Royal Festival Hall
Schubert – Four Impromptus, D
935
Beethoven – 33 Variations on a Waltz by Anton Diabelli,
op.120
This was, by any standards, a
challenging programme. Mitsuko Uchida has long been in her element in Schubert,
and so it proved again here, though no thanks to external – or should that,
with reference to the Royal Festival Hall, be internal? – circumstances. The
first of Schubert’s second set of Impromptus was brought to us, at least to
start with, in typical Uchida manner. If the delicate passages told most of all
– they usually do! – then there was no want of force, not least when it came to
the double octaves. It was, nevertheless, the pianissimo writing and performance, and the progress ion therefrom,
that really drew us in. There was considerable, though never overstated,
cumulative power. And there were plenty of song-echoes in Schubert’s
figuration, yet with no doubt as to his singular form here. Alas, a good part
of the close to the piece was blighted by the twin interruptions of an alarm
and what appeared to be a recorded announcement outside the hall, instructing
patrons to leave. No one did, but Uchida, visibly distressed, was forced to
leave the stage for a while until things were sorted out. Eventually we were
informed that there had been a false alarm.
I wondered whether, when
Uchida returned to the stage, she might have started again, but no, she resumed
with the second Impromptu. In this particular context, its balm, its consolation
were especially welcome. Vulnerability was supremely well judged. There was,
moreover, a compelling sense of key relationships and distance. The different
lilt of the third piece was equally well captured, its harmonic determination
and implications included. It was difficult not to sense an implicit contrast
being set up with Beethoven’s handling of variation form after the interval.
The second variation was apparently carefree: the qualification of ‘apparently’
just as important as the ‘carefree’. The third variation’s pathos was all the
greater for the lack of indulgence (never, in any case, a trait one associates
with this artist). There were clean lines, yes, but there was equally great depth
of feeling. The final variation hinted at the world of the Trout Quintet, albeit with palpable shadows. Its coda was as lucid
as I have heard; and yes, it left the requisite lump in the throat. Finally,
the F minor Impromptu was despatched in piquant fashion, seemingly pre-empting
Brahms’s ‘Hungarian’ music, yet at the same time like an extended Moment musical, eminently sensitive to
Schubert’s own formal imperatives. It surprised, even when one knew it. Despite
the interruption, Schumann’s claim that these sets of Impromptus might be
considered in some sense as sonatas did not seem so very wide of the remark;
this certainly had the quality of a finale.
Uchida seemed reinvigorated,
or perhaps better reattuned, following the interval, the theme to the Diabelli Variations splendidly alert.
Her performance of the first variation showed itself fully alert to its potentialities,
whether ‘purely’ musical or musico-historical: was that a hint of Brahms here, or
a presentiment of Die Meistersinger
there? Like the Missa solemnis, this
is highly dialectical music, not the least of whose dialectics is between the
characteristic and the un-characteristic Beethoven. Bass and harmony came very
much to the fore in our ears and minds during the second variation, whilst the
strangeness of earlier ‘late’ Beethoven, op.111 for instance, reasserted itself
in the third, in a sense both reinstated and reconciled – though with what? Not
for the first time with Beethoven, Hegel came to mind. As the variations
continued upon their way, Uchida showed a willingness to deal with Beethoven’s
messiness one might more readily associate with an artist such as Daniel Barenboim;
this was certainly a performance that tried to take Beethoven at as many of his
own terms as possible, and generally succeeded in doing so. There was, for
instance, imperious command of rhythm in the seventh variation, rhythm which
was, however, always allied to harmony (a crucial alliance so many contemporary
performers seem to forget). There was awkwardness, too, productively so as
perhaps only Beethoven can be. Haydn’s peasant moves problematised and – almost
– transfigured. At times, Liszt did not seem so very far away.
‘Late’ disjunctions were
definitely felt in the ‘teen’ variations, which came more and more to sound
like expansions, exacerbations even, of the Bagatelles.
Beethoven’s wondrous imagination intensified its explorations, opening our ears
and minds; for instance, the ‘boogie-woogie’ of the sixteenth variation registered
in context as appropriate climax and
refuge. With dialectics aplenty announcing and working themselves out, even
Schoenberg would have seemed faint-hearted by comparison. The mysterious
stillness of the twentieth variation – Liszt referred to its sphinx-like
quality – was necessarily followed, though certainly not effaced, by fury and exaltation. Leporello duly
disconcerted us in the twenty-second variation. Mozart in a different guise
seemed to haunt the twenty-fourth, counterpoint and harmony in perfect
equipoise. It might be too late for Mozartian paradise, but for a few moments,
one at least felt within its reach. Bach too, of course, haunted proceedings.
The pathos and strength of
the great slow variations spoke of human dignity as only Beethoven can.
Faustian questing had taken us so far, and yet it also seemed only just to have
begun. The expansiveness of the thirty-first variation thus proved properly
generative, opening up a host of possibilities in a fashion or at least with a
consequence not entirely dissimilar from the greatest serial explorations of
the twentieth century. Nevertheless, a fugue somehow came to seem the only possible
solution. But what a singular fugue! Not through ‘eccentricities’ of
performance but through fidelity that yet encompassed Beethovenian imagination.
Surely even Liszt would have been proud of the transition effected to the final
variation. ‘Delightful’ might seem a strange adjective for the conclusion of
such a work, but there was the truest of delights to be experienced here, the
mediated restoration both similar to and quite distinct from that effected by
Bach in his Goldberg Variations.
