Grosses Festspielhaus
Symphony no.33 in B-flat major,
KV 319
Horn Concerto no.3 in E-flat
major, KV 447
Piano Concerto no.20 in D
minor, KV 466
Radek Baborák (horn)
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Daniel Barenboim (piano, conductor)
Mozart’s music requires but one
thing in performance: perfection. Needless to say, it rarely receives what it
needs. That is hardly the fault of us mere mortals; it is, however, our fault
when we impose absurd ideological constraints upon his music, consciously
reducing and impoverishing it. On this occasion, I am delighted to report that
an all-Mozart concert came as close as I can recall to that perfection in
performance it required. Radek Baborák, the Vienna Philharmonic, and Daniel
Barenboim did Mozart, his music, and their audience proud.
Bewilderingly neglected – have I
ever heard it in concert before? - the
B-flat major Symphony, KV 319, benefited from that ‘rightness’ that is
difficult to put either into words or practice, but which one knows when one
hears it. Tempo, balance, articulation, sound, line: everything was there, just
as it should be, in the way one used to hear from Sir Colin Davis, though never
quite to be identified. (Near-perfection takes more forms than one might
suspect.) Barenboim clearly heard the first movement, indeed the whole work, as
if in a single breath, but that did not preclude a host of characters making
their mark on Mozart’s invisible stage. The development section contrasted and
complemented what had gone before. There was no need to make a meal of the
four-note contrapuntal tag that to us inevitably presages the finale of the ‘Jupiter’
Symphony; it was simply put to its post-Fuxian work, thereby blending in and
generating. A graceful return smiled and led to a thrilling climax and coda.
Poised and poignant, the slow
movement also boasted an oboe solo to die for, not that the Vienna strings were
any less gorgeous to hear: warm, translucent, inviting. Barenboim’s harmonic
understanding underlay and underwrote it all. The Minuet had a fine swagger to
it, an equally fine developmental edge too. This was a dance that recalled or
looked forward to the ballroom, but was certainly not to be confined to it. Its
trio, often underestimated, was afforded due weight (not heaviness!), thereby
singing, seducing, and effecting a Don
Giovanni-like response in the reprise of its elder sibling. Champagne of
the finest vintage characterised the finale, corks bursting, wine overflowing. ‘Finch’han
del vino!’ Style and symphonic drama emerged as one in a performance whose stature
was underlined by Barenboim’s opting to take the second repeat. Why, after all,
should anyone wish such music and such music-making to end?
I wonder whether Baborák’s
performance in the Third Horn Concerto may have offered the finest horn playing
I have heard. I can safely say that I have heard none finer. Flawless of
phrasing and of line, despatched with supreme aristocratic elegance, the first
movement set expectations impossible high, only for them to be fulfilled. A
slightly smaller string section, just as warm and polished as before, and
delectable woodwind followed Barenboim’s lead to effect a partnership poised
between chamber and orchestral music, or rather navigating between them. What
riches of musical thought were revealed anew, not least some of Mozart’s most
breathtaking modulations. A splendidly directed cadenza, Baborák’s own,
presented us both with a true microcosm of the whole and a witty surprise. Sung
with perfect consolation, human in its divinity and vice versa, the slow movement spoke of tragedy too, its turn to the
minor all the more affecting for the lack of underlining lesser musicians would
have brought to it. The quintessence of a hunting finale ensued, detail and
sweep, balance and propulsion all finely weighed and communicated.
Dark, mysterious, soon
explosive, the opening tutti of the D minor Piano Concerto again had
expectations run unreasonably high, only to meet, even to surpass them.
Dialogue between first and second violins, not only its clarity but also its
import, left us in no doubt this was to be no run-of-the-mill performance. It
set the scene, however, for a movement of great contrasts, responsorial and
otherwise. When I had last heard Barenboim play this concerto, his technical
control had not always been what it might; here, technique proved the
liberation of the imagination, as Peter Pears once put it (at least according
to a quotation on my A-level music teacher’s wall). The sweetness of tragedy,
that ineffably Mozartian smiling through tears, was my abiding memory of a
first movement as terrifying as anything in Don
Giovanni, anger repressed as crucial as anger unleashed. It was, however, a
more intimate performance than I expected, once again showing that, at his
best, Barenboim is never a musician to rest on his laurels. That said, the lead
up to the cadenza and the voice of Beethoven himself was seamless. And if that
were not the Angel of Death hovering in the penumbra of the coda, I cannot
imagine what it was.
Piano legato flowed like oil in
the slow movement, as Mozart famously prescribed. It was in the half-lights and
shadows, however, that the truest revelations – in every sense – lay. It was
played with all the ease of a young man and all the wisdom accumulated since.
The grief of which the central minor mode section spoke was harnessed
thereafter to something seraphic, which managed to sing through the memory,
through the trauma. Barenboim’s opening finale solo leapt off the page onstage,
inciting a demonic rage from the orchestra that surely would have thrilled
Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner too. The dramma
giocoso balance to this movement, however, was Mozart’s and Mozart’s alone.
Our destination, D major, proved balm for the soul and all the more painful for
it. Whatever the horrors of our world, Mozart remains.
