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Spring days and Arabian nights London
Wigmore Hall
11/26/1999 -
Gustav Mahler Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, Hans Werner
Henze, Sechs Gesänge aus dem Arabischen (UK premiere)
Ian Bostridge (tenor), Julius Drake (piano) This programme of two song cycles matched the familiar, conventionally
German Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen with the new, exoticizing
Sechs Gesänge aus dem Arabischen, composed specially for Ian
Bostridge and Julius Drake.
Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen normally comes over as an
adolescent's Winterreise, the despair that of a teenager whose first
relationship has just ended and who has a chance of emerging from the
whiteout of lime blossom slightly more mature. (It is, after all, spring.)
Drake brought out the Schubertian allusions and tone, while Bostridge
suggested anomie close to madness from his first bitter "Wenn mein Schatz
Hochzeit macht" onwards.
Bostridge pushed the music for colour and expression, especially
disturbingly in the last song, for example, when he let the already
dislocated line on the words "dunkle Heide" become rough in texture and
even more adrift in pitch. This clearly wasn't a mistake -- his intonation
was precise everywhere else, including in similarly distorted melodic
sections in the Henze -- but a dangerous expressive gesture.
Hans Werner Henze's Sechs Gesänge aus dem Arabischen are from
the Arabic in spirit only. The six songs set texts by Henze himself, which
he assembled to provide the frame for a musical drama that he had already
conceived. The song cycle is similar in shape and themes to the classic
Lieder cycles, but the decor is kitsch oriental, with lurid effects in the
text and music, and the cruelty is explicit. There is very little in the
music that could be called Arabic, perhaps a couple of melismas, but the
general effect is exotic and sensual.
"Selim und der Wind" casts Selim adrift on a violent sea, populated by
sexually destructive witches from Goethe's Walpurgisnacht. "Die
Gottesanbeterin (mantis religiosa)" (dedicated to the sculptor Giacommetti)
offers a contrastingly delicate and artificial image, of the brittle
insect, but deal with the same theme: she destroys her husband by sex. "Ein
Sonnenaufgang" is a surreal, gaudily marine-coloured rework of a romantic
nature poem and "Cäsarion" a Cavafy-like evocation of a doomed youth
on the sea-shore. "Fatumas Klage" is the lament of the woman who Selim has
abandoned, and caused to be imprisoned in a dark cave, now a bride of "a
chalk-white old lecher". The final song, "Das Paradies", sets Rükert's
translation of Hafiz, an expression of longing for the moon and for rescue
in death.
There was a sense of danger in this performance which might have been to do
either with underpreparation or with the genuinely disturbing nature of the
words and music. (One member of the audience said the music upset her
physically.) Bostridge looked uncomfortable throughout, and at times seemed
at risk of coming adrift. But the music itself is about being adrift, and
if they were hanging on the the seats of their oriental baggy pants it was
entirely appropriate. Similarly, both words and music were on the fine line
between extreme emotion and masochism. This song cycle is ingenious and
striking, but it is perhaps less a modern Winterreise than a knowing
showoff piece for two extremely stylish performers.
H.E. Elsom
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