Philharmonie
Boulez – Livre pour cordes
Mémoriale
Originel
Schubert – Symphony no.9 in C major, ‘Great’, D 944
No encore, although the
audience would clearly have liked one; more to the point, there was a non-advertised
late addition to the programme at the beginning. Daniel Barenboim came to the
podium and announced that the concert would begin with the Air from Bach’s
Orchestral Suite in D major, BWV 1068. Beautiful without affectation, it was a
more eloquent mark of respect to those who had lost their lives in the German
Wings aeroplane crash than any words. It was not a performance to be
‘reviewed’, but it should be noted.
The Vienna Philharmonic
strings then launched more or less immediately – though not without unwanted
applause, dealt with admirably by Barenboim – into Boulez’s Livre pour cordes. Barenboim’s reading
proved, like his Wagner and much else, both spacious and keenly dramatic. I was
struck how close the music sounded at times to Bartók. The players, coaxed into
playing ‘New Music’, offered crucial subtlety in dynamic gradation and
transition; to give an example, the eight double basses’ pizzicato playing was
not only admirable in its unanimity but in its acceleration of impetus, driving
the music forward just as it might in Beethoven. The piece emerged almost as if
a tone poem (of ‘absolute music’).
Mémoriale benefited from another performance of what
one might call warm precision: very much akin with much of Boulez’s own later
conducting work. Perfect coordination between the magnificent flautist,
Karl-Heinz Schütz, and the Vienna strings – interplay and counterpoint, echoes
and collision – led us into a beguiling labyrinth indeed. The subtle yet
crucial contribution of the horns should also be noted, not least at the end,
fading exquisitely into nothingness. Those horns – and their players, or their
instruments, according to one’s understanding! – then moved to the other side
of the stage, quickly joined by other wind instruments. Two more flautists
stood on either side, awaiting the return of Schütz and Barenboim for Originel. But first, Barenboim said a
few words, explaining that we should now hear the same material in another Besetzung, referring to Boulez’s love
for complexity and kinship both with Mahler and the orchestral Notations. (Difficult to argue with any
of that!) The pairing proved genuinely rewarding, both for the mind and the
senses. From the presence of clarinets at the opening, soon joined by
electronics (Christina Bauer and Noid Haberl, developed and realised at IRCAM),
and then the first of the two additional flute Kinder (Barenboim’s term), similarity
and difference not only presented themselves but ravished. I wished I could
have heard it all again, and that we might have heard any number of other
potential versions.
Whilst the connection with
Schubert was not overt, the care that Barenboim took to make ‘New’ Music
classical and ‘old’ music new was once again clear; so was the superlative
playing of the VPO. The introduction to the first movement sounded simply
glorious, but more than that, it proved in spirit quite the most Furtwänglerian
account I have heard in concert. There was, needless to say, none of that
absurd ‘same tempo as the exposition’ nonsense. This was an experience that was
mystical in the best sense. The Vienna horns, the oboe, pretty much everything –
all sounded to die for. Even the depth of the violas’ sound could not help but
strike, could not help but draw one in to the incipient, inexorable drama. But
there was no more wallowing in beauty for its own sake than there had been in
Boulez. Dark menace was a hallmark of the strings throughout the movement, always
in alliance with harmonic motion; indeed, as time went on, the ghost of
Klemperer sounded almost as present as that of Furtwängler, just as in much of
Barenboim’s recent Beethoven. And indeed there was an almost Beethovenian
purpose to the course of the movement, tension between and beneath the notes
inescapable. What struck me at the end of the coda was not ‘heavenly length’
but apparent concision.
The Andante con moto was perfectly judged, both parts of the tempo
marking honoured. If the oboe solo was undoubtedly exquisite, so were
contributions from all of the woodwind. So too was the string playing, sounding
new in the light of the Boulez works. Barenboim’s build up to the great climax
was both Brucknerian and not, never uncharacteristic. I was left feeling bereft
and yet, in the light of the cellos’ song in aftershock, also (potentially)
reconciled. The Scherzo’s opening material was played with rustic swagger: more
than the odd reminiscence of Haydn. Line, orchestral balance, and, not least,
grace were equal partners in crime here. Grace certainly suffused the lovely,
yet never too lovely, Trio. It relaxed – out of symphonic necessity. And yet,
the harmony ever pushed us forward. There could be no arguing with the heft of
the finale, nor, more importantly, with its tension and release. This was a
finale truly worthy of the name. It was not only that its thrills were both
visceral and intellectual; the performance showed that the two could not be
separated. Likewise motivic life in inner parts and the grinding harmonic
motion in the bass. If there has been a greater performance of this symphony
since Colin Davis in Dresden, maybe even since Karl Böhm, I have not heard it.
