György Kurtág Endgame (UK premiere). Frode Olsen, Hamm; Morgan Moody, Clov; Hilary Summers, Nell; Leonardo Cortellazzi, Nagg; BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Ryan Wigglesworth, conductor. Victoria Newlyn, stage director
This is an event that I really felt duty-bound to go to, without necessarily a huge amount of enthusiasm – but a new work by the last of the great European post-war modernist composers still alive, and a magnum opus of his being given its UK premiere both felt like ‘musts’; it was time to grit my teeth and embrace the new.
It’s interesting how – relatively speaking – full the RAH seemed for this performance. The upper ranges were more or less empty but the stalls and boxes were full and so as well was the arena – surprising for what one might have assumed in advance to be a somewhat tough-listening experience. I remember reading about a Proms performance of Messiaen’s Francis of Assisi opera given at the Proms about 40 years ago and the reviewer referring to rows of empty seats, and it being a thoroughly dismal concert. Kurtag’s work by contrast had a warm and appreciative audience last night – there was a lot of hype about this performance in advance (e.g. an article in the Guardian) which might partly explain the crowd but I’ve noticed generally increased numbers at all the Proms I’ve been to this year – partly based on the huge numbers of tourists, in London no doubt – but this was one, obviously based on my purely subjective views, that didn’t seem to have tourists boosting the numbers . A few people left as the performance proceeded but the overwhelming majority stayed to the end and cheered.
Nor indeed was the work as rebarbative as I’d feared. OK, the combination of Beckett and Kurtag isn’t going to make for a Barber of Seville experience, but I was surprised by the relative absence of dissonant grinding chords and also the way in which the text was used to create wisps of melody, based on speech patterns, throughout the work (slightly like Janacek, I suppose). It was all thoroughly listenable to and there are moments of great beauty – Nell singing about boating on Lake Como, for instance. I guess Endgame is in fact an odd work to wish to set as an opera, given that the point of the play is that none of the characters can communicate effectively with each other, and that silences are at times as important as words – whereas music is precisely all about communication (though silence is also important)……..It is however a tribute to Kurtag’s skill that somehow the opera was a different experience to watching the play – not just a theatre piece with some incidental music, but Kurtag has created something new artistically, and the music provides connections that the words of the characters cannot . The text – allusive, gnomic, spare – and music seemed well suited to each other. The orchestra is large, but with less than the normal number of strings, making for a sharp, crystalline musical sound world, heavy on brass, wind and percussion, all of which are used sparingly and often very quietly.
This is an ideal opera for a concert performance – static, no real need for scenery or indeed props apart from the two barrels for Nell and Nagg and Hamm’s toy dog. The singers performed on the upper level of the stage below the organ, lit as they would be in the theatre (with Sir Henry Wood being an occasional unintended participant). Clov is the only person who moves around and he had the full length of the stage to do so. Some shapes and scenery were projected onto the wall immediately below the Choir area – these were intermittent and didn’t really add much. The only slight setback in the staging was the strange English sometimes used in the surtitles – Hamm calling a walking stick a stanchion, for isntance. It became apparent why when a Iook through the programme credits disclosed that the surtitles were provided by Flemish Opera.
All the singers were utterly credible in their roles. Nagg has the most ‘characterful’ role and this was very well done by Leonardo Cortellazzi. Hamm has to do the lion’s share of the singing and did so magnificently. Ryan Wigglesworth seemed totally in command of the music and had indeed met Kurtag earlier in the year in Budapest to discuss the work
Was this an utterly absorbing experience ? – yes, it was. I really enjoyed listening to this – perhaps ‘enjoy’ is not quite the right word, but certainly it felt like time very well spent – it was an intense experience. Would I want to repeat it? – not soon, but yes. Currently Kurtag has only set some 60% of the play . There is a hope – perhaps forlorn- given that he is now 97 – that he may yet be able to set more of this to music.
There is sometimes a bit of an Emperor’s New Clothes aspect to responses to new music by famous composers, and so, analysing my reactions to the work and what I’ve written above, my only query would be about seeing it in the opera house – it made a lot of sense for it to be a staged concert version, but what would it feel like in the opera house – is there enough action for it to absorb the audience in the same way? There were a few times when I felt things were moving very slowly – at such points in a concert there is plenty look at in the orchestra, but obviously that’s not an option in the opera house
John's musical journey 