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Everything I am
brought me here.
- Robert
Lowell, Prometheus Bound (derived from Aeschylus)
 Like
any good chef, Prometheus wanted the best for his creations, and
was not above a little creative cheating to get it. Unfortunately,
when Zeus found that he had cheated a little too well and brought
divine fire to mankind, he changed his fate from server to supper.
Chained to a rock on a high mountainside, Prometheus suffered daily
as a vulture came to eat out his liver, only to have the organ grow
back supernaturally overnight.
Prometheus
steals fire from the sleeping Zeus. Detail of a painting by Christian
Griepenkerl.
Likewise, Claudio
Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic have prepared a musical feast
derived from various aspects of the Prometheus myth - the creator
of humankind, the captive freed by Hercules, the bringer of light
and the perpetual wanderer - with a wide range of compositional
flavors and thoughtful juxtaposition of styles. The real reason
many people will want this recording, however, is for the presence
of Martha Argerich in the third course of this banquet, Scriabin's
Prometheus - The Poem of Fire. But more on that later - we do not
want to serve these dishes out of turn.
As an appetizer, Abbado
serves a series of excerpts from Beethoven's ballet, The Creatures
of Prometheus, an early work written for a commission from
Salvatore Vigano, ballet-master of the Viennese court. In Vigano's
libretto, Prometheus molds humankind in two senses of the word,
both literally by forming him from lifeless clay and intellectually
by imbuing him with knowledge of the arts and sciences. For a child
of the Enlightenment such as Beethoven, such a scenario proved too
good to refuse.
The final number of
the ballet will be familiar to many people - Beethoven later reused
the theme for the finale of the Eroica Symphony, as well as Eroica
Variations for piano solo. The other numbers here, beginning with
a Mozartean thunderstorm depicting Zeus's wrath, show the abrupt
key changes, tonal shifts and sudden moments of tension that characterize
Beethoven's style. While not as dynamic or individual as what his
music would become, the Prometheus excerpts have their own charm
and make for pleasant listening, especially when as well played
as they are here.
For our second course,
we are treated to a dish that is reasonably light but still adventurous
- Liszt's symphonic poem Prometheus, based on the
scenario Prometheus Unbound by Johann Gottfried Herder. Originally
an overture to incidental music for this play, written in 1850 to
commemorate the unveiling of a statue of Herder in Weimar, the poem
is one of the most compact and dynamic of Liszt's orchestral works.
While the main theme
of this work was meant to depict "suffering and apotheosis," in
keeping with Herder's theme, Liszt's Prometheus is more dramatic.
The opening fanfare, stark and based on the interval of a fourth
instead of the traditional third, imparts a thrusting, visionary
quality to the music. A central episode, based on a third and introduced
in the cellos, depicts both the human side of Prometheus and his
empathy with mankind.
Abbado draws out the
opening, a nice touch that lends the passage increased weight and
heightening the drama still further. Although he does not underline
the suffering or violence in the music that follows as fervently
as Solti, nor is as passionate in the central episode, he maintains
tension and keeps things moving. Altogether, Abbado's is more of
a consommé than Solti's more robust fare, but the performance is
still a satisfying one.
The fourth-based harmonies
Liszt used to spice his work become one of the main ingredients
for the next dish on the menu - Scriabin's Prometheus - The
Poem of Fire. Scriabin, considering himself a Promethean
figure in his own right, developed all this work's harmonic and
melodic structures from a "tonal center" consisting of a six-note
"mystic chord" of different fourths - c-f sharp-b flat-e-a-d - in
which space becomes time and time becomes space. He even wanted
to use a "color keyboard" to bathe listeners in different colors
according to the varying degree of the musical scale, and finally
immerse them in an orgasmic blaze of light and sound.
I am not a fan of
Abbado's Scriabin, and his Poem of Ecstasy with the Boston Symphony
(DG - no longer available) had all the savoriness and flavor of
dry, unseasoned fish. In this music, there needs to be passion,
excitement, and sex. After all, what is Scriabin without sex? Compared
to Abbado, Pierre Boulez is a consummate master at cooking and seasoning.
He really knows how to build and shape a passage; and though he
is still not in Leonard Bernstein's league in the sex appeal department,
he really lets go in some of his more recent performances, his second
recording of Prometheus (DG 459647 - full price) being a prime example.
 However,
an excellent sauce can overcome bland fish and make or break a recipe.
As I mentioned earlier, the real reason for getting this disc is
for Martha Argerich's contribution to the solo part, and if ever
there were a sous chef who could transform an entrée such as this,
it is La Martha.
On the Boulez recording,
Anatol Ugorski is dutiful but bland, smothering the spices Boulez
has chosen with care. With Argerich, we have zest, exotic flavors,
a modicum of sensuality and quite a kick in the louder passages.
From her first entrance, she literally brings Abbado and the Berlin
Philharmonic to life, transforming the third course with a combination
of seasonings as intimate as a lovers' conversation and as heady
as sex itself.
After such a bold
dish, a final course could easily prove anti-climactic, undermining
the structure of the meal. Abbado, fortunately, has provided both
a palate cleanser and an intriguing fourth course in two excerpts
from Nono's Prometeo. Originally thinking, like Scriabin, in terms
of the correspondences between colors and sounds, Nono developed
Prometeo along Scriabin's analogy of "tonal centers" between time
and space. Simultaneously shimmering and austere, this work uses
live electronic techniques to circulate the music timelessly in
space, with neither beginning nor end, always moving in much the
same way as Prometheus's endless wandering.
The result is a work
sounding very much like Hungarian composer Gyorgy Ligeti's static
blocks of sound in pieces like his Requiem and Atmospheres (familiar
to some listeners through its use in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey),
though over a much longer time span. It may not be for everyone's
taste, but once the taste for it is acquired, the work becomes all
the more fascinating and irresistible with repeated listenings -
an elusive and tantalizing finish to this aural banquet.
Bibliography:
Lowell, Robert, Prometheus Bound (New York: Farrar, Straus
& Giroux, 1967, 1969), 8.
JONATHAN
YUNGKANS
is a hopeless
fan of chef Emeril Lagasse, with musical chef Martha Argerich running
a close second.
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respond to this article, please post your comments to classical@inkpot.com
793: 20.8.2000 ©Jonathan
Yungkans
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