Barbican Hall
Webern – Im Sommerwind
Berg – Violin ConcertoStrauss – Ein Heldenleben, op.40
I enjoyed this concert very
much, my only cavils being the Barbican acoustic – especially at climaxes: a
new hall cannot come soon enough! – and a doubtless curmudgeonly wish to have
heard some more characteristic Webern. I do not think for a minute that this
was the case here, Im Sommerwind finding
its natural home with Strauss, but I cannot help but wonder whether some
performances of it and, to a certain extent, of the Passacaglia, op.1, happen
because they enable orchestras or conductors to have played Webern without
really having done so. It is fascinating to hear Webern’s ‘Idyll’, but mostly
for the fact that it really does not sound anything like his mature œuvre. It
seems to wishful thinking to claim to detect seeds of the future, whereas there
is more of a case to be made with the Passacaglia. Its originality was revealed
being quite contrary to that of later works; intriguingly, the more inept
passages tend to be the more original, perhaps experiments from which he
learned and which he thus never repeated. The LSO and François-Xavier Roth
nevertheless relished it for what it is, producing a gloriously Straussian
sound, highlighting indirectly that Webern could surely have never pursued this
path, even if he had wished to do so. The sound of that extraordinary chord,
though: it was worth coming to the concert for its sake alone.
From apprentice work to
towering mature masterpiece, and in a reversal of preconceptions, from ‘late
Romantic’ work and performance to something far more ‘modernist’: Berg’s Violin
Concerto, for which Renaud Capuçon joined the orchestra. Capuçon and Roth
seemed very much of a similar mind, offering a highly dramatic performance, in
no sense hidebound to performing tradition. Under Roth’s direction, the opening
– what splendidly characterful woodwind playing from the LSO! – conveyed a real
sense of the post-Wozzeck laboratory.
Berg is far more ‘difficult’ than he is often given credit for; as ever, we
should do well not to confuse style and idea. Both conductor and orchestra
offered great orchestral clarity; that enhances rather than detracts from the
labyrinthine quality of Berg’s invention. Indeed, both soloist and conductor
conveyed a very strong sense of the Wagnerian melos; our thread through the labyrinth. Capuçon selected from a
commendably wide palette; he can paint in silver as well as gold, which
heighted the impact of the full, truly glorious ‘Romantic’ tone when we heard
it. Capuçon selected from a commendably wide palette; he can paint in silver as
well as gold, which heighted the impact of the full, truly glorious ‘Romantic’
tone when we heard it. I loved Roth’s – and the LSO’s – way with the Mahlerian
dance rhythms: ironic and yet affectionate. The ending of the Allegretto section and thus of the first
part seems tricky to get right; all too often, it sounds over-emphatic, but not
here. And the great contrast – how could it be otherwise? – with the Allegro opening of the second part was,
above all, dramatically meaningful, the dazzling ferocity of Capuçon’s playing
very much part of that. Indeed, I cannot recall hearing this music imbued with quite
such urgency. Again, the orchestral dances were wonderfully apparent, although
quite rightly, they seemed to have left Mahler behind: Lulu came to mind, even, dare I suggest it, Stravinsky. There was
for me here an unabashed modernity that truly convinced and which made the
appearance of Bach all the more moving and meaningful. It was not that the work
lost what we might call its ‘nostalgia’, but that the performance both questioned
and made sense of it.
Ein
Heldenleben continued the path
of the first half, both enjoyable and thought-provoking. I liked the way Roth
did not wait for silence; he simply turned to the orchestra and began, almost
as if clicking a switch, although there was certainly nothing mechanical about
what followed. This is such a difficult piece to bring off, the rest of the
work all too readily overshadowed by the opening; not for one moment did that
seem to be the case here. Perhaps the seeds for that actually lay in Roth’s way
with the opening, the ‘Hero’, who had swagger, to be sure, but plenty of light
and shade too, also a flexibility which simply sounded right. The LSO was on
splendid form throughout, heightening a growing conviction in my mind that both
work and performance were essentially ‘about’ music and musical performance. Adversaries
as piquant as one could hope for seemed to necessitate an almost Elgarian string
consolation. Throughout, the orchestra could sound vividly pictorial, but never
just that; under Roth’s leadership, it maintained an intense, ever-changing,
and yet coherent sense of musical drama. Roman Simovic’s violin solos were not
only technically and emotionally right. In themselves and in their orchestral
context, they seemed to be telling a captivating story, even if it were a story
one could not necessarily put into words, or which at the very least could not
be exhausted by a programme. Just as Strauss’s operas are so often about opera,
here the tone-poem seemed to be about tone-poetry.
The great orchestral-phantasmagorical
passages sounded, despite the acoustic, to be judged well-nigh perfectly,
Strauss’s materialism – this could never have been Webern’s way! – relished.
(How we still far too often misunderstand Strauss, his æsthetics, and his
æstheticism!) The battle seemed both to have a great deal at stake musically yet
also to be a game, a game, I felt, we were intended to enjoy; there were no
metaphysics. Roth’s shaping of the work convinced just as much as Daniel
Barenboim’s very different London performance had last year, the appearance
of Don Juan sounding as properly
climactic as I think I have heard, highlighting the extraordinary originality
of the music that follows. Whatever the non-redemptive force might be that is
hymned at the end – surely, just as in Strauss's operas, it is music! – it spoke wisely, even if, arguably particularly if, we actually might believe in redemption. It was possessed of just
the right sense of irony, quite without sentimentality, and thus had no need to
shout its presence, nor to shout about itself.
