Royal
Festival Hall
Webern – Variations for
Orchestra, op.30
Berg – Lulu-Suite
Bartók – Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta
Martinů – Double Concerto for
Two String Orchestras, Piano, and Timpani
Barbara Hannigan
London Philharmonic Orchestra,
Vladimir Jurowski (conductor)
It was good of Vladimir
Jurowski and the LPO to dedicate this concert to the memory of Sir Colin Davis,
although in reality it was not a very Davis-like programme. No matter: the
focus was on ‘Music from Dark Times’, Berg’s Lulu-Suite having been written in 1934 and Webern’s Variations for
Orchestra in 1940-1. There seems to have been some confusion concerning ordering:
Jurowski at the opening claimed that the programme had been reordered, so that
the pieces would be heard chronologically backwards. If so, Martinů’s Double Concerto
should have swapped places with the Berg work, the earliest on the programme.
As it was, it certainly made some sense for Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta, and the Martinů to be
heard together, though Martinů’s work, despite what was undoubtedly the best
performance of the night, could not help but pale into relative insignificance
following Bartók’s masterpiece.
Anyone who programmes Webern’s
Variations deserves a vote of thanks. It seems extraordinary that we find
ourselves just as starved of Webern performances as audiences were decades
earlier. A while ago, Pierre Boulez was asked whether Webern was back in
purgatory, and responded by asking his questioner whether Webern had in fact
ever left. That one of the most important, most intensely expressive composers
of the twentieth century or indeed any other still languishes unperformed
reflects poorly on all concerned. Whatever the shortcomings of this
performance, Jurowski’s enthusiasm could not be doubted, both when he held the
score up for applause at the end and when his spoken introduction helped
prepare the audience beforehand. There was much to admire: this was highly
dramatic Webern, almost as if communicating via a serial version of Baroque Affekt. Pieter Schoeman’s violin solos
were especially well judged, sweetly Romantic, even hyper-Romantic, just as
Webern’s music demands. However, the LPO’s performance suffered from a few
loose ends, including one especially noticeable false entry. Moreover, this was
a perhaps surprisingly pointillistic, or indeed intervallic, performance, at
least earlier on; sometimes one longed for Jurowski and his players to join up
the dots more audibly. It was closer, say, to the Boulez of his first, Sony
Webern than to the later recordings on Deutsche Grammophon, though without the
pinpoint accuracy. That said, one nevertheless emerged, especially from the later
variations, with a proper sense of ‘late Webern’, that is, of straining towards
larger, more extended forms. And Jurowski’s commitment was something to
treasure in itself.
Berg’s Lulu-Suite immediately sounded more fluid in conception, as if
heard in the opera house. The first movement was a little on the fast side,
with the effect of somewhat skating over the admittedly beautiful surfaces; at
least, if fast, it was not harried. Moreover, if weight had been lacking
earlier on, there was an emotional payoff at the opening of the ‘Hymn’ that
marks that movement’s conclusion. Dance rhythms were etched sharply, though not
didactically. A tighter hand on the formal reins might, however, have put paid
to nagging suspicions of sprawl, however wonderful it may be to luxuriate in
Berg’s sonic tapestry. (One certainly never harbours such doubts with Boulez or
Abbado.) There was excellent saxophone playing to be relished from Martin
Robertson. The second movement was altogether tauter, more focused; it really
packed quite a punch. Tempi, including transitions between them, were very well
judged, simply sounding ‘right’. Barbara Hannigan arrived on stage for the ‘Lied
der Lulu’, very much dressed for the role. Indeed, she offered a more ‘acted’
performance than I have hitherto encountered in the Suite, her use of the text
very much bound to her visual expression. There was just the right degree of
lilt to her performance, as there was to that of the LPO. High notes hit the
spot in every sense, and coloratura told dramatically as well as musically. One
longed to see her in the entire role. Jurowski balanced his forces and shaped the
musical argument well. Berg’s extraordinary cityscape was relished at the
opening of the fourth movement, almost as if this were Petrushka, albeit ‘Petrushka im Bauhaus’, with liberally applied
sleaze. It was not all dramatic action without a stage though; variation form
was audibly communicated throughout. The ending was somewhat abrupt, though.
Grim foreboding characterised the closing ‘Adagio’; this was undoubtedly a
different world, that of Whitechapel. The darkness of tragedy unfolded, though
so eventually did the warmth of that reconciliation the young Boulez found so
suspicious in Berg’s later work. Jurowski undoubtedly dug deeper here than in
the first movement, and with excellent results; there was more than enough to make
one keen to hear him conduct Berg’s operas in the theatre. Hannigan’s
reappearance proved harrowing and yet consoling, like the opera itself.
Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta had its moments. The
first movement was very good indeed: the build-up potent, emotionally
satisfying, with true depth to the LPO strings, expertly guided by Jurowski,
their subsiding equally impressive. There was precision, though not always
quite enough, in the ensuing ‘Allegro’. Perhaps, though, it was taken a little
too fast; at any rate, the performance seemed unable, for whatever reason, to
dig deeper, to take the music by the scruff of its neck. Catherine Edwards’s contribution
on the piano was, however, excellent. The third movement was nicely alert to
the apparent paradox, properly generative, of the clockwork nature to Bartók’s ‘night
music’, having one think also of a not entirely dissimilar paradox, or
dialectic, with respect to Webern’s ideas of Nature. The finale again seemed too
fast to permit the full strength of the strings to shine through, though that
may well have been a deliberate ‘lightness’ on Jurowski’s part. There was
nothing especially wrong with it, but again, the music seemed skated over at
times, almost balletic. A strangely excessive holding back of tempo just before
the end caused confusion, seemingly catching the orchestra unawares.
Martinů continues to have his
cheerleaders, and this Double Concerto certainly did not find him at his worst;
by the same token, it hardly benefited from being performed in the same concert
as Webern, Berg, and Bartók. Jurowski and the LPO nevertheless gave the
concerto as convincing an account as conceivable; for one thing, it sounded
more thoroughly rehearsed than the Bartók and Webern works. Rhythms in the
first movement were ominously generative. Stravinskian motor-rhythms were
relished, making one long to hear these musicians in the ‘real thing’, for
instance the Symphony in Three Movements. Neo-classical – or better,
neo-Baroque – form was sharply delineated, the implicit violence of such
playing with time rendered explicit. Edwards again proved excellent in the slow
movement. Jurowski could not dispel my doubts regarding the apparent emptiness
at the heart of the composer’s note-spinning, though he did a good job in
trying. It seems that Martinů’s music is attempting to depict turbulence from
without rather than actually being turbulent; that, however, is not the
performers’ fault. Again, rhythmic command was excellent in the finale. I wish
I could have felt more enthusiastic about the music itself, which, despite its
apparent ‘excitement’, is little more than derivative. Some Hindemith (the Nobilissima visione Suite?) or perhaps Honegger’s
Second Symphony might ultimately have worked better, despite the outstanding
performance and the second-half Paul Sacher connection.
