From everywhere, music lovers travel in March to the Charente-Maritime, about 100 km north of Bordeaux, to personally come and reserve their concert tickets and choose the best seats. For this, people even spend the night in sleeping bags in the inner courtyard of the abbey. A loyal festival visitor from East Flanders already had queue number 42 in l'Abboutique at 6 o'clock in the morning.
Like in the early days, the festival has its 'musical friends'. Usual suspects from our country include Huelgas Ensemble, Graindelavoix, Vox Luminis, Oxalys, Het Collectief and of course founding father of the festival Philippe Herreweghe with his Orchestre des Champs-Elysées and/or Collegium Vocale.
Unique coup de coeur
The opening concert on July 12 in the Gothic cathedral Saint-Pierre could be followed outside via headphones. Whoever sent in the most original photo of this happening had a chance to win free concert tickets. Le Concert Spirituel and Hervé Niquet built a staged program around an eight-part mass by Orazio Benevolo (1605-1672). Too bad I missed this monumental concert. It must have been quite impressive, époustouflant. Fortunately, the Missa si Deus pro nobis can still be heard on March 16, 2020 at BOZAR during the Klarafestival. My coup de coeur of this festival edition is the unique production of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde by Het Collectief under the direction of Reinbert de Leeuw and with vocal soloists Lucile Richardot and Yves Saelens.
Mahler bouleversant Gérard Pangon in Musikzen Au festival de Saintes, Mahler fait le bonheur des mélomanes Thierry Collard in Sud-Ouest Le maestro hollandais, dont les mouvements et le corps se courbent sous le poids de l'œuvre et des années, maintient solides les complexes fils de la polyphonie Vojin Jaglicic in Ôlyrix
Neither Mahler nor Schönberg ever heard their own score of Das Lied von der Erde. That cannot be said of Reinbert de Leeuw, who conducted his own arrangement for chamber music ensemble in Saintes with verve. He wrote it in 2011 for the Asko-Schönberg ensemble as part of the Rotterdam Operadagen. It is unfortunate, however, that both the programme notes and the French music press maintain that the Schönberg version was performed in Saintes, especially since we know that de Leeuw is not at all fond of the 'reduction' that Schönberg began in 1921 and that Rainer Riehn completed in 1983. The now elderly and fragile conductor takes the stage in Saintes only to immediately conduct a 15-member army of soloists with a strong hand. Whaam – what a grand sound bursts forth here, what dynamics. With your eyes closed, you sometimes think you hear an orchestra at full strength. Many of them came for this occasion from the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra to bring Het Collectief à géométrie variable up to the required number. Das Lied is a song cycle for tenor and mezzo-soprano: two voices that never touch. One rises as the other leaves the stage, each in his own universe. Since his first collaboration with de Leeuw at the Rotterdam Operadagen, Yves Saelens has seen these two voices as an example of yin and yang, man and woman: the complementarity of two complementary opposites that question each other, perhaps don't even understand each other, but still try to reach each other. In the poetry that Mahler selected, Saelens also sees that strange, oriental element: attractive, moving, profound, wild, life-hungry, hushed, letting go … All in one. Woman with two voices
In the production in Saintes, the voices also came literally from another world. Stephan Maciejewski, the artistic director of the festival who took over concert programming from Herreweghe in 1996, took a gamble. He invited someone from the baroque genre: the French Lucile Richardot. You may know her, among other things, from the recording Perpetual Night that she made with ensemble Correspondances. She would never have accepted Mahler's original Lied von der Erde, says Richardot, but she could still see a version for chamber music. Richardot is the woman with two voices: crystal clear, almost sharp in the high register only to switch in one and the same sentence to a warm, rounded sound that embraces you. Yes, some will see this as a technical flaw. I found it rather fascinating. And with what ease and how modestly she sings this unfamiliar repertoire.
Yves Saelens has a lifelong bond with Das Lied. In 1998 he already sang the Schönberg/Riehn version at a festival in Tours. And in 2011 he sang the transcription of Reinbert de Leeuw together with Birgit Remmert, a semi-scenic performance that was subsequently heard, among others, at the Klara Festival 2012. Like a heroic tenor, Yves Saelens throws himself into Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde here in Saintes. He raises his glass, everything bursting open, the great primal scream of life. Even without a programme note, you believe what he tells. Unfortunately, it is to be regretted that his voice, especially in the first and third songs, seemed to sink somewhat into the collective, which was not the case with Richardot. Admittedly, the mezzo sings mainly during the softer orchestral passages, while the tenor often has to battle against heavy fortes. Is the acoustics of L'Abbaye after all not suitable for this repertoire? Do these 15 soloists play with such conviction that they become disproportionately large? Or has de Leeuw in his enthusiasm not maintained the balance well? By the way, in other concerts at L'Abbatiale in Saintes we also heard singers who could not rise above the instruments, as with Gli Angeli under the direction of Stephan MacLeod to name just one.
The grand and the intimate
Unlike the Schönberg/Riehn version, Reinbert de Leeuw has provided a harp and the piano only has to take on one harp part – Mahler writes two for – instead. Dunkel ist das Leben sounds lighter and more bearable with harp accompaniment. Instead of one, de Leeuw uses two clarinets. Also striking is the contrabassoon, which blends beautifully with other instruments such as the gong and the cello which together ring the death knells. Or are they rather whiplashes chasing after you: come on, do something, because life is short. Where Schönberg omits the celesta (to save money?), Reinbert de Leeuw, as in the symphonic original in Der Abschied, opts for a celesta that engages in intimate dialogue with the harp. Unmoved, in the best sense of the word, Lucile Richardot is the high priestess who pronounces the words Ewig … ewig over her listeners.
Ich wandle nach der Heimat, meiner Stätte Ich werde niemals in die Ferne schweifen Still ist mein Herz und harret seiner Stunde!
Since the private concerts of the Vienna Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen that Schönberg founded in 1918, symphonic works have been performed in pocket format. The fact that they cost the organizer less is a nice bonus. Whether they represent an amputation of the original is a matter for discussion. With Das Lied by de Leeuw we could hear once again that a chamber music version tells exactly the same story as its grand predecessor from 1909. Only the musical lines and the text become clearer, the details much more audible, the color palette more refined, all bombast – for those who didn't appreciate it – has vanished and the end result is simply much more poetical. As pianist and artistic director of Het Collectief Thomas Dieltjens says, this version by de Leeuw brings together the best of two worlds: the grand and the intimate. However dark life may be, after this concert I felt reasonably reconciled with the eternal circle of Life and Death. After such an intense concert experience, you mainly want to remain silent. The fireworks and traditional ball of the Quatorze Juillet were not for me. One can only hope that this production will be heard in our region again.
Gallia Théâtre is the cinema in Saintes that shows quality films. During the festival you can go there for films that have a direct link with the concert programming. This summer, among other things, La tourneuse de pages by Denis Dercourt, the Mahler documentary Autopsy of a genius by Andy Sommer and the cult film Mahler by Ken Russell from 1974 with Robert Powell in the role of the composer were shown there. In the chapter hall of the abbey, the exhibition Mahler, mon temps viendra… is on display.
In March the program of the Festival van Saintes 2020 will be announced. In the second part of this report you will soon read more about this festival, which brings together the best of two worlds: vacation and culture.
- WHAT: concert review from the Festival van Saintes 2019. Part 1.
- WHO: Het Collectief conducted by Reinbert de Leeuw || Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) – Das Lied von der Erde
- WHERE: L'Abbatiale, Saintes, France
- WHEN: Sunday 14 July 2019
- PHOTOS: © Sébastien Laval | Johan Vandenbosch
- CONCERT TIPS:
- On 26 November 2019 (20:00) Lucile Richardot can be heard at the Fondation Axel Vervoort in Wijnegem in the program Perpetual Nights with ensemble Correspondances conducted by Sébastien Daucé.
- Yves Saelens performs with Oxalys in the program The Curlew, British chamber music by, among others, Vaughan Williams, Warlock and Dove on 3 October 2019 (20:30) in the Grote Aula Maria Theresia in Leuven. In February 2020 he sings in the Da Ponte trilogy by Mozart at De Munt in Brussels.