The world will never, unfortunately, receive a full performance of Stockhausen’s Klang; Stockhausen had completed 21 of the 24 component works when he died in 2007; Havona one of the last of these, and did not receive a performance until the beginning of the year. Nicholas Isherwood is well-known for his championing of both early and contemporary vocal music,, and performed the role of Lucifer in several of the operas from the Licht cycle. Klang is the thematic heir of Licht, both in its concern for providing music for the hours (as opposed to Licht’s days) and in drawing inspiration from the Urantia Book. According to Urantian cosmology, Havona is the last galaxy before Paradise, consisting of a billion planets. Stockhausen’s text takes the form of a ritual chant depicting the journey to Paradise, in the process also referring to other elements of Urantian theology, such as humans “black, white, green, yellow, red, brown and blue”, which Isherwood described in his pre-concert talk as a joke, but which is, in fact, key to a Urantian conception of evolution.

Havona is constructed from two elements; one is a double tone-row, the other is the lower elements of the electronic work Cosmic Pulses, also an hour of Klang, which forms  a backing track. Havona is split into 24 one minute sections, each of which has a section of music attached to it. The music for each section may be sung freely, the performer judges the lengths of notes and rests, as well as timbre and dynamics, although this must necessarily fit into the framework of Cosmic Pulses. Isherwood appeared to be concentrating largely upon the strength of his performance, singing with unwavering conviction. Combined with the costume of a white robe and orange scarf, this was an imposing performance.

If Stockhausen is always fascinating, Christian Wolz was certainly an unknown quantity. Wolz also used electronics in his performance – a largely understated backing track and electronic echoes, shifting quickly between his two microphones to produce slightly different sounds. Wolz’s oeuvre is semi-improvisational, using unfamiliar timbres. In particular, he has an interest in Middle Eastern singing and other unusual vibrato techniques, which he employed throughout Atropa-Bella-Donna. He describes the work as ‘”an acoustic performance in 3 stages”, but these are really undetectable, for in fact  it has far more divisions than this, switching to a different technique every minute and a half or so, an irritating feature which prevents the work from evolving beyond a too-long (50 minutes!) showcase of Wolz’s abilities. After half an hour, I was frustrated and exhausted. The other twenty minutes were fairly torturous. (To be fair, I was fairly tired beforehand; it would probably have been easier in a better state of mind, but this problem certainly didn’t exist for the Stockhausen – twenty four minutes felt like ten)

More than a little ironically, I’m starting this blog by talking about a a symphony that is probably as far away from a traditional symphony as one can possible get. Shostakovich’s 14th was written during a period of debilitating ill-health, requiring the composer to work with only a small ensemble, rather than the expected massive modern orchestra. Shostakovich’s forces consist of a small string section (19 players), light unpitched percussion, assorted pitched percussion and two vocalists. In fact, the work resembles a song-cycle much more than it does a symphony.

The music of the opening movement, De profundis, perfectly reinforces the imagery of the poem it accompanies. Pianissimo violins open with the melodic germ from which almost all the instrumental music in this movement arises – Bb-A-Bb-G. The bass sings a melody that is almost entirely static, capturing the quiet atmosphere of lovers ”falling into eternal sleep”. Shostakovich chooses to highlight one line: “so that we might not forget them”, perhaps reflecting his own fear of not being remembered and appreciated after his death – heightened by his illness. Remarkably, Shostakovich chooses to use his double basses in divisi rather than using celli in this movement. The result is an imbalanced texture, heavily weighted towards the bass, but this still serves to reinforce the sombre mood.

A sudden change in music, although not theme, announces the arrival of the second movement, Malaguena. Chromaticism, present though understated in the first movement, immediately enters the piece with an ascending chromatic scale from C-Bb. The opening vocal phrases of Malaguena use the interval of a perfect fourth, but the two fourths used are a tritone apart: G-C and Db-Gb. When taken with the rapidly, heavily chromatic passages of the strings, they announce, as a distorted fanfare, the arrival of Death. Static melody then underlines the lyrics “Death keeps entering and leaving”, which portray Shostakovich’s view of death as something that may be forgotten about for a while, but never really leaves the picture.

Lorelei is the first of three longer movements, but the swirling, chromatic strings sweep it along at a frenetic pace. Shostakovich contrasts between declamatory recitativ passages in additive time (5/8-3/8-5/8-6/8-5/8…) that advance the story and melodic passages that largely restrain themselves to 9/8 and 15/8 expressing the emotions of the poem’s characters. The result is a small section of tragic opera that could not be more different from the more familiar version of the Lorelei – a dreamy children’s lullaby. The story is seen not so much as a piece of fantasy but of reality – the poem focuses on characters and events rather than myth. Instead of melodious song, listeners hear of the Lorelei’s desire for death.

The lilting 6/8 opening phrases of The Suicide are much more akin to a lullaby. It features the sweet tone of a cello played in its uppermost extremes alongside the soprano voice, creating a particularly tender atmosphere which is only interrupted for one passage, the lyrics of which feature a lily “lacerating” the mouth of the buried suicide. As a whole the movement suggests regret for things past and the fear that in death there is no comfort from the things that seem beautiful in life.

The text of On Watch confronts the idea of death for glory, and Shostakovich’s attitude is immediately apparent. He mocks the traditional military fanfare by having it played not by a rousing trumpet but by a xylophone, as if it is a children’s plaything. Shostakovich clearly thinks that things like ‘glory’ and ‘country’ are not worth dying for. Curiously the German translation, approved personally by the composer, uses the word “Sturmsoldat” for “soldier”, possibly to referring Nazi stormtroopers. Perhaps Shostakovich’s message is that all soldiers are people, whose lives are all worth something.

Madam, Look! turns back to a more operatic approach, with a duet recitativ accompanied at first by a full string texture, that changes to pizzicato following the voice in octaves, recognising the lightness with which the ‘woman’ treats broken hearts – yet this is cruelty, recognised by Shostakovich’s adding minor 2nds below each violin and viola note. The more melodic section of the song employs tritone and 7th leaps alongside chromatic movement to give the woman’s laughter a bitter edge. Love and gaiety stand no chance against the cruel blows of death.

At the Sante Jail is less remarkable for its vocal melodies as for its instrumental section, in which each string grouping is divided into pizzicato and col legno sections, each playing the same melodic material. These dry timbres, combined with the tapping of a woodblock, create an effect of rattling bones, highlighting the inevitability of the death of the poem’s protagonist.

Shostakovich plays up the Russian angle in the Cossacks’ Reply, focusing on taut rhythmic flow. The strongly accented staccato strings give a bold martial feel that supports the impudent nature of the soldier’s words. The final furious flurry of violins is reminiscent of the European avant garde of the time, that was typically suppressed in the Soviet states. In evoking this, whilst writing a piece that honours the Cossacks, another group discriminated against in Soviet Russia, Shostakovich is clearly thumbing his nose at the authorities.

O Delvig, Delvig is perhaps the most intensely emotional movement in the symphony. Once again the upper reaches of the cellos are exploited, both in complex contrapuntal passages and in lush chords with the violas. The augmentation of the second iteration of “Delvig” reeks of desperation. For the listener this seems a very personal plea from Shostakovich against the oppression of artists.

The Poet’s death marks the recapitulation section of the symphony, the strings returning with their melody from De profundis. Much of the movement consists of intimate duets between the soprano and the violins or violas, before the texture slowly thickens, symbolically linking the poet to the world around him. Shostakovich also harks back to earlier sounds in the symphony’s Conclusion, which opens with the same string texture employed in At the Sante Jail.

Recording: Goeteborgs Symfoniker, Neeme Jaervi, with Ljuba Kazarnovskaya and Sergei Leiferkus, 1983

Score: Edition Sikorski Taschenpartitur