Darmstadt doctrine may have made a fuss
of dispensing with the old. But, like
many statements by its proponents it
was made for show, and to shock. Its
composers were far too good to swallow
the buzz phrases whole, as some of their
opponents did. This recording is a collection
of new compositions by modern composers
based on their explorations of Schubert.
It can be listened to on many levels.
Berio’s Rendering
is easily the best known piece on its
own terms. Written specially for his
friend Riccardo Chailly, to be performed
by the Royal Concertgebouw, Amsterdam,
it is a good example of what Berio meant
about making the past speak anew. Berio
uses those fragments remaining to us
of Schubert’s Tenth Symphony, but writes
a completely new work, informed by the
Unfinished Symphony, and Berio’s own
synthesis. In the definitive notes to
the score, he describes his work as
restoring a fresco. What remains is
kept intact, but the restored missing
parts, though modern, enhance them.
"In the empty spaces between one
sketch and the next there is a kind
of connective tissue which is constantly
different and changing, always pianissimo
and distant, intermixed with reminiscences
(and) polyphonic textures." Berio’s
"musical cement", is more
fascinating than he modestly puts it.
There are several recordings, and excerpts
of it on the excellent recent Frank
Scheffer DVD.
Nott and the Bamberger Symphoniker,
are rather good in the elegant Schubert
passages, if a little less acute in
the Berio ones. The shimmering, ambiguously
toned parts in the second movement could
be more precisely defined. When the
celesta heralds the "cement"
in the third movement, the orchestra
sounds underpowered and does not recover
until the later, flamboyant bars before
dissolving into Berio’s startling, amorphous
abstraction. The final, boisterous ending
is well done, but had Nott aimed for
overall greater contrast it might have
been more effective.
Reimann’s Metamorphosen
was written for Gidon Kremer’s Camerata.
This is unabashedly "modern",
any Schubertian lyricism deeply buried
by the much more dominant Reimann inventions
for woodwinds, strings and brass. Playing
in small ensemble, the soloists sound
strangely liberated; the horn in particular
is very animatedly played. However,
as music the piece is a little too self-conscious
for my personal taste. Unlike the Berio,
which grows with repeat listenings,
Metamorphosen becomes predictable.
In complete contrast is the Henze fantasy
on Erlkönig. It didn’t spring from
a commission, but from sheer inspiration,
to use a hackneyed term. Coming across
a discarded fragment of his own work
after thirty years, Henze’s imagination
brought forth an explosive new vision
of the ideas in Schubert’s song. He
makes no pretence at recreating the
song, apart from capturing the same
manic sense of urgency. The result is
demonic indeed, ideas surging out with
such violence that they hardly develop
before being adapted into other, new
ideas. It is far more ambivalent than
the ballet for which it was eventually
used, where a boy becomes a man through
dance and art. It is as if Henze was
intuiting levels in the original which
neither Schubert nor Goethe were in
a position to express openly. Here at
last, we hear what this excellent orchestra
is really capable of. They attack with
great precision, percussion in the lead,
pounding inexorably. Henze fleshes the
music out with what the booklet aptly
calls "iridescent flute and unearthly
harmonics embedded in the colours of
vibra- and marimbaphone, harp and celesta."
The playing at last is completely passionate
and involved. The whole piece is barely
five minutes long, ending as suddenly
as it starts. As Henze himself was to
say, audiences aren’t expected to perceive
all its levels at once. I’ve had this
one on regular repeat play and still
feel there’s so much to learn. There
may not be a note of Schubert here,
but Henze is far closer in spirit to
what Schubert was depicting in his bizarre,
disturbing original.
Zender understood the
Darmstadt zeal for shaking up complacency.
The four songs here were written long
before the notorious Zender Winterreise
which provoked such outraged reactions
from Schubert traditionalists. Zender’s
aim certainly wasn’t to "replace"
Schubert, but to counteract stifling
performance tradition from burying the
work’s true revolutionary soul. Here,
Zender simply replaces the piano part
with orchestral accompaniment, leaving
the vocal part as is. Nothing unusual
in that per se: there are plenty of
Schubert song orchestrations, most of
them undistinguished. Zender’s have
the composer’s quirky fingerprints,
such as what sounds like manic glockenspiel
in Der Gondelfahrer. Its bizarre
mechanical ending mimics the rocky rhythms
of the choir.
Surprisingly, when
his wit is subtle, as in Die Nacht
ist heiter, all Zender does is amplify
Schubert’s lyricism with humorous zest.
The tenor here is Carsten Süss,
who sounds like a young Peter Schreier,
no less! It sounds remarkably like an
opera set-piece, with gorgeous tenor,
choir and voluminous, soaring orchestra.
What fun it would be to try this on
unsuspecting opera buffs. Schwertsik’s
Epilogue zu Rosamunde, in contrast,
doesn’t sound in the least bit tongue-in-cheek.
Using themes from Schubert’s Rosamunde
and the Wandererfantasie
it’s innocuous, though the Bambergers
play it with characteristic warmth and
sheen.
Altogether, though,
this is an uneven recording and it is
mainly for those with a specialist interest
in the composers and their take on the
Schubert tradition. And the Bamberger
Symphoniker are always worth listening
to!
Anne Ozorio
Chör der Bamberger Symphoniker, 
for
details
