Whisper or scream

Since the recent death of Karlheinz Stockhausen, his compatriot Helmut Lachenmann, 73 this year, has inherited the Emperor’s mantle of grandiose invisiblity. I’m pitching it with provocative unfairness! Yet the struggle to extract gold from their mass of water or rock is beset with legitimate reservations that cannot be begged: Stockhausen the visionary charlatan–genius, Lachenmann the poet of exiguity — both present enormous problems to the would-be believer. In Madrid last week for completely different events, I chanced upon the Spanish première of Lachenmann’s Little Match Girl, a theatre-piece after Hans Christian Andersen, in a revised version, given without staging to open a brief season of avant-garde opera.

There was no scenery and no costumes, but plenty for the eye: the stage, bursting with most of a large orchestra, was flanked to left and right by two grand pianos, two sopranos, a small vocal group, and backed by a solid row of computer consoles.