- Judith Weir
Blond Eckbert (pocket version) (2006)
- Chester Music Ltd (World)
The original version of this work was commissioned by English National Opera with funds provided by the Geoffrey C. Hughes Charitable Trust. It was first performed by English National Opera at the London Coliseum on 20 April 1994. The Pocket Version was commissioned by The Opera Group and Sequitur. It was first performed on 14 June 2006, at Linbury at the Royal Opera House, London, by The Opera Group (Owen Gilhooly, baritone; Heather Shipp, mezzo-soprano; Claire Wild, soprano; Mark Wilde, tenor; Patrick Bailey, conductor).
Available in German translation by Alexander Gruber and Frank Harders-Wuthenow.
- S,Mz,T,Bar + 0.1.2(II:bcl).0/2.0.0.0/hp/2vn.2vc
- Soprano, Mezzo-soprano, Tenor, Baritone
- 1 hr
- The Composer, after Ludwig Tieck
- English, German
Programme Note
Synopsis
Eckbert and his wife Berthe live in seclusion in the Harz Mountains. One stormy night, Eckbert’s friend Walther arrives and, to while away the time, Berthe tells him her life story. Walther mysteriously knows a great deal about Berthe' s early life and Eckbert’s suspicions grow, eventually leading him to murder Walther during a hunting expedition. Consumed by terror and suspicion, Eckbert retreats into seclusion and revisits the fairy-tale scenes of Berthe's childhood, accompanied by a magical singing bird. He encounters the old woman who raised Berthe, and at last learns the terrible truth about Walther, Berthe, and himself.
© Judith Weir
Scores
Reviews
(…) Blond Eckbert by the British composer Judith Weir on Sunday showed how increasing madness can have a much more subtle and therefore more probing effect. The festival theme ‘lost paradise’ was clearly apparent in this dark fairy tale, in which a secluded life in and amongst nature is upset by frightening revelations. Atmospheric black and white images, shot live on stage, honoured Hitchock’s style. It formed a perfect complement to Weir’s sober lyricism, performed with growling suspense by the Oxalys Ensemble.
The clarity of the music and the near-impenetrability of the folk tale by Ludwig Tieck on which the opera is closely based together set up endless possibilities. The device of having a chirpy Bird narrate the action, and Weir’s skill at telling a story through music, suggest a certain cheerful innocence, but it is a teasing innocence. Weir can change the dramatic mood within a couple of bars, as at the moment when the musically ‘innocent’ strangers passing the homicidal Eckbert suddenly become terrifyingly threatening. Paranoia certainly plays a part in the scenario; so perhaps do crime and punishment – and much else. It is a work one wants to see and hear again and again, in the same way as one does Così fan tutte, for the sheer beauty of the music and the ever-changing variety of response to the deceptively simple action.
As she is a dedicated composer of chamber music and a self-confessed “miniaturist”, Weir’s “reduction” of the Blond Eckbert scoring brings an enhanced clarity to the textures and throws her hauntingly beautiful, songful wind-writing into sharper relief. This is one of the most ravishing operatic scores written in the past 15 years, inspired by the romanticism not only of Tieck, but also of Schumann and Brahms, although it sounds like neither and could only have been written in the latter half of the 20th century.
Director John Fulljames and designer Adam Wiltshire boldly convert fairytale to sinister sitcom: an Edward Hopper interior, without the sunshine. Eckbert and his wife must pay for Berthe's childhood crime: the theft of a magic bird. The bird itself is arrestingly sung by Claire Wild: part raven, part jetty cabaret act. Owen Gilhooly's Eckbert, Heather Shipp's Berthe and Mark Wilde's Walther - bumbling botanist and false friend - all sing splendidly too. But the greatest pleasure is Weir's hyper-sensitivity to narrative mood. When Berthe remembers her childhood, each note from the rippling harp seems to mark the passing of another blameless day. When she needs to be frightened, the orchestra - fastidiously conducted by Patrick Bailey - alerts us, pounding like a heart at bay.
The new orchestration makes Weir's music sound even more marvellously concise and communicative. With the simplest of means, like the florid melismas that define the vocal lines of Claire Wild's performance as the Bird, Weir creates a character at once mythical and human. It's a musical world that captures the ambiguous emotional story of Blond Eckbert, based on a fairytale by Ludwig Tieck. Eckbert and his wife Berthe are visited by Walther, who mysteriously knows the names of Berthe's childhood pet, a dog called Strohmian. Eckbert grows suspicious and shoots Walther, only to find out, through the visitation of an old woman, that Berthe was in fact his sister. He dies in insane agony.
Weir's brilliance at musical narrative is enhanced in a miniature story-cycle in the first half, Really?, in which she wrings a world of imagery from the smallest of musical ideas, like a viola solo or a harp chord.
More Info
- Judith Weir to be Featured Musician at Aldeburgh Festival 2024
- 19th December 2023
- Judith Weir will be a Featured Artist at the 2024 Aldeburgh Festival with the performance of over a dozen of her works, including the world premieres of String Quartet No. 2 'The Spaniard' and Planet.