Philharmonie
Prokofiev: Symphony-Concerto for cello and orchestra in E minor, op.125
Schoenberg: Pelleas und Melisande, op.5
Alisa Weilerstein (cello)
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| Images: Monika Rittershaus |
A concert of two halves would generally be taken to mean one good, one not so good. In this case, I more to suggest approximate temporal equality, albeit with a second half a little longer, and first-half bemusement followed by an excellent performance of an acknowledged masterpiece. Prokofiev’s Symphony-Concerto is one of those pieces I have long known of, without ever (I think) making its actual acquaintance. Bearing in mind the usual caveats from a single hearing, it is difficult to know for certain whether my bemusement related to the work itself. This performance, from Alisa Weilerstein, the Berlin Philharmonic, and Lahav Shani, seemed very good, but might another performance have dissuaded me from the reluctant conclusion that it marked a significant decline in the composer’s powers? For now, all I can do is report what I heard, and suggest that, even for great admirers of Prokofiev’s music, amongst whom I count myself, this material stood in greater need of revision than the composer’s death permitted.
The first movement’s opening tutti was promising, Shani and the players managing somehow to sound both bright and dark: a matter of timbre and harmony respectively, if not exclusively. Weilerstein’s solo response was intense, in vibrato and other respects, Prokofiev’s trademark sidestepping melodic writing instantly familiar. This began, then, very much in the line of other late Prokofiev works, especially those in the minor mode. There were, moreover, no balance issues, cello and cellist more than holding their own: doubtless a matter of writing as well as performance. The movement had other ear-catching passages, for instance pizzicato cellos shadowing the solo cellist, whose rich, warm tone far from precluded precision. Shani handled tempo changes very well, all the way up to a final, curious winding down.
Hand on heart, I could not have said I found it top-drawer Prokofiev, but there was enough to retain interest, and a hint – if only a hint – of the scherzando grotesquerie of old at the beginning of the central ‘Allegro giusto’ augured well. If the music soon lapsed into the most blameless of Prokofiev’s late style, I was not inclined to be censorious. Weilerstein’s often astounding virtuosity more than held the attention too, not least in the cadenza. Alas, at a certain point, it began to seem interminable. It was difficult to imagine not only quite why the music had to go on for so long, but also why it had been ordered in the way it was. As I said, it did not seem to be the performance, but I am not entirely sure. A new mood was struck, not before time, in the third and final movement, the BPO wind making the most of their solos, as was a cellist for whom no technical difficulty appeared insurmountable. If more rhapsodic than symphonic, then, Prokofiev was not dead yet.
If the inevitable Bach sarabande – am I alone in thinking concerto encores should be the exception rather than the rule? – did little to dispel doubts concerning the quality of Prokofiev’s work, nor did Schoenberg’s Pelleas und Melisande. As it happens, the last time the Berlin Philharmonic played it, fifteen long years ago, I was also in the audience. Shani had little to fear from comparisons with 2009’s Christian Thielemann; both performances made a considerable impression on me, this marking a fine contribution to the composer’s 150th anniversary celebrations. Balances were finely attuned; a keen sense of drama was throughout achieved; overall coherence and an ear for colour were both in evidence, as were many other virtues. Every line – and there are many here – seemed to be heading somewhere, often to be opposed by another, in a motivic web that may have been complex but whose method was undeniable. As in so much of the best post-Wagnerian (and Wagnerian music) the violas proved crucial, as here in addition did the excellent solo violist.
Seductive and consoling by turns, this was
music for whom Maeterlinck’s drama proved a starting point to further
exploration, as if an orchestra-only version of Gurrelieder or an expanded
full-orchestral sequel to Verklärte Nacht. Schoenberg’s actual
orchestral experience may as yet have been severely limited, but one would
never have known it. The sincerity of his ‘voice’ was, moreover, never to be
doubted in a gracious account for which Shani knew how to defer to the score
without being hidebound by it. As Schoenberg’s music danced, as so often it
does, echoes of old Vienna resounded. As it sank into darkness, we experienced
all too well its tragic import. And as it gestured to the future, counterpoint
always crystal clear, the First Chamber Symphony and even the Five Orchestral
Pieces beckoned.
