Think of it as a very entertaining get-together. The opera in Rome gave the impetus, they wanted an opera by Morton Feldman, the libretto was to be provided by Samuel Beckett. The two met in Berlin in 1976, assured each other of their mutual respect, but also their skepticism towards the opera genre. Above all, both had a very negative attitude towards setting texts to music. A little later Beckett sent Feldman a text consisting of 87 enigmatically assembled words, no poem, no libretto, and above all no story, because narration was the least thing they liked in opera. Feldman then turned it into a piece that trades as an opera, but – in the traditionalist sense – is not one, and whose performance in the Kollegienkirche now marks the end of the “Time with Feldman”, the last of four composer portrait concerts at the Salzburg Festival.
For Feldman’s standards “Neither” – in German “neither” – is a compact process of around 50 minutes, which is enough to destroy any supposed security in dealing with art. Beckett’s words can perhaps best be described as a linguistic image that outlines the impossibility of understanding oneself. Here, however, Beckett hits a core of Feldman’s composing, when he dissolves time and frees the sounds from all constructivism. The lyrics and music of “Neither” are certainly an imposition, but also the grandiose fascination of uncertainty. Since many are still hoping for an answer, the people in the sold-out church listen intently; outside there are still some waiting for tickets. For this concert. That is also Salzburg.
Morton Feldman’s “Neither” is based on a text by Beckett and goes by the name of an opera – but in the traditionalist sense it is not at all.
(Photo: Rob Bogaerts / Anefo)
Roland Kluttig, chief conductor of the Graz Opera, steps in for Ilan Volkov at very short notice, but neither he nor the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra seem to be impressed – the performance is an exercise of extreme precision, a constantly changing timbral play, invented with the most stubborn repetitions of microparticles or whole blocks. Sarah Aristidou takes on the vocal part. In any case, Feldman hardly cares that one understands the words in his setting. Several times he leaves the singing with pure vocalises, often insisting on one tone, from which he builds enormous increases twice. In these now Aristidou struggles like in a quarry, makes the physical effort tangible – this singing is hard work. With this and with the broken mechanics of the orchestra, the impression of a desperate run arises. This art would be desolate if it did not also have a peculiar beauty in it.
Before “Neither”, the orchestra and the Minguet Quartet play Feldman’s “String Quartet and Orchestra”, a twenty-minute idea how to understand sound in space. It begins with a quote from Anton Webern’s early string quartets, which has an amazing melodic sweetness that hardly anyone felt that way back then, at the beginning of the 20th century. But what was atonal-terrible at the time is now an inkling of something concrete, which Feldman consequently refuses with his shimmering construct. So this piece would be a good preparation for “Neither”, but it would have required a seamless transition, not a break that lasts longer than “String Quartet and Orchestra” itself.