A Study in Comparisons, Contrasts

SALZBURG, Austria — In the intermission hall of the Grosses Festspielhaus, where the largest opera productions and symphony concerts of the Salzburg Festival take place, there is an exhibit of new sculpture by Ferdinand Bohme that consists of animal-like skeletons made from Carrara marble and titled “Allegories of Death.”

You can’t miss them, and they provide, in a pinch, handy surfaces upon which to rest a drink or one of the tasty lox sandwiches on sale. Plus they offer an apt symbol for what’s going on here, namely the attempts of this glorious festival to make something new from its fossilized tradition.

Mostly that means innovative opera productions along with an increase in new opera and new music on concert programs. But it also includes the incorporation of a separately produced new music series, Zeitfluss, which falls under the Salzburg Festival umbrella, with performances given in various spaces around town.

There is none of the usual tony festival atmosphere surrounding Zeitfluss--no fancy program books and few fancy patrons. And it seemed that there could be no greater contrast on Friday between one of the festival’s traditional orchestral concerts, an all-Schubert program by the Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by Riccardo Muti, in the morning; and an evening appearance by Pauline Oliveros, the meditative accordionist and electronic music composer who was long a controversial fixture of the UC San Diego music department.

For the morning concert, Bohme’s skeletons were littered with champagne glasses by an elegant, exclusive crowd, despite the early hour. It was a stuffy concert, though not stuffy music. Schubert’s early Symphony No. 3 and his affecting Mass in A remained earthbound, although there was exciting singing from the Arnold Schoenberg Choir and excellent soloists (Ruth Ziesak, Monica Bacelli, Rainer Trost and Rene Pape).

Later that night, it was a black-jeans-and-Birkenstock crowd in the bleachers in front of Salzburg’s cathedral. This is hallowed ground--the site every year of Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s “Everyman,” the play that inaugurated the festival in 1920. And it certainly seemed that Oliveros, blowing a conch shell to each of the four corners of the compass before settling down with accordion for her new work, “Echoes From the Moon,” would prove just how much Salzburg had changed.

But that wasn’t the case at all. Oliveros’ improvised performance--stunningly enhanced by “sound architect” Andrew Bosshard, his assistants and his array of surround-sound equipment--was simply gorgeous. Thick accordion chords, ethereal embellishments, engulfed the magnificent space and bent around it with Doppler-like effects in a manner absolutely appropriate to its Baroque splendor.

More than that, the music was also downright Schubertian in its lyrical lushness and heavenly length (it lasted 40 minutes and seemed too short). And it may be no coincidence that the two composers particularly in fashion in the gender-conscious new musicology are Schubert (who, the latest research strongly suggests, was a member of a closeted homosexual society in Vienna) and Oliveros (a well-known feminist who has long been an icon for gay women in music).

That historical Schubert, a social outsider and musical dreamer who broke with conventional compositional modes of his day, was harder to recognize in the Vienna Philharmonic’s playing. Every phrase was predictably polished to the point of obsessive luster by an orchestra that until this year did not allow women (and had none Monday).

But for the audience, so prim and proper and proud of these performances, such playing remains a comfort. Helga Rabl-Stadler, the conservative president of the Salzburg Festival (who is often at odds with its venturesome artistic director, Gerard Mortier), likes to say: “The Austrian regards change as an undeserved punishment by fate.”

Zeitfluss has no such illusions. This year’s 10-concert program is titled “Final.” Its organizers, pianist Markus Hinterhauser and Tomas Zierhofer-Kin, ask the question “What happens when there is nothing more?” in hopes of finding a “distant” music within us.

So among the offerings have been Morton Feldman’s opera “Neither,” with its libretto by Samuel Beckett, and Beckett’s play “Endgame.” Earlier in the week, a Zeitfluss program included Peter Sellars’ dramatic reading of John Cage’s “Lecture on Nothing” about “the pleasure of slowly being nowhere,” drawn out to a record 70 minutes, to the annoyance of some in the audience and the deep satisfaction of those who remained.

Last week, the series also brought the world premiere of “100 Objects to Represent the World,” a “prop opera” by filmmaker Peter Greenaway. This had promised to be a highlight but instead turned out to be a hastily staged version of an exhibition Greenaway had created in Vienna five years ago displaying objects of special significance to him--among them “The Phallus,” “God” and “Rubbish.”

For the 70-minute performance, objects or symbols of them were illuminated, one by one, behind a scrim. Some clever sound effects by Jean-Baptiste Barriere were heard on tape that included chant-like intoning of each object and spoken narration of why it is interesting.

There were a few live characters onstage who were sometimes the objects themselves and sometimes had the Vanna White role of displaying the objects. A nude Adam and Eve, at first cool, got a little nasty toward each other by the end.

The whole thing had more of an antique shop look to it than the gleaming modernism found in Greenaway’s films, exhibitions and the one opera he has directed, Louis Andriessen’s “Rosa.” But it at least felt like a 21st century antique shop--that is, a return to an earlier era seen from the eyes of the future--and thus fit right in with the vast and difficult task the Salzburg Festival has set for itself.