Vienna is the center of what we call “classical” music in a narrow sense. The wider realm of 18th- and 19th-century art music, which we also refer to as “classical,” had many centers: Rome, Paris, London, St. Petersburg, even Boston. But one meaning of “classical” refers to a tradition of composition that achieves meaning and coherence primarily through shared tonal and formal processes, in other words, mostly instrumental music that utilizes the “classical” forms. It is no accident that a high-point of such music is referred to as Viennese Classicism. Its founding figure is Joseph Haydn, and his disciples include Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Brahms, all of whom lived in Vienna for the most important years of their careers. Vienna is also home to a “second Viennese school” whose leader, Arnold Schoenberg, looked back worshipfully toward Gustav Mahler as forerunner and whose followers included Alban Berg and Anton Webern, along with others. An idealistic concept of classicism persists as a transcendent force in Viennese life and culture today, while the city strives to maintain the balances between so many complex forces of geography, politics, and history.
Anyone who has lived a life with this music has absorbed—by intention or osmosis—a great deal of information and some mythology about Vienna from books, articles, reviews, concert program notes, and CD booklets. Somehow or other, an image of the city lodges itself in our imaginations. This was certainly true for me prior to the 10-day visit last month, my first. Having performed and written about these composers for decades, it was a source of chagrin to have to admit that I had not actually been there. My pilgrimage changed that.
I planned to immerse myself in music as fully as possible and managed to attend two operas, two orchestral concerts, one evening of chamber music, and one musical church service, along with visits to the residences (now museums) of the “big three”: Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. (I never got to two others listed on my pass to such venues: Schubert and J. Strauss II.) In addition, I visited five art museums, five churches, two palaces, and wandered miles of Viennese streets. The Vienna I came away with was a much more complex, multi-layered place than I had imagined: Many of its cultural riches are tied to an almost obscene concentration of wealth in the hands of the emperors and powerful aristocrats, wealth which was ostentatiously displayed in grandiose architecture, over-the-top ornamentation, an overwhelming worship of power in its styles of painting and public monuments. On the other hand, Viennese visual modernism taught us to see and hear in new ways through the artists of the Secession and the Schoenberg school; and the Vienna Werkstatt promoted democratic ideals in public housing and artistic objects designed to enhance everyday life, the counterpart to the British Arts and Crafts movement. (The 1926 Karl-Marx Platz is the world’s largest public housing building at .7 of a mile in length.) Add to that the development of psychoanalysis; the incubation of virulent anti-Semitism; the fierce embrace of fascism; the blossoming of critical intellectual, literary, and philosophical movements, and you have a place full of the most intense energies and contradictions.
The first thing that struck me about the 1869 Vienna Opera House was its feeling of intimacy. It has a capacity of 1700 (less than half that of the Met in New York) and has five horseshoe-shaped tiers, like other vintage houses. But from the second to top tier, the stage did not feel far away, and the sound was immediate, present, and very clear. Voices seemed to carry with ease, and subtlety of vocal delivery was conveyed clearly. The orchestra carried so well that when, in the first scene of “Wozzeck,” the solo viola played its cadenza, I leaned over to see whether it was amplified (it wasn’t).
I heard “The Marriage of Figaro” and “Wozzeck,” probably the operas that I am most familiar with, having seen each many times. The Vienna Opera productions were innovative and imaginative, both moving the time-frames to the present; the “Figaro” was consistently more effective. The singing and orchestral performances were mostly excellent, and the casting for “Figaro” was unconventional, offering new light on the characters and their relationships. Philippe Jordan conducted both with full authority and dramatic flair, and the orchestral playing was stylistically wide-ranging enough to sound fully idiomatic in these two very different scores. Needless to say, it was also spot-on accurate and tonally rich.
The production and performance of “Figaro” was lively, quick on its feet, and full of humorous stage bits. The cast included Patricia Nolz as a Cherubini, who seemed almost boneless, a lithe, loose-limbed, and lecherous adolescent who attempted to attach himself like leech to the nearest passing female. In the scene where Susanna and the Countess are disguising him as a girl, the production called for him to strip down and don female underclothes, which, considering that the singer was herself female, added a polymorphous layer that was both titillating and hilarious. Even more unusual was the casting of Dr. Bartolo (Stefan Cerny) and Marcellena (Stephanie Houtzeel) not as frumpy old has-beens, but as fit and fashionable jet-setters. This rendered Marcellena’s plan to marry Figaro a bit more plausible, and it also made the sudden Act III decision of Bartolo to marry her a bit less absurd. The rich, gleaming sound of Hanna-Elisabeth Müller as the Countess was the outstanding voice, but the general level of singing was very high. Conductor Philippe Jordan led from a forte-piano, providing active and imaginative accompaniment for the recitatives that served as editorial commentary and moved the action along swiftly.
The ensembles are the true pivot-points of the story, both in plot and music, and they were effective; but here was my one quibble: Mozart brings the voices together for some very poignant harmonies that only achieve their full impact with perfect balance, coordination, and timing from all performers. Some of these moments were done in a perfunctory manner—less than fully synchronized and passed over a bit quickly. Thus the Count’s Act IV moment of contrition, with wrenching response from the Countess and the others, elicits from the score some heavenly and wrenching harmonies that got short shrift. (The plot complication is that the apology is too facile, the acceptance by the Countess predictable, and the likelihood of further transgression a certainty, making the moment all the more bitter-sweet.) That and a confusing, unsatisfactory set for the final act (in which the characters seem to be playing a game of Whack-a-Mole) were the two flaws in an otherwise satisfying production.
Wozzeck was staged on a very slowly revolving disc divided into cubicles (two walls of different lengths at right angles to each other framing each of the 15 scenes) that moved at a slow, steady speed for the entire opera, which was performed without intermission. That meant that the new scenes had to be invisibly prepared in the back of the rotating stage while it was in motion and exhibiting the current one. This had a powerful, juggernaut-like effect on one’s perception of the plot: a series of events that led inexorably to a tragic conclusion, as Wozzeck says, “Eins nach dem Andern” (“one thing after another”). This could be highly effective. In the first scene, we see him wielding a straight razor to shave the Captain who is shamelessly abusing him (“you are so awfully dumb!”). This makes the Captain visibly uncomfortable. At the end of the scene, Wozzeck walks through a door into the next cubicle, in which we see the Captain again in the barber chair, this time with his throat cut and his wrapper covered with blood. We understand that this is a symbolic window into Wozzeck’s repressed rage which will explode in Act III. But such psychologically layered use of the set is not consistent. The modern time-frame misses other opportunities for dramatic intensification. The doctor is blatantly torturing Wozzeck, performing an on-stage painful colonoscopy with a video monitor showing an actual medical image. Rather than allowing us to understand the psychological abuse the doctor practices, it renders the abuse gross and shocking, as if the audience might otherwise miss the point. On the other hand, Marie lives in a modern apartment with separate bedroom, kitchen equipped with modern appliances, and her modern clothing is unremarkably ordinary. But Marie is tormented by the squalor in which she lives, both material and spiritual; we get this through her words and music, but not the appearance of her environment. So it is to the words and music that the audience must turn, if it can avoid being distracted by the revolving stage which more often than not reveals a puzzlingly ordinary or inappropriate setting for a field, a tavern, or a soldiers’ barracks. The most powerful moment was at the end of the final scene, where, after being told that his mother is dead, the child, who seems oblivious to the meaning of this news, steps off the rotating disk in a spotlight and walks to the front of the stage, looking at the audience, before the house goes to black.
The quality of singing was again quite high, with the outstanding voice being that of Sara Jakubiak as Marie. As the Captain, Jörg Schneider was also highly effective: squeamish, self-involved, sadistic, and vocally strong. The small parts were also strongly cast; the only disappointment was Wozzeck himself, sung by Johannes Martin Kräntzle, who seemed a bit underpowered and bland. His “aria” in scene one (“We poor people …”) lacked the strength of a break-out moment which should be a crack in his shell and key to the ethos of the opera. Here, the orchestra overpowered the singer and the significant moment passed too quickly (this is an opera of brief moments of revelation and the devil is always in the details). His acting did get stronger during the performance, and the murder scene was done powerfully enough, but it was undercut by the production which lacked even a suggestion of the pond in which he had thrown the knife and later, while looking for it, drowned.
Vienna has two well-established orchestras, each associated with its own hall: The Philharmonic usually performs in the older Musikverein, while the home of the Symphony is the newer Konzerthaus. Both orchestras and halls are splendid, but have contrasting characters. The venerable Philharmonic was founded in 1842, its hall in imperial Ringstrasse style dates from 1870, and it has a reputation at the pinnacle of the orchestra world: Its New York performances are quickly sold out, and the performance I saw seemed to be as well. The orchestra is run democratically by the players who select its guest conductors, and there is no chief music director. It performs exclusively on its own subscription series and international tours.
As to the Vienna Symphony, according to Wikipedia, “In 1900, Ferdinand Löwe founded the orchestra as the Wiener Concertverein (Vienna Concert Society). In 1913 it moved into the Konzerthaus, Vienna. In 1919 it merged with the Tonkünstler Orchestra. In 1933 it acquired its current name.” Since its reconstitution in 1945, it has been associated with big names in the conducting world, and from 2014 to 2021 it was led by Philippe Jordan, who is now principle at the Opera and who directed the two opera performances already discussed.
The Philharmonic carries rich traditions: It premiered works by Schubert, Brahms, Bruckner, and many other “classical” icons. The Symphony has a more checkered history, and seems today to be a parallel to the London Symphony, an orchestra that plays almost every night and is available for diverse performances including backing up pop artists and doing children’s shows. It is, nevertheless, a very impressive ensemble: It has a lighter, more transparent (you could say more streamlined) sound, and its home, the Konzerthaus, is a more modern Art Deco gem.
The two programs I heard captured the contrasts between the two groups and their homes. Brahms’ Violin Concerto was on the Philharmonic program, performed by Leonidas Kavakos and Herbert Blomstedt, the same artists who did it at Tanglewood in August 2021. This gave me the opportunity to do some dramatic comparisons. Both performances were beautifully expressive, technically polished, and flexibly phrased and paced. From the fifth row of the Shed, the Boston Symphony had been transparent and sleek (the French pedigree of its string sound still apparent). From the center balcony of the Musikverein, the Philharmonic’s sound was rich, deep, and perfectly balanced, more of a unified sound-mass but with all elements lucid. Blomstedt, now 95 years old, needed assistance to get on stage and conducted sitting down (in 2021, he was on his feet all concert). He allowed the orchestra even more flexibility; it is a miraculous quality of the Philharmonic that it can ‘sing’ melodies with a subtle rubato (tempo variation) without ever sounding uncoordinated. This was true of the massed strings, but it was even more apparent in the oboe solo that opened the second movement of the concerto: Here, the soloist (Clemens Horak) emerged as an equal to Kavakos, giving the beautiful melody a fully personal, singing performance. When it was joined by the (perfectly tuned) wind band to complete the opening paragraph, I had almost forgotten about the violin soloist who was waiting with the orchestral strings to respond. I am an admirer of the intelligence and warmth of Blomstedt’s performances, but I think much of the credit for this extraordinary expressiveness goes to the orchestra itself.
Filling out the program was Nielsen’s Fifth Symphony of 1922. As with the Korngold Symphony performed by the Vienna Symphony (discussed below), this is a work of a composer who used to be dismissed as insufficiently modern, too tied to romantic traditions and tonal processes. At this point a century later, it is clear that this is an inadequate, blinkered view. The Nielsen is an extraordinarily unified symphonic structure of totally original design and dramatic power that the Philharmonic played to the hilt, energetically encouraged and held together, despite its explosive energies, by the nonagenarian conductor who knows it inside-out. Compared to Blomstedt’s excellent 44-year-old recording with the San Francisco Symphony, this performance teetered excitingly on chaos without ever losing its bearings. I take this again as a case of trusting the orchestra members to individualize their parts without losing contact with the larger ensemble. It had never before struck me how much this work anticipates the most powerful moments in the symphonies of Shostakovich, none of which had yet been written at that date. The solo parts for clarinet and snare drum were rendered superbly, again with concerto-like flare and a dramatic power that propelled the entire orchestra. For me, this performance was the musical high-point of my trip.
The Vienna Symphony, led by Bertrand de Billy, offered contrast: The first half of the program was devoted to two “lighter” works of Saint-Saens, “Dance Macabre” and Piano Concerto no. 2 with soloist Alexandre Kantorow, who won the Gold Medal at the Tchaikowsky Competition in 2019 at the age of 22. After intermission, there was the Korngold Symphony in F-sharp minor. The Saint-Saens works were offered with rapid tempi and incisive accents, bringing out demonic qualities in both works (particularly the tarantella third movement of the concerto). Kantorow is a young man who wants to run: His performance was marked more by speed and energy than by elegance, but his control and dramatic flair indicate someone to watch.
At its 1953 Vienna premier, Korngold’s Symphony was met with indifference. The composer had returned from a brilliant career as a Hollywood film composer to his post-war hometown with the hopes of restarting the brilliant career he had left behind in the 1930s. But during the interim, the former child-prodigy and Hollywood romanticist found himself, post-war, angst-ridden and pessimistic, struggling with a vestigial nostalgia that seemed historically misplaced. All of this was forged into a sprawling symphonic structure that can seem rambling and digressive. But in a performance that balances and connects the disparate elements, a powerful drama emerges in which a grim impersonal present (the opening dull hammer-strokes) beats in upon a flailing clarinet solo, an individual voice unsuccessfully seeking flight. A vast symphonic canvas unfurls, including an ironic scherzo with a nostalgic trio, a deeply tragic Adagio-Lento, and a kaleidoscopic Finale as a kind of negative image of the last movement of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony, itself an ironic commentary on the Viennese love of fun, frivolity, and Gemüthlichkeit. Layered in are references to Korngold’s iconic film scores, here peering out like heroic figures ensconced in war-zone bunkers. De Billy and the Vienna Symphony gave a reading to rival the recent performances by the Berlin Philharmonic in New York last fall. Korngold’s demanding orchestral virtuosity was fully met, with the conductor’s never-flagging energy impelling the structure forward with a kind of tragic inevitability. This performance was a worthy companion to the Philharmonic’s Nielsen.
Two other performances served as footnotes to the above. The first was a full Latin mass celebrated at the Hofburg Chapel, which included the participation of the Vienna Boys Choir. It was a full mass with the congregants who took communion mixed with tourists. The Proper sections were performed by a true Gregorian Choir at the altar, and the Ordinary sections, Monteverdi’s Four-Part Mass, were sung by a full choir with the boys on the upper parts. The building has a small foot-print, holding around 150, but is spacious with several balconies, the upper-most being the choir-loft situated at the rear. The choir was invisible to the audience, but fully present in a clearer acoustic than that of the larger churches. After the service, the boys came down to the altar to perform a motet by Victoria, for which we were allowed to use our cameras. Given that they perform a different work every Sunday, the ability of these children to learn and give spot-on performances of complex works like this is remarkable; these are serious performances with perfect intonation and beautiful phrasing.
The other footnote performance was a quirky program at the Brahmssaal of the Musikverein entitled “Abschied von Beethoven” (“Farewell to Beethoven”). It was a lecture-recital of music associated with Beethoven’s death, both funeral music and posthumous tributes. There was a men’s quartet, trombone choir (playing historic instruments), an 1820 Viennese fortepiano, a guitar, and a narrator. It added up to a ritual enactment of Beethoven worship. Included were unpublished works of Beethoven that had been fitted out with memorial texts by his friend Ignaz von Seyfried;, a duet “Bei dem Leichenbegräbnisse des Ludwig van Beethoven” (a burial text) by Simon Sechter; a work by Palestrina that Beethoven had studied, played on four trombones; the funeral march from the Op. 26 Piano Sonata reworked by von Seyfried into a male quartet with piano; another setting of a burial text for solo voice and piano and a “Trauerklänge” (lament) for quartet and piano, both by Joseph Drechsler; etc. Johannes Prominczel, the archive director of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, who organized the event, offered lengthy connecting commentaries as well as a reading of Franz Grillparzer’s entire funeral oration for Beethoven. The instruments are all part of the Gesellschaft’s historic collection housed at the Musikverein. It says something about Viennese music-lovers that there was a large and appreciative audience in the Brahmssaal. The program was part of a festival running from late February through April entitled “Beethoven’s Medicine-Spoon,” an artifact that had been donated to the Gesellschaft in 1906 and which the composer apparently used in his final days to take his medicine (which one can imagine either as the comedy or tragedy).
There was a weird symmetry between these two ‘foot-note’ events: The Mass, of course, being a Viennese manifestation of the Catholic ritual speaking to the religion that united the Austrians in their “holy Roman Empire” which was neither holy, Roman, or really an empire; and the concert being another form of quasi-religious ritual, the worship of the god-like figure of Beethoven via a quasi-sacred relic, a medicine spoon, that served to connect the congregants (i.e. audience) to the magically transformative power of the composer’s music, a spiritual force in some way equal to (or even greater than?) that evoked by the mass. The observation of this ritual seemed like something that would only take place in Vienna, where religion and culture stand on an equal footing, sustaining the sense that the city hovers above and beyond the fray of nationalism, politics, history, and geography. At the same time, it seeks to come to grips with those realities, some of which were on display, for example, in the Jewish quarter, which is guarded by armed soldiers and set out with plaques reminding visitors of those who were removed during the Holocaust. The struggle between past and present continues to be expressed in its cultural institutions and its geographic location at the crossroads of Europe.
