Barbican Hall
Mozart – Violin Concerto no.4
in D major, KV 218
Violin Concerto no.5 in A
major, KV 219
Tchaikovsky – Sérénade mélancolique, op.26
Souvenir
d’un lieu cher, op.42
(orch, David Walter)
Valse-Scherzo, op.23
Polish Chamber Orchestra
Maxim Vengerov (violin/conductor)
I had greatly been looking
forward to my first opportunity to hear Maxim Vengerov live. Sadly, the reality
proved somewhat disappointing. It is not that there was not in many respects a
good deal to admire; this was no catastrophe, nor indeed anything remotely akin to that.
However, I came away thinking that the concert itself had been somewhat
ill-conceived, and that that had led to a number of more immediate performing
shortcomings.
First, the programme
transpired to be as imbalanced in practice as it had appeared on paper. To have two Mozart
violin concertos in one half was odd, but doubtless could have been made to
work in an outstanding performance. To have a second ‘half’, though – in reality,
more akin to a final ‘third’ – which comprised three slight, encore-style
pieces by Tchaikovsky really did not make any sense at all. Would it not have
made for a more balanced, if still not especially revealing, programme to have
had Mozart and Tchaikovsky in both halves?
Vengerov has devoted a
considerable amount of time in recent years to conducting; indeed, he will, as
part of the Barbican’s Artist Spotlight, conduct Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade later in the season. On
this occasion, though, and especially in the Mozart works, it was difficult to
avoid the conclusion that he would have been better served by having a separate
conductor. The Fourth Violin Concerto opened promisingly, Vengerov noticeably
attentive to the need to elicit a variegated sound and textures from the
players of the Polish Chamber Orchestra. However, once he began to play, the
players were largely left to fend for themselves. Acting as soloist and
conductor is an enormously difficult task, and in reality, few musicians prove
fully equal to it. (Daniel Barenboim would be an obvious example; at this stage
in his career, having someone to conduct him in Mozart would most likely prove
superfluous. Brahms, though, would be another matter.) The Mozart that emerged,
in both works, proved somewhat on the bland side: pleasant enough, but alas, that
is not nearly enough. There are certainly, contrary to the strange claim made
by Richard Wigmore in his programme note, darker undercurrents in these works,
which demand the performers’ – and the audience’s – attention. The D major
concerto’s slow movement sang sweetly, but the Rondeau seemed to run out of steam, sounding rhapsodic rather than
full of integrated contrasts. A firmer hand at the helm would surely have
helped. Perhaps what most surprised, though, were the occasional passages in
which Vengerov’s intonation was at odds with the orchestra’s, or indeed, in the
first-movement cadenza, with what he had just played.
A similar pattern was
followed in the A major concerto. Vigour arrived at last in the ‘Turkish’
section of the finale, but given the listless quality of what surrounded it,
sounded more incongruous than anything else. The Polish players were generally
excellent, sectional leaders in particular, but at least in this hall, a larger
body of strings (we had 7.6.4.4.2) would often have been welcome. Throughout, I
could not help but contrast the performance with the Mozart we had heard
recently across the road in Milton Court, from the Royal Northern Sinfonia and Thomas Zehetmair. Then, every phrase, every note, had been invested with life, with
meaning; Mozart had scintillated and beguiled in equal measure, even when I
might in the abstract have queried Zehetmair’s tempi. Vengerov is not yet, at
least, a soloist-director of that calibre, and Mozart requires no less.
I could not help but wonder
whether Vengerov had imbibed too much of Tchaikovsky’s view of Mozart as all
sweetness and light, a nineteenth-century confectioner’s view of a composer
whose true essence is fathomless profundity, however lightly worn at times.
That might have made at least for a programming idea: a concert, for instance,
including Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Orchestral Suite, ‘Mozartiana’. The collection
of three pieces we heard, though undoubtedly more stylish, did not add up to more
than the sum of its parts. There were wonderful touches, for instance of
portamento, never overdone, and there were virtuoso fireworks to be savoured,
for those who care for such things. The latter were despatched with the aplomb
one would have expected, though elsewhere, intonational problems occasionally
resurfaced. The central Souvenir d’un
lieu cher, here orchestrated for strings by David Walter, was charming and
well-proportioned in performance, yet the Sérénade
mélancolique emerged, despite the idiomatic if somewhat small-scale string
sound, as meandering and longwinded. In that respect, the fault is probably
Tchaikovsky’s. Vengerov’s admirers, and they clearly remain numerous, went wild
following the Valse scherzo, which at
least was not inflated into something that it is not. It was difficult, though,
not to ask whether they would have have reacted similarly, irrespective of what
they had heard. A concert, then, more for fans of the violinist then for Mozartians.
