VHK's singing

If I want a fix of Second Viennese School round here, I’m most likely to get it over at the Wiltshire Music Centre in Bradford. Over the years I’ve heard several performances, most recently from the Britten Sinfonia, who are regular visitors here. On this occasion it was just a selection of their number (strings and pianists) with the soprano Barbara Hannigan.

I’ve remarked before on the spareness of the performing area; between pieces I noticed also how well endowed it is with electrical sockets. Two banks of them are prominent features on the walls behind the stage, and there are others. But the stage is also low and close to the seating. In the second row, I almost felt as if I was completing the circle of performers.

This concert was very much in the tradition of the Society for Private Performances, mixing arrangements and relatively undemanding pieces with more radical compositions. Several pieces were early works by their composers. Schoenberg’s six pieces for piano duet are very much in the tradition of Schubert’s for the same forces. Richard Strauss’ Serenade in G was pleasant but undemanding on the ear. Mahler’s early piano quartet movement, a rare survival from his formative years as a composer, was accomplished and dramatic, with a suggestion of folk tunes rather than any actual quotations. With hindsight one could see how his music developed from this start, though it could easily have gone in several other directions. More light relief was provided by Schoenberg’s arrangement of Strauss’ Lagunen-Walzer.

Among all these were two works that have never ceased to challenge listeners, and one unexpected discovery.

I’d always thought of Chausson (when I thought of him at all), as standard out-of-the-box late French Romantic. What was his Chanson perpétuelle doing in an otherwise Germanic programme? It turned out that he took an expressionist turn towards the end of his life; this song turns into a monodrama, a kind of cross between Erwartung and La voix humaine.

We heard the last of the Altenberglieder in the voiceless chamber arrangement Berg made in 1919. I long for an opportunity to hear the complete set with orchestra. (It was disappointing that there wasn’t one in Britain in the centenary year of 2013.) For the final item, Barbara Hannigan returned (having untied her hair and sitting/standing among the players) to sing in Schoenberg’s second string quartet. This was a highly dramatic performance, with the effect heightened by the intimate setting I remarked on above. With the passage of time the use of the voice seems more startling than the transition to atonality. All of this was superbly performed throughout, with the only slight slip I noticed being in the Strauss waltzes. No one who came to this concert will forget it in a hurry.