Simon Keenlyside as Wozzeck © Opéra de Paris / Ruth Walz 2008Alban Berg's Wozzeck
Royal Festival Hall
Thu 8 Oct 2009 7:30pm
Berg - Wozzeck (semi-staged)
Esa-Pekka Salonen conductor
Simon Keenlyside Wozzeck
Katarina Dalayman Marie
Hubert Francis The Drum Major
Robert Murray Andres
Peter Hoare The Captain
Hans-Peter Scheidegger The Doctor
Anna Burford Margret
David Soar First Apprentice
Leigh Melrose Second Apprentice
Ben Johnson The Idiot
Philharmonia Voices
Jean-Baptiste Barrière video direction
If you want to get a bit of a feel of what last night was like here a small video courtesy of PhilharmoniaLondon
.......Every now and then my ears need a breath of fresh air and I generally need to do, see and hear something “new”. And after an intensive Verdi, Wagner, Bizet, Berlioz treatment Alban Berg does seem like sparkling fresh and new :-)
Well, ok, not all new… I had read Georg Buchner’s “Woyzeck”, albeit many many years ago and at least the main singer of the evening is all but novelty to my ears ;-) But, I had never been to the Southbank centre before, I had never crossed the Hungerford bridge before.
To be honest on paper it looked like just as much pleasure like going to the Barbican, that is .. none! Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had some wonderful evenings at the Barbican but getting there and out of there I hate, it is almost creepy if you have to do it like me on foot around the area. But I was intrigued by the music, wanted to hear and see Esa-Pekka Salonen conduct it live and wanted to understand why Simon Keenlyside is such a big fan of this particular opera and role. So I rushed through the working day, literally put trainers on while dashing out on the street to make sure I could make it fast enough to the underground and armed with a mental image of the tfl journey-planner hurried into the unknown …And that is all the preparation I had time for, no pre-listen, no browsing the libretto, not even a lazy reading of the synopsis…
It is beyond odd that I came out of a most depressing piece with a feeling of accomplishment and almost elation. And it is entirely due to the fact that the quality of playing and singing on the night was exceptional!
Berg’s music is these days less of a surprise to newcomers as it has actually been around for almost 100 years. To me it sounded much smoother than I expected although full of contrast and colour. It doesn’t flow harmonically in a traditional sense, but changes abruptly as do the feelings of the main characters. It spite of it’s apparent harshness and abrupt twists and turns it does not estrange you, but on the contrary traps you, engages you. Salonen created with the Philarmonia a sound that while precise and extremely well coordinated was never detached, but profoundly touching and emotional, lending the piece a strange, almost romantic feel at times. Curious, because I had to think back to the Damnation at the Barbican last month and precisely this kind of feeling was not always present there. The final musical attack on the death scene was marvellously violent and obliterating:-) It gave that almost cleansing feeling, I guess an almost cathartic release from al the pain and torture, at least that is how it felt to me.
(Esa-Pekka Salonen in a Figaro photo from this interesting article on Wozzeck in London and Paris and his work with the Philharmonia Orchestra. And here you also have an interesting article from March 2008 when Simon Keenlyside made his debut in the role at the Opera de Paris (in French). )The singing was under the strenuous score amazingly lean and clear and also in character. Peter Hoare’s Captain was appropriately sharp and hysterical with some nerve tingling top notes and Hans Peter Scheidegger’s earthy bass come over convincingly scary as the crazy doctor. Katarina Dalayman’s Marie infused her interaction with her son with warm sadness and some gorgeous low notes and at times of remorse conquered with her Wagnerian panache the piercing top notes. The Philarmonia Voices provided the edgy, strong and chillingly “happy” and contrastng chorus interludes before the final resolution. Everyone’s diction was good, at least good enough for me to be able to understand the text without having to look at the surtitles to my upper left, which would have been immensely distracting.
In fact the semi-staged performance work really well, with everyone to only being well suited to their parts from a musical point of view, but also providing reliable acting. So much so that the visual display to my left behind the orchestra on the big street proved more of a distraction than an addition. The interaction between the characters, even if only on a meter wide band around the orchestra and confined to a few chairs, was captivating enough, that one didn’t want to look away. I suspect this was less of a problem if seated in front with everything going on in front at various levels. But sideways, after I while I stopped looking at the screen when singers were on stage and only looked back during the musical interludes. I ignored the surtitles altogether, even if I missed the odd word here and there, too much neck-twisting!
I think the visuals were not a bad idea, but sometimes too repetitive and probably would have worked more in a completed non-staged performance, concert with singers on stage most of the time. With the acting and singing going on and the orchestra on display on stage, it was too much to focus on. However, I have to say I appreciated the almost static (by comparison to the rest of the images) red moon among trees at the end. Effective for the completion of the “bloody” mood.
The major reason why I don’t believe this particular performance benefitted from the creative visual is… Simon Keenlyside. It would have been an absolute shame not to focus on him while he was on stage…. No image, no matter how ingenious is better than that! I’m starting to grasp maybe not all why he loves the part, but just how much he does! It was heart wrenching and scary to watch his Wozzeck. So obviously the physically fittest of all the cast he managed to “brake himself” to the point of complete merger with the character. The gestures, the poses, the steps where so incredibly natural it was chilling. I really wonder how he does it, is it choreographed? Does he do it mostly spontaneously, is every movements carefully placed? Having seen him as Posa so recently, this was a total revelation of what he is able to do. Did he look and sound crazy… yes and no… is Wozzeck the crazy one or is he rather the temporarily sane one in a screwed and screwed up world? I guess it isn’t about certainty with either Berg or Keenlyside as Wozzeck, it is about the questions he makes you ask yourself. It is very touching how he hangs on to every shred of sanity and logic and belief to prevent the slide towards the abiss, but everyone inevitably pushes him nearer to the edge. I personally like the fact that the others seemed madder than Wozzeck, that his thoughts seemed sometimes to come from introspection rather than a wild mind. However the gestures and movements enforced the sensations that lucidity is ever farther away… Keenlyside is too sophisticated an artist to be just the object of abuse of doctor, captain, lover …. He lends his Wozzeck a touch of Hamlet at times I felt, which managed to draw you in even more than being a mere onlooker of a poor man’s unavoidable decent into death and /or madness, whichever you feel has come first. It’s even more admirable that his voice sounded in this ruptured part generally even smoother and cleaner, warmer and easier handled than in his recent run of Posa… figure that…
He’s left me wondering what he can do with other characters, amazed by what he can create outside his voice and, to be honest, almost frightened of how deep he is able tor reach within with the characters he portrays. I hope he can rid himself of them as soon as he steps off stage :-) And it has left me also strangely looking forward to hopefully heaingr him in a liederabend where he is not a single character, but many, all filtered and contained within the artist, the Simon Keenlyside I can recognise as himself and where the voice is the impulse that drives the stories.
There were of course 10 minutes of very very enthusiastic applause for everyone!
And I’ll be definitely looking forward to more Salonen and Philarmonia Orchestra in the near future! It seems to be a an exciting and dynamic match :-)
The Royal Festiva Hall at the South Bank centre at night, photo on Panoramio.com by paulie455
So I left the Royal Festival Hall with a smile on my face and crossed the bridge back to the underground under the crisp winds. I stopped in the middle of the bridge to listen to the melancholic jazz music that came from a saxophone player, to smile at the city lights under the huge bright moon on what was a wonderful night over the Thames…. Lingering along the bridge I suddenly realised how beautiful London can be at night and while i looked at the people filling in the streets towards Covent Garden for the first time I felt like I belong here and I’m really happy to be here :-)
And all that thanks to an evening with Berg’s Wozzeck… now how weird is that????
This concert was recorded by BBC Radio 3 for broadcast in Performance on 3, at 7.00pm on Thursday 15 October.
Reviews:
TelegraphAnd some interesting contributions from bloggers (including a few photos from last night):
