Grosser Saal, Musikverein
Manfred, op.115: Overture
Piano Concerto in A minor,
op.54Symphony no.2 in C major, op.61
Murray Perahia (piano)
Chamber Orchestra of EuropeBernard Haitink (conductor)
As safe bets go, this all-Schumann
programme, with these musicians, would probably have veered toward the extreme
end of safe. Yet, however heightened the expectations, they were not to be
disappointed by performances whose supreme musicality delighted and edified
from beginning to end. The golden acoustic – it really does sound more or less
as it looks, albeit without the questionable ornamentation that must have given
Adolf Loos severe palpitations – of the Musikverein’s Grosser Saal did no harm
either, of course, although the chattering pair of girls behind me certainly
did. No number of hard stares seemed to be enough; why do these people bother
going?
I am not sure that I have ever
heard the Manfred Overture in concert
before; if I have, I have forgotten the experience, which forgetfulness might
well speak for itself. We rarely, if ever, hear the complete incidental music:
a great pity, but then much the same can be said of a good deal of Schumann’s
music. At any rate, Haitink and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe had nothing to
fear from the most exalted of comparisons. Indeed, whilst the orchestra was of
course smaller, though not at all too small, and Haitink’s way is not
Furtwängler’s – whatever the inspiration, neither is Barenboim’s – the darkness
of tone Furtwängler drew from the Berlin Philharmonic did not always sound so
distant. The extraordinary drama of such a performance, sounding with no
exaggeration as if everyone’s life depended on it, is doubtless unrepeatable,
just as no one could or should imitate Furtwängler in the Ninth. However, if
the orchestral lines did not ‘speak’ quite like that – how could they do? –
there was a noticeable, parallel kinship with Wagner. Two of the very greatest
of Wagner conductors, and moreover, two of the very greatest Walküre conductors, impart their
different varieties of musico-dramatic eloquence to the same score. Those
Neapolitan sixth chords tell so much – which might perhaps resist the attempt
to put it into words – because the crucial importance of harmony and, above
all, harmonic rhythm is present throughout. It is that greatest wonder of
Western music, harmony, which shapes the melodic, almost verbal, contours
above. We feel again the loss, Genoveva
notwithstanding, of Schumann as opera composer – even if, perhaps particularly
if, it could never really have been. And the playing of the COE was just as
committed as the Berlin Philharmonic: whether the Freischütz-like brass, the vernal woodwind, or the strings, whose
every note pulsed with life – life, which Furtwängler, in his echt-Romantic way, distinguished in his
notebooks from ‘vitality’, a second order virtue, longing for something already
gone. Ours is largely a secondary lot, or sometimes it seems, but without
grandstanding, Haitink and the COE permitted this neglected masterpiece to
shine as itself.
The Piano Concerto is of
course, a different animal. No one could call it neglected; indeed, it is the
sort of work I only really wants to hear in a great performance, since
otherwise one might just as well return at home to the great recordings of the
past. Well, this was a great performance of the present. If I say that the work
appeared simply to speak for itself, the claim stands open to objection in any
number of ways. ‘Appeared’, ‘simply’, etc. The art that conceals art is in many
respects the greatest and most difficult art of all. But there was a wisdom
here born not only of lengthy experience, but also surely of the renewed
delight in treating again with a masterpiece: finding new things, no doubt, but
also, I suspect, finding old things and letting them speak, or sing, anew. Haitink
and the orchestra offered the most impeccable of balance, lines weighted as if
we were hearing, say, Boulez subtly and yet unmistakeably bring to the surface a
Bergian Hauptstimme. Yet beneath that
surface, again, lay harmony. So too, it did with Perahia, whose renowned love
for Schenker was clearly in evidence. And yet, individual lines sang with
Mozartian eloquence, the eloquence of a Mozart piano concerto in which the ‘purely’
vocal has been aufgehoben. A
right-hand melody, in which the shadows deepened, lifted, or perhaps in which
our standpoint upon them shifted, was crafted in the most apparently ‘natural’
of ways, just as it would be from the outstanding COE woodwind. Transitions,
such as that from the Intermezzo from the finale, were a model of their kind,
uniting every one of those virtues listed above. Moreover, not the least virtue
of the finale would be when a Brahmsian piano chord revealed through its
voicing the potentialities of a future later still. Perahia is not noted as an
exponent of Schoenberg; indeed, I recall an interview in which he admitted
ruefully that he did not understand twelve-note music. This, however, made me
long to hear Perahia, Haitink, and – why not? – the Chamber Orchestra of Europe
in a performance of that composer’s piano concerto. They might even give Uchida
and Boulez a run for their money. Such was not, however, my final thought: that
lay with the jubilation of warm, radiant, Musikverein A major: a Romantic battle
had been lovingly won.
Haitink’s performance of the
Second Symphony was to be no less distinguished. (It would by this stage have
been surprising indeed, if it had.) Both of the earlier works are in many,
although not all, respects ‘symphonic’ of their kind; this, however, was the ‘real
thing’, as it were. What struck me – and I might have expected it, but
experiencing it in the flesh can surprise one even with the unsurprising – was the
structural grasp Haitink and his players displayed not only of each movement
but of the symphony as a whole. That was not to paint each movement or indeed
each paragraph, each phrase even, in similar shades. There was certainly
diversity in unity, and vice versa,
here. Again, I think of those chords from the piano concerto, with seeds not
only of the future I mentioned, but also, of course, of the past, Bach in
particular. Bach is, not without reason, often invoked in discussions of the
first movement, but for me, Beethoven is just as important, perhaps more so.
Moreover, there is kinship – I am not quite so sure that it is ‘influence’, but
that is neither here nor there – with Wagner too. Such aspects were readily
apparent, perhaps all the more so for the lack of underlining. Haitink,
whatever he might be, is certainly not an ‘underliner’. (I imagine with horror
what some of those intent on arbitrarily pulling around symphonic structures
would have done with, or rather to, this.) Once again, the freshness, the exhilaration
of the COE’s response was a joy in itself, not that it could or should have
been heard merely ‘in itself’. The scherzo dazzled, not in a flashy way –
again, can one imagine a less ‘flashy’ conductor? – but through the unleashing
of kinetic, Mendelssohnian, above all profoundly musical energy. There was nothing sentimental to the slow movement,
but nor was it treated in the perfunctory way that some, eager to avoid charges
of sentimentality, will inflict upon it. Phrase upon phrase unfolded, almost as
if in a poetry reading, until the dam broke and the high yet not un-tortured
spirits of the finale flowed, like the Rhine itself. Beethoven again seemed a
guiding but not an overbearing inspiration; Schumann spoke for himself.
