Royal Albert Hall
Beethoven
– Symphony no.4 in B-flat major, op.60
Boulez
– Dialogue de l’ombre double
Beethoven
– Symphony no.3 in E-flat major, ‘Eroica’, op.55
Jussef Eisa (clarinet)
Gilbert Nouno (IRCAM computer music designer)
Jérémie Henrot (IRCAM sound engineer)
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra
Daniel Barenboim (conductor)
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Images: BBC/Chris Christodoulou
Daniel Barenboim conducts the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in Beethoven's
Fourth Symphony at the BBC Proms |
This
second instalment of the Beethoven symphonies from Daniel Barenboim and the
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra reversed the chronological order, so that the
Fourth was to be heard in the first half, along with Boulez’s Dialogue de l’ombre double, with the
second half given over to the Eroica.
Fair enough, one might say, the latter symphony being an obvious work with
which to conclude the programme. I wondered whether it might therefore have
made sense to mix up the programming a little more, rather than to present an
almost-but-not-quite chronology, but any ordering will possess its particular
advantages. As it was, even though the Fourth came first, I could not help but
hear it to a certain degree in the light of what was yet to come.
Its
first-movement introduction sounded deliciously dark, spacious, mysteriously
flowing in a fashion that almost inevitably brought Barenboim’s hero,
Furtwängler to mind. Zum Raum wird hier die Zeit? The transition was thrillingly navigated to a
spruce, well-articulated, yet dramatically charged exposition. Six double
basses marked a larger orchestra than that employed for the First and Second
Symphonies (with four), but somehow there was already a sense of slight scaling
down from the Eroica we had not yet
heard; and so it would come to pass, with eight players after the interval.
There was an occasional slight thinness to the WEDO’s string tone, not simply
to be ascribed to numbers or the acoustic, and especially if one had in the
back of one’s mind Barenboim’s recording with the Staatskapelle Berlin, but for
the most part this was cultured, cultivated playing. More important was an
ever-present sense of teleology, without which Beethoven makes no sense
whatsoever. Equally crucial, indeed indissolubly interlinked, were rhythmic
propulsion and the concision that is such a hallmark of this symphony and this
movement in particular. There was an abiding sense of the processional – ghosts
of the French Revolution? – to the slow movement, woodwind rightly to the fore.
What a joy it was to hear again after the years of ‘authenticke’ terror a
Beethoven in which the metronome played no part; music in the sense of score and performance progressed according to
its own requirements and possibilities. It was as free and goal-oriented as one might expect from Barenboim in one of the
piano sonatas. Other ghosts – the Eroica,
late Haydn – haunted the sterner moments; humanity and the present always won
through, with woodwind playing of truly heart-stopping beauty. The scherzo
sounded as a successor to the funeral games of its Eroica counterpart: athletic, heroic, what the Olympics might be,
were their vile commercialism to be jettisoned. There was a ‘traditional’
slowing for the trio, rightly pointing to its premonitory kinship with the
Seventh. The finale was certainly swift, but also graceful, Haydn’s example far
from banished – and why should it be? By turns lithe and muscular, this exuded
vitality.
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| Jussef Eisa performs Boulez's Dialogue de l'ombre double at the BBC Proms |
Boulez’s Dialogue de l’ombre double, performed by Jussef Eisa with IRCAM
design from lbert Nouno and sound engineering from Jérémie Henrot, received a
revelatory performance: an achievement from any musician, let alone a
clarinettist so young. The Royal Albert Hall came into its own here, the ‘double
shadow’ enveloping the audience – amongst whom, there were, sadly, a few
disruptive influences – and evoking all manner of historical resonances from
plainsong versicle and response in a great basilica to Boulez’s own Répons. The relationship between ‘original’
and electronic sound was by turn blurred and rendered clear, intelligent
lighting adding a helpful visual element. Truly magical passages of transition
between strophes provided some of the many highlights. Eisa – and Boulez! – offered
arabesques of ravishing beauty, delivered with a virtuosity that would surely
have impressed Berio, to whom the score is dedicated, though here the
virtuosity tends towards a more gentle kind than is essayed in the Sequenzas. I was also put in mind of
Nono’s Venetian evocations, whilst the spatial movement of electronic sounds,
at some points almost dizzyingly fairground-like, sounded as if transformed
Gabrieli or Monteverdi. This was a remarkable performance of a remarkable work,
which survived coughing, sneezing, chattering, even the man next to me who
insisted on eating his sandwiches.
The first movement of the Eroica took a little while to get into
its stride, the only (relative) disappointment to the concert. Accents, surprisingly
for Barenboim, sounded a little over-emphasised, more akin to the artificial ‘excitement’
lesser musicians impose upon Beethoven. Counterpoint, however, was clear and
harmonically propulsive, and momentary apparent desertion from Furtwängler’s
path was put right with yearning voicing – and working – of the second subject.
The magic tended to be reserved for hushed moments, at least until echt-Beethovenian defiance was voiced in
the recapitulation. Gloriously apparent was the status of the coda as second
development – perhaps a link, despite the formal perfection of Beethoven’s
scheme, to the open-endedness integral to Boulez’s æsthetic. Klemperer, hewn
from granite, remains the model for so many of us in the Funeral March, but
Barenboim’s more fluid approach more than justified itself. There was some
especially fine playing from the WEDO’s woodwind principals. The episodes
unabashedly evoked Furtwängler, not just in their shaping but in their organic
growth from existing material. Nobility of utterance verged upon the supreme.
This was Wagnerian Beethoven, and all the better for it; several times I heard
intimations of Die Walküre. Wagner’s 1851
programmmatic explanation of this symphony came to mind:
... the term ‘heroic’ must be taken
in the widest sense, and not simply as relating to a military hero. If we
understand ‘hero’ to mean, above all, the whole, complete man, in possession of
all purely human feelings — love, pain, and strength — at their richest and
most intense, we shall comprehend the correct object, as conveyed to us by the
artist in the speaking, moving tones of his work. The artistic space of this
work is occupied by … feelings of a strong, fully formed individuality, to
which nothing human is strange, and which contains within itself everything
that is truly human.
I wonder whether I heard the
scherzo differently, following that of the Fourth. At any rate, Beethoven’s
life-force was wonderfully apparent. The Romantic grandeur of those horns announcing the trio acted as
a reminder that Der Freischütz is not
so very far away. Beethoven’s finale followed on with truly musico-dramatic
inevitability, as did each variation from its predecessor. Beethoven cannot be
given with cynicism, yet our own, cynical age needs him more than ever. I doubt
that any musician today could square that circle as well as Barenboim. The very
existence of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra stands as testament to that.
