Grosser Saal, Mozarteum
Bartók:
Music
for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta,
Sz 106
Weber:
Clarinet Concerto no.1 in
F minor, op.73
Stephan
Koncz: Hungarian Fantasy on Themes by Carl Maria von Weber, for clarinet and orchestra
Kodály:
Dances
of Galánta
Andreas Ottensamer (clarinet)
Camerata Salzburg
Lorenzo Viotti (conductor)
A deeply frustrating concert,
this: a fine orchestra and fine soloist, let down by odd programming and, more
seriously, a conductor who only intermittently impressed. Mine, it is fair to
see, was very much a minority view, the audience rising to give Lorenzo Viotti
a standing ovation.
Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta opened with great
promise, its first movement involving and intriguing. Musically, it was the
highpoint of the concert, though the Weber First Clarinet Concerto, a considerably
lesser work, could hardly be faulted in performance terms. Veiled yet clear
from the outset, the Camerata Salzburg strings grew in muted – and then
non-muted – intensity. Viotti guided them with skill and evident commitment,
Bartók’s structure readily becoming form. There was a welcome physicality to
the second movement, not only concerning rhythmic impact but of bows on
strings: once again, the orchestra was on superlative fault. Corners, however,
were more of a difficulty, Viotti communicating little of how the movement’s
sections were connected, a problem that only increased throughout this
admittedly difficult work. Eerie ‘night music’ passages registered vividly in
the third movement, which, to be fair, also generated a good deal of harmonic and
dramatic suspense, so long as one listened only a section at a time. There was
a welcome sense of the dance to the finale, or at least to its opening. Overall
line, however, eluded me.
Joined by Andreas Ottensamer
for the Weber concerto, the orchestra and Viotti gave what was overall their
most satisfying performance. Some might have found Viotti’s moulding of the
first movement’s Romantic drama a little much, but it was a perfectly
justifiable aesthetic stance to take, evoking responses from Ottensamer both
surpassingly virtuosic and intensely dramatic. Phrasing and articulation here
and in the remaining two movements were splendidly judged, the slow movement
characterised by deeply-felt lyricism, tone variegated without affection, the
finale winningly propelled with an Italianate verve that may not have been
especially profound, but which was very much in keeping with music that neither
asks for nor requires profundity. For Weber music that does, we turns generally
to the final three operas, a flash from which – Der Freischütz – opened Stephan Koncz’s Hungarian Fantasy on Themes by Carl Maria von Weber. As a vehicle
for Ottensamer’s virtuosity, it did its trick. Musically, it seemed to me quite
without interest, mostly written in a language that would hardly have been
avant-garde two hundred years earlier. Not everything need be Helmut
Lachenmann, but it is difficult to imagine Weber writing straightforwardly in
the style of Monteverdi, minus the content. It went on for too long simply to
be a throwaway encore.
As for Kodály’s Dances of Galánta, they have their fans;
I remain uncertain quite why. At any rate, they seem dangerous to programme alongside
a Bartók masterpiece. Camerata Salzburg’s playing was again beyond reproach, impeccable
in balance and blend, heft and subtlety. Viotti responded well to the needs of
characterisation. I am not sure his habit of pulling them around did them any
favours either, nor his placing emphasis so strongly on the ‘Romantic’ side.
They are what they are, though, and the audience clearly enjoyed them, as it
did the encore: a swashbuckling account of Brahms’s Hungarian Dance no.1 in G minor.
