Wozzeck            Franz Hawlata
Captain            Graham Clark
Andres             Peter Bronder
Marie              Deborah Polaski
Margret            Nadja Michael
Doctor             Eric Halfvarson
First Apprentice   Andreas Macco
Second Apprentice  Garry Magee
Idiot              Ian Bostridge
A soldier          Andrew Busher

Conductor          Christoph von Dohnanyi

Philharmonia Orchestra
London Voices, London Oratory School Schola

This premium-cast performance of Wozzeck is part of the Philharmonia's
series Mahler and Vienna:Beginnings and Endings, currently on on the South
Bank. It's Vienna that is relevent here, of course. Wozzeck is part of the
Viennese musical-theatrical scene of the war years and immediately after,
which was heavily cross-fertilized with that of Berlin. The integration of
music and theatre into an almost movie-like over-coded, rather melodramatic
experience recalls Strauss-Hofmannstal, and the experiments with
Sprechstimme and altered consciousness recall earlier works Berg's teacher
Schoenberg. (Wozzeck's visions, especially in the last act, reminded me
musically and verbally of Pierrot Lunaire.) I'm not sure at all where
Mahler fits into musically, but I'm not complaining in the least.

Although it uses a substantial orchestra and three choirs as well as a
number of small-role singers (Ian Bostridge for the sixteen-bar role of the
Idiot is the ultimate in luxury casting), Wozzeck is a masterpiece of
economy in many ways, with a symmetrical dramatic structure and
dramatically driven use of themes and musical forms, for example in the
themes representing the characters which appear one by one in the scenes in
the first act and are reiterated in the final scene, with Marie's theme
left until the end when her son goes off the look at her dead body.
Christoph von Donhanyi and the Philharmonia kept everything absolutely
clear, avoiding schlock and sentiment but getting great force behind the
thunderclaps of musical punctuation.

On one level, Wozzeck is a ghastly comedy of stupidity -- the Doctor and
the Captain by their obsessions drive the none-too-bright Wozzeck to
madness, then walk away. (Buechner was presumably interested in satirizing
conventional authority figures, but Berg's audience might well have seen
Wozzeck as a loser avatar of Schweik, who beats the idiots by creative
stupidity.) Franz Hawlata was a solid, good-natured, confused Wozzeck,
perhaps not crazy enough during his initial hallucinations, but moving in
his final scene where he gives in to despair. Graham Clark was infuriating
as the neurotic Captain, franticly telling everybody else to stop rushing
around. (Maybe it was seeing Clark as Mime last month, but the first scene
between the Captain and Wozzeck reminded me of Mime and Siegfried.) Eric
Halfvarson was also funny as the mad Doctor, though his singing didn't
always quite come over the orchestra. The scene between the two obsessives
was very amusing, though the way their self-absorbed ramblings destroy
Wozzeck is also quite painful.

Deborah Polaski sang Marie with an earthy, not particularly beautiful tone,
quite appropriate for a Dirne with a heart of gold. But I'm not sure that
she could do the role in a production. She could obviously deck anyone
intent on seduction or murder who came near her -- if she told you to go
away, you would. Nadja Michael has a jolly, rich contralto, just right for
the more straightforward Huere next door.

The final scene is particularly movie-like, backing away from the main
characters to the onlookers, and in particular to Marie's son. The boys of
the Oratory School Schola sang splendidly, with a fuller, more theatrical
sound than I'd expect of a boys' church choir. (I'm not sure that being
Catholic makes that much difference...) They also did the German dialogue
quite impressively.