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Two world premieres and three women centre-stage: last Friday’s concert at Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Saal looked exciting.
It was Ukrainian conductor Oksana Lyniv who had suggested that Munich-based Russian composer Vladimir Genin write two operatic miniatures. He responded with Alkestis (2015) and Orpheus. Eurydike. Hermes (2017) — both setting poems by Rainer Maria Rilke for solo voice and strings.
It took longer than anticipated for the works to receive their first performance, but time has made the ancient Greek themes of love, loss, sacrifice and regret more relevant than ever.
It is part of the Boulez Saal’s brief to experiment with form in the presentation of chamber music, with an eye to the future. This is the second music-theatre evening in the hall this month, following a dynamic incarnation of Handel’s Aci, Galatea e Polifemo with puppetry by South African director Janni Younge.
Neither evening quite met conventional definitions of music theatre — the Handel because the boldly illustrative nature of the puppetry inevitably sidelined the singers, and the Genin pieces because almost no staging was attempted. Better, then, to view both as innovative takes on the medium of chamber music and set aside any operatic expectations.
Alkestis preceded the interval. Here, with mezzo Susan Zarrabi singing the single role carefully, the Boulez Ensemble occasionally ventured into microtonal territory — or were they just playing out of tune? In retrospect, there were probably moments of both. Most orchestral entries were ragged, which suggested insufficient rehearsal, but also a lack of trust between players and conductor.
After the interval, Thea Musgrave’s Orfeo II continued the theatrical theme, but without singers; a solo flautist, Alberto Acuña Almela, played the title role, while a solo violin in the hall’s upper circle answered with snatches of Gluck.
The moment Christopher Ainslie set foot on the stage for Orpheus. Eurydike. Hermes at the end of the evening, everything shifted. Ainslie has theatre in every molecule. He knows how to stand on a stage in front of an audience. Simple, right? Evidently not. He prowled around the seated chamber orchestra like a caged lion, and when he sang, his entire body participated. This was music theatre. It is a skill set. This was the instant when the evening became more than a chamber music concert.
Though Ainslie is a countertenor, Genin’s short drama called for him to add his baritone register and, at times, to speak and shout. The orchestra spoke too. Rilke’s evocative text picks the moment when Orpheus looks back and loses everything. Genin’s music is largely tonal, deft and pictorial without lapsing into kitsch. It is not radical, not experimental, but it is also never dull.
Still, it would have benefited from more precision and greater dynamic range. Lyniv seldom looked up from the score and beat time with grimly metronomic determination; she did little to shape the lines, and often barely held things together.
Lyniv is clearly a strong and significant musical figure, with plenty to say and boatloads of courage, but it would do her good to spend a bit of time out of the limelight, working on her technique.
★★★☆☆
boulezsaal.de