Philharmonie, Berlin
Weinberg – Sonata no.2
for solo violin, op.95
Brahms – Fantasies, op.116
Weinberg – Sonata no.3
for solo violin, op.126
Franck – Sonata in A
major, for violin and piano
1 April: I suppose the
date should have given it away. Perhaps I am being unduly cynical, but this was
the fifth time I had booked to hear Martha Argerich, and the fifth time she had
cancelled. At any rate, a ‘feverish flu’ led to her replacement with Denis
Kozhukhin and consequent rearrangement of the programme. Out went a Beethoven
sonata (op.30 no.3) and one of Mieczysław Weinberg’s sonatas for violin and
piano; in came Brahms’s op.116 Fantasien
and a second of Weinberg’s sonatas for solo violin.
Frankly, one would have
been more than enough, not least given the sometimes shocking performance
offered by Gidon Kremer of Weinberg’s op.95. It took until the sixth of its
seven movements for the performance to sound like a performance at all; a
friend commented that Kremer had often sounded as if he were someone practising
in his bedroom, and it was difficult to dissent. Maybe he had been as irritated
by the rearrangement of the programme as many others. The poverty of Weinberg’s
invention nevertheless came through, the first movement, ‘Monody’, made of the
sort of banal figuration with occasional wrong notes Shostakovich would offer
with (in a generous reading) irony. With this piece, however, irony was
difficult to discern. Likewise, the third movement seemed characterised by
sub-Shostakovich impotent anger. Kremer’s somewhat fuller tone – before, only
thinness had been striking – was welcome in the final two movements, but that
did not, most likely could not, disguise the sense of straining and failing to
achieve profundity.
The one-movement Third
Sonata, with which the second half started, was much more of a performance,
certainly more urgent. Indeed, it was in this that Kremer sounded at his best.
Weinberg, perhaps, shows at times a slightly less reactionary language and,
more to the point, a stronger sense of development. At best, at least at the beginning,
there are some mildly attractive ideas, whose development was over-extended.
That, I am afraid, is the greatest enthusiasm I can muster. I think it is time to
say that, as with some of the Entartete
Musik composers and, more often than not, Shostakovich that an undeniably
moving personal story and political persecution do not guarantee convincing, let alone compelling,
music.
Denis Kozhukhin’s
contributions proved to be stronger than Kremer’s. Kozhukhin’s Brahms is not
for me the most appealing; I simply – or perhaps not simply – hear and
understand the music differently. However, on its own, Romantic, ‘grand manner’
terms, it worked very well. It is perhaps too easy to describe it as ‘Russian’
Brahms, but there was more than a hint of that. The opening Capriccio showed a great dynamic range: ‘big’ tone, which can
certainly be scaled down. If the following Intermezzo might have been intimate
in conception, especially to begin with, it was admirably flexible; this
remained, however, very ‘public’ Brahms. (One might well argue that a large
hall such as the Philharmonie invites such a conception.) A stormy third
movement had little sense of Brahms as progenitor of Webern, but certainly held
the attention. The succeeding Intermezzo was slower than is perhaps
fashionable, but none the worse for that. It was played beautifully, if at times
the sound edged a little close to Rachmaninov. Moreover, the central section
achieved a beautiful sense of half-lighting. The next Intermezzo, the fifth
movement, was meaningfully voiced, though not in a modernist fashion. Its
successor was bracingly fast, at least according to pianistic ‘tradition’, but
arguably – just about – an ‘Andantino’ nevertheless. Such a reading is
preferable to a sentimental one, but was the piece’s heart perhaps lost? The
final movement needs to be fast, and it was; it was certainly ‘agitato’ too.
Voicing again was a particular strength. And how the poverty of Weinberg’s
inspiration was shown up!
As for the Franck
Sonata, the only piece in which violinist and pianist appeared together, it was
Kozhukhin’s playing that proved by far the more compelling. Even relative
understatement, as at the beginning of the first movement, drew one in. Kremer’s
wiry tone was disappointing, his poor intonation rather more than that. The
performance did not conceal the truth of Debussy’s jibe about Franck as a ‘modulating
machine’; the best can. In the second movement, Kozhukhin’s tone, recognisable
from his Brahms, offered much to admire, Kremer’s only rarely. Much the same
could be said of the very different third movement. Kozhukhin’s legato was
pleasing, but in itself could not paper over the cracks of the composer’s
vaunted cyclic method. More of the same in the finale – with some breathtaking
pianism from Kozhukhin. In replacing Argerich, he saved the day in more than
one sense.
