Orchestre de la Suisse Romande Jonathan Nott STRAUSS Schlagobers DEBUSSY Jeux LIGETI Melodien Richard Strauss (1864-1949) Claude Debussy (1862-1918) Orchestersuite op. 70a aus dem Ballet “Schlagobers” op. 70 9 Jeux, Poème dansé (1912) 17. 12 (Ballet Suite “Whipped Cream”) (1924) György Ligeti (1923-2006) 1 I. In der Konditorküche, Marsch 3. 31 (In the Confectioner’s Kitchen, March) 10 Melodien, für Orchester (1971) 12. 58 2 II. Tanz der Teeblüte (Dance of the Tea Blossoms) 3. 53 3 III. Tanz des Kaffee’s, Träumerei (Dance of Coffee, Reverie) 7. 22 4 IV. Schlagoberswalzer (Whipped Cream Waltz) 5. 44 Total playing time: 72. 35 5 V. Einzug der Prinzessin - Tanz der Prinzessin, Walzer 6. 45 (Entry of the Princess, Dance of the Princess, Waltz) 6 VI. Tanz der kleinen Pralinees, Springtanz, Galopp 4. 09 (Dance of the Small Pralines, Leaping Dance, Galop) 7 VII. Menuett, Pas de deux (Minuet, Pas de deux) 4. 41 8 VIII. Finale, Allgemeiner Tanz (Finale, General Dance) 6. 07 Orchestre de la Suisse Romande Conducted by Jonathan Nott Elective Affinities: narratives, differently grounded, be they make numerous revisions following d’un faune in sports clothes’. On the Debussy-Strauss-Ligeti literary, historical, musical, otherwise. the first performance, none of them ‘triple kiss’ climax, Debussy wrote of its And yet, the obstinate, noble thread of incorporated into the Durand score. ‘risqué situation’: ‘when it is a question This programme might be a testing modernism never quite snaps – certainly of ballet, immorality escapes through ground for what Goethe, in the title not in the works heard here. Debussy initially rejected as ‘idiotic’ the legs of a female dancer and winds to his third novel, called elective Diaghilev’s trivial scenario: ‘The scene up in a pirouette’, a claim as artfully affinities (Wahlverwandtschaften). Debussy composed Jeux at unusual is a garden at dusk; a tennis ball has ambiguous as the score. Likewise for the mysterious freedom speed over a single month in 1912, to been lost; a boy and two girls are that Walter Benjamin, in a celebrated a commission from Sergei Diaghilev’s searching for it. The artificial light of the A basic tempo must endure, whilst essay on that novel, argued would arise Ballet Russes. Its opening bars speak large electric lamps shedding fantastic ‘actual’ tempo is modified on average through transcendence of Goethe’s of an almost Joycean, fragmentary, rays about them suggests the idea almost every other bar. Form is ‘mythic’ standpoint. The danger might modernity in their febrile, uncertain of childish games: they play hide and seemingly generated before our ears, nonetheless remain of confusing straining towards melody: not unlike seek, they try to catch one another, inviting and yet resisting analysis, aural critique, ‘truth content’ for Benjamin, Berg’s Three Orchestral Pieces, begun they quarrel, they sulk without cause. or visual. The octatonic scale – intervals with commentary or ‘material content’. the following year. Debussy’s opening The night is warm, the sky is bathed in of a semitone and tone alternating Is that, however, a danger at all? marriage of timbre and harmony is pale light; they embrace.’ Diaghilev had – offers important symmetries: Does it even matter if sometimes we almost melodic in itself: not unlike though homoerotically: himself and two suggestive, perhaps, of those in the confuse the merely (co)incidental – Viennese Klangfarbenmelodie, be it of men. This was the practical, stageable game. It also offers ambiguities – where Benjamin’s essay was published in 1924, Schoenberg’s or Webern’s variety. No realisation of his fantasy. Comparison would Debussy be without them? when Schlagobers had its premiere wonder that Jeux, alongside the piano with an earlier ballet, seemingly – crucial to transgression of rules, – with more substantive connection or Etudes, proved to be Pierre Boulez’s similar in its lazy yet provocative lack sporting and musical alike. Debussy’s ‘influence’? Not necessarily, though it most prized Debussy. He would go on to of purpose, also now heard almost dissonances permit an exploration might. We are all, in this sense, post- help prepare a critical edition: no mean exclusively as a concert work, is telling, of harmonic colour, of intervallic modernists now: we construct our own task in a work to which Debussy would Boulez describing Jeux as ‘Après-midi construction to combine with, incite, English even contest organisation of timbre such as Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and male liqueurs vying for the hand of has posed many listeners problems – as and duration, thereby anticipating style Debussy (now deceased) seemed to Marianne Chartreuse: those and other perhaps it should. We are accustomed and idea in Messiaen and the post-war have left him behind – even if Strauss’s absurdities – surreal, by intention or to Strauss donning masks in his operas avantgarde. The ‘general organisation earlier harmonic iconoclasm and otherwise – take us on a gluttonous and tone poems, to asking ‘what, if … changeable instant by instant’ Boulez latter time-travelling neo-Classicism journey, its dramatic ‘purpose’ as elusive anything, might this mean?’ Ask that discerned might have been made to foretold a good deal in their work. as that in Debussy’s ballet. of Schlagobers and affinities with the order for him; likewise for Stockhausen If the triple-time waltz – metrical materialism of Jeux and Melodien may and, as we shall see, Ligeti. For Boulez, instantiation of Diaghilev’s three-way So sweet-toothed a ballet suite might suggest themselves after all. frontiers had been ‘deliberately relationship? – haunts Jeux, here it is seem a world away from the ‘form … “anaesthetised”, listening time … no fundamental. Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker only perceptible in the continuity of its A clue concerning critical failure may longer directional, but time-bubbles.’ comes to mind, not least in Strauss’s unfolding’ foretold for Boulez in Jeux. be found in Romain Rolland’s diary: Bar Debussy’s final, nonchalant own scenario, as slight as Diaghilev’s. Yet listen unconcerned with posthumous ‘Richard Strauss invites me to come musical shrug, much of that had been A young candidate for confirmation reputation and you will encounter a to see him; and I go to his flat in the prefigured, in the art of transition – ‘my (Firmling) follows Viennese custom by portrayal of Vienna and its waltzes Mozartstrasse. ... His ballet Schlagobers most subtle’ – of later Wagner. Parsifal taking a horse-drawn carriage ride to a more sophisticated, more satirical has just been slated by the Viennese offered Debussy, Boulez, and many Konditorei, at which he may help himself than ‘critical opinion’ has generally critics. Strauss appears affected by its other heirs to Wagner rather more than to as many sweets and chocolates, allowed. The surface glitters and, as failure. “People always expect ideas musical lighting. bedecked with Schlagobers (whipped often with Strauss, invites us to consider from me, big things. Haven’t I the right, cream), as he can stomach. Dances whether the ‘depth’ of his great German after all, to write what music I please? I Strauss had long been vaunted as for marzipan puppets; a Träumerei for inheritance, is straightforwardly absent, cannot bear the tragedy of the present Wagner’s foremost heir; some had Prince Coffee; medicinal treatment for is mocked in its absence, or is subtly, time.”’ Should Strauss’s words be taken called him ‘Richard the Second’. the Firmling’s indigestion; a ceremonial even satirically reinstated. A possible at face value? Most likely: yes and no. However, his early 1920s reputation entrance for Princess Pralinée, attempt, conscious or otherwise, at its He often liked to play the philistine, was uncertain. Modernist radicals showcased literally and metaphorically; all-too-cosy (gemütlich) reinstatement all the more to rejoice in art for art’s sake: a creed, if not a sensibility, he of the Months – men and beasts at work Importance of pitch and thus of the ‘deeper currents of sadness and shared with Debussy. Thoroughgoing and play throughout Nature’s cycle – Webernian intervallic construction had melancholy’ heard here by Richard aestheticism may challenge and helped inspire Ligeti’s orchestral writing taken a battering in Ligeti’s Apparitions Steinitz. However, in its delicacy, in its entertain more than a Zeitoper in Melodien, commissioned by the City (1958-8: closest of his works to Jeux, subtlety of orchestration and its fruitful concerning hyperinflation. That evening, of Nuremberg for Albrecht Dürer’s via Stockhausen’s analysis of it as ambiguity between individual line and Rolland resolved to hear Schlagobers quincentenary in 1971. Ligeti described heralding moment form). Not only have self-transforming whole, Melodien for himself, heading to the Opera. ‘It is the opening in an interview given they returned here; textures have been returns us to Jeux. now clear to me,’ he wrote, ‘that the three years later: ‘There are chromatic clarified – lines placed further apart, righteous indignation of the Viennese scales in many instruments, you have semitonal clusters more the exception Mark Berry critics … stems from personal motives; a whole space – you know, intervals – than the rule – so as to justify Ligeti’s for the music is highly agreeable.’ There which is filled up with scales. The first title. A melody such as that on tuba were ‘happy touches in it of colour, light imagination was not exactly which will occasionally emerge in almost and shade,’ notably in the Meistersinger- pitches, but only ascending streams traditional fashion. ‘Restoration of ish riot scene, ‘which conjures up visions which are combed though so that interval’ (Jonathan Barnard), the major of Brueghel and of Rembrandt. But the certain pitches will fall out. Then I have third prevalent here, or ‘non-atonality’ public, under the influence of the press, a comb which is more…,’ to which Ligeti in Ligeti’s teasing self-description, does not applaud.