31 May - 6 June 2001
Issue No.536
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 31 May - 6 June 2001 Issue No.536 |
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Crash and carry
David Blake picks up some valuable crocks
50th anniversary concert of Shönberg's death; Cairo Symphony Orchestra; Soloists, Trio Bellini: Vito Imperato (violin), Benedetto Munzone (cello) and Mario Galeani (piano); conductor, Ahmed El-Saedi; Cairo Opera House: Main Hall, 26 May
It's never too early to be soon, first, pre-, especially in music. Be before everything, even if the shoe pinches, as it certainly did in Shönberg's case.
He was and still is uncomfortable but like Leonardo and Picasso before him, however far he goes, often way out beyond understanding or acceptance, we forgive and finally respect. We get a kick out of watching the stiff knees of convention working-out. There is in Shönberg's every work the stamp of the heroic. "Here I am, I stand before you, do something." Usually they all went away. Shönberg was not as accepted as a composer as he was as a teacher, and certainly not when the abyss-like depths of his musical understanding were revealed.
But Shönberg was not the cloud that sank; his rivals were. He was a good cloud to copy from -- a passing one, Shönberg would have said, because like Picasso his life's work was a travelling performance of always something new. They took his window dressing from him but left the rest. False, copied Shönberg haunted the musical scene for years. But in the process of keeping up with Proteus, everything got shattered. The conservatives laid the dark mass of modern music's unplayability at Shönberg's feet. But Shönberg was merely the guy with the shady lamp light, one that went on and off as needed. The 20th century was born out of Shönberg. It's music has had a long winter, but we are now in the light again.
What's next? Don't ask me would probably be Shönberg's answer. Music is creepy. It, including Bach, never answers questions. So, after this gap of years since he started to compose, what does the world expect of Shönberg? They say he was born in Berlin. Musically, for the 20th century at least, we were all Berliners or Viennoises.
Music, because of this strange creature, Shönberg, has altered forever. All the fuses are blown but somewhere there is a pile of unblown ones, and it's a safe bet Shönberg is sitting atop.
The Op 31 Symphonic Variations for Orchestra, which was the celebratory offering of the concert, is a strange visiting card at a party of goodwill. This work positively bristles with everything people most dislike about the composer. It presents in its few movements 12-tone serial methods, perfectly cold and didactic, and has the quality of a faded early Cubist painting. It moves about in leaps and bounces, tonal changes and weird erratic tempi.
Brahms
El-Saedi did a good job. It was crash and carry, and he and the orchestra carried off a pile of oddments from the dig.
The opening of this piece has the formal inhumanity of a rubbish-disposal unit. As it went its way it slithered into tonality of a certain brash elegance. What temptations lie around for a pure-hearted escapee from the flesh pots of the ordinaire?
The trouble with Shönberg's revolution was it soon showed signs of withering. This is its position now. Shönberg has already become classical-historical. Waiting for the great move into tonality, long expected of Shönberg, is like waiting for Godot. But the master was true-hearted, always right in musical discourse about his untenable position. He was adorable -- and how he could write. Gershwin revered his skill. He was a true genius to the end of his life and beyond.
After his last formal illness in the operation room he was declared dead. But the medical authorities injected directly into the heart and he came to life, lived again and long enough to write his final gesture -- his Trio. This little work gives all the answers to the musical nations that had cast Shönberg out. It is a work of the purest genius. It is a work of liberation.
A programme which, like tonight's, consisted of the following pieces in this order -- Shönberg's Op 31, Beethoven's Triple Concerto Op 56 and culminating with the Brahms No 1 Symphony Op 68 -- might suggest comparisons were being made, backwards at least. As it was the crash came first. Only then was the musical structure reassembled.
After Shönberg came one of Beethoven's most disturbing pieces. At first no one liked it, then it more or less joined the collection of semi-performed pieces until the 20th century discovered it. The Triple Concerto was and is a useful arena for big-time players on the concert circuit, a place in which to show off their virtuosity and their deeper musical instincts. For the entire ensemble, this Beethoven is difficult to play.
What is it? No one has ever decided. Beethoven was not a game's man. Jokey would not be the word for him.
It begins darkly, and then almost jumps into a jog-trot series of cheerful hunting melodies -- romantic and evocative of pleasure. We canter through some lovely country, vernal, arboreal, and without a trace of the angst that usually haunts the simplest melodies of Beethoven. Yet it's never a true landscape, unlike some of the symphonies; it is almost wall decoration, a fresco for a gamey reception.
The three soloists of the Bellini Trio were good enough when it came to spacing and tempo, keeping up with El-Saedi's sharp speeds. But there is more to the Triple Concerto than hunting tunes, and when the hunt moved off there was not much fill-in provided until the jog began again. The piano part is difficult -- Mario Galeani had his work cut out to make his jumps, hurdles and runs within El-Saedi's time. Both the strings were good, and when the orchestra brought this strange, rather courtly and dated music -- atypical of Beethoven -- to a halt, we might be forgiven for wondering who it was that had received the hunt cup. Probably the first violin.
And so to Brahms (inset) and some of the enigmas of music. How young the First Symphony seems -- young and a bit rough. A few attitudes were struck as if the composer, hands deep in pockets, was kicking at a few lumps of recalcitrant earth left carelessly by the plough. We the audience respected what had gone before but loved what we got with the First Symphony. Brahms wants to let us know the plough and the shield are emblems of love and loss.
El-Saedi sailed into everything from the start. I was happy. El-Saedi's Brahmsian revelations have been among the pinnacles of the Cairo Opera since its beginnings. He has an affinity with Brahms -- all the shades and colours and cadences of the Viennese plus, at times, the dust of a bronze age far away.
Brahms' music comes up from the deeps -- some terribly black, Stygian, and some ocean-pearly. We had all this in this wonderful elastic, certain-as-to-impact performance. So the First went its way, muscular, but with the touching uncertainty of youth. And it is not always "Big." This man Brahms left that stuff to his rivals and jesters.
And so at last El-Saedi opened the Golden Book at the end of the symphony: listen, behold Brahms daring to show everything that matters. And you don't pay for such art. It is offered generously. The opera house is transfigured with the form of Captain Shotover of Shaw's Heartbreak House whom Brahms turns into one of the great tempest-tossed seers of the Sistine Chapel.
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