Philharmonie
Dvořák – Cello Concerto in B
minor, op.104
Elgar – Symphony no.2 in E-flat
major, op.63
My visit to this year’s
Festtage was somewhat curtailed; given the earliness of Easter, I was unable to
get away earlier. (Yes, I know that sympathy will be a little limited.) I was
very sorry to miss a Mahler concert from Daniel Barenboim, the Vienna
Philharmonic, and Jonas Kaufmann. In any case, this concert, my doubts
concerning one of the works notwithstanding, offered ample compensation.
Indeed, although I am no more convinced by Dvořák’s Cello Concerto as a work
than I was before, the excellence of the performance from Yo-Yo Ma, the
Staatskapelle Berlin, and Barenboim matched that of Elgar’s Second Symphony in
the second half. I could not help but think it a pity they had not played
Elgar’s Cello Concerto instead, or, for that matter, some Haydn, but never
mind.
It was, of course, a pleasure
in itself to hear Ma: believe it or not, my first opportunity in the flesh; it
was an equal pleasure to hear the Staatskapelle’s fabled sound, to my ears
preferable to that of the city’s still-more-celebrated orchestra, at least nowadays,
in this music. In the introduction to the concerto’s first movement, the
orchestra sounded darkly brooding, as if the instantiation of a dark German
(or, insofar as it might be different, Bohemian) wood. Barenboim, Dvořák’s
digressions (even here!) notwithstanding, gave us a sense that, with a pinch or
two of salt, we might discern some roots in Beethoven. Hushed expectancy was
combined with exultant lyricism. There could, moreover, be no doubting the
extension of that lyricism with Ma’s entry, likewise no doubting that we were
in the company of a great cellist. It was perhaps the moments of quiet ecstasy
beautifully cushioned by the strings, sometimes duetting with equally
outstanding woodwind, that were most touching, but Ma’s ardent Romanticism, always
focused, never blowsy or grandstanding, was just as impressive. Gorgeous horn
calls, straight out of Tannhäuser,
were as great a pleasure as anything else. There was a splendid sense of
give-and-take, at times almost as if Ma and Barenboim were making chamber
music.
The second movement had a
passionate songfulness about it that looked forward to Elgar, and yet retained,
not least through the offices of the Staatskapelle’s woodwind, a truly vernal
quality. Not that the grander moments were underchanged, of course; indeed,
soloist and orchestra alike relished the interplay. And what a beautifully
variegated palette it was from which Ma painted. Barenboim, meanwhile, clearly
relished those occasional moments of Tristan-like
chromaticism. (If only they had more meaning!) Brahms was an ever-present
influence too, of course, still more so in the finale, even given Lisztian
excess on the triangle. Barenboim seemed especially keen to draw out other
Lisztian elements too, much to the work’s advantage, although even he could not
really impart much coherence to this movement. The nobility of Ma’s solo line
could not be gainsaid; I doubt anyone would have tried.
The performance of the Elgar
Symphony was, I think, the greatest of any Elgar symphony, perhaps even any
work by Elgar, I have heard. Forget the insularity of ‘English music’; this was
music, and great music at that. From the outset, we not only heard ‘Edward
Elgar, Modernist’ to quote the title of the study by my Royal Holloway
colleague, J.P.E. Harper-Scott; Elgar, modernist, even radical, was thrust to
the fore of our consciousness whether we liked it or no. (Perhaps that was why
a significant number of the audience left; I should like to think so. Sadly, I
suspect that it was spießig
incomprehension of Elgar tout court.)
Barenboim took the movement, at least to begin with, at an ‘authentically’
Elgarian lick: no sentimentality here, or indeed elsewhere. Even here, however,
this was an Elgar with Straussian knowledge, harmonic as well as colouristic,
insofar as the two may be separated. And then, how he – Barenboim, that is, but
also, Elgar – yielded, the music sounding, despite its meter, as if it were
something approaching a slow waltz. We all know about Edward Elgar, German; too
few of us remember Edward Elgar, Tchaikovskian. There was flexibility aplenty
then, but directed flexibility. Aspirant climaxes underlined that composer and
conductor alike knew their Wagner. Dark moments of phantasmagorical mystery
sounded far more enigmatic than anything in a certain set of Variations. Given
Barenboim’s Brahmsian credentials, I was struck by how un-Brahmsian it all
sounded. This sounded nothing like the Elgar of Adrian Boult? It perhaps
sounded, if you can imagine such a thing, more like a Frau ohne Schatten Fantasy that actually worked. If Strauss were
not so surprising a composer to come to mind, Szymanowski was – and sounded all
the more welcome for it. (Has Barenboim conducted his music? If not, he
should.)
The second movement offered a
similar – yet different – holding together of the material, despite its
sometimes extreme disintegrative tendencies, compositional and performative. In
that sense, I thought of late Beethoven. There was certainly no taking an easy
road here. Roots in German Romanticism needed no underlining; rather Elgar and
such roots appeared to renew their vows in a vision that sounded well-nigh
Schoenbergian. (If only Barenboim’s great friend, Pierre Boulez, could have
heard this performance, maybe he would have given Elgar a second thought. Or maybe
not.) And yet, that side, those sides, were of course not all; climaxes at
which a melody could sing, even perhaps momentarily triumph, spoke of Brahms
and Schumann, not Mahler or Schoenberg. Well, sort of anyway; they really spoke
of Elgar. It was, nevertheless, the liminal passages, not entirely
un-Mahlerian, that seemed to lie at the heart of this extraordinary
interpretation (i.e., Barenboim) and performance (i.e., the Staatskapelle
Berlin).
Elgar’s scherzo opened as if it
were a darker, perhaps more complex (!), Till
Eulenspiegel. Outwardly, that is, for Elgar is not a composer to share
Strauss’s materialism. It soon, of course, developed into something quite
different, and crucially, continued to develop: this was a symphony, no doubt
about it, Mendelssohn perhaps, subjected to and liberated by a modernist
nightmare. Militarism, if we can call it that, sounded as the indictment it
surely is – I doubt any of us, thank God, possesses the troubled imagination to
conjure up an ‘Edward Elgar, Blairite’ – but there was nothing programmatic
about what we heard. The finale seemed to offer the prospect of something
good-natured, even Haydn-like. But triumph was long denied; this was an arduous
path, just as it must be. Harmony, as always with Barenboim’s greatest
performances, drove what we heard, made it possible. I suspect that his
detractors, whether in Beethoven or here, have little understanding of that.
Who cares? One does not need to be able to name the chords and their
progressions to feel their import. What one needs is a receptive ear and the
willingness to listen.
