Barbican
Hall
Haydn – Cello Concerto in C
major, Hob.VIIb/1
Bruckner – Symphony no.7 in E
major
It was the Haydn C major Concerto,
which, despite the massed ranks of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in the
Bruckner symphony and the radically smaller ensemble deployed before the
interval, received the more compelling performance in this, the second of three
Concertgebouw concerto-and-Bruckner programmes. There were occasional slight
irritations to be endured in the orchestral performance: a little more string
vibrato and longer bows would sometimes have been desirable (too much time with
Nikolaus Harnoncourt?), and the odd tapering-off at the end of phrases edged towards
mannerism. In the present climate, however, such shortcomings could readily be
coped with; moreover, there was nothing whatsoever about which one might
complain with respect to Truls Mørk’s performance. The first movement in his
hands was naturally phrased, taken at a sensible tempo; every line was shaped
so beautifully that it did not sound ‘shaped’ at all, art concealing art.
Inflections were meaningful, never unduly emphatic. Mariss Jansons was a
sensitive ‘accompanist’, though sometimes one might have wished for a little
more than that. (Think of Britten for Rostropovich in this concerto.) What I
suppose one might call ‘period’ tendencies – though they have nothing to do
with the eighteenth century, and everything to do with latter-day puritanism –
were a little more marked in the slow movement: in the orchestra, that is, for
there was no sign of such influence in Mørk’s performance. That tapering off of
phrases detracted from the overall line, and left for some peculiar
near-silences. Again, one hears far worse, but it seemed a pity. There was
certainly a great contrast with the richness of solo cello tone, and also with the
generally aristocratic tenor of Mørk’s account: clearly from the heart, without
a hint of undue emoting. The finale proved an unalloyed delight: dashing
without descending into a mere dash. Darker currents – almost proto-Mozartian –
were not absent, but nor were they exaggerated. It was a true delight to see
and to hear Mørk respond so vividly to the first violins. Best of all, this
really had the character of a finale. The Sarabande from Bach’s D minor Cello
Suite made for a rapt encore, the single line so all-encompassing, so brimming
with perfectly-judged harmonic implication, that it would have been worth
attending for that alone.
Sad to say, Jansons’s
performance of Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony disappointed – and the orchestra was
on less than top form too. (Much of the audience seemed to disagree.) There
were passages when the Concertegbouw Orchestra sounded gorgeous, but others
when string tone was decidedly anonymous; maybe the trials of touring have
proved too much. At the beginning of the first movement, there was certainly a
warm, febrile sound, but neither the orchestra nor, more noticeably, Jansons’s
direction seemed quite able to settle. Moreover, here and elsewhere, the brass
blared, rather than blended; this was overpowering in a most unfortunate sense:
more a caricature of, say, Chicago, than what one expected from Bernard Haitink’s
old orchestra. There was ultimately too much stopping and starting; though not,
I suspect, slow by the clock, the music felt drawn out. One longed for Furtwängler
– or indeed, Karajan. The slow movement was much the same. Later on, there was
a greater sense of inevitability, but much of the movement’s progression had
little sense of overall line. There was a cymbal clash, for those who care
about such things; my sense was that that climax was very well-prepared and
well-executed. It was a pity, that one could not say the same of everything
else.
The scherzo was better. If it
still lacked the dramatic and spiritual tension of a great performance, then it
cohered, making musical sense. Once again, though, the brass proved too much:
straightforwardly too loud at times, but also lacking in blend. The trio, alas,
was too relaxed, almost somnolent at times. It was not so much a matter of
speed as such as of lack of tension. Jansons’s rubato, moreover, sounded merely
arbitrary. The return to the scherzo came as a relief in quite the wrong sense.
And it was difficult not to ask oneself: what does this mean, what is at stake?
In some senses, the finale, that most incongruous of movements – whatever was
Bruckner thinking of, placing it there? – came off best. I have heard
performances with a better sense of line, but there was at least an impression
of thematic blocks in friction that was generative rather than a non sequitur. There were a few cases of
conductor’s moulding which would have been better left undone, but there was on
the whole a greater sense of forward thrust. Alas, it was rather too late for
the symphony to emerge as more than the sum of its parts.
