Mozarteum
Mozart – Divertimento in F
major, KV 247, ‘First Lodron Night Music’
Mozart – Violin Concerto no.4
in D major, KV 218Mozart – Rondo for violin and orchestra in B-flat major, KV 269
Haydn – Symphony no.103 in E-flat major, ‘Drum Roll’
Renaud Capuçon (violin)
Salzburg Mozarteum OrchestraIvor Bolton (conductor)
An attractive enough
programme, this, even if it looked a little as if it had been thrown together
rather than considered conceptually. The Mozarteum Orchestra for the most part
played very well, less hampered than one might have expected by the use of
natural brass (though there were exceptions). Likewise Renaud Capuçon was on
splendid form. One could have had worse than Ivor Bolton – for instance, most
of his ‘authenticke’ confreres – but it was difficult to find anything that
would not have been better done by a good number of other conductors, or indeed
by none.
Playing the First Lodron Night Music one-to-a-part
is a perfectly justifiable decision, though arguably a little perverse when one
has an orchestra to hand. Whether, played in this matter, it benefits from
having a conductor is another matter. Often the players seemed to be managing
perfectly well without Bolton, whose sub-Bernstein flailing around appeared out
of all proportion to discernible results. After a slightly worrying start, the
solo strings showed themselves sensible with respect to vibrato; it would only
really be when Capuçon joined them that
one realised what one had been missing. (I am not at all sure, however, why the
programme claimed that the divertimento would be prefaced by the March, KV
248; I find it difficult to believe that
I somehow missed it in performance.) Speeds
were generally unexceptionable: one should give Bolton credit for that in an
age when the general practice is anything but. The exception to the
unexceptionable was the second minuet, taken at absurdly breackneck speed,
almost overshooting the scherzo level. The two slow movements were nicely
differentiated between Andante grazioso
and Adagio, even if both might in
other hands profitably have been taken a little more slowly. Harmonic motion,
however, was conveyed far more successfully by the players when listening to
each other than when observing Bolton’s direction. His conception seemed to be
entirely sectional; indeed, it proceeded for the most part phrase to phrase.
Capuçon’s tone was as bright
as his phrasing was sensitive. (And I certainly do not mean that as a
backhanded compliment.) To all intents and purposes these seemed to be his readings,
and were all the better for it, Bolton actually proving quite a supportive
accompanist. Occasionally, I might have longed for a little more in the way of
darkness, though especially during the slow movement of the fourth violin
concerto, that was not absent. Cleanness of tone was never clinical; it was
simply an indication that the soloist was able to play the notes – rarer than
one might expect. That direction lacking in parts of the divertimento was
certainly present here. Moreover, Capuçon’s singing tone imparted more of a
sense of the serenade than had generally been afforded earlier. What a joy it
was to hear the Rondeau played at a sensible tempo – it is marked Andante grazioso – thereby permitting
passagework to sound brilliant without being garbled. Following the interval,
the B-flat Rondo, KV 269, offered a lively, equally lovable pendant. Capuçon has mastered that necessary quality
of making Mozart performance sound like the easiest thing in the world when, as
anyone who has ever attempted it knows, it is actually the most difficult.
Rhythmic and harmonic understanding were as one, even – arguably, especially –
during the cadenzas.
Haydn’s ‘Drum Roll’ Symphony
would doubtless have been mauled far more by more exhibitionistic ‘period’
practitioners. (Though if the best one can say is ‘not very good’, as opposed
to charlatan, the situation is far from rosy.) It is, by the same token, not
difficult to imagine more absurd, attention-seeking interpretations of the drum
roll itself, but again that is not in itself a commendation. Once again, the
score, the first movement in particular, proceeded in sectional fashion. How I
longed for the harmonic understanding Daniel Barenboim recently showed in his
Proms Beethoven cycle. The slow movement, though taken fast, was acceptable
enough, save for the perverse rasping noise inflicted by ‘period’ brass at high
volume. There was still little sense, however, of how the movement might be
considered as a whole, nor indeed of the sophistication of Haydn’s variation
form. Somehow the minuet contrived both to be taken one-to-a-bar and yet also
to sound sluggish; again, harmony is, or should be the key, here. The finale
simply galloped along. Haydn is so very much more interesting than this strange
quasi-reversion to ‘Papa Haydn’-type suggested. At least we can return to
Jochum, Davis, et al. ...
