Barbican
Hall
Detlev Glanert – Brahms-Fantasie – ‘heliogravure’ for
orchestra
Haydn – Cello Concerto no.1 in
C majorBrahms – Symphony no.1 in C minor, op.68
The BBC Symphony Orchestra is
fortunate indeed to have Semyon Bychkov as a regular collaborator; he holds the
orchestra’s Günter Wand Conducting Chair. In this concert, we heard what a
difference a great conductor makes to these players. The depth of string tone
almost had one believe this was one of the great German orchestras, and that
was not simply a matter of numbers.
One certainly heard that to
good advantage in Detlev Glanert’s Brahms-Fantasie.
The opening disintegration of Brahms augured well, perhaps echoing Henze’s Tristan. However, the rest meandered in drearily
neo-Romantic fashion (the work rather than the performance), hovering somewhere
between Shostakovich and Khatchaturian. A spot of sub- – very sub-! – Heldenleben battle-music sounded merely
incongruous. This was not merely eclectic, but eclecticism with a vengeance –
and, more to the point, without any apparent point. The performance seemed
excellent, but I cannot imagine anyone wanting to hear the work again.
Haydn, then, was just the tonic
we needed. Cultivated playing announced itself from the opening bars of his
First Cello Concerto. A sensible tempo – God be thanked! – was adopted, Paul
Watkins responding very much in kind. His playing as soloist was lively,
characterful, full of joy in a melodious gift that almost approaches that of
Mozart (although the music never really sounds ‘like’ his in what is, in every
respect, a pre-Mozartian concerto). Thematic construction and development were,
quite rightly, the thing. It was again an immense relief to have the aria-like
slow movement not taken too fast. It flowed as it would have done from a great
singer in a performance of surpassing elegance. The finale possessed many of
the virtues of the first movement, including a well-chosen (of course, faster)
tempo, which permitted the music to breathe. Excitement was musical rather than
externally, artificially applied to it as in so many contemporary Haydn
performances. Watkins’s virtuosity was not of the high-octane variety; it was
full of musical life. As was that of
the orchestra.
Brahms’s First Symphony opened in medias res; there was no doubting its
tragic import, at least here. There was freshness too, similarly an allied
Romantic intimacy, not least from the cellos (a nice link there, consciously or
otherwise, with the Haydn). The exposition proper likewise exhibited a Schumannesque
Romanticism one rarely hears here. This was, on the whole, quite a brisk
account, but not unduly so, for Bychkov ensured impressive responsiveness to
the composer’s twists and turns – which are many! It is surely as ‘difficult’ a
work as the First String Quartet, although perhaps rather more ingratiating. I
loved the archaisms from reedy woodwind, supported and/or modified by brass:
very nineteenth-century Bach! Developmental struggle itself, though, was quite
rightly more Beethovenian in character, if not necessarily sounding ‘like’
Beethoven. Consciously or otherwise, intervallic relationships signalled close
kinship with Webern. Melancholic
lyricism, often cruelly foreshortened, was, however, entirely Brahms’s own.
The second movement was, again,
quite swift, though not unreasonably so. There was no lack of involvement in
any sense: emotional, motivic, rhythmic (those cross-rhythms!) Harmonic shifts
told their own story: both in the moment and in the longer term. A beautifully-played
violin solo from Giovanni Guzzo was not the least pleasure here. The third
movement was warmer, more spring-like than autumnal, at least to begin with.
Darker undercurrents were not ignored, but I wondered whether they might have
been made more of; that, however, might not have been so consistent with
Bychkov’s conception of the work. Again, the music was taken quickly, but
flowing rather than being harried.
Darkness proper returned at the
opening of the finale, thematic reminiscences darkening the mood further. That
most difficult of transitions was well handled, trombones sounding splendid, as
did the horns. And yet, it was difficult not to feel that something was
missing: there was less at stake, so it sounded, than with a great account such
as Furtwängler’s or, latterly, Barenboim’s. Moreover, a few gear changes were a
little less subtle than they might have been. Here, and only here, the music
did not sound more than the sum of its considerable parts. There was no
doubting, however, the excellence of the playing Bychkov drew from the orchestra.
