Grosser Saal,
Musikverein
Bach – Piano Concerto no.1 in D
minor, BWV 1052
Mahler – Symphony no.1 in D
major
What a refreshing change to
hear a Bach keyboard concerto not only played on the piano, but by someone who
did not sound ashamed of the instrument! In the performance of Bach’s D minor
concerto, one needed to make no allowances for Lahav Shani making his debut
with the Vienna Philharmonic; this would have been a fine concert from anyone.
The orchestra was small – for the Bach, that is – at 6.6.5.4.3, although doubtless
enormous enough for the ayatollahs of ‘authenticity’ to order exemplary
punishment. Shani took the first movement faster than I had heard before, but
without it sounding in the least garbled or harried. Demisemiquavers remained
melodic, likewise trills: never mere effect. There was always clear
understanding of relative melodic weight within groups, as there was from the
Vienna strings, similarly of the work’s greater contours. The Adagio was taken rightly in slow triple
time, unmistakeably triple, unmistakeably an Adagio. (If that sounds tautologous, tell that to the zealots!)
Shani again proved his own man, the tone of his cantilena noble, almost
defiant, always underpinned by the bass. He can certainly spin a long line
without detriment to the chiaroscuro. There was a broadly, harmonically,
conceived ritardando at the end,
which, being harmonically conceived, was not in the slightest excessive. The
finale was again fast, but not too fast. Shani’s piano cut nicely through the
strings. A duet with solo cello brought a nice element of variation, whilst the
light and shade in the piano part was such as one might hear in an excellent
performance of Schumann, but hears far too rarely today in
Bach.
There was, needless to say, a
larger body of strings for Mahler’s First Symphony. From my seat in the right
hand-side of the balcony, I could not see the whole orchestra, but there were sixteen
first violins, going down to eight double basses (in VPO style, along the back
of the orchestra), firsts and seconds split to left and right of the conductor.
Shani conducted the work from memory; he is, apparently, about to conduct it in
Birmingham with the CBSO. One would expect the Vienna Philharmonic violins to sail
through the stiff test of those opening harmonics; it nevertheless remains a
stiff test and is always worthy of praise when passed. Shani’s performance was
anything but an identikit performance. Again, he proved his own man, but
differences from tradition/Schlamperei
never sounded different for their own sake; they could always be justified
within his conception. During the long introduction to the first movement, a
growling bass line, at an unusually – convincingly – slow tempo, had the
woodwind sound unusually – convincingly – uneasy above. The contrast with
spring-like gambolling thereafter, with wonderfully sweet string playing, was
clear, but so too was kinship, calling into question that contrast; Mahler’s
playing with sonata form expectations was clearly both understood and
communicated, harmonic tension screwed up nicely. The symphony’s Wayfarer roots were clear, but so was
their transformation. Moments and passages of unease sounded, not through undue
grotesquerie, but through their roots in and deviation from German Romanticism.
And when the dam finally burst, there was some magnificent orchestral swagger,
perhaps most notably from the Vienna horns, but not just from them. I was a
little uncertain about the somewhat throwaway ending, but again, Shani was
clearly not hidebound by Schlamperei.
It was good to hear the strings
really dig in for the Ländler to
follow. Here, numbers counted, but still more so did rhythm and its
relationship to harmony. Shani clearly, like his mentor, Daniel Barenboim, has
a fine ear for harmony and its implications. Beethoven is a sterner test again,
but I should be interested to hear what he has to say there. The bass line
again proved the root of much questioning. A tender horn call – the German, weich, so often seems the mot juste in such a context – ushering in
the Trio, seemed momentarily to look into the future, as far, perhaps as the
Seventh Symphony, reminding us that the undeniable charm of the new material
was not to be taken without a good dose of irony. The return of the initial
material had it thereby sound quite transformed, the showmanship of the
conclusion growing out of it rather than imposed upon it.
Ghostly kettledrums, taking
Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream
somewhere it never wanted to go, began their dance of death with solo
double-bass. (Thank goodness there was none of that nonsense of employing the
entire section, an absurdity for which Sander Wilkens, editor of the so-called critical
edition, should hang his head in shame!) The canon gathered momentum just as it should:
with a fragility that proved both real and deceptive. Pyramus and Thisbe
indeed! And the Klezmer music was equally well judged; remembered, reimagined,
integrated, the tension thereby all the greater than if it sounded, as too
often occurs, as if it had come from nowhere. It was sardonic, but the Romantic
framing remained: both need each other. There was, moreover, a wonderful
stillness thereafter, which put me in mind of the slow movement to the Fourth
Symphony. Solo oboe and violin cut through that stillness with cruel beauty.
And then: harp intonation of death, returning us to an eerily intensified ‘Bruder
Martin’. The end, intriguingly, sounded as if it might disintegrate into the
opening of Berg’s Op.6 Orchestral Pieces.
The opening of the finale
proved quite a wake-up call. This is hardly a time for understatement, and yet,
what was to come reminded us that theatrics need a harmonic foundation. A
little too much of those theatrics at times? Perhaps, but there is more than
one way to skin a Mahlerian cat. I, for one, rather welcomed the sense of a
blinding flash, especially – and this was the key in retrospect – when the
slow, cloying, knowing sweetness, honest in its desperation for a past that
never was, told its own tale. If one has the Vienna Philharmonic’s strings, one
might as well use them to full effect! Episodes screamed, but did not just
scream; they spoke too. Moments, passages of calm, as in the preceding
movement, were not just what they might initially have seemed either. This was
an integrative reading, which this movement, its structure perhaps problematical
unless powerfully unified in performance, cries out for – in every sense. And
so, triumph, when it came, felt and indeed had been earned. I have little doubt
that we shall hear more from this pianist-conductor.
