|
RECITAL REVIEW
Henze's Royal Winter Music, Shakespeare for the Guitar
March 5, 2001
|
By Scott Cmiel
Hans Werner Henze turned 75 this year and David Tanenbaum presented a celebratory performance of his Royal Winter Music at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music last Monday. The work, which consists of two sonatas that reflect on Shakespearean characters, represents some of the most ambitious music in the guitar repertory.
The speech "Now is the winter of our discontent," from Richard III, inspired both the title of the cycle and the opening movement, "Gloucester." That movement's rhythmically jagged, melodically disjunct first theme portrays Richard's barely contained rage at his fate. Following sonata form, this is contrasted with a legato second theme, using the implied polyphony favored by lute composers and portraying the idle pleasures enjoyed by the rest of the royal court. Tanenbaum captured these extreme moods while creating a remarkable dramatic synergy that led inexorably to the startling modified recapitulation, with its percussive effects unprecedented in their variety, intensity, and structural necessity.
The emphatic music of "Gloucester" is followed by three quiet and intimate movements. "Romeo and Juliet" is a secretive duet between the masculine lower pitches of the guitar's range and the feminine higher pitches. Generally soft and consonant, it builds to a forte climax that uses more dissonant intervals and rhythmic independence, perhaps reflecting the tragic aspects of the story.
"Ariel" is a quicksilver fantasy that depicts three episodes in The Tempest when that imprisoned spirit plays a harp. Henze imitates the harp with a series of extraordinary arpeggios that create a bell-tone "campanella" texture and involve the entire range of the guitar. "Ophelia" is a gentle, plaintive setting of the song "'Tis the Last Rose of Summer," which Henze imagines Hamlet's mad and pathetic friend singing, in half-forgotten phrases, as she drowns. The melody is very high on the instrument. Sometimes phrases are complete, but more often they break off unpredictably. The accompaniment is suggestive of waves, at first gently rocking but gradually slower and more overwhelming as Ophelia presumably drowns. Tanenbaum's playing was tender, mercurial, and heartbreaking. "Touchstone, Audrey and William" is a scherzo that portrays three minor characters from As You Like It: Touchstone, the sophisticated clown, William, the country bumpkin, and Audrey, the country maid they fight over. A hilarious transformation of an Elizabethan galliard, this masterpiece of comic portrayal concludes with the victorious Touchstone engaging in some macho posturing to the sound of flamenco rasgueados. Tanenbaum (playing Touchstone's displaced dance rhythms with panache and executing Williams' drone on open fifths with gusto) made us smile.
"Oberon" is a sonata rondo characterized primarily by a peaceful rising diatonic motive that contrasts with the capricious music of Puck and incorporates music reminiscent of earlier movements. The peaceful introspection of Tanenbaum's playing made this final movement of the First Sonata a benediction on the passions experienced throughout. The Second Sonata of Royal Winter Music, in three movements, is a sonata in the simple pre-Classical sense of an extended instrumental work, not an example of the later Classical sonata form. It begins with two gracious portraits. "Sir Andrew Aguecheek," from Twelfth Night, is a spoiled aristocrat totally out of touch with reality, and his campaign to win the love of Olivia is doomed to failure. Henze writes a gently comic march that continually breaks down and loses focus in a series of episodes sometimes touching and sometimes humorous but always irrelevant to Aguecheek's purpose. A desultory march is an oxymoron, and Tanenbaum provides the subtle and deft rhythmic sense this music requires. "Bottom's Dream" eschews the broad satire often associated with the story of this simple buffoon, focusing instead on the sweet bliss of Bottom's fantasy that all the boorishness that has hitherto encumbered him has fallen away and that he lies blissfully in Titania's arms. Tanenbaum invests the predominant falling thirds and sixths with a wistful and gentle enchantment.
The final movement, "Mad Lady Macbeth," is an incredible tour de force. Henze imagines the madwoman "clad in a long robe, her hair undone, her crazy eyes following the smoky flickering light of a candle. . . . She is totally mad, talks incoherently, sings dirty ditties, swears and shouts. For all that . . . her madness is majestic." The score includes instructions to the guitarist at various times to play fiercely, proudly, with pathos, with noisy vulgarity and weeping. Henze calls for a dynamic range from pppp to ffff, 20 tempo changes, and unconventional vibrato, tamboura, glissandi, and percussion. Tanenbaum met the huge demands placed on the performer with passion and persuasive conviction. While his fragile Ophelia evoked pity, his interpretation of Mad Lady Macbeth was terrifying. In an introductory note to the score, Henze wrote that the guitar "possesses a richness of sound capable of embracing everything one might find in a gigantic contemporary orchestra; but one has to start from silence to notice this: one has to pause and completely exclude noise." Tanenbaum's mastery of the extreme dynamic range and broad color palette necessary to project Henze's orchestral vision, as well as his intimate understanding of the score based on almost 20 years of performance and collaboration with the composer, made this the most profound and enjoyable guitar event of the season. (Scott Cmiel is a guitarist on the faculties of the San Francisco Conservatory and the University of California, Berkeley, SCmiel@aol.com) ©2001 Scott Cmiel, all rights reserved |
