Festival at Aix en Provence
LIKE most other festivals this year, Aix has been unobtrusively dominated by Mozart. To four performances of Don Giovanni, with a memorable Elvira by Danco, a very intelligent and finely pointed production by Jean Meyer, and old-fashioned sets of authentic style and atmosphere by A.-M. Cassandre, were added a small Don Giovanni exhibition and six well- chosen Mozart concerts, which included, among the well-known works, the original slow movement of the 'Paris' Symphony (found by Legros too long and too rich in modula- tions), an alternative finale to the Piano
Concerto in D (K.192), an alternative slow movement to the Violin Concerto in A (K.219), the first modern performance of an Allegro, Theme and Variations (K. Supplement 212), and one or two other very early works—adding up in all to an original and valuable contribu- tion to the bicentenary celebrations.
The programme was also adorned with one or two of the touring star-turns of the inter- national festival season—two concerts by 'I Musici,' and three performances of The Barber of Seville by an Italian cast conducted by Giulini, slightly less effervescent than it ought to have been. France's own operatic contribu- tion was a revival of two light comic operas of the eighteenth century—Gretry's mildly pretty trifle Zetnire et Azor, and Rameau's more amusing comedy-ballet Platee, a work of much musical wit and interest, un- fortunately less stylish in the musical per- formance than in the dancing of John Taras's excellent choreography.
In all the operas, and some of the Mozart concerts, the orchestra, which failed in the open-air theatre to make much impression, was that of the Paris Conservatoire Concerts, conducted generally by Rosbaud. The other main orchestra was that of the Sudwestfunk. Baden-Baden, which played most of the rest of the Mozart, and also provided, under Ros- baud and its equally excellent second con- ductor Ernest Bour, the remaining important part of the festival, consisting of four concerts of modern music. These modem concerts, now an annual fixture at Aix, are mostly of French and German music, and generally include some of the extremist works from both countries. The most important this year were a Passacaglia. written in memory of Honegger, by Maurice Jure, more remarkable in tech- nique than in content, and an extended intermezzo for flute and strings from a cantata to a Lorca text by the young Italian neo- Webernite Luigi Nono. This consisted of a fascinating slow movement, of fragmentary orchestral texture in complex rhythms, held together by the coherent force of the more sustained, much simpler, and often very beautiful melodic line of the solo flute, fol- lowed by a relatively banal quick movement of much less interest or promise.
Earlier in the festival the orchestral Varia- tions Op. 30 by Nono's model, Webern, had been played, and the Wind Quintet by Webern's teacher, Schoenberg. Technically Webern explored the revolutionary pos- sibilities of Schoenberg's twelve-note tech- nique much more radipally than its inventor. and Nano. in company with several other young French, German and Italian composers, has now carried Webern's technique to still further extremes of mathematical note- juggling and discontinuity )3f musical texture. But in aural effect the Nono was like Webern made more communicative by melodic enrich- ment, as the Webern in turn, in comparison with the Schoenberg, was an easy and pretty little piece, like a very simple and tuneful Mozart rondo in comparison with Bach's Art of Fugue. With their more complex techniques, evidently, Schoenberg's successors are seeking, and finding, ways of making twelve-note music not more but less complex in sound. and more easily intelligible and attractive to the ear. Such seemed to be the lesson of these three works. This need not mean that Schoenberg's use of the technique was invalid, not for him- self at any rate. The time will no doubt come when our ears can take in even his music fully, and he will find proper appreciation of his genius as a composer. But it is probably as a master of pre-twelve-note music, only aspiring towards true dodecaphony, that he will finallf be recognised, his contribution to twelve-note technique being admitted only as the invention of the means to the new and aurally simpler music that he himself was too deeply rooted in the old musical traditions ever to write.
That this trend in twelve-note music WaS made so clear, we owed very much to tbe excellent understanding of it by the players and conductors of the Sudwestfunk Orchestra, whose performances, when the rustling of tbe trees, the noise of aeroplanes, the chiming ef bells, and the protests of the crickets allowed, and when one was sitting near enough to hear the sound they were making before OS substance got hopelessly dispersed on the open air, left as deep an impression as anything in varied and wholly enjoyable festival.
COLIN MA5014
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