Sir Roger Norrington’s account of the Brahms
Requiem is over twenty years old now, but it still has the ability
to surprise and to shock. Shock, because the approach to the work seems
to be so totally wrong-headed. One has no objection to the use of period
instruments in music of this era. Indeed they can frequently add something
to our understanding; but it is essential that, if they are used, additional
and extraordinary care is taken to ensure that the internal orchestral
balance between sections is correct. That simply is not the case here.
Take just a few examples: in the second movement,
Denn alles Fleisch,
the main sarabande melody of the movement on the violins is almost inaudible
when set against the accompanying detached wind chords. The result is
that the work proceeds in an almost percussive style like one of those
records where the performer is left to fill in the solo melodic line
himself. Even worse is the big orchestral outburst after the baritone
solo
Und ich davon muss in the third movement, where the soaring
violin line - which generates much of the development of the music that
follows - is simply drowned out by the heavy organ and brass which accompany
it. In the section describing the last trumpet, the fizzing string figurations
which add so much excitement to the music are clear enough when nothing
else is playing, but are then immediately submerged as soon as the choir
and organ enter. The organ is also far too forward in the balance in
places, dominating where it should accompany. The timpani in the second
movement assume centre-stage during the choir’s statements of
the chorale tune which is certainly dramatic but effectively drowns
out the tune itself. What this all comes down to is that when period
instruments are employed extreme care
must be taken to ensure
that the musical argument intended by the composer can be clearly heard.
This is simply not the case in this performance/recording. Some critics,
who are familiar with the work in more traditional readings, hailed
this Norrington recording as a fresh experience; but one seriously questions
how often their own memories were supplying the aural information that
on this disc is simply obscured by the numerous faults of internal balance.
The ‘fresh experience’ might also be said to derive from
Norrington’s general approach to the work, with brisk tempos adopted
throughout. There is almost no really slow music here. Indeed sometimes
the results are almost frisky. “Ich habt nun Traurigkeit”
sings Lynn Dawson, but there is no sense of sorrow in the music at this
speed, simply a beautiful melody being sung in an emotional vacuum.
The fast speeds don’t help the strings to give weight to their
tone, either - a problem exacerbated by Norrington’s insistence
on vibrato-less playing. I am not going to enter into the vexed question
of whether vibrato
should be employed in music of the nineteenth
century, but it is certainly the case that it
was employed by
players - Cecil Forsyth in his
Orchestration published in 1914
devotes some time to the question, and remarks that “Curses did
not kill it. Both the beautiful sort and the sort that resembles a nanny-goat
in distress continue to be heard in our midst … It is all a matter
of taste.” By the way, I make no apology for citing Forsyth in
this context; his textbook gives many valuable insights into orchestral
style at the beginning of the twentieth century.
It is I think uncontestable that vibrato
would have been employed
by many string players in the nineteenth century, maybe not all the
time but certainly to add intensity to more sustained lyrical passages.
Norrington’s speeds hardly allow for such passages to exist in
the score, but it is also notable that composers when they bothered
to specify the numbers of players in the orchestra universally preferred
a larger body of violins than we get here. The resulting sound is simply
scrawny in places.
Norrington’s approach is not helped by the singing of his soloists.
Lynn Dawson begins by eschewing vibrato at the beginning of her solo,
but her better instincts soon take over and she delivers many passages
with a warmth that is at odds with the chilly sounds that surround her.
Olaf Bär never even
attempts to sing without vibrato, which
is evident from his very first entry. The fact that he fails to make
anything much of his chilling line
Und ich davon muss is the
fault of Norrington’s speed, continually pushing ahead, rather
than of involvement on the part of the singer. The choral singing is
fine, although the body of singers is small for a work on the grand
romantic scale and certainly smaller than Brahms would have expected
from the German choral societies of his day. What all this comes down
to is that the body of tradition in a work like the
German Requiem
has real validity. One does not hanker after the marmoreal funereal
treatments that turn the work into a Victorian Gothic monument, but
one does expect the music to be set before us as a work of mourning
and consolation, not simply as a set of pretty tunes. Sadly, the latter
is rather the impression that Norrington’s account leaves, even
when the ‘pretty tunes’ can be properly heard. What we are
given here is not so much a cleaning off of old varnish, but a substantial
amount of the paint has been removed as well to give us a view of the
individual strands in the bare canvas - not an inspiring sight.
In his recordings of Beethoven, Norrington has insisted on the importance
of fidelity to Beethoven’s metronome markings. Brahms too added
metronome markings to his score of the
German Requiem. It is
true that some of these are surprisingly fast by the standards of many
performances but Norrington often pushes ahead even of these. This tends
to undermine his contention that the composer’s metronome markings
should always be respected. In an article written a year after the Brahms
score was published, Wagner as a conductor made some pertinent observations
about such markings: “Whenever I heard of a foolish tempo in a
performance of my
Tannhäuser, for example, my recriminations
were always parried by the plea that my metronome marks had been followed
most scrupulously. So I saw how uncertain must be the value of mathematics
in music, and thenceforth dispensed with the metronome … The correct
speed for any piece of music can be determined only by the special character
of its phrasing.”
The Norrington approach works better in the Mozart
Requiem which
comes as a coupling in this two-CD box. Mozart left the work incomplete
at his death, and we are usually given the completion made by his pupil
Süssmayr - although how much of the latter’s work derives
from Mozart’s indications is unclear. What we are given here is
a new version by Duncan Druce, who has made use of some sketches by
Mozart which Süssmayr ignored. These are most noticeable in the
Lacrymosa, where Druce considerably expands on the traditional
conclusion which Süssmayr wrote to Mozart’s opening bars,
to very good effect. The closing
Amen fugue starts rather baldly
but builds to a thrilling climax which seems to anticipate the end of
the
Gloria in Beethoven’s
Missa Solemnis in its
continual ratcheting up of the tension - not particularly Mozartian,
but most enjoyable nonetheless. However Druce does eliminate the orchestral
postlude to the
Benedictus, one of Süssmayr’s best
contributions and a passage which one misses. Elsewhere Druce makes
a number of small corrections and amendments to the Süssmayr score,
but none are conspicuous here. At one point Druce seems to be quoting
from Mozart’s well-known setting of the
Laudate Dominum,
but this is quite in order in the context.
Again we have Norrington insisting on the removal of vibrato, and here
unlike in the Brahms the singers largely go along with this. The tones
produced by both the women sound distinctly like boys’ voices;
and neither John Mark Ainsley nor Alastair Miles sound at their best,
as one would imagine they might if allowed greater freedom. Norrington’s
speeds are again on the fast side, but the results in the double fugue
of the
Kyrie are thrilling and the pacing does not seem as wilful
as it does in the Brahms. With Mozart’s smaller orchestra, the
problems of balance between strings and wind is not so troublesome either.
Only in the
Rex tremendae and
Dies irae do we miss the
rushing violin counterpoints which are submerged by the characterful
brass and basset horns. Druce seems to give more prominence to the latter
than one finds in the Süssmayr version, which is welcome. The trombone
solo in the
Tuba mirum sounds no more effective here than in
the traditional edition. I know that Mozart himself wrote that the opening
phrase should be played on the trombone, but did he really intend that
the instrument should continue thereafter to play as an obbligato with
the bass soloist in passages that don’t seem to suit the style
of the trombone at all? He never uses trombones in this manner in any
of the other works in which he employs them. Cecil Forsyth in his book
on
Orchestration correctly describes the result as a “tuba
dirum”. This is a point at which one might welcome a more interventionist
approach by a modern editor.
Nevertheless this is an enjoyable traversal of the score, with plenty
of character and many points of illumination. It is just a pity that
it now comes coupled with such a thoroughly unrecommendable reading
of the Brahms. There are some useful fill-ups on both CDs. The Brahms
comes coupled with the
Burial Song, finely delivered by the choir
and here - without strings in the orchestra - the balance ceases to
be a problem. Similarly in the Mozart
Ave verum corpus, with
strings only in the accompaniment, the results are beautiful. In the
Mozart
Masonic funeral music once again one is confronted by
a lack of parity between the strings and wind. The latter play very
characterfully, but the string figurations are very backward and ill-defined.
Paul Corfield Godfrey
Masterwork Index: Brahms
Ein
Deutsches Requiem
