Wigmore Hall
Weber – Andante e Rondo ungarese, J.79, op.35
Brahms – Viola Sonata in
E-flat major, op.120 no.2
Berlioz-Liszt – Harold en Italie, S 472
Gérard Caussé (viola)
Michel Dalberto (piano).
Weber’s Andante e Rondo ungarese seems nowadays more often to be performed
in its later bassoon version, but was originally written for viola and
orchestra. I am afraid I had the same problem I have with most of Weber’s music
written before the great trilogy of three ‘late’ operas: bewilderment that such
trivial, anonymous music could have been written by the same man who composed Der Freischütz. In this case, the
problem was compounded by use of what I assume must have been a piano reduction
of the orchestral score; at any rate, no credit was given, either to Weber or
to someone else. It put me in mind of accompanying for Associated Board exams –
somehow, as a teenage schoolboy, I used to think that £10 was an acceptable
rate, rehearsals included, but it certainly taught me to listen to other musicians – and especially
so in some thumping chords it is difficult to imagine anyone who actually
played the piano having written as such. There was, however, some gorgeous
lyrical tone to savour from Gérard Caussé. It was amiable enough, I suppose,
but an odd choice and, in whatever guise, ultimately banal, form seemingly
little more than a matter of adding section to section. Did this really hail
from the composer of Euryanthe? It
sounded closer to Donizetti.
With Brahms, inevitably, one could
think and feel: now for some real music. The op.120 sonatas – sorry,
clarinettists – have always seemed to me still more suited to the viola, its
rich, dark tone as suited to the composer as the dark mahogany of a Hamburg
panelled room. Caussé proved warm and
clean of tone, well-nigh ideal. The first movement’s tempo was well chosen,
also flexible without drawing attention to itself. After a slightly anonymous
start, the piano grew in stature too, also benefiting from a richly Romantic
tone to Michel Dalberto’s Bechstein (an excellent, fitting choice of
instrument). Brahms’s rippling, cumulative complexity found a convincing
dialectical relationship with his melodic (viola and piano) genius. The music sounded closer to the violin sonatas
with these forces, and rightly so. Metrical dislocations told in the second
movement: more the piano’s doing than the viola’s, again without exaggeration.
Perhaps structure might have been a little more malleable or protean, a little
less sectional; the transition back to Tempo
I seemed tacked on rather than a necessity. Nevertheless, there was some
fine ghostly as well as ardent playing in the reprise. The players grasped the
singular mood of the finale, poised between melancholy and passion, dramatising
the conflict between them.
This was, I think, the first
time I had heard Liszt’s transcription of Harold
en Italie. It is a marvellous work; I cannot imagine why it is not heard
more often. But then Liszt is the transcriber, arranger, and paraphraser to
vanquish all others, with the possible exception of his heir Busoni. I barely
missed Berlioz’s orchestra at all: quite a claim, the more I think about it. In
this performance, Dalberto’s piano opening was fluent, full of anticipation,
quite unlike the piano reduction of the Weber piece. There were touches, if
only from time to time, of Lisztian bravura too. Caussé made an amusingly
melodramatic entrance on stage, ready for his viola entry, quite in keeping, I
thought, with Berlioz’s Romantic sensibility and once again lavished his
beautiful tone upon the music. Intriguingly, the music begins to sound more
virtuosic in this transcription. Might Paganini have accepted it after all?
Probably not, but I could not help but wonder. Nervous rhythmic eccentricity
came across strongly too. Dalberto’s repeated piano notes towards the end were
worth hearing for their own sake. The ‘Marche des pèlerins’ was on the swift
side, but perhaps that was as much a matter of dealing with the piano’s
relative lack of sustaining power as anything else. Both transcription and
performance imbued the movement with high Romanticism, quite different from the
more Classically-inclined Berlioz one hears from, say, Sir Colin Davis. The
third movement was spirited and again surprisingly virtuosic (from both). It
was fascinating as ever to hear how much of Liszt’s own personality shines
through, even when he is as faithful to the original as here. The same could be
said of the final orgy, though on occasion Dalberto’s rendition of the piano
part suffered from a certain hardening of tone. I was not entirely convinced by
Caussé’s exit from stage, followed by a return for the end: too much of a good
thing. However, it did mean that one concentrated, once past the surprise, upon
Liszt’s piano writing. Dalberto’s rendition was not flawless but impressed
nevertheless. The delightful choice of first encore – alas, I missed the
second, not having realised that there would be one – was Schubert’s Ständchen, in what seemed to be Liszt’s
piano transcription, with the vocal part transferred to the viola from the
second stanza onwards. It sounded quite magical, performed with delightful
Romantic sweep.
