WAGNER & HEAVY METAL
  • Home
    • Donner und Wetter!
    • From Metal to Wagner
    • From Rush to Lohengrin
    • Franz Liszt - The First Rock Star
    • The Wagner - Strauss connection
    • The day of Wagner & Heavy Metal
    • Classical picks
  • Latest
    • Ein Holländer in Bayreuth 2014
    • Ein Holländer in Bayreuth 2017 - Meistersinger
    • Ein Holländer in Bayreuth 2017 - Der Ring
    • Ein Holländer in Bayreuth - Parsifal 2018
  • One Ring to rule them all
    • Wagner & Tolkien: Ring to Ring
    • Die Nibelungen (Fritz Lang 1924)
  • Metal Section
  • Nederlands
    • De kluis (recensies)
    • Trip naar Bayreuth (2014)
    • De tovenaar van Bayreuth (2014)
    • Bayreuther Meistersinger (2017)
    • Bayreuther Ring (2017)
    • Parsifal in Bayreuth (2018)
  • Contact

Helmut Lachenmann in the Mozart sandwich

1/14/2019

0 Comments

 
'Mouvement' by Helmut Lachenmann sandwiched between two Mozart symphonies
Picture
Do not pay attention to the music. Keep on talking. Thank you. 

There are hardly any more cynical words imaginable to urge the audience to be silent. However, the request is anything but cynical, it must be taken literally. It serves as an introduction to Erik Satie's Vexations. Music d'Ameublement. Music while you're doing something else. Music that may be regarded as a forerunner of elevator music and noise. Music that tonight has to prepare the audience for the piece Mouvement by Helmut Lachenmann. A piece that, sandwiched between Mozart's symphonies 39 and 41, should lead the listener to a new world of sound, perhaps even to a new way of listening.

A listening experience in which every sound can be music. A listening in which the listener himself can check the boundaries of what he considers music, what he wishes to consider music. An aural journey that will go from the first Viennese school to the acoustic techno, Musique Concrète Instrumentale, of Helmut Lachenmann. A journey that can perhaps best be described as a descent into modern Nibelheim - a place where the consumer society has taken the place of nature. Perhaps a combination with the music of Gustav Mahler would have been more appropriate. Where Mahler tried to capture the essence of nature in his symphonies, one can say with Lachenmann, and this is mere a listener's opinion, that he aims for the world after nature. The world of the industrial revolution and its outcome, the modern consumer society. Lachenmann creates sound images that must point the nowadays listener to the essence of their desire to consume. He aims his arrows at instant satisfaction and his music certainly does not have an obligation to please. Instead of ecstasy and entertainment Lachenmann seeks danger, stirred by alienation, frustration and confusion - a danger every composer should strive for in our time, The real danger for him comes from the listener who wants to be entertained and the composer who wants to please. 
​In an era of magic conveniently available at the touch of a button, new music should on principle represent something akin to 'danger'... 
(Helmut Lachenmann)
There is this story about Ennio Morricone, told by Lachenmann, who did not want suites from Once Upon A Time In The West to be played on the same evening as Lachenmann's Mouvement. Despite Morricone's objections, Morricone and Lachenmann shared the same programme, with both composers sitting side by side during the concert. Aware of what the famous film composer thought of him, Lachenmann (a great admirer of Morricone by the way) didn't dare to say anything to the Italian maestro. What Morricone, the good, found so bad & ugly in Lachenmann's music, the story doesn't tell and it won't become clear tonight either. Because that music turns out to be exciting and by no means as inaccessible as might have been feared beforehand. 
​
Picture
For the creation of his music, Lachenmann doesn't use other kind of instruments than Mozart had at his disposal. Where Mozart sought innovation in his orchestration, for example fitting in a clarinet where an oboe was more in the conventional line of expectation (in symphony 39), Lachenmann takes other, more extreme, paths. He ignores the academic rules on how to play an instrument and moves aside classical harmony and counterpoint.  Thus oboes are used as percussion instruments, the bow of cello and double bass does not play only the strings but also the body and tuning pegs; a kettledrum is put upside down. With something as anachronistic as a classical orchestra, he emancipates sound into music. He looks at modern times with classical means - like making an engraving of a computer screen. With the result, in which every sound can ultimately be music, what is heard must also be felt. It is an awareness through sound. A music that leads to thinking, whether or not about concrete topics. Music that takes you back in your thoughts, makes you aware of those thoughts without the need to formulate or express them. It leads to a kind of "knowing through feeling". It seems to be both inspired by Wagner as well as revolting against it. Over the rainbow bridge that leads to Valhalla, Lachenmann lays a grey carpet. He covers the opulent colours of Romanticism with shades that are (much) less seductive but the question whether there is music in his soundscapes does not come to mind. For example, the confusion that can arise from a piece like Heinz Hölliger's string quartet - am I listening to randomly chosen notes or a composition? - stays here at great distance. Lachenmann's acoustic techno (it would lend itself well for an unplugged session with Nine Inch Nails or Mike Patton's Fantomas) sounds too structured for that, too comfortable also.
​
Picture
Lachenmann's music is no less structured than the classical music that preceeds it, but the ordering effect of his music - which is able to sharpen the mind, to make you feel smarter (if only by the power of suggestion) - is less compelling than with Mozart. It appeals more to one's own interpretation. You have to feel it. The resonating of the air. The sine waves that land on your eardrums. Attending it live is (even more than with the classical repertoire) a necessary condition for possible appreciation. The Jupiter symphony can sound good on your smartphone, Lachenmann not. His music is for modern ears an invitation to link image to sound. An invitation that, once accepted, turns the head into a space that one can travel in. The fact that this journey leads less far into unknown territory than was previously thought says something about the emancipation process that the dissonant has gone through over time. Film music makes ample use of it. Of note clusters that are used purely for their suggestive power. The contrast that lies in Lachenmann's work - catching the modern world with classical means - makes his music, at least the music I became acquainted with tonight, a fascinating experience. (It seems that nothing offends Lachenmann more than saying that you find his music interesting, so I will mark my words here.) It is an experience in which tuning the instruments prior to a Mozart symphony becomes part of the programme.​
Picture
How does one listen to Mozart when one have just breathed the air of a new world? Does the introduction to new music provide a new perspective on old music? Tonight's concert did not give an unambiguous answer to that. Before the intermission I felt some reservations about the performance of Mozart's 39th symphony. Under the baton of Francois-Xavier Roth, the rendition of Les Siecles sounded a bit stiff. As if the piece was a bit underrehearsed. After the break, after Lachenmann, the Jupiter and the Overture Nozze (as encore) sounded significantly better. But that was simply because of the performers and (probably) because of the compositions themselves. Also in music of centuries ago one can, every performance again, stare into a new world. For example in that superbe Adagio of the Jupiter symphony. A sound carpet that is like a sky with clouds in which one can see faces appear, again and again, the longer one looks at it. It are meandering sounds that are an invitation to fill in the silence between the notes with one's own panoramas. In that Adagio, music automatically becomes a landscape in which one can let the mind wander. Here Mozart reached out a hand to his 20-21th century colleague. His music became here, as the musical companion of Lachenmann's Mouvement, a sound in which the spirit was encouraged to go on a journey of discovery itself. It was as if the two composers, each a child of their own time, met on the banks of the IJ and engaged in conversation.
​
​Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ - 12 January 2019

Les Siècles orchestra
François-Xavier Roth conductor

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Symphony 39
Helmut Lachenmann Mouvement
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Symphony  41
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Nozze di Figaro - overture (encore)

- Wouter de Moor
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    RSS Feed

    KÖNIGSKINDER: A TRIUMPH IN TRISTESSE
    An EVENING WITH DER FREISCHUTZ
    DAS RHEINGOLD ON PERIOD INSTRUMENTS
    UPLOAD (LIVING IN A DATA STREAM)
    DER SILBERSEE
    A (POST) COVID PARSIFAL
    THE WRITE OF SPRING
    A DescenT Into The Nibelheim Of The Mind
    Eddie van Halen
    Wagner at the movies
    With Mahler and Stravinsky into the new year
    The return of Die Walküre
    Pagliacci / Cavalleria Rusticana
    (No) Bayreuth (Summer blog)
    Tannhäuser: what's on a man's mind
    About extreme music
    Die Tote Stadt
    Helmut Lachenmann in the Mozart sandwich
    Oedipe: is man stronger than fate?
    One More ... (Ring cycle)
    Marnie: opera & pictures
    The Halloween Top 10
    Jenufa: ice-cold reality & warm-blooded music
    ​My Parsifal Conductor: a Wagnerian Comedy
    Lohengrin: in the Empire of the Swan
    Die Zauberflöte in a roller coaster
    Ein Holländer in Bayreuth: Parsifal
    Heavy Summer (the road to Parsifal)
    Lohengrin in screenshots
    Lessons in Love and Violence
    Berlin/Blog: Faust & the claws of time
    The Gambler: Russian roulette with Prokofiev
    BACH/BLOG: BachFest Leipzig
    Der Fliegende Holländer, Wagner & Dracula
    The Christina cycle of Klas Torstensson
    La Clemenza di Tito: Mozart über alles
    Bruckner and the organ
    Gurre-Lieder: the second coming
    Parsifal in Flanders: Reign in Blood
    Tristan & Isolde and the impossible embrace
    Danielle Gatti & Bruckner's 9th
    On the birthday of Ludwig (Beethoven's  mighty 9)
    The dinner party from hell
    Zemlinsky & Puccini: A Florentine diptych
    La clemenza di Tito (Veni, Vidi, vici)
    Eliogabalo (here comes the Sun King)
    La Forza del Destino
    Das Wunder Der Heliane
    'Ein Wunder' to look forward to
    Ein Holländer in Bayreuth
    Franz Liszt in Bayreuth
    Salome & The Walking Dead
    Lohengrin in Holland
    Wagner Weekend
    The Summer Of 2016
    Parsifal in Screenshots (Bayreuth 2016)
    Being Tchaikovsky
    Gustavo & Gustav: Dudamel & Mahler
    Haitink & Bruckner: a never-ending story
    Henry Rollins (spoken word)
    David Bowie
    For Lemmy and Boulez
    Boulez ist ToT
    Lemmy -  Rock In Peace
    The Battle: who's the better Lohengrin?
    Stockhausen and Heavy Metal
    Franz Liszt in the funny papers
    Tristan und Isolde
    Der Rosenkavalier
    Solti's Ring and Bayreuth in 1976
    Easter Chant (Via Crucis)
    Boulez turns 90
    Holy Tinnitus
    Franz Liszt in the Phot-O-Matic
    The Holy Grail
    Franz Liszt - Rock Star avant la lettre
    The best theater experience in my life
    Boulez in Holland

    TIMELINE

    October 2022
    June 2022
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    March 2021
    October 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    November 2019
    September 2019
    July 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    March 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    April 2017
    December 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    November 2014
    January 2011

Wagner-HeavyMetal.com
  • Home
    • Donner und Wetter!
    • From Metal to Wagner
    • From Rush to Lohengrin
    • Franz Liszt - The First Rock Star
    • The Wagner - Strauss connection
    • The day of Wagner & Heavy Metal
    • Classical picks
  • Latest
    • Ein Holländer in Bayreuth 2014
    • Ein Holländer in Bayreuth 2017 - Meistersinger
    • Ein Holländer in Bayreuth 2017 - Der Ring
    • Ein Holländer in Bayreuth - Parsifal 2018
  • One Ring to rule them all
    • Wagner & Tolkien: Ring to Ring
    • Die Nibelungen (Fritz Lang 1924)
  • Metal Section
  • Nederlands
    • De kluis (recensies)
    • Trip naar Bayreuth (2014)
    • De tovenaar van Bayreuth (2014)
    • Bayreuther Meistersinger (2017)
    • Bayreuther Ring (2017)
    • Parsifal in Bayreuth (2018)
  • Contact