Fake Beaches, Brahms in Austria, Penderecki

Last week I saw Jacob Lenz, an opera by Wolfgang Rihm. This photo of the cast was taken at curtain call. I’m still processing the opera and the book (Lenz, by Georg Büchner), a short but intense read.

After working inside today, I forfeited my last chance to see Lohengrin, opting instead for a long early evening walk by the Danube Canal accompanied by a luscious pastel sunset. Vienna must offer more benches, chairs, lounges, stairs, and fountains---wide expanses of grass, too---to sit on or near than any other city. The river was lined on both sides with informal and inviting pubs, clubs, many nestled into fake beaches, with lounging chairs sinking into the sand, and music often provided by a dj. One pub/club/hangout, a kind of immense houseboat, sported a pool overlooking the river.

Yesterday, part of the afternoon was happily spent hearing the Vienna Philharmonic perform Krzysztof Penderecki’s Adagio – Fourth Symphony for Large Orchestra, followed by Symphony No. 2 in D Major by Johannes Brahms. Penderecki’s symphony began in such a mild-mannered, gently lyrical way that I had to check the program to be sure that I was at the right concert. It evolved quickly, however, into the dissonant, clustered string sonorities indicative of his many of his other works. He requested that three additional trumpets be placed in the hall. In the Musikverein, the players stood in the balcony above and behind the orchestra, dramatically enhancing the antiphonal passages with the seated trumpets below. Lorin Maazel conducted the Paris premiere in 1989 with the National Orchestra of France, and was the conductor in this concert as well. The luminous strings in the Brahms were transcendent, even when they were only playing pizzicato. He wrote the symphony quickly, in one summer, while living in Pörtschach am Wörthersee, a town in southern Austria. Also known as the ‘Nature Symphony’ of Brahms, he invoked the beauty of the region, “the bright blue sky, trickling springs, sunshine and cool, green shade”---a comment attributed to Theodor Billroth, surgeon and friend of the composer, after playing through a piano reduction for four hands with Brahms.