Don Giovanni König Kandaules Die Zauberflöte Turandot Die Liebe der Danae Roméo et Juliette La Donna del Lago Helmut Lachenmann Jedermann Daponte in Santa Fe Das weite Land Young Directors Joachim Schlömer Concerts 2002 The Unfinished

THE UNFINISHED
Fragments – a programmatic theme of the Salzburg Festival 2002

“The Myth of the Unfinished” will be a programmatic theme of next summer’s concerts, in which fragments can be heard (in some cases completed by others), for instance Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony that will be performed by the Vienna Philharmonic under Nikolaus Harnoncourt, who will also introduce and comment on the work; Mahler’s Tenth under Riccardo Chailly; Luciano Berio’s Rendering based on compositional fragments by Schubert, and various Mozart fragments that will form a kind of leitmotif in the Mozart Matinees.

All strength has left me

The final work remained unfinished. When Joseph Haydn realised that he would not be able to complete his most recent string quartet, he allowed the two central movements to be printed as a torso three years before his death. At the end, instead of a finale, the visiting card of the composer was reproduced in the music. On it is written a quote from Haydn’s song “The Old Man”, a melancholy confession, “All strength has left me, I am old and weak…”

A fragment as a farewell greeting

A fragment such as Haydn’s String Quartet opus 103, given to the world as a valedictory greeting while he was still alive, makes one think almost automatically about the frailness of human creativity, the finite nature of things, transitoriness – vanitas vanitatum. How is it, when it is irrevocably too late, over and gone? Only few are capable, like the tired and ageing Joseph Haydn, of wisely resigning themselves, and calmly accepting what cannot be changed. Gloomy despondency speaks from the last letters of Giacomo Puccini, already fatally ill and who was tortured by the fear of having to leave behind his Turandot incomplete.
Who can appreciate what he was going through?

In the awareness of approaching death

Who can say what was concealed behind the scant words with which Arnold Schoenberg, at the end of his days, abandoned work on his Jakobsleiter and entrusted the unfinished oratorio to a pupil for him to complete? Schoenberg was 76 years old when he handed the work over to a younger composer. Mozart was not even 36 years old when death came and prevented him from finishing his Requiem. An anonymous count had commissioned the work but in the end Mozart wrote it for himself, clearly aware of his approaching death. However, the score remained incomplete and was only fully orchestrated in the Introitus. A fragment as the opus ultimum of a life abruptly brought to an end much too soon; an incomplete requiem as the final work: so much allegorical and symbolic meaning surpasses our comprehension.

Fragments reflect human achievement and failure

Fragments belong to music history just as they reflect human achievement and failure. In most cases they are pieces or movements, often merely sketches that the composer, strictly critical of his work, intentionally put away in a drawer where they remained until curious researchers brought them to light again. Schubert’s Quartet Movement in C minor, D 703, is one such important example. Or the opening movement of a clarinet quintet, K. 516c, handed down as a fragment, that Mozart never completed.
These and many other fragments will be performed during the summer 2002 at the Salzburg Festival, just as they are or reconstructed, expanded, completed: Puccini’s Turandot with a new finale by Luciano Berio; Zemlinsky’s König Kandaules in the completed orchestration by Antony Beaumont; Mozart’s Requiem without the movements later composed by Sußmayr; Bruckner’s Ninth, with the finale; Mahler’s Tenth and many other works – rarities, discoveries, special cases.

Death was stronger than art

Of course with all “completions”, the delicate question remains as regards piety and authenticity. What is permitted? What appears to be necessary? In Milan at the world premiere of Turandot, Arturo Toscanini put down his baton after the last bars composed by Puccini and turned to the audience: “The opera ends here for this is when the maestro died; death was stronger than art.” And the curtain fell on the stunned scene.

We are not the ones who complete our life

Works that remain as fragments remind us that we are not the ones who complete our life. That it is not in our power to close the circle. Just as our concept of the world is fragmentary – “Now I recognise in part but then I will recognise as a whole, just as I will be recognised as a whole” – as it says in the first letter to the Corinthians – ultimately our existence is also fragmentary. The serene wisdom and calmness of Joseph Haydn is needed to see our own limits, to become acquainted with the weak powers we are given, to come to terms with the small amount of time that rushes away from us. Haydn’s song “The Old Man” is melancholy at the beginning but calm and reconciliatory at the end: “Death knocks at my door, unafraid I open up to him, thank heaven! The course of my life was harmonious song.”

Wolfgang Stähr

Guest Orchestra
10 August 2002, 11 a.m.
Felsenreitschule

W. A. Mozart Requiem K. 626
(as a fragment)
Arnold Schoenberg Die Jakobsleiter

Conductor Kent Nagano
Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus
German Symphony Orchestra, Berlin

Tickets from 2 30 (ATS 412.81)
to 2 135 (ATS 1,857.64)

Vienna Philharmonic
14 August 2002  9 p.m.
15 August 2002 11 a.m.
17 August 2002 11 a.m.
Grosses Festspielhaus

Anton Bruckner Symphony No. 9 with the final movement in D minor
(Original version)
Conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt

Tickets from 2 8 (ATS 110.08)
to 2 190 (ATS 2,614.46)

Guest Orchestra
25 August 2002 9 p.m.
Grosses Festspielhaus

Mahler Symphony No. 10 in
F sharp major
Conductor Riccardo Chailly
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam

Tickets from € 8 (ATS 110.08)
to € 135 (ATS 1,857.64)