ICSM Online Journal > Reviews

Erwin Schulhoff: Flammen
KlangBogen, Wien 7 August 2006 and subsequently

Reviewed by Michael Eagleton
posted 14 Feb 2007

Proudly proclaiming itself as ‘Vienna’s New Opera House’ (Fidelio notwithstanding!), the Theater an der Wien was as usual hosting the main attractions in this year’s Vienna summer festival, KlangBogen Wien 2006. There was a new Don Giovanni directed by Keith Warner and conducted by the Frenchman Bertrand de Billy, by now probably more Viennese than the Viennese themselves after a long association with the Volksoper and the Radio Symphony Orchestra. And running in tandem with Mozart the same artistic team were responsible for the first complete staging since its 1932 premiere in Brno of Flammen (Flames) by Erwin Schulhoff.

Schulhoff was born in Prague in 1894, to a German-speaking Jewish family, and, on the recommendation of no less a figure than Dvořák, was accepted as a piano student at the age of ten at the Prague Conservatory. Studies in Vienna , Leipzig , and Cologne followed, and prizes won both as pianist and composer. He lived in Germany until 1923, when he returned to Prague with quite some reputation as a pianist specialising in music of the avant-garde (in particular the quarter-tone music of Alois Hába). From 1933 onwards he was, of course, precluded from working in Germany but continued composing, and even after 1939 was still playing as a jazz pianist (under a pseudonym) for Czech Radio in Ostrava. He was interned in Prague in 1941, and died in 1942 in the concentration camp at Wülzburg.

Two considerable influences were crucial to his musical development. Firstly his experiences in the Austrian Army during the First World War resulted in a lifelong commitment to socialism – he was later to pen a large-scale oratorio based on the Communist Manifesto, with the writings of Marx and Engels – and eventually he applied for Soviet citizenship which was granted, though an exit visa to the Soviet Union arrived too late and he was interned as a citizen of an enemy state. Second, his introduction to jazz, where a major influence was the caricaturist George Grosz – of a similar political outlook as well as an avid collector of jazz records. But although jazz was a major component of the works of his German years, on his return to Czechoslovakia in 1923 it was overtaken by a growing awareness of the music of his native country, of folk music, and its contemporary exponent Janáček.

It was through a meeting with Janáček’s friend and biographer Max Brod, shortly after his return to Prague , that Schulhoff began work on his only opera. Discussing the Don Juan legend as a possible subject, Brod introduced him to a newly written verse play by the Czech writer Karel Josef Beneš. Schulhoff and Beneš agreed to co-operate, and the resulting text was translated into German by Brod. Composition was slow, however, not only because of Schulhoff’s many other commitments, but because he found it hard going. His introduction to the piece at its premiere recalls ‘a time of endless torment’. Some nine years after the first meeting with Brod, the opera received its first performance at the Zemské theatre in Brno , sung in Czech (titled Plameny) conducted by Zdenĕk Chalabala, in January 1932. A proposed staging in Berlin under Erich Kleiber was abandoned, and the piece lay forgotten for sixty years. There has been one previous staging, in Leipzig during the 1994–95 season, but with a reduced orchestration by the then Intendant Udo Zimmerman. This seems to have generated little enthusiasm, and certainly little critical response, but in 1996 Decca released a recording made in 1993 by John Mauceri and the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin , surely one of the most important issues in their Entartete Musik series. There was a concert performance in Amsterdam in May 2005, conducted by Edo de Waart.

Among the many variants on the Don Juan legend which have appeared in Western literature over the years. Mozart’s is, of course, pre-eminent, and in Schulhoff’s version we meet Donna Anna and the Commendatore again. Indeed, Schulhoff includes quotations from Don Giovanni. But while Mozart’s Don is an adventurous libertine, irrepressible and irresponsible, Schulhoff’s Don Juan is a cursed character, a victim caged by his past exploits. Besides Don Juan himself and the principal female character, the ubiquitous Woman – one singer, who appears as a nun, Donna Anna, and Margarethe), there is a (female) chorus of five Shadows, who introduce and comment on the action. There is also the pivotal character La Morte, an ‘angel of death’ figure who haunts him day and night. Juan can only be released from his torment by union with her, but that moment never arrives. He is condemned to everlasting life….

The opera has little narrative as such, rather a series of unconnected scenes, ten in all, each with an individual title ranging from the abstract to the specific The opening Nocturne sets the scene: a solo flute mysteriously draws us into the action, and entices Juan into a house, from which moans of ecstasy can soon be heard. In ‘ Midnight Mass’ he is seduced by a nun on the altar steps: the organ strikes up but is drowned out, Ives-like, by a mocking foxtrot. In the penultimate scene, ‘ Banquet’, the headless Commendatore arrives, interrupting Juan and La Morte. Don Juan shoots himself, but is immediately transformed into a young man again, thrown back into his endless cycle of life. The concluding Nocturne shows Juan once more entering the same darkened house, accompanied again by the solo flute. La Morte hovers in the darkness, singing the final words: ‘salvation is so distant – again…’.

There are lengthy orchestral interludes, hugely atmospheric and dreamy sequences, achieved through highly chromatic and rich polyphonic textures. Every so often these clear, to reveal clear single strands, which meander seemingly aimlessly. One is reminded of Schulhoff’s teacher Max Reger, but perhaps more of Szymanowski and certainly of Scriabin. This music needs space to breathe, and was not helped by the rather boxy acoustic of the Theater an der Wien. Nevertheless, the Symphony Orchestra of Vienna Radio coped manfully, and De Billy certainly had the measure of this highly original score.

Mention of the Scriabin is pertinent for another reason. Schulhoff’s stage directions are specific in their demands concerning an all-pervading darkness, punctuated by revealing shafts of light and colour, and the Shadows’ commentary similarly continually makes reference to colour and light imagery.

Much of this was ignored by Keith Warner and his designer Es Devlin, but instead the idea of entrapment was carried one stage further. A background cityscape composed of old newspapers (eagle-eyed members of the audience could see that they were dated at the time of the composer’s death) from which segments were removed to form a window (‘ Nocturne’) or intersecting streets highlighted to form a cross (‘ Midnight Mass’), all sufficing to reinforce Juan’s inability to escape his past. As a concept, this was spot-on, but, as is so often the case with Warner, over zealous detail clouds the effect. Some of the stage business during the orchestral interludes was distracting, particularly the Shadows’ predilection for chalking on a blackboard to remind us the Don’s – and Schulhoff’s – historical context. We should be able to get the message without such obvious pointers. The newspaper background disappeared for the most beautiful and poignant scene, ‘ Dialogue with the sea’, in which Juan yearns for the releasing embrace of La Morte. In this production, Juan is being rowed by La Morte in a boat destined, perhaps, for the Isle of the Dead, but the curtain falls before they reach the shore.

The Festival had assembled a cast of singers well used to the unfamiliar. Don Juan was sung by the American tenor Raymond Very, veteran of a couple of world premieres in the States, a bright steely voice, and the Woman by soprano Stephanie Friede (Sophie’s Choice and Petra Kant in London), both riding the challenge from the orchestra. Always present, but with less actually to sing was the rich mezzo of Iris Vermillion as La Morte, reprising her role on the Decca recording.

This was an important event, and it was good to see the capacity audience responding with enthusiasm. We know from the recording the quality of the score, and we now know how well it works in the theatre. The flames need to rise again, and soon!

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