Philharmonie
Ravel:
La
Valse
Ravel:
Piano Concerto in G major
Stravinsky:
The
Rite of Spring
Martha Argerich (piano)
Staatskapelle Berlin
Zubin Mehta (conductor)
Martha Argerich
notwithstanding, this was, I am afraid, a disappointing concert: in the vein of
Zubin Mehta’s Berlin Philharmonic Bruckner Eighth in the autumn, only more so. Perhaps that was
because what can to a certain extent pass muster in Bruckner, at best letting
the music flow without interference, leads to scrappiness and other lack of
necessary control in Ravel.
At any rate, near collapse at
two moments in the first movement of the G major Piano Concerto can hardly be
accounted a positive; likewise bizarre orchestral balances, seemingly resulting
less from an eccentric hearing of Ravel than from an inability to hear him at
all. It was difficult to escape the view that the concerto and especially this
movement would have been better off without a conductor. Once the fabled
tigress of the keyboard took the lead, there was much to enjoy in terms of
pellucidity, drive, and clarity, not least of the rhythmic variety. Her opening
solo in the slow movement was everything one could wish for: line, voicing,
nobility, a refusal to mistake sentiment for sentimentality. Beating time,
Mehta did a reasonable job for the most part, despite a couple of audibly
difficult corners to turn. The Staatskapelle Berlin’s woodwind nevertheless sounded
gorgeous. Argerich’s pianism proved in equal measure muscular and variegated,
spot on throughout the finale. When she was not playing and occasionally even
when she was, Mehta’s tendency was to let the orchestra fall behind.
La
Valse, preceding the
concerto, had perhaps fared better, so long as one were not looking for
revelation. Growling double basses – eight of them – at the opening augured
well, but soon the performance had fallen strangely rigid. When Mehta
intervened a little more, it helped; that is, until he drove the score too
hard. Again there were wonderful woodwind solos, often allied to string playing
of sheen and depth: recognisably this great orchestra. Overall form, however,
remained elusive in a performance that seemed simply to move from phrase to
phrase, sometimes even bar to bar. The sign-off was, by any accounts, bizarrely
plodding.
To my surprise, The Rite of Spring probably came off
best, albeit in strictly relative terms. So long as one were not expecting
Pierre Boulez or Esa-Pekka
Salonen, there would have been enough to make sense of the piece. Its
opening in particular verily teemed with signs of rebirth, capturing
fascinating instrumental combinations and balances and relationships between
freedom and metrical precision prophetic for later-twentieth-century modernism.
For most of the first part, there was nothing eccentric about Mehta’s tempi,
nor did he lose momentum. Indeed, tension increased, notwithstanding a few
strange decisions concerning balance. Stravinsky’s rite became more involving,
seemingly of its own ‘volition’ or at least material: that is surely the trick
here, at least to mainstream Rite
interpretation. There was something properly horrifying to the apparent
automation of the Procession of the Sage, although its immediate aftermath fell
oddly flat. The final dance of the first part, however, perked up. Alas, the
second part was somehow rather on the dull side. There was nothing really to
complain about, save for an overtly sectional approach. It was neither
involving nor intriguingly ‘objective’, just ultimately rather nondescript and
lacking in cumulative power. I have never felt less thrilled at the close.
