Concert review

Alpine sounds with a difference

The special concert as part of the subscription cycle of the Vorarlberg Symphony Orchestra (SOV) brought an encounter with extraordinary works at the Festspielhaus Bregenz. 

We remember: for many years, opera was performed in the Ländle in February as a collaboration between the Vorarlberger Landestheater and the Vorarlberg Symphony Orchestra, which also included opera in its subscription. This year, no opera production is possible for budgetary reasons, so the SOV compensated its subscribers with an extraordinary concert evening. This took place on Saturday and Sunday in the Festspielhaus Bregenz. Both items on the program were linked to the Alps.

The first was "A Padmore Cycle" by Tyrolean composer Thomas Larcher, born in 1963, a cycle for tenor and large orchestra based on cryptic-aphoristic texts by Hans Aschenwald and Alois Hotschnig. It is an extremely impressive composition with a lot of quiet, noisy sounds and only sometimes, but all the more excitingly, clusters of sounds. The tenor part - originally written for Mark Padmore - also tends to be conducted in the quiet range, indeed it is often just a whisper. Ilker Arcajürek, who grew up in Vienna, leads his voice with a noble, bright timbre. The fact that little of the text was understood was not due to him, but to the composition.

"Eine Albensinfonie": a work that is difficult to grasp
From a quiet beginning back to quiet again, this is how one could describe the course of Richard Strauss' work "Eine Alpensinfonie", composed in the winter of 1914/15. On the surface, it is a tone poem depicting a mountain hike, beginning in the dark, then the "sunrise" and finally "on the summit". The hiker is then caught in a thunderstorm before it calms down again and night falls. However, if you follow the genesis of the work, other content emerges, such as Nietzsche's provocative essay "The Antichrist" or the life story of the Swiss painter Karl Stauffer. "Eine Alpensinfonie" is rarely performed, although the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra performed the work on its American tour a year ago.

It requires an enormous contingent of around 120 musicians, including 16 (!) horns, some of which, together with trombones, act as a "remote orchestra" behind the stage. Gustav Mahler sends his regards, just as the "Alpine Symphony" makes a rather epigonal impression, especially in view of the other works by Richard Strauss. One has the feeling of listening to a kaleidoscope of previously existing works, without a real thematic center, as in the Munich master's earlier tone poems.

Aufwand would have deserved a more expressive score
The SOV under its chief conductor Leo McFall mastered this mammoth score with few weaknesses with impressive assurance and beautiful sound. However, the high expenditure of musicians and their energy and passion would have been far more appropriate for a more expressive score, for example - just a suggestion - for a work by Olivier Messiaen. And because there was talk of money at the beginning: Richard Strauss was paid 100,000 marks for his "Alpine Symphony" at the time, or around 480,000 euros in today's money. Anna Mika