Finally the Lucerne Festival

A few pictures from Lucerne here, as photos are not permitted (though I’m sure many people have taken them) inside the concert hall. And a brief diversion: some very typical Swiss dishes, simple but well done at Taube in Luzern: veal with sauce and noodles, and roesti (I have also seen it "roeschti" in Switzerland), basically hash browns with all kinds of butter, cheese and dripping cheese fat, bacon, onions, sometimes an egg, or hear, apples slices -- so healthy! -- added. How do the Swiss stay in such good physical shape compared to Americans???
We saw two concerts: Thursday night, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra conducted by Daniel Harding in pieces by Schumann and Schubert, and Saturday night, the Lucerne Festival Orchestra conducted by Claudio Abbado in Beethoven’s incidental music to Egmont (a play by Goethe) and the well-known Mozart Requiem.
I know of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra having learned a bit more about the Lucerne Festival Orchestra after I first heard and was wowed by the LFO a few years ago. The MCO was founded by Claudio Abbado and forms the core of the LFO. Add some first-chair players from the world’s best orchestras, some first-rate chamber musicians including string quartet players, and a singular joy and respect for Abbado that seems to infuse the LFO (these musicians choose to play in Lucerne during what would normally be summer time off for classical musicians), and you get what has been called the greatest pickup band in the world. I have started to recognize a number of the musicians in both the MCO and the LFO by face and even playing style from LFO DVD’s and last year’s concerts.
Harding (more dimunitive live than I had imagined from clips) is a rising star in the conducting world who previously had assistant positions with Abbado and Simon Rattle. I was not really familiar with the pieces on the program (Nachtlied by Schumann, Spirits on the Water by Schubert, and the E Flat Mass by Schubert). I have seen clips of the MCO and Harding, particularly a revelatory Beethoven symphony clip which seemed to me to wipe all the cobwebs away from the heavier, more unified sound adopted in performance practice for much of the 20th century. Given that I didn’t know the pieces, I thought Harding’s conducting was excellent with a great sense of flow while maintaining very distinctive phrasing and voicing among the orchestra and choir parts. The soloists (Mari Eriksmoen, Sara Mingardo as a late replacement for Bernarda Fink, Andrew Staples, Andrew Kennedy, Franz-Josef Selig) seemed good, though Schubert frankly gave them very little to do in the Mass so we didn’t get to hear very much of them.
The Abbado concert featured a stripped-down version of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra and members of the same choirs on hand for the Harding concert. Mahler’s gargantuan Symphony No. 8 had originally been programmed for opening week of the Lucerne Festival, but for somewhat ambiguously stated (“artistic”) reasons the program was changed to the Egmont incidental music and Mozart’s Requiem, both calling for much smaller orchestral, choral and vocal soloist forces. I would have enjoyed the Mahler 8 for the spectacle if nothing else, though on a more musical level, I personally find it a flawed piece with almost impenetrably dense counterpoint in a Latin religious text for the first movement, coupled with a very long second movement based on the end of Goethe’s Faust (change from Latin to German), the whole seeming a bit oddly constructed to me. The last 10 or 15 minutes of the Mahler 8 are quite spectacular and no doubt would have brought the house down. But—
This re-programmed concert was in some ways the best I have ever attended. The best part of the Egmont music for me was the well-known overture, and here the playing was flawless. I was a bit surprised at the muscularity of this performance, horns blaring, timpani pointed and threatening, all to very dramatic effect without crossing into “showy” for its own sake. Juliane Banse was the soprano soloist in the Beethoven (there are a couple songs for Egmont’s despairing beloved, Claerchen). I thought she was perhaps a bit emphatic in her physical delivery given the nature of the songs, but her singing was ravishing.
Mozart worked on his Requiem as he was dying, and it was largely completed by a student of his with further work done by scholars and several editions available. Those who know more music history and composition than I do, can debate how much “Mozart” is really there in the final product. Much of Mozart I can take or leave – elegantly constructed, with a perfection of form, but not much blood and guts except in the most stylized, diffused fashion. I came into this concert expecting magnificent musicianship, a given with the LFO, but not too much surprise in the music itself. Instead I was floored. This Requiem was one of the great performances I have heard, live or recorded. The soloists were very good to magnificent: Anna Prohaska, Sara Mingardo, Maximilian Schmitt, and the great opera star Rene Pape.
The choir (combined forces from the Swedish and Bavarian Radio groups) was amazing, from the most hushed quiet passages to impressive volume – how can such menacing sound come from such a modest sized group? -- with what seemed like perfect diction and pitch throughout. I don’t hear much choral music but it has been second-rate compared to this performance. I wanted to give a standing ovation to each choir member and the obviously fantastic director of the choir.
I have now read one review of an earlier night’s performance of the Requiem which suggested Abbado was too genteel with the piece. I must have been in a different universe. There can of course be great variation in live performances, and perhaps there was a great difference from earlier in the week to Saturday. In the performance we attended Saturday, the final performance of this program, I was surprised by the degree of weight and drama infused into Mozart by Abbado and all of the musicians, without losing clarity anywhere. By comparison to my reaction to much Mozart, I was almost on the edge of my seat at times! Part of the reason may have been choral singing the likes of which I have never heard before. I don’t know how to describe this performance other than to say it seemed unusually uplifting for a requiem mass.
The members of the choir seemed unusually animated and one or two almost rapturous. Perhaps the opportunity to sing in this setting with Claudio Abbado conducting is as fantastic as I would imagine.
The difference in sonic experience between Thursday and Saturday was quite remarkable. On Thursday from the second balcony, the sound was clear but drier, with shorter reverberation time. On Saturday, from the main floor, 10th row, the sound was deep and full with much longer reverberation, but never muddy. I don’t know if it was a change in configuration of the hall (as in most modern-designed or retrofitted concert halls it appears there are movable panels, etc. in the KKL) or simply that much difference based on the seat location, or perhaps a combination of the two. I don’t think I’ve ever heard better bass and percussion sound in a large hall.
And I’m not sure I want to hear the Mozart Requiem again -- because this single, live performance seemed to me to have captured perfection.