrenko’s direction. Another piece, Transitus III, is programmed for performance in May.
Vida Miknevičūite said that the Rihm work is a monodrama and was to be performed alongside Salome in 2004/5 based on a libretto by Botho Strauss and is a psychodrama in which her character Anita kills the great eagle or perhaps is committing suicide. Simone Young suggested the score refers to influences from the nineteenth century, to Mahler, Richard Strauss, Berg and Schoenberg and quotes from Wozzeck – specifically from the drowning scene – and is about someone whose conscience is destroyed by violence and about a lost personality.
The opening bars opened on sliding vibrato strings, and the extended percussion group introduced more dissonance before emerging screeching sounds were heard against shrill brass harmonies and prattling woodwinds. The opening words from the soprano, ‘I hear your rotten screaming, I see your ash-green eyes’ epitomised the grim tale of an eagle as if describing its desperately agonising struggle for life. Desperately sad, low orchestral sounds emerged which I thought that was such a waste of the soloists’ talents in such an ugly piece of music invoking the worst of twenty-first-century modernism. There were clanging chords from the piano and chirping harmonies from the woodwind. To her credit, Young conducted as if believing in the music.
The words discouraged one from empathising with the composer’s music, ‘I want to scorch you with scorching tar!’ It was against low notes on the strings, accompanied by a plaintive oboe and cor anglais, then there came a sharp increase in the tempo before the piece suddenly reached its conclusion with striking blows from the percussion. Then after a brief solo from the violin, accompanied by the snarling double basses, the Lithuanian soprano sang ‘How I deceived you!’ before Young coaxed the orchestra to a loud culmination with the repeating phrases, ‘Forest, forest, forest…’ until the orchestra descended to quietness, and stillness against the repetitive, ‘forest, forest…’ brought this piece to a close.
The 200th anniversary of Anton Bruckner’s birth was commemorated by the Berlin Philharmonic with all the symphonies being performed both last season and continued at the Musikfest Berlin in September with the magisterial Fifth Symphony under Kirill Petrenko and closed with Herbert Blomstedt’s direction of the Ninth Symphony.
The Australian conductor Simone Young is known to me from her recordings of Mahler, Bruckner and Wagner, and she won many admirers through her direction of the 2024 Bayreuth Ring Cycle, when she made her debut. Her recordings reveal a deep understanding of the Austrian-German late-Romantic school – she can reach the depths of Wagner’s music, so this concert was a new opening to a very gifted musician.
Young first performed this original version in Berlin in 2005 with the Deutsche Symphonie-Orchestra and recorded it with the Hamburg Philharmonic Orchestra for Oehms Classics in 2006. She said in her pre-concert interview that when the composer gave the score of his Second Symphony to the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, they refused to play it and only after revisions did they accept it for performance. Bruckner made compromises in the revised version, and in the first version there is a sprawling fourth movement, the Scherzo was placed after the first movement, and there are harmonic changes – only with his Sixth Symphony did he free himself from the influence of his organ playing.
There are four versions of Bruckner’s Second Symphony, yet only his 1872 score offers an account of the composer’s original ideas without the later changes because of externally imposed pressures. The most significant difference is the removal of eight of the nine long pauses in the opening movement of the first version which assisted in clarifying the structure, as well as the transitions and rubatos. In that version, the fourth movement is more prolonged with over one hundred bars giving a total length of just over seventy minutes.
The opening of the Allegro. Ziemlich schnell, began with a piano tremolo on the cellos leading the remaining strings to adopt the main idea and developing a wonderful interweaving of themes before the trumpets signalled a switch in mood and a turn to a lyricism on the woodwind. The pauses allowed fresh ideas to emerge and gently interrupt the lyricism before two great crescendos led to the coda. The Scherzo momentarily reprised the lyricism of the first movement, yet the Trio – akin to a Ländler – epitomised his later symphonies. The culmination was introduced dramatically by the timpani. The Adagio quoted themes from Bruckner’s F minor Mass, specifically the ‘Qui venit’ which was heard in the strings twice, and later other themes from the mass were heard as powerful chorales, and at the close, there was a beautiful horn solo passage invoking nature and religion.
In the Finale. Mehr schnell, the main theme from the opening movement was reprised, and the Kyrie from the F minor Mass was cited, and following another pause at the end of the recapitulation the Kyrie was repeated in a string chorale. The structure of the Finale was contemplative and embellished by an amazingly powerful rhythmic vigour heralding lyrical melodies of great beauty before a triple fortissimo brought this symphony to a terrifically powerful climax. Young was masterly and through broad sweeps of her arms and with her eyes, she impelled the musicians to give their best. The conductor is great to watch through her total involvement with the music. This was a tremendous performance of a work rarely heard and hopefully, other conductors will take up the original version of this great symphony.
Gregor Tassie