Royal Festival Hall
Johan Wagenaar – Overture: Cyrano de Bergerac, op.23
Magnus Lindberg – Violin Concerto
no.2 (world premiere)Beethoven – Symphony no.7 in A major, op.92
This was a strange concert programme,
whose internal logic I found and continue to find difficult to fathom. The
London Philharmonic was on excellent form throughout; otherwise, there was not
much to unite these works. Moreover, Jaap van Zweden’s conducting of Beethoven’s
Seventh Symphony, whilst starting promisingly, proved a decidedly mixed
blessing.
One can hardly begrudge a work
more or less unknown an occasional outing, but I really cannot understand what
would possess someone to conduct Johan Wagenaar’s Cyrano de Bergerac Overture. Its opening flourish is so clearly derivative
of Don Juan, as are a good few other,
strangely decontextualised progressions that Strauss would surely have had a
case for plagiarism. Not that the piece, of course, in any sense approaches
Strauss in quality. Stale bits of Brahms seem as though they are there to
provide padding, but rarely succeed in doing so, at least coherently. It begins
pleasantly enough, soon becoming merely tedious. The conductor’s irritating,
sub-Bernstein podium manner did not help.
Magnus Lindberg’s Second Violin
Concerto benefited not only from fine playing from the LPO but quite stunning
virtuosity from Frank Peter Zimmermann, not only in the cadenza but throughout.
Zweden’s conducting, the visual element aside, could hardly be faulted either,
insofar as I could tell. It certainly seemed that the composer received a true
performance of the work. What of the work itself? In three movements, the first
two of them connected without a break, its strongest point seemed to me to be
its construction (something one could certainly not have said of Wagenaar’s
piece). The opening solo, open fifths on the violin, is soon questioned by the
orchestra. Intervals and their working out sound in this first movement strongly
suggestive of Berg: there are worse models! Even towards the beginning, though,
there is a stronger tonal pull. Orchestration is colourfully (post-)Romantic,
sometimes, especially in its use of celesta and harp, strongly echoing
composers such as Bartók and Prokofiev. Harmonies and indeed orchestration seem
to become more and more overtly Romantic as the work progresses, at times
edging, bizarrely to my ears, towards Khatchaturian (if rather more careful in
its construction). There is a point in the final movement at which I thought
the work had finished, but then it started again, moving ever closer to a
Hollywood film score; there is more, much more, of the same to come. One
passage sounds – I should like to say ironically, but I really am not sure –
extremely close to the Waterfall in Strauss’s Alpine Symphony. I found myself longing for another performance of Boulez’s Anthèmes 2, such as I had heard
in the same hall a few nights earlier.
The first and second movements
of the Beethoven symphony fared best. Above all, one could relish the full
sound of a decent-sized, uninhibited symphony orchestra, an increasingly rare
occurrence in this music. Violins were not split, but clarity was such that
there was no overriding need for them to be. There was some splendid
raucousness from the horns too. Quite what Zweden meant in a programme
quotation saying ‘There are still people who play Beethoven like Brahms. And
that I refuse to do,’ was unclear; I have never met someone who claimed to play
Beethoven ‘like Brahms’, although I suspect the ‘authenticke’ brigade might
have accused him here of doing just that. Rhythms in the first movement were
nicely sprung, although the harmonically-founded inevitability of a great
performance (think, for instance, of Daniel
Barenboim) was lacking in an ultimately sectional reading. The exposition
repeat, for instance, merely sounded as if we were starting again, unmotivated.
Zweden took the Allegretto faster
than I think I have ever heard it. Any element of a processional was banished,
but there was a highly creditable command of line, which put me in mind of no
less a conductor than Herbert von Karajan – albeit, if you can imagine so implausible
a thing, Karajan in a rush to catch the last bus home. The LPO’s cultivated,
variegated playing was a joy to listen to. Sadly, the third movement resembled
a caricature of Karajan in less flattering light: one of those faceless, breathless
Beethoven symphonic recordings from the 1970s. We were spared ‘authenticity’,
but it did not seem that Zweden had anything to say. (The contrast with recent
performances from Christoph
von Dohnányi and Oliver
Zeffman was stark.) There was grandeur to some elements of the Trio, but it
was unclear where it had come from, or indeed where it went. If you were a
Toscanini fan, I suppose you might have liked this. The finale was unsmiling in
similar vein, but to a greater degree: quite absurdly hard-driven, despite
unerringly fine orchestral playing. Zweden occasionally brought out subsidiary
parts to no obvious end. It was, I am sorry to say, a bit of an ordeal.
