Royal Albert Hall
Piano Concertos nos 1-5
Daniil Trifonov, Sergei Babayan, Alexei Volodin (pianos)
London Symphony Orchestra
Valery Gergiev (conductor)
Yes, in case you had not
heard about this much-hyped extravaganza, this concert offered all five of
Prokofiev’s piano concertos. Much nonsense was spoken beforehand concerning the
length of the concert. Excluding the two intervals – just the one would surely
have been preferable – it barely lasted longer than the first act of Parsifal. However, as Richard Bratby remarked to me,
overlap between concert attendance and opera attendance is less than one might
expect. That is perhaps especially the case in this country, and is to the
detriment of both camps. Germany, as ever, shows a far healthier cultural life;
for one thing, many of its greatest orchestras play as a matter of course in
both opera houses and concert halls. Although one could hardly award this
programme marks for imagination – one might, I suppose, as Devil’s Advocate, on
the basis that it can rarely, if ever, have been attempted before – I was
certainly willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. After all, one can often
learn a great deal by hearing a composer’s development, even if the ‘CD bargain
box treatment’ – fine for a CD bargain box – is hardly something to be welcomed
in principle for concert life.
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| Daniil Trifonov playing the First Piano Concerto Images: BBC/Chris Christodoulou |
The playing of the LSO was
generally excellent, although I cannot believe it was the most eagerly awaited
of the season’s engagements by the orchestra itself. Valery Gergiev is, to put
it mildly, a controversial figure, both politically and musically, but he has
generally been in his element in Prokofiev’s music, and so he was here too,
even if there were a few cases of carelessness, which greater rehearsal or,
perhaps, care on his part during rehearsal might have averted. And so, the
First Piano Concerto opened and, indeed, continued with just the ‘right’
orchestral sound. That is not to say that there is only one, but the trick is
to make one think, or at least feel, that there is. It was certainly a
forthright opening, preparing to ‘do business’, as it were. (I shall try to
avoid an undue number of comments on the conductor’s friendship with Vladimir
Putin, but the reader should feel free to draw whatever conclusions he or she
wishes.) Daniil Trifonov, for me by some way the most interesting of the
evening’s three pianists – to be fair, he had the two greatest of the concertos
at his disposal – presented perhaps the most motoric performance I have heard,
at least to start with. That that was an interpretative strategy became clear
when, later on, especially during the slower sections, he pulled around the
score to great, fantastical effect, perhaps hinting at, whilst also keeping its
distance from, Scriabin. Whatever he did convinced, and that was the crucial thing,
and the degrees of dynamic variegation never ceased to amaze. The work’s
Lisztian inheritance was clear, both virtuosically and structurally. So,
perhaps more surprisingly, were the roots of much of Prokofiev’s later style –
and by ‘later’, I mean some time after his final piano concerto, at least as
far as Cinderella and its evocation
of moonlight. There was some beautifully hushed orchestral playing, not least
from the warm cushion of LSO strings, and the truly outstanding wind soloists
made every line their own. (This was, I believe, the first engagement of the
new principal oboist, Olivier Stankiewicz.) If Scriabin sometimes came to mind,
so did Rachmaninov, especially in certain elements of the piano figuration. And
yes, that was partly, I am sure, a matter of a very, if not exclusively, ‘Russian’
brand of piano virtuosity.
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| Sergei Babayan in the Second |
The Second Piano Concerto is
heard less often: partly, I suspect, on account of its extreme technical
difficulties, but also surely testament to its unusual structure. Here, I did
not find that remotely a problem. If it receives a good performance, which it
did, then such a problem, if indeed problem it be, seems suspended during
playing. Sergei Babayan and the orchestra again offered sound that seemed ‘right’,
without that necessarily precluding alternatives. Acerbic Romanticism, almost a
very Russian Brahms sound, emerged at times, more so at the keyboard. The music
is more discursive, of course, and the performance seemed content, in my view
quite rightly, not to curb that tendency unduly. I very much liked the
Babousha-like playing in the first movement, akin to half-speed Sarcasms, heading toward the
grotesquerie of The Love for Three
Oranges. A keen rhythmic sense was crucially maintained throughout. After
the huge cadenza, the LSO brass entry still managed to sound awe-inspiring,
before the music subsided into nothingness. The second movement proved a
surprisingly light-footed moto perpetuo:
Mendelssohn for the age of the internal combustion engine. Its successor then
seemed to hark back to the age of Mussorgsky’s ‘Bydlo’, brass and drums
infallibly setting the scene for some more flat-footed (knowingly so) piano grotesquerie.
Dances emerged from one another, slightly deformed. Contrast was thus to be
discerned in the more balletic material of the fourth movement: on speed, as
well as at speed? Also, alas, in one of the more extended of the evening’s passages
for mobile telephone. The ‘side-stepping’ quality of Prokofiev’s melodies was
clearly relished but, commendably, not exaggerated. Formal oddities, then, were
neither camouflaged nor played up. This was, perhaps, surrealism avant la lettre, or avant L’Ange du feu.
The Third Piano Concerto,
surely everyone’s candidate for the greatest, is the most Classically
proportioned: three movements of more or less equal length. However, in this
performance, it sounded considerably less Classical in spirit than it often
does (for instance, in my favourite set of the concertos, from Michel Béroff,
the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and Kurt Masur). It was none the worse for
that; Trifonov and Gergiev for the most part convinced on their own, often
imaginative terms. The opening of the first movement was sinuous, with perhaps
the most athletic piano entry I have heard here. It was probably the fastest
tempo I have heard for the movement too, although that proved highly flexible;
Classical, I should reiterate, this was not. The weight of chords where
necessary offered a masterclass in modern piano touch. Again,in spirit we
seemed close to the fantastical world of The
Love for Three Oranges. The slow movement offered similar virtues, albeit
with different (for the most part) character. Its lithe passages were lithe
indeed (and threatening); its ruminative passages were ruminative indeed (and
enchanting); and so on. Trifonov’s leaning into syncopations truly made them
tell musically; they were no mere ‘effect’. The finale, however, I found a
little puzzling, curiously deliberate. Again, the fantastical elements came off
very well, as did the LSO’s moonlit Romanticism. I was left feeling that a
little more coherence and depth might have been achieved. As piano playing,
however, and as rather more than that, there was a great deal to admire.
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| Alexei Volodin joins the orchestra for the Fourth Piano Concerto |
The left-hand Fourth Piano
Concerto, surprisingly receiving its first Proms performance, proved, for me at
least, something of a trial. I think that was more a matter of the ‘programming’
than the performance, although the LSO sometimes seemed a little tired by now.
With the best will in the world, it is hardly the equal of what had gone
before. Alexei Volodin’s despatch of the piano part, especially in the first
movement, offered intriguing parallels with the motorism Trifonov had brought
to the First Concerto. Voicing within his single hand – or rather, the single
hand he was using – was impressive. Soon, however, and certainly by the second
movement, it was difficult to avoid the impression that what we heard was
mostly to be understood at surface level, and I think that is a reflection of
the piece itself. It really is not clear here, or at least was not on this
occasion, how ideas follow on, or indeed how movements follow on, the third
movement seemingly appearing from nowhere. I know this is not Ravel, and is not
trying to be, but even so… The blandness of the gestures and material here and
in the finale’s reheating of the first movement did nothing to dispel notions
of fatigue all around.
The Fifth also received its
first outing at the Proms. I was unable on this occasion to renounce my
long-held view that it and its predecessor are considerably weaker works than
their predecessors. I suspect, though, that they could make more of an impact
if more sensitively – it would hardly be difficult – programmed. Again, it was
the first movement that emerged strongest, feeling somewhat haunted by Stravinsky,
without ever sounding ‘like’ him. Neo-Classical tendencies threatened to invade
without ever quite succeeding in doing so. There was no doubting Babayan’s
technical command, although again, how the music fits together remained an open
question (not, I think, his fault). The tick-tocking of the orchestra in the
second movement was accomplished very well by the LSO; I find little else to
say about the material. The following Toccata was certainly Allegro but, at least at its opening,
might have been a little more con fuoco.
That came soon enough, though, and I was won round by Babayan’s initial
more-is-less strategy as the more modernistic Prokofiev briefly asserted
himself. The different moods of the fourth movement were well characterised;
there was more than a hint of the Soviet future to be heard. Again, quite how
this all coheres remains questionable. The finale did little to dispel notions
of re-heating, despite occasional hints of originality, such as the duet for
two bassoons. And then, suddenly, it stopped; not, I am afraid to say, in the
spirit of Wozzeck. Goodness knows
what Furtwängler, who conducted the first performance, must have thought.
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| Soloists and conductor take a bow |
