Barbican Hall
Eloise Nancie Gynn – Anahata (world premiere)
Schubert – Symphony no.8 in B
minor, D 759
Brahms – Violin Concerto in D
major, op.77
Nikolaj Znaider (violin)
London Symphony Orchestra
Nicholas Collon, Manfred Honeck (conductors)
Eloise Nancie Gynn’s Anahata was the latest work to receive
its first performance in the LSO Panufnik Young Composers Scheme. The best,
alas, that could be said about it was that it was competently enough
orchestrated, if relying far too heavily upon ‘eastern’ colour: bowed
vibraphone, Tibetan singing bowl, and so forth. (Edward Said might never have
existed.) Otherwise, the piece sounded akin to the sort of soundtrack one might
hear on an average television programme: a few ‘effects’, which might have gravitated
some meaning in conjunction with an external narrative, but with apparently
zero musical justification. Tonal harmonies sounded rather more than
shop-soiled. The work, one read, was ‘inspired by my [Gynn’s] exploration of
spirituality through meditation. Finding a way through life and its obstacles
and emotions; a journey inside, from the head and all its mental chaos,
thoughts and “stuff” ... into the
stillness of the heart space, connecting to the peace within.’ I could go on
quoting; on second thoughts, I am not sure that my stomach could withstand the
effort. Nicholas Collon and the LSO seemed to give the piece a far more
authoritative performance than it deserved. No matter; I doubt we shall hear it
again.
I certainly cannot imagine
that we shall hear it again in the company of the otherwise well-suited pair of
Schubert and Brahms. Manfred Honeck, deputising for Sir Colin Davis, led a
performance that for the most part convinced, though it sometimes went a little
overboard in its pursuit of extremities, whether of tempo or of dynamic
contrast. The opening cellos sounded dark, mysterious, yet controlled: just
right. Perhaps the basic tempo adopted was on the fast side, but it soon
yielded – arguably too much. Still, better to enjoy flexibility than Kapellmeister-ish straitjacket. Cultivated
playing from the LSO alternated with furious eruption. It was the beauty of the
softest playing, however, which ultimately lingered longest in the memory.
Moreover, one certainly heard a good few of the harmonic seeds for Brahms,
preparing the way for the second half. This was a musical landscape whose
breadth tempted one to think of Bruckner, albeit with greater incident.
Unwanted applause ensued. For the most part, the second movement flowed beautifully.
‘Beauty’, however, proved to be a slight problem, for however exquisite the
opening of the second group sounded – and it certainly did – it sounded a
little too much like an object of appreciation rather than a participant in a
musical, indeed above all a harmonic, drama. It undoubtedly offered contrast
with the outburst that followed, but the contrast seemed too much: an easy way
out, however impressively controlled. That said, it was impossible not to warm
to the echt-Viennese quality of
Schubert’s Harmoniemusik: not just
its exquisite tonal quality, for which the LSO players stood beyond praise, not
only on account of its timbral differentiation, but also for its communication
of the menace within the ‘heavenly’ material. With a stronger sense of
continuity, this might have been a great performance. It is probably a good
thing that I do not possess the vocabulary to describe those who applauded
before the final chord had ceased to resound.
Nikolaj Znaider joined the
orchestra for Brahms’s Violin Concerto. The orchestra showed typically
impressive symphonic heft in the opening, Znaider offering in response winningly-old
fashioned silken sweetness, not that he lacked cleanness and precision. (Let us
pass over the problematic cadenza.) Honeck proved an attentive ‘accompanist’,
perhaps a little too much so, clearly following Znaider’s tempo fluctuations
rather than emerging as an equal partner. As a whole, there was much to enjoy,
but there is something a little amiss when Brahms sounds more ‘enjoyable’ than
profound; I could not help but long for Menuhin and Furtwängler, or perhaps
even Znaider and Sir Colin. The slow movement offered ravishingly beautiful
woodwind playing, and not only from Fabien Thouand’s exquisitely turned oboe
solo; once again, Vienna and even Mozart came to mind. When Znaider entered, he
creditably sounded as first among equals rather than dominating soloist. With a
flowing, uncontroversial tempo, this sounded as Brahms closer to Mendelssohn
than to Schoenberg, but there is nothing wrong with that once in a while. The
finale, however, proved somewhat awkward, a state of affairs that seemed more
Honeck’s doing than Znaider’s. The ‘Hungarian’ rhythm of the principal theme
was shaped with fine understanding, its rhythmic accent spot on. Alas, the
music soon began to meander, for which Honeck appeared to over-compensate by
bringing out an excessive, almost Tchaikovsky-like, array of primary colours as
‘interest’. Such vulgarity has no place in Brahms.
