'Vienna - A New Era': Webern, Schönberg and Zemlinsky in concert at the Bozar in Brussels

 

Photo: allpaintingstore.com

La Monnaie at Bozar in Brussels, Sunday October 25 2026

Conductor: Alain Altinoglu. Soprano: Maria Bengtsson. Baritone: Johan Reuter.

• Anton Webern: Passacaglia für Orchester, op.1 (1908)
• Arnold Schönberg: Verklärte Nacht (für Streichorchester), op.4 (1899/1917)
• Alexander von Zemlinsky: Lyrische Symphonie in sieben Gesängen, nach Gedichten von Rabindranath Tagore, op.18 (1923)

It shouldn't take more than a week to write up a concert. But after more than two months away at a gentler pace, coming back to Paris (this year in the thick of the annual art fairs, and against a background of violent social unrest) always requires some readjustment. Putting the clocks back an hour doesn't help. And in this case, I've been blocked by simply not knowing what to write. Once you've stated that everything was just... right, what more can you add?

As I was still away in September, I missed Gounod's Roméo et Juliette. According to fellow subscribers I met at the Bozar on Sunday, I didn't miss much. 'Vienna - A New Era',  as La Monnaie billed it, was thus the first event in my 2026-2027 calendar. As I've already written several times, Alain Altinoglu has worked wonders with the orchestra of La Monnaie (as well as building up a singular rapport with the Brussels audience). Since he took over, the concerts the house now always includes in its 'set-menu' subscriptions, though not staged opera and usually not opera at all, have become a highlight of each season.

Sunday's exacting programme might have been calculated to show off how far the orchestra has now come in developing some of the strengths - including the string sheen and sustaining power usually missing in France - of the famous German and Austrian ensembles - though already, in the same hall, they've given us Parsifal (2022) and Mahler's tediously overblown 8th (2025), so apparently nothing is now too much for them. It also, perhaps intentionally, harked back to 2024's concert of Schönberg, Mahler, Korngold and John Williams, designed expressly to illustrate Hollywood's debt to Vienna.

After the conductor had waited for people up on the balcony to stop chattering, Webern's gorgeous Passacaglia started the concert as it was destined to go on, i.e. at a high level, bordering on perfection. It's hard to find the right words to describe how they perform under Altinoglu, with whom they seem to have achieved some sort of symbiosis, other than just copping out by saying everything is just... right, Goldilocks-style. Sitting there, I wondered how long they'd rehearsed to master  these complex, even tortured scores. Altinoglu is visibly attentive to every detail and seemingly to every player. Tempi, rhythmic accuracy, dynamics, intonation... all are just so, and while the orchestra is now starting to deploy that Austro-German sheen and sustaining power I mentioned above, they stop short of the potential blandness, that sleek, slightly smug and seemingly effortless smoothness that can make modern performances by 'Rolls-Royce' ensembles (naming no names) sound disappointingly bland. La Monnaie's pit band still has some bite, some grit in its sound, of the kind that has served them well over the years, to my mind, in Verdi.

This is, then, straightforward, serious music making in which the music, not the conductor's eccentricities or mannerisms of whatever kind, or the orchestra's showy virtuosity, comes first. Everything is just so. And once you've said that, what else is there to say?

Verklärte Nacht isn't a favourite work of mine, to be honest (too grisly for me, until the Salvation Army announces the major key and its rustling arpeggios), especially in the orchestral version, so I twiddled my thumbs a bit while they played it (with an unexpected smartphone improvisation at one point), wishing they'd programmed Berg's Lulu Suite instead, as they had a soprano to hand. Though of course, she might not have fancied taking on the Berg before the Zemlinsky: 'C'est méchant, ce truc,' ('This thing's really cruel,' more or less) was my neighbour's comment as we clapped after his seven demanding songs. I'd only seen Maria Bengtsson once before, as Ellen Orford in Paris. 'I really liked what I heard of Maria Bengtsson, a convincing actress with a distinctive timbre,' I wrote back then, in 2023. In Brussels, though, I found her singing a bit dry and stiff, short on the lyricism you'd expect in a work called Lyrische Symphonie, and her personality reserved; but she got the job done: 'Elle fait le job,' said the same neighbour.

Johan Reuter looked more deeply involved - totally 'in character' - acting the part, you might have said, if this had been opera. I last saw him as Jochanaan at the Bastille (with Lise Davidsen as Salome, in 2024) and then found him 'sonorous' but not very charismatic. Here, I was glad to find that some of that dark sonorousness is at the bottom, as I'm a bit fed up with complaining about baritones' weaknesses in the lower range. None of that here. In addition, he sings expressively, with subtle phrasing and changes of timbre, deploying a wide range of vocal colour. Only occasionally was he in danger of being covered by the unleashing of orchestral paroxysms behind.

So once again, thanks to Alain Altinoglu's remarkable work at La Monnaie, the new season started well. 'Pourvu que ça dure,' as someone once said...