Royal Festival Hall
Beethoven – Symphony no.1 in C
major, op.21
Thomas Larcher – Violin Concerto
Stravinsky – The Rite of Spring
Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin)
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Markus Stenz (conductor)
This was a refreshing concert
from the LPO and Markus Stenz, with one work entirely new to me, and two works
I might have feared I knew too well, given thought-provoking performances.
Stenz’s approach to Beethoven’s First Symphony struck me from the outset as
refreshingly un-ideological, save for the puzzling use of natural trumpets
(though not horns, I had assumed that to be a quirk of Vladimir Jurowski, but
maybe it is an LPO ‘thing’ instead). A spruce and precise first movement,
particularly impressive with respect to accents and crescendi, did not, at
least on occasion, lack weight. It was certainly more ‘Classical’ than
Wagnerian, but there is no one way to perform this music. I should not have
minded more vibrato from the strings, but at least it was not absent. If Haydn’s
spirit had come to the fore structurally and motivically in that movement,
Stenz’s shaping of the opening theme in the second and indeed the progress of
the movement as a whole proved strikingly Mozartian: a different sort of
complexity, often overlooked in Beethoven. I thought in particular of the slow
movement of the Jupiter Symphony, but
that was far from the only kinship suggested. Kettledrums nevertheless reminded
us that this could only be Beethoven (or perhaps Haydn). My only complaint was
that the orchestra sounded a little as if it were being pressed to sound ‘small-scale’,
as if it were inhibited by something. There was no doubt whatsoever that the third
movement was a true Beethoven scherzo; it sounded the most ‘advanced’ of the
four. Its trio was graceful, though no less Beethovenian, for all the
reminiscence of ‘bucolic’ Haydn. A splendidly teasing introduction to the
finale captured its vocal and jesting quality. The movement possessed many of
the virtues of the first, sounding lithe and lively. Excitement was musical
rather than something imposed upon the music. Ultimately, this was a
performance that made me think.
Thomas Larcher’s frankly tonal
Violin Concerto was not quite what I had been expecting, and the surprise again
set me thinking. In two movements, it was written for Isabelle Faust, who have
its first performance in 2009; here, the dazzlingly virtuosic, although not
always tonally ingratiating, Patricia Kopatchinskaja was the estimable soloist.
The first movement’s opening slow section offers an interesting combination of
music-box sonorities and persistent, almost yet not quite minimalistic
simplicity. The repeated E minor arpeggio put me in mind, a tone up, of the
opening of The Art of Fugue: as if
Bach were unable to get going and simply went around in a loop. (I have no
reason to think that that is anything other than my own association.) The
abruptness of change to the second section of this movement is striking – and was
so too in performance. Tempo (very fast), sonority, harmony, rhythm: pretty
much everything changes really, certainly the need, met with verve, for
soloistic virtuosity. The close returns to the mood and material of the
opening. ‘Romantic’ does not seem quite the right word for the second movement;
nor does it seem entirely wrong (at least, I should stress, upon a single
hearing, and without having seen the score). There is a hint of the ecstatic,
which, despite its clear German Romantic roots, also put me in mind, perhaps
arbitrarily, of Vaughan Williams. Pictorial virtuosity seems a particular
hallmark of the violin writing. There is a strong narrative thrust, powerfully
conveyed by Stenz and Kopatchinskaja. The close again returns to the arpeggio
material and the general mood of the opening to the concerto, although it
seems, quite deliberately, incomplete: perhaps deconstructed, perhaps not.
A performance of The Rite of Spring should always be an ‘occasion’; it certainly was
here. As with the Beethoven, Stenz had clearly thought long and hard about the
work. There was nothing routine to his interpretation; it undoubtedly had a
logic and character of its own, without trying to be ‘different’ for the sake
of it. There was menace in the slightly unusual drawn-out quality (a notable
hairpin in particular) to Jonathan Davies’s opening bassoon solo. The teeming
strangeness of what followed from the woodwind section really sounded as if
being heard with fresh ears. Different sections of the work offered marked
contrast, perhaps occasionally at the expense of a longer line, but also
reflecting a strikingly balletic approach. That approach was reflected not only
in sharply defined rhythm, such as one could imagine having helped the hapless
corps on that notorious premiere, but as strong a kinship to the Petersburg
colours of Petrushka as I can recall
having heard. This was ‘Russian’, yes, but without stereotype. More ‘purely’
musical matters were not neglected. Stravinsky’s cellular method and his
screwing up of dramatic tension were admirably conveyed, with a striking sense
of theatre. The LPO brass’s screams straightforwardly demanded one’s attention.
Some electronic intervention from an audience member proved an unwanted
interloper in what should have been silence prior to the ‘Dance of the Earth’. The
weirdness of the opening to the Second Part seemed more clearly than ever to
refer back to where it had all begun, at the beginning of the First Part. By
the same token, and this combination intrigued, there was very much a
world-weary quality: perhaps not unusual in itself, but at least a little so in
its degree, which even had me think of the Prelude to the Third Act of Parsifal. (Sorry, Stravinsky, but your
Wagnerian inheritance was never shaken off quite so readily as you might have
wished to claim.) As the music proceeded, there was again nothing routine to be
heard. Stenz seemed to have rethought the music as a conscientious performer
should naturally do. Throughout, it was the spirit of the Ballets Russes and of theatre in general that was most intriguingly
apparent.
