Page 605 - Media Coverage Book - 75th Aldeburgh Festival 2024

Schoenberg’s instrumentation is innovative and stylish to the core as he uses a different
pairing for each number apart from the last when the full ensemble comes together.
Schoenberg also employs the use of ‘sprechstimme’ (‘speech-voice’) frequently used in 20th-
century music and so closely associated with his compositions. He first used the technique
in Pierrot lunaire although it was used by Engelbert Humperdinck a few years earlier in his
melodrama, Königskinder, in 1897.

A remarkable and internationally-renowned singer and perfect for Schoenberg, Claire Booth
has just issued a couple of recordings marking the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth
namely Pierrot lunaire and Expressionist Music: A Schoenberg Songbook (generously
supported by the Schoenberg Centre, Vienna) pairing Schoenberg’s songs with eight of his
own paintings taking its cue from the composer’s statement that ‘painting is the same to me
as making music’. Mendelssohn, a gifted watercolourist, felt the same way, too. On a trip to
Switzerland in 1838, he wrote to his life-long friend, Carl Klingemann, revealing that he had
composed not even a bit of music but sketched and drew entire days to his heart’s content!

Staying over for a further concert on the final Saturday of the festival (22 June), Claire Booth
and The Nash Ensemble offered an attractive programme conducted by Martyn Brabbins
comprising Beethoven’s Clarinet Trio in B flat, Op.11, Julian Anderson’s Three Songs,
Judith Weir’s Distance and Enchantment and Mozart’s Piano Quartet No.1 in G minor.

Scored for the rare combination of clarinet, cello and piano, Beethoven’s Clarinet Trio, a
work of expansive and genial elegance, provided a good ‘opener’ for a late-morning concert
in the Britten Studio. Composed in 1798, just before Beethoven turned his attention to his
first set of string quartets, the work found great favour with a packed house with the sprightly
and tuneful last movement ending a nice playful and lyrical piece. Comprising variations on
‘Pria ch’io l’impegno’(‘Before I begin this task, I need a snack’) from Joseph Weigl’s comic
opera, L’amor marinaro, which was all the rage in Vienna in 1797. Beethoven was quick off
the mark to cash in on it!

Julian Anderson’s Three Songs so well-suited Claire Booth’s voice. They were simply
delightful. A 12-minute work, the first song, ‘le 3 mai’, set to a text by Ahmed Essyad,
written in 2020, focuses on the Covid-19 social restrictions with a brilliant satirical-like line
‘I embrace you all, this kiss is pure, without Covid’; the second ‘Tombeau’, set to a text by
Stéphane Mallarmé, commissioned by the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group in 2017
for a celebration of the music of Debussy in 2018, was pure delight; the third, ‘THUS’, a
setting of the last verse of Henry Longfellow’s poem, Rain in Summer, had members of The
Nash Ensemble adding percussive sounds to the performance by heavily stamping their feet
hard on the boards of the stage (as part of the score, of course!) at the same time as playing
their instruments with Anderson employing a bass clarinet thus adding an extra dimension to
the overall mood of the piece.

In Judith Weir’s Distance and Enchantment, the composer sums up her piece as a musical
essay about people who suddenly disappear from home never to return, a strikingly common
occurrence nowadays. But what is not such a common occurrence is a sudden break in
performance. Just a few minutes into the piece, Adrian Brendel had a fright (the audience,
too, to a certain extent!) as he was up-and-ended when the piano stool he favours for
performance collapsed - maybe under the strain of Mozart! Shades of the British rock group,
The Who, who would smash to smithereens stuff and the like at the end of their
performance.