Staatsoper
Unter den Linden
Elgar:
Violin Concerto in B
minor, op.61
Mussorgsky-Ravel:
Pictures
at an Exhibition
Pinchas Zukerman (violin)
Staatskapelle Berlin
Lahav Shani (conductor)
Strange though this may sound
to the uninitiated, Daniel Barenboim’s Staatskapelle Berlin now stands second
to none in contemporary Elgar performance. Barenboim’s long association with
the composer has latterly seen an Indian summer, much of which I have been
privileged to hear. This evening, in the fourth of the orchestra’s seasonal subscription
concerts and the third to include music by Elgar (!), it was time to hear from
Barenboim’s similarly long-term associate, Pinchas Zukerman, and a more recent
associate, Lahav Shani, with whom the orchestra already seems to be on good
terms.
The opening tutti certainly suggested a similar affinity
on Shani’s part for the composer: passionate, urgent, and flexible as required,
as idiomatic as it was ‘objectively’ convincing. The Staatskapelle, moreover,
played as if it were playing for Barenboim himself. Tender, noble, rich, and
dark: one could not reasonably have asked for more. This was a Romantic rather
than a modernist Elgar, but there is nothing wrong with that. There would have
been little virtue in attempting to present a performance someone else, let
alone Barenboim, would have given. Zukerman’s entry suggested something
similar, his golden, even glamorous tone recognisable of old. There was
something, moreover, intriguing, not just here in the first movement but
throughout, to the Brahmsian confrontation of soloist and orchestra we heard:
these interpreters again very much their own men. Sadly, the charms of what
increasingly sounded more like aggression on Zukerman’s part began to pale. Not
only was he sometimes out of sync with the orchestra in his passagework –
however craftily Shani covered up for him – but the unyielding, squarer quality
of his playing was less than suggestive of much in the way of musical
sensitivity. At its best, the glamour was irresistible, but was it Elgar? The
slow movement fared better, roots in German Romanticism clear and meaningful.
It was taken very slowly, but was none the worse for that. Shani, however, was
still doing most of the real work. The finale was probably better forgotten. By
turns unduly deliberate and running away with itself, it never settled down and
threatened to seem interminable. There were wonderful moments, but the golden
thread proved sadly elusive. A pity.
I felt no such reservations or
difficulties concerning the second half: Pictures
at an Exhibition in Ravel’s orchestration. Insofar as I had any at all,
they related as ever to Ravel’s enterprise itself; even on that count, I had
fewer than usual. Shani, seemingly liberated, conducted without a score,
leading a performance full of incident but also possessed of long-term
coherence. The opening Promenade had a similar urgency to the opening of the
Elgar, yet rightly opened the door to music of very different qualities. ‘Gnomus’
boasted depth of string tone and agility in equal measure, colour, and above
all mystery. There was not a little of that to ‘Il vechhio castello’ too,
Gallic suavity – also heard later, in ‘Limoges: Le marché’ – balanced by occasional
hints at an intriguing post-Mozartian sensibility. ‘Bydlo’, however, was more
Russian, Ravel’s crescendo and diminuendo notwithstanding. (Surely he had to do
something along such lines anyway. Mussorgsky’s strategy could hardly have
worked as it did with orchestra.) Its shadow darkened the following Promenade
and seemed also to inspire the portrait of ‘Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle’.
Antisemitic? Undoubtedly, yet we lose something if we sit too sternly in judgement.
Wagnerian brass turned Russian as we toured the catacombs. The spirit of Boris Godunov appeared not for the first
time in the unease and sheer malevelonce of ‘Cum mortuis in lingua mortua’.
Baba Yaga’s arrival took one’s breath away, Shani’s insistence on motor rhythms
strongly suggestive of Prokofiev. Perhaps perversely, I missed the piano most
for ‘The Great Gate of Kiev’, though there was no doubting the excellence of
the playing, nor Shani’s command. Ravel’s cunning hints at Boris-like orchestration made their point in any case.
