Interview
Susanna Mälkki in conversation with Esko Laine Susanna Mälkki conducts “Bluebeard’s Castle”
Zoltán Kodály described Béla Bartók’s only opera Bluebeard’s Castle as “a masterpiece, a condensed tragedy, a musical volcano that erupts for 60 minutes and leaves us with only one wish: to hear the whole thing again”. Written in 1911, the one-act piece is a brilliantly orchestrated symbolist drama that takes us deep into the emotional world of the fin de siècle. “What do you see?”, Bluebeard asks Judith, who wants to open the seven doors of his past. Susanna Mälkki presents this musical psychoanalysis that will make you shudder.
Works by the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho are regularly featured in Berliner Philharmoniker programmes. After premieres in 2006 and 2009, the orchestra presents the German premiere of the orchestral piece Vista in this concert. The conductor is Susanna Mälkki, who is considered one of the foremost experts on Saariaho’s work and has conducted a production of the opera L’amour de loin at the Metropolitan Opera in New York to great success.
With imaginative timbres and symbolist musical language, Saariaho draws on French Impressionism, a style which also strongly influenced Béla Bartók when he composed his only opera, Bluebeard’s Castle. In his version of the chilling fairy tale, librettist Béla Balázs leaves open whether Duke Bluebeard actually murdered his former wives or whether they symbolise the secrets of his psyche. Balázs described his libretto as a “ballad of inner life”.
Behind the seven doors that the titular hero opens at the request of his wife Judith, scenes stained with blood are revealed: a torture chamber and an armoury, but also the magnificent possessions of the duke and a lake of tears. With magnificently evocative means and inimitable scoring, Bartók’s music shows a journey that leads from darkness into light and, in the end, back into the dark night: despite her love, Judith cannot save Bluebeard from the torment of his soul.
Berliner Philharmoniker
Susanna Mälkki
Ildikó Komlósi
Johannes Martin Kränzle
© 2021 Berlin Phil Media GmbH
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