Mutter/WEDO/Barenboim - Brahms and Schubert, 9 August 2024

Waldbühne

Brahms: Violin Concerto in D major, op.77
Schubert: Symphony no.9 in C major, ‘Great’, D 944

Anne-Sophie Mutter (violin)
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra
Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

Images: Jakob Tilmann

That it came close to a miracle that this concert took place at all will not be news to anyone. The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra continues to offer hope, light, and crucially listening. It has for me ever since I first heard the players in a London memorial concert for Edward Said, conducted (partly from the piano) 20 years ago, almost to the day, by co-founder Daniel Barenboim. As Barenboim and Said made clear, it was not straightforwardly a political project; an orchestra was never going to bring justice to the world or to part of it. It could, however, show a way to listen to one another in extremely difficult – some might have thought, impossible – circumstances. That it has now been doing for 25 years. I was unable to attend the anniversary concert here in Berlin in April, but it helped nonetheless to know that it was taking place—and I was able the previous September to hear them come together once again to play the three final symphonies of Mozart, conducted as (almost) always by Barenboim. It was not a concert I reviewed, but the ultra-Klemperian performance of the E-flat Symphony was the finest I have ever heard. It compelled one above all to listen. 

And so, it was a privilege once again to see, as well as to hear, these musicians assemble to perform Brahms and Schubert with long-term collaborator Anne-Sophie Mutter. Berlin’s Waldbühne is a strange venue. It was my first visit, earlier plans having been confounded. And it is certainly worth the visit for the ‘experience’, even if it rains for part of it, necessitating a sea of umbrellas and the rest. In the forest, as its name suggests, the vast ampitheatre offers no shelter for anyone but the performers; it offers little shelter either, save for the determinedly uninquisitive (never underestimate them!) from its Nazi origins and concept. Handel’s Hercules and Eberhard Wolfgang Möller’s Frankenburger Würfelspiel featured here in 1936, as well as the Olympic Games’s gymnastics competition. Still, boiling things down merely to alleged origins is as un-historical as it is un-musical. Barenboim has never been a musician to resort to such pseudo-archaeology, and nor should we be. History is, or should be, as much about dialogue, about listening, as music.

The major problem in saying much concerning the performances is the necessary amplification such a vast open-air theatre requires. I say that not to complain; if you do not wish to hear an amplified performance, do not attend one. I say it rather to explain why my remarks on the performances will be brief and somewhat generalised, and will take second place to the ‘event’ itself, reflecting the nature of the occasion and my experience of it. Insofar as I could tell, given the nature and consequences of amplification – that ‘insofar’ should be taken as read or heard for the rest – Mutter gave a fine performance: broad, unmannered, tonally centred throughout. From time to time, she led, but like those around her, she listened; her understanding with the players, as well as Barenboim, drawing on an even greater wealth of experience, was palpable. Barenboim ensured, often whilst doing apparently little – he has always known when not to conduct, as well as when to do so – that not only the proportion were there, but that they were thoroughly founded on harmony: another humanistic, as well as musical, lesson. The Divan’s strings, as so often of a greater size than one would hear with a ‘normal’ symphony orchestra, produced not only fine tone, but a true sense of how (relatively) massed musicians can come together to prove so much more than the sum of their parts—when they listen, and act on that listening. So too did the rest of the orchestra, the oboe and other wind solos in the slow movement exquisite, yet also somehow symbolic of how individual voices may continue to sound and matter when part of that greater whole. 

Barenboim has long been an outstanding interpreter of Schubert in general, and the ‘Great’ C major Symphony in particular. A performance I heard him give at the Philharmonie, with the Vienna Philharmonic, was without question the finest I had heard, drawing as much as his Beethoven on the Furtwänglerian sources of his musicianship. Here that lineage remained important, but it was joined – as indeed as has much of his symphonic Beethoven over the past fifteen years or so – by a reunion with another powerful influence on his career, albeit slightly later, the aforementioned Otto Klemperer. As with Klemperer, if there could be something implacable to the playing here, that did not preclude the more mercurial, let alone the more human; it was part and parcel of the same dialectical conception. And Furtwänger’s famed long-distance hearing or listening (Fernhören, he called it) was just as apparent, from beginning to end. Barenboim had no truck with currently fashionable, frankly idiotic ideas concerning the opening tempo; he trusted the score, listened to it, and aided his musicians to do likewise. Here, deep – well, not so deep, but one could fancy it was after nightfall – in the German forest, horns and other wind took on a magical quality of their all, spirits already presaging, like quicksilver strings, the perfectly chosen and played encore, the Scherzo from Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream music. The Andante con moto’s length felt truly ‘heavenly’, to reprise Schumann’s celebrated description of Schubert’s ‘lengths’: not a moment too long, but just long enough. Such Goldilocks proportions characterised the symphony as a whole and in its myriad interrelations, not least between trio and scherzo material, all with admirable, infectious Schwung. The meteor-like finale thrilled, erupted, and not least, recalling Brahms, satisfied just as it should. I may not have heard the music quite as in a concert hall, but I was drawn in to listen to it as such.

 

The orchestra has released the following statement, which I do not wish to edit or to paraphrase. As in a musical performance, the text, whilst not everything, has intrinsic value: 

As we witness and mourn tens of thousands of lives destroyed and communities shattered while political courage remains absent, we, the musicians of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, are horrified and deeply saddened by the extreme escalation of violence in the Middle East, which continues to intensify daily. The profound humanistic commitment of Maestro Daniel Barenboim and the late Palestinian intellectual Edward Said stands at the core of our orchestra. In and through our music we seek to model a life of mutual recognition between equals. We call on the local and the international communities and their leaders to stop procrastinating and put an end to the cycle of violence by effecting a permanent cease-fire, ensuring the safe return of all hostages and unlawfully held detainees. It is imperative to work toward a long-lasting peaceful resolution grounded in equality. 

It would not have done so without Barenboim or Said; indeed, it would not have come into existence without them. But nor would words from their founders have had the import they do without these musicians, and without the many others, musicians and otherwise, who have worked with them. Such a statement does not just ‘happen’; it requires work, reflection, listening, empathy: as do music and its performance, at least to be worthwhile. I see no reason to add to or further to comment on the orchestra’s words. The world, however, needs to listen: not at some point in the future, near or far, but now. And, like Barenboim, Said, and the Divan, it needs to act.

 

Mutter/Ma/WEDO/Barenboim - Beethoven and Bruckner, 23 October 2019

Philharmonie

Images: (c) Monika Rittershaus

Beethoven: Concerto for piano, violin, cello, and orchestra in C major, op.56

Bruckner: Symphony no.9

Anne-Sophie Mutter (violin)

Yo-Yo Ma (cello)

West-Eastern-Divan Orchestra

Daniel Barenboim (piano, conductor)

Twenty years of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra: can it really be so? Indeed it can, and what an inspiration – musical, political, humanist – it continues to be. ‘Not in our wildest dreams,’ Daniel Barenboim writes in the programme, ‘could we have imagined that 20 years later this orchestra would be travelling the world as a musical ambassador for cultural understanding.’ Yo-Yo Ma was with the orchestra from the start; Anne-Sophie Mutter first joined only this year. After a wonderful performance of the Beethoven Triple Concerto, all three musicians performing as soloists, Barenboim as conductor too, the latter announced that his colleagues, to their evident delight, would now be honorary members of the orchestra. It was, then, a special evening in several ways – yet, as ever, none more so than the musical, without which the project, born in Weimar in 1999, would long since have been forgotten. For there was nothing remotely of the routine to either of these performances, separately and together an event fitting to these anniversary celebrations, which will now look forward to the future of the ensemble and its ideals, in a series commemorating the 200^th anniversary of Goethe’s original West-Eastern Divan, from which the orchestra and more broadly its mission take their name.

I am not sure that I have heard the orchestral cello opening to the Beethoven sound quite so full of expectation, still less so when the rest of the orchestra joined, sending shivers down the spine. What depth there was to the sound of the string section, what keenness to the wind. When our piano trio entered, the relationship between soloists, however starry, and orchestra sounded collegial. Sometimes the latter would amplify, shadow in an almost Boulezian sense, the former; on other occasions, the give and take of Classical chamber music found itself writ large. Throughout this first movement and beyond, the performance was variegated and dynamic, founded, as ever with Barenboim, on harmony, be it that of the piano bass, its orchestral counterpart, or both. If he necessarily stood (and sat) at the centre, there was no grandstanding, no pretence at superiority; as there should, indeed must, be in Palestine, there was room for all. Ma’s quicksilver response and careful listening to that of his fellow musicians was perhaps the most readily visible, yet without such an attitude from all concerned, all would have come to naught. A welcome note of old-school glamour from Mutter brought thoughts and memories, however distorted by sentiment, of the age of Jacques Thibaud. All had roles to play, none more important than listening.

The slow movement’s opening cello solo, as eloquent as it was elegant, was cushioned perfectly by the orchestra. How many years’ experience by now Barenboim must have as ‘accompanist’, whether at the piano, as conductor – or here, as both. Ma’s honest lyricism – rapt might suggest here something more self-regarding – was duly responded to by all concerned, whether soloists or orchestral musicians, wondrous Harmoniemusik proving just the trick. A finely traced transition took us to a finale imbued anew with a sense of tonal discovery, however much one may have ‘known’. The release of pent-up energy was echt-Beethoven; so too was its humour. Delicacy and drive were combined in a performance whose Beethovenian nobility was felt just as keenly as the intelligence of its structural command. Whatever some cultured despisers may tell you, this is not second-rate Beethoven. Only a second-rate performance could have one think so, and this was certainly not that.

A string section pretty much doubled in size, alongside augmented forces all round, returned for Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony, its opening heir to another, (still) more elemental Beethoven, that of the Ninth Symphony. And so, the first movement opened, again expectant, febrile. However, what struck me here and throughout was Barenboim’s tendency towards highlighting the modernist, the fragmentary: not at the expense of underlying coherence, but rather in dialectical relationship to it. This might almost have been Pierre Boulez conducting; perhaps ironically, there was a stronger sense of incipient Mahler – a composer to whom Boulez stood closer than the more selective Barenboim has – to the second thematic group than I can recall hearing previously, the chorale from the first movement of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony, rooted and yet rootless, seemingly already in the making. That said, a Furtwänglerian combination of flexibility and direction endured, indeed intensified, in the great flow of this movement and its successors. If Barenboim’s Beethoven has often seemed to owe much to a compelling synthesis of Furtwängler and Klemperer, here Furtwängler and Boulez seemed to be the thing. Fascinating – and, crucially again, compelling. Harmony below, its dissolution above; brass of the Wagnerian apocalypse; as full an orchestral sound as you could imagine; that and much more took us to a coda of unutterable defiance. ‘Dem lieben Gott’? Yes and no.   

The scherzo proved more overtly diabolical, in properly disconcerting fashion. Rhythm, melody too (delectably turned woodwind melodic fragments in particular), emerged from harmony, threatening to separate, yet quite properly, never managing to do so. This music may retain strong roots in Schubert, yet it sounded at times uncommonly distant, without rejection. Relaxation, such as it was, in the trio, was deeply ambiguous. Dissolution and disintegration of at least one type, often more, was always a present danger. It should be no surprise to hear Wagner in Barenboim’s Bruckner, but rarely, if ever, can the third movement have sounded quite so soaked in Parsifal, and so fatally determined to escape its narcotic orbit. How? The question is part theological, part ontological, above all musical. Such, in many ways, was the drama of this movement and indication of the futility of any attempt to ‘complete’ the symphony; for this was a supremely questing, questioning performance, plagued by doubt, yet equally certain that it must find a way. Taken to extremes, not least of tempo, it refuted any case for ‘moderation’, cohering, yet never too readily. Final repose somehow seemed both absolute and temporary. There are lessons beyond the ‘merely’ musical in that too.

Salzburg Festival (3) – Mutter/WEDO/Barenboim: Previn, Sibelius, and Beethoven, 16 August 2019

Grosses Festspielhaus

André Previn: Violin Concerto, ‘Anne-Sophie’: third movement, ‘(from a train in Germany)’

Sibelius: Violin Concerto in D minor, op.47

Beethoven: Symphony no.7 in A major, op.92

Anne-Sophie Mutter (violin)

West-Eastern Divan Orchestra

Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

Image: Salzburger Festspiele / Marco Borrelli

For the third and final of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra’s Salzburg appearances this year, the players and Daniel Barenboim were joined by Anne-Sophie Mutter, for one-and-a-third violin concertos. The third-fraction was the final movement of André Previn’s work, written for Mutter and named after her, the movement in question a set of variations on the song, ‘Wenn ich ein Vöglein wär’. She is clearly fond of the work, although it is difficult to imagine we shall hear much of it from anyone else; at any rate, performance of a single movement afforded a touching tribute, without outstaying its welcome. Korngold, Prokofiev, Walton, even occasionally Berg haunted its pages: rather as one might have expected. It is not so much reactionary music, as simply what it is, never pretending to be anything else. Mutter here, as later, was on outstanding form, her tone centred, and focused, the music knowingly playing to her strengths, supported not only by a gorgeous orchestral sound, but by players and a conductor who knew where things were heading and how to get there. The soloist’s final sustained note, fading into nothing, made for a loving farewell to a mentor, sometime husband, and collaborator.

Sibelius, I am afraid, is a composer whose music I have never really been able to get on with. My loss, doubtless. I put the symphonies to one side some time ago, deciding that there was little point in persistently trying and getting nowhere: better to wait until they came knocking at the door again. Although I have found many of the shorter pieces, whether songs or orchestral works, attractive, I have likewise avoided the Violin Concerto for some time, initially nonplussed by it. If I cannot imagine it ever being my favourite work in the genre – though who knows? – I am delighted to report the extent to which I was won over, my reservations confounded and quite forgotten. Sometimes it pays to wait not just for the right time, but for the right performers. For me, at least, Mutter, the Divan Orchestra, and Barenboim proved very much that. Mutter’s tone for the opening was different: less glamorous, with tighter vibrato, her line nevertheless built swiftly and surely with evident passion and belief. It was a long line, yet variegated. Barenboim attended to harmonic rhythm with all the understanding one would expect. This first movement emerged as not un-Wagnerian at times: not just the sound, but, in Barenboim’s hands, dramatic timing too. The depth and vigour of the Divan strings did no harm whatsoever either. Mutter’s cadenza was as nourishing as it was thrilling, the vehemence of the movement’s close quite stirring from all concerned. There was more than a little Wagner to the slow movement’s opening clarinet and oboe duo, Mutter responding with a rich, yet never thick, solo of her own. It was unashamedly ‘Romantic’, yet with an awareness that the term meant something quite different from what it might have done twenty-five or fifty years earlier. The movement spoke ‘for itself’, not unduly or even noticeable moulded, Barenboim attentive in the best way. Virtuosity at the service of the score characterised the finale. I doubt one would hear its opening solo played with greater clarity or understanding today, the orchestra responding in (darker) kind. And so on and so forth, our musicians excellent guides. This prior sceptic found himself entirely won over.

With Beethoven we were firmly on Barenboim’s home territory – and his orchestra’s. The Seventh Symphony’s first movement introduction can rarely, if ever, have sounded replete with potentiality, with hope. (How we need that right now!) Haydn radicalised: is that not what Beethoven is, in many ways? From the outset, harmony was the symphony’s guiding force. (Why, apparently, do so many conductors fail to realise or at least to communicate this? As if Beethoven had no harmonic understanding…!) Every new phrase, every new section of a sequence, was developmental, generative, the transition to the exposition proper almost responsorial. Barenboim’s great friend and colleague, Pierre Boulez, would surely have nodded smiling assent. And the moment of arrival was, paradoxically, or better, dialectically, both decisive and almost imperceptible. Above all, though, there was meaning; this was music that mattered: I had shed a couple of tears before the advent of the second group. All the virtues of the introduction were carried forward, developed, transformed, Barenboim’s leading of his musicians an object lesson in symphonic form. Not only did we face the tonal universe in an almost Newtonian sense; we explored it, as humans do, as humans all will. To have those musicians playing as if their lives depending on it, a strong, decisive, generative bass line (ten cellos, eight double basses) reminded us what Beethoven can be, should be, must be, yet sadly, tragically, in these diminished times of ours, so rarely is. What struck me once the movement, coda and all, was over was how it had passed in the twinkling of an eye: as concise, so it seemed, as its opposite number in the Fifth Symphony.

Taken attacca, the nobility of the second movement, voiced with surpassing musical excellence and understanding, pursued the humanistic tale. A requiem for our hopes? No, although perhaps a moment to consider, to reconsider, to begin to achieve them. This, once again, was awe-inspiring Beethoven, such as only Barenboim can summon up today. Harmony and counterpoint alike offered an absolutely necessary coming together: political in every sense. This is our music; let us never forget that. Fresh, determined, the scherzo never hinted at outstaying its welcome, as it can in lesser performances, its trio offering new, yet related vistas and hopes. Mahler would have understood the marriage, the interdependence, of physical and metaphysical. And how this music, so often grimly driven, danced with delight! Much the same might be said of the finale, albeit with very different material and, ultimately, purpose. It was a whirlwind in the best sense: all-enveloping, directed, yet embracing us. ‘Seid umschlungen, Millionen…’ Content and form, style and idea were indissoluble: dialectically sparring and, yes, mutually embracing. The apotheosis, then, of human, necessary revolution.

Mutter/Vengerov/Argerich/Oxford PO/Papadopoulos - Bach, Schumann, and Beethoven, 12 January 2019

Barbican Hall

Bach: Concerto for two violins in D minor, BWV 1043

Schumann: Piano Concerto in A minor, op.54

Beethoven: Symphony no.3 in E-flat major, op.55, ‘Eroica’

Anne-Sophie Mutter, Maxim Vengerov (violins)

Martha Argerich (piano)

Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra

Marios Papadopoulos (conductor)

A curious concert this: three star soloists, any one of whom would likely prove a highpoint of most orchestras’ seasons; an excellent yet, to many, unknown orchestra; and, sadly, a conductor who proved at best mediocre. Quite how the Oxford Philharmonic and Marios Papadopoulos had been able to enlist the services of Anne-Sophie Mutter, Maxim Vengerov, and Martha Argerich (!) for the orchestra’s twentieth-anniversary concert, I have no idea. Even if I could not help but wish that I had left at the interval, it had been an unusual, or rather unique, opportunity to hear all three.

Bach’s Double Violin Concerto was performed without conductor, violins and violas standing. The orchestra instantly revealed a cultivated string sound, matched and indeed led by Mutter and Vengerov. The first movement was taken quickly indeed: too fast, I am afraid, with much of Bach’s music simply skated over. Solo ornamentation was not unduly distracting, but largely unnecessary. Still, compared to what one often hears today in Bach, there was nothing especially perverse. The central Largo ma non tanto was again on the fast side, but perhaps not entirely unreasonably so. Mutter’s tone proved more Romantic, although Vengerov’s rich, viola-like tone on the G string offered its own allure and pleasure. It was a musical, if not especially profound performance. (We shall always have the Oistrakhs.) Much the same might be said of the finale, again very quick, but with better reason than the first movement. Mutter showed a naturalness in her phrasing I have not heard from her in years.

Argerich, however, seemed far more in tune with Schumann and his demands. A full, Romantic orchestra, large by today’s standards and all the better for it, joined her in an emphatic opening paving the way for poetic flights of fancy from piano and woodwind soloists alike. The problems, such as they were, lay with Papadopoulos, who drove the orchestra mercilessly, quite unmusically, and unquestionably at odds both with its playing and with that of the soloist; that is, until, he suddenly his direction started meandering. Insofar as Argerich regained (infinitely flexible) control, there was much to enjoy. Her direction of what became essentially chamber music was as much to be savoured as her solo playing; a knowing, confiding nod to the principal cello would have been heard, even had it not been seen. Innigkeit and fire, dialectically related yet apparently spontaneous, reminded us once again what we miss, given her withdrawal from the solo platform. So too did the cadenza, despatched with a well-nigh Brahmsian integrity and vehemence, yet fresh as ever. If only, here and elsewhere, she had been partnered by a musician with a superior sense of harmony, of form, of tempo: a Barenboim, for instance. The Intermezzo benefited greatly from being essentially led by Argerich: these were her dreams, her phantoms. The finale’s opening bars proved surprisingly martial, yet not unreasonably so. Would that the same might have been said later on of hard-driven orchestral tutti, blaring brass much in need of reining in.

There was little faulting the orchestra in the Eroica Symphony. Admirable heft, variegation, unanimity of ensemble, and much more were all on display. Not to have the first movement taken at currently fashionable breakneck speed proved a relief in itself. Alas, neither here nor in any of the symphony’s movements did Papadopoulos convey so much as a hint of structure becoming dynamic form. The harmonic motion on which the symphony’s progress is founded passed for nothing, so too did much phrasing, especially during the slow movement. One phrase just followed another, one paragraph another. What did it add up to? What did it mean? Very little, so far as I could discern. The Funeral March and finale seemed interminable: not on account of having been taken particularly slowly, but from a lack of formal logic and impetus. Merely pleasant Beethoven barely registers as Beethoven at all: given the excellence of the orchestral playing as such, a great pity. As for the tedious, allegedly ‘humorous’ encore, the less said the better.

Berlin Festtage (4) – Mutter/Staatskapelle Berlin/Barenboim - Takemitsu, Beethoven, Debussy, and Berg, 11 April 2017

Philharmonie

Takemitsu: Nostalghia: In Memory of Andrei Tarkovsky, for violin and string orchestra

Beethoven: Violin Concerto in D major, op,61

Debussy: La Mer

Berg: Three Orchestral Pieces, op.6

Anne Sophie-Mutter (violin)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

 

A concert very much of two halves, but which half would be which? Sad to say, it was the longer ‘half’, with Anne-Sophie Mutter, which proved frustrating (although not, it would seem, to an often poorly behaved audience: telephones, quadrophonic coughing, chattering, dropping things, etc., etc.) As it was, a truly outstanding performance of La Mer – was it perhaps the best I have heard? – and an excellent account of Berg’s Op.6 Pieces had me wishing that perhaps the Beethoven Violin Concerto had been omitted from a strangely programmed concert.

 

Takemitsu’s Nostalghia opened the concert, and fared considerably better than the Beethoven. The composer’s move ever closer towards (more or less) conventional tonality was to be heard here, yet not entirely unalloyed: post-Messiaen the harmonies might have been, but there were hints of Berg too. Moreover, Mutter’s playing, consciously or otherwise, seemed designed to pick up the intervallic aspects of Takemitsu’s construction, even constructivism, and their implications. The contrast between her tone – for once, ‘glamorous’ does seem the mot juste – and that of the small band of orchestral strings was telling rather than distracting. She and Daniel Barenboim shaped the work’s contours well; attention to detail was equally impressive. The ‘tender and elegiac mood’ of which Takemitsu spoke was evoked, but not at the expense of a ‘merely’ atmospheric account, no more welcome here than in Debussy.

 

That distinction of string tone was also present in the Beethoven Concerto, but it began to take on the characteristic of mannerism, especially when Mutter’s playing with intonation – I say ‘playing with’, since it seemed deliberate – began to grate. Perhaps more disturbing were her sometimes extreme rubato and tempo variation. Barenboim is renowned as a master in post-Furtwänglerian Beethoven, which we might have had chance to hear in another performance; here, too much sounded like a bad parody of Mengelberg. The first movement in particular was listless, at times seeming interminable, even when the tempo was far from ‘objectively’ slow. The magnificence of the moment of orchestral return showed us what we were missing. Interestingly, somewhat perplexingly, Mutter’s account of the cadenza (Kreisler’s, I think) was far stronger in direction, and indeed in expressive range too. Applause at the close of the movement was as unwelcome as it was predictable, although it was probably preferable to another extended bout of bronchial display. The slow movement was better: broad, with undeniable intimacy for much of its course. Characterful solo voices from the Staatskapelle Berlin – the bassoon in particular caught my ear – were a delight. A reverie, with sterner moments, then, whose spell was broken by a vigorous, even dashing account of the finale. If only the first movement had borrowed a little of that vigour! Now the orchestra really played out and Barenboim seemed far more in control.

 

Once past the bizarrely bronchial sunrise, impressively handled so far as one could tell, Barenboim’s La Mer achieved perhaps the most truly symphonic stature I have heard. It is certainly not the only way to perform this work, but it was mightly impressive. The great sweep of the first movement, and indeed beyond, was enhanced by equally fine attention to detail. The climax rightly grew out of and yet also transformed what had gone before. There was no lingering, rendering its impact all the greater. ‘Jeux de vagues’ emerged as a glittering orchestral scherzo, with all the dynamism of (if a different dynamism from) a scherzo by Mahler or Brahms. Cellos drove, or so it seemed, the harmony as well as the rhythm. The ‘Dialague du vent et de la mer’ opened as ominously as any symphonic finale (that to Berg’s Pieces included, if we may include them). Its dark malevolence looked back to Parsifal but forward too. During the course of a struggle that was avowedly musical rather than pictorial, quintessentially Debussyan magic and mystery sounded reborn.

 

Sonic mystery of a different kind enabled the very components of Western music to emerge in the opening of Berg’s ‘Präludium’: an exaggeration, perhaps, but there was a real sense, even, in theological terms, a real presence, of the instantiation of harmony, melody, rhythm in that creation. (I often think of this opening as a counterpart to Haydn’s ‘Representation of Chaos’. Here it stood, or so it seemed, midway between Haydn and Varèse.) The strangeness of this music remained undimmed; it was no orchestral showpiece that we heard. ‘Reigen’ danced as it must, but it was the evolution of that dance and its subsequent development that registered especially strongly. Fragments of old Vienna were remembered, misremembered, invented; they filed past us in a ballroom that disintegrated before our ears. Line here proved as crucial as in La Mer, or indeed as in Barenboim’s Wagner. A similar thing might be said of the ‘Marsch’, save for its necessary dissimilarity and contrast. The insanity and downright barbarism of the huge orchestra and its music was celebrated, then distilled and dissolved, reinstating the unspoken presence of Mahler, even prior to the hammer blows. Berg claimed that Mahler’s modernity over Wagner was in part a matter of saying, with Nietzsche, yes rather than no. Here, Berg seemed to say yes, no, maybe, all manner of things. If there was not quite the clarity that Pierre Boulez, with no sacrifice to its emotional range, used to bring to performances of this music, Barenboim and his orchestra offered interesting new perspectives of their own. This is music we hear far too infrequently; there really is no excuse.

 

Salzburg Festival (7): Mutter/VPO/Muti - Tchaikovsky and Brahms, 15 August 2015

Grosses Festspielhaus

Tchaikovsky – Violin Concerto in D major, op.35

Brahms – Symphony no.2 in D major, op.73

Anne-Sophie Mutter (violin)

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Riccardo Muti (conductor)

This concert, dedicated by Anne-Sophie Mutter, the Vienna Philharmonic, and Riccardo Muti to the memory of Herbert von Karajan took place on the date he traditionally reserved for concerts with that orchestra. (I assume that to have been on account of the Feast of the Assumption, which always catches me unawares in southern Germany and Austria.) Mutter had played this concerto thirty years previously with Karajan and the VPO in the Grosses Festspielhaus. I wonder how many in the audience then were again in the audience this year: quite a few, I suspect. Brahms’s Second Symphony was, of course, premiered by this very same orchestra, and this year’s Festival offered a number of works whose first performance the VPO had given.

Although there was much to enjoy and little to complain about, I could not help but ask whether there was a little too much of the memorial to the concert. There is more, much more, to music-making than excitement, but perhaps this tended a little too much to the ritualistic. Mutter’s technique was quite beyond criticism, but occasionally, I longed for something a little more surprising, whether from her or from the orchestra. That said, I could not help but enjoy the splendidly old-world sound of the opening tutti and Mutter’s response: rich and sweet. Vibrato and portamento were very much part of her palette, but not at the expense of centring the notes. Moreover, she could cut through the orchestra’s sound as if she were Martha Argerich. The opening of the Canzonetta was beautifully hushed, the audience the recipient of whispered confidences. Above all, it sang. And then, the mood was transformed in a musical flash with the coming of the finale. Structure was clear – and if it left a little to be desired, the fault surely lay with the work rather than the performance. Expansive and urgent as required, the movement might nevertheless have benefited from a little more earthiness at times.

Too much D major in a concert? For my ears, I am afraid so. But that was not the only problem with Muti’s Brahms. I am all for slower tempi, but the first movement was off the scale, apparently a slow movement. There is ‘autumnal’ Brahms and then there was this. It was interesting, but I should not want to hear it like that again in a hurry. Counterpoint in the development was unexpectedly forthright: something of a relief. Thereafter, things picked up, although there was a true slow movement still to come. That, the Adagio non troppo, was memorable especially for the VPO cellos at the opening: like liquid chocolate, darkly noble. Again, this was a grandly autumnal reading, but easier to take. The change of mood for the ensuing Allegretto grazioso was welcome. This was no less exquisite, but faster-moving, lighter too. Perhaps the greatest contrast was nevertheless offered by the finale: jubilant, although, quite rightly, not uncontestedly so. Brahms’s tale was told frankly, without fuss, and was all the better for it. A gloriously rich orchestral sound would surely have delighted the concert’s dedicatee.

Mutter/Müller-Schott/Previn - Mozart, Previn, and Mendelssohn, 20 February 2012

Barbican Hall

Mozart – Piano Trio no.2 in B-flat major, KV 502
Previn – Trio no.1
Mendelssohn – Piano Trio no.1 in D minor, op.49

Anne-Sophie Mutter (violin)
Daniel Müller-Schott (cello)
André Previn (conductor)


The Mozart trio, KV 502, did not augur well for the rest of the programme, yet, although it was certainly a pity that Mozart’s fortunes proved mixed, there was considerably more to be enjoyed in the performances of André Previn’s own 2009 trio – another is to be premiered in New York, later this year – and Mendelssohn’s delightful D minor essay in the genre. The first movement of the Mozart was taken fast, perhaps too fast for the players – save for the excellent Daniel Müller-Schott – really to delve beneath the admittedly attractive surface. I was perhaps most surprised at the outset by the intonational difficulties experienced by Anne-Sophie Mutter, but even once the music had settled down somewhat, there remained problems. Previn often sounded as if he were playing regardless of his partners. (I cannot believe that that was the case, but it was the impression.) The slow movement cohered better, Previn’s part sounding more integrated, the pianist showing a greater willingness to follow where necessary. I was struck here and elsewhere by the sensitivity of Müller-Schott’s playing, even when, perhaps especially when, he was called on only to play a ‘mere’ bass line. The piano part, however, remained distinctly cool. Despite a serious lapse early on from the pianist, the finale fared best: lively, whilst remaining an Allegretto. The string players imparted great character, Mozart at times looking forward – though only looking forward – to Beethoven’s trios.

The immediate impression in the first movement, marked ‘Spirited’, of Previn’s trio was of Copland meeting Prokofiev, later joined by more than a hint of Vienna-cum-Hollywood. Balance and idiom were here much surer: there was at last a true sense of interaction between all the players, whether the material were angular, sweet, or both. Opportunities were well taken by Müller-Schott to shine in the second movement, ‘Adagio’; he proved equally fine as a soloist and a chamber musician, or rather made one doubt the validity of any such distinction. The rapt lyricism often to be heard here again put me in mind of Prokofiev in Cinderella-mode, and a certain side-slipping quality again evoked the Russian composer. Jazzy tendencies present earlier on became more pronounced at the opening of the concluding movement, marked ‘Lightly’. It received a lively performance, every bit as rhythmically alert as its predecessors. Whatever the ultimate fortunes of the work, it sounded – and looked – fun to play.

Romantic yearning, counterbalanced by Classical sense of form, characterised the first movement of Mendelssohn’s D minor trio. Previn’s fingers could not always keep up with his mind: some scale passages were blurred, or skated over. The sense, however, was always present. Mutter and Müller-Schott were both on excellent form, their dialogue at the opening of the recapitulation quite heartrending. There were, moreover, real vehemence and passion to the closing bars. The opening of the slow movement offered perhaps the best piano playing of the concert so far, Previn sounding an unaffected, Schumannesque nobility of spirit. Violin and cello responded in kind: a Romantic kind, certainly, yet never mawkish, and above all songful. Previn seemed rejuvenated when the scherzo opened, as able as his colleagues to contribute not only to its elfin but also to its Beethovenian qualities. It was a delight, as was the finale. If there were occasions when, again, Previn could not quite articulate every note as he doubtless once would have done, the spirit was ever-willing. There was a fine sense of major-mode apotheosis at the close, not unlike Brahms, but less ‘late’ in character.

Mutter/LSO/Davis - Dvořák and Janáček, 10 October 2010

Barbican Hall

Dvořák – Violin Concerto in A minor, op.53
Janáček – Glagolitic Mass

Anne-Sophie Mutter (violin)
Krassimira Stoyanova (soprano)
Anna Stephany (mezzo-soprano)
Simon O’Neill (tenor)
Martin Snell (bass)
London Symphony Chorus
London Symphony Orchestra (chorus master: Joseph Cullen)
Sir Colin Davis (conductor)


First things first: not even a performance of this distinction could salvage Dvořák’s Violin Concerto. I suppose it is worth hearing occasionally, perhaps as part of a large scale Dvořák retrospective, but even the combined forces of Anne-Sophie Mutter, the LSO, and Sir Colin Davis could not conceal its ramshackle structure, or lack of it. ‘Rhapsodic’ might be a polite way of describing the work, but it would barely do such aimlessness justice. There are small sections that are relatively attractive in themselves, though it is difficult to discern the melodic or other attractions of the composer’s better works. But where do they come from and where do they go? Davis and Mutter launched the first movement in grandly symphonic, Brahmsian style. Unfortunately, this valiant attempt to shoehorn the composer’s meanderings into an intelligible structure was doomed to failure. Everything one could have wished for was there in performance terms. The LSO’s woodwind contributed delectable solo work. Mutter’s tone was simply ravishing, generous vibrato and precise intonation– none of the pain inflicted a week ago by Viktoria Mullova – happy bedfellows. As ever, her commitment seemed complete. Leaving aside a couple of ever so slight disjunctures between soloist and orchestra during the finale, I cannot imagine the concerto being better performed, but it still could not come off. No wonder Joachim rejected it. If only these musicians had been playing Brahms, Beethoven, or Berg.

Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass was another matter entirely. The performance matched at the very least that preceding the interval, but here we are concerned with a masterpiece of staggering originality. Sir Colin is not a conductor I especially associate with Janáček; I do not know whether he has conducted any of the operas, but on the basis of this performance, I hope that he might yet be persuaded. This was not a reading that went out of its way to stress the work’s Moravian roots, but it is arguably high time that Janáček was freed from nationalist constraints. There were elements of Romanticism, not least in the gorgeous cello lines of the Introduction, but the work was never unduly romanticised; it stood stark, craggy, and wondrous. Indeed, there was a stentorian quality to the structural whole: not unlike an imaginary Klemperer Glagolitic Mass. Above all, Davis and his forces imparted the requisite awe and joy. Just as Janáček, especially later Janáček, should not be reduced to regional status, his affirmation cannot be restricted to any creed, whether Christian or pantheist. That was what we heard here.

The LSO was on simply outstanding form, the only fault I can recall a very minor brass slip in the concluding Intrada. Unanimity of attack, orchestral weight and colouring, and burning commitment to the score: the orchestra’s players had it all. Catherine Edwards’s rendition of the extraordinary organ solo was similarly distinguished, despite the feeble Barbican electronic instrument: a pity. Nevertheless, I was left wishing that the composer had written a mature solo work or two for the King of Instruments. Following that postlude, I found myself wondering briefly whether the orchestra's tuning was quite that of the organ's, but my ears soon adjusted and it may have been my imagination. Davis also seemed to drive the opening of the Intrada a little hard, though there was no denying the grandeur of its conclusion.

The performance from the London Symphony Chorus was outstanding too. I do not think I have ever heard a bad performance from this chorus; that state of affairs was not about to change here. Shouts of exultation are mightily impressive, and they were on this occasion, but equally so was the singers’ way with the language and its connection to the notes. The vocal soloists impressed too. Krassimira Stoyanova and Simon O’Neill had most to do, all of which they did very well indeed, complementing and extending the orchestral and choral rapture. The sensuous quality of Stoyanova’s delivery drew one in, seduced one even, whilst O’Neill’s Heldentenor portrayed and commanded awestruck respect. Anna Stephany had little to do, though the tone quality of her mezzo-soprano pleased briefly; Martin Snell’s bass was warm and rounded, yet nevertheless precise.

Microphones were present, so I assume the performance was being recorded for LSO Live. The programme will be repeated, prefaced by Sasha Siem’s Trickster, on 12 October.

Mutter/LPO/Morlot - Wagner, Brahms, and Bartók, 17 March 2010

Royal Festival Hall

Wagner – Lohengrin: Prelude to Act One
Brahms – Violin Concerto in D major, op.77
Bartók – Concerto for Orchestra

Anne-Sophie Mutter (violin)
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Ludovic Morlot (conductor)

This was an attractive programme, but the performances did not really ignite as they might have done, despite Anne-Sophie Mutter’s sterling efforts. The prelude to Act One of Lohengrin creates a problem of coming back to earth in Wagner’s Romantic opera. It is also rather difficult to programme in concert, in terms of what might follow; I am not convinced about it introducing Brahms. In any case, despite some beautiful, ethereal string playing from the London Philharmonic, Ludovic Morlot’s direction remained laboured, over-emphasising the bar lines, so that the requisite upward ascent never quite materialised. The orchestra was on excellent form, never more so than at the moment of full climax, trombones magnificent, but the players could only do so much by themselves. Coughers were especially prominent during the closing bars; clearly the Grail had done them no good.

The first thing that struck me about the Brahms concerto performance was the decisive brilliance of Mutter’s entry. (It is perhaps telling that the orchestral introduction made little impression.) Sweetness and steel were equal parts of her armoury here and throughout. The pin-point precision of her intonation, double-stopping notwithstanding, was awe-inspiringly consistent, and the expressive quality of her vibrato, nicely imitated by the orchestral strings, was equally apparent. However, the orchestra rarely sounded inspired even in this opening movement, and what direction Morlot had provided seemed fully dissipated by the advent of the Adagio. (In between, we had to endure precipitate applause.) And so, although the slow movement’s woodwind solos sounded beautiful in themselves, the context was lacking, especially prior to Mutter’s re-entry. A lack of orchestral focus persisted until the finale, where things picked up somewhat, the LPO sounding reinvigorated. Mutter’s virtuosity was jaw-dropping, likewise her purely musical command. However, it was still very much – sadly, too much – her show. Memories of her magnificent 2008 performance with André Previn and the LSO were certainly not effaced.

The second half was better. Morlot sounded more at home in Bartók and the orchestra sounded focused throughout; perhaps more rehearsal time had been allocated to the Concerto for Orchestra. The strong bass line manifesting itself at the very opening of the first movement proved a good augury and was matched by a greater general sense of direction and a fuller string sound. Again, there was something of a tendency to stress bar lines, but the orchestra by now seemed better practised in evasion. Morlot shaped the climaxes well, though. The second movement brought especially nice work from the various pairs of woodwind instruments: what skilful writing this is! And I was pleasantly surprised by the degree of strangeness to the sonorities with which the Elegia opened. Greater flexibility aided the sense of onward movement. Bartók’s brilliant joke in the fourth movement registered; so did its political and æsthetic edge. Now there are different reasons to wish to send up Shostakovich, not least amongst which are his canonisation by the smug victors of the Cold War and, still closer to home, his consequent ubiquity in the concert hall. Bartók’s derision still demands to be heard. The finale suffered somewhat from an unduly fast main tempo, which necessitated too much of a gear change later on, disrupting continuity. However, the string counterpoint registered clearly. Whilst not, then, an unforgettable performance, there was much to enjoy, especially given the opportunities for the LPO players to shine, just so long as one were not expecting the excitement and fulfilment provided by the likes of Iván Fischer.

Mutter/LSO/Previn, 22 June 2008

Barbican Hall

Mozart - Serenade in G major, KV 525, 'Eine kleine Nachtmusik'
Mozart - Symphony no.39 in E-flat major, KV 543
Brahms - Violin Concerto in D major, Op.77

Anne-Sophie Mutter (violin)
London Symphony Orchestra
André Previn (conductor)

This was a wonderful concert. The LSO sounded on better Mozartian form than I have heard it for a long time, certainly more so than under Bernard Haitink earlier this month and arguably even than under Sir Colin Davis at the beginning of this season. As if this were not enough to surprise me, I was also surprised by the fact that, reduced to chamber-size, with a smaller body of strings than under Haitink or Davis, it boasted a fuller and arguably more cultured sound. André Previn has long been a fine conductor of Mozart and Haydn, although rarely if ever has he been duly acknowledged as such. (Present-day mania for the 'authenticke' does not help.) Although I am perhaps more difficult to impress in Mozart's music than in that of any other composer, I was certainly impressed here. Mozart does not, one might say, require many things, only perfection; he certainly leaves nowhere to hide. Eine kleine Nachtmusik received no condescension, such as the musical nouveaux riches might accord it. Instead, it was given a straightforward, yet charmingly attentive account. No 'points' were being made; rather, a delightful example of Mozart's serenade style was played with grace, affection, and a beguiling sense of the Salzburg the composer had left behind. The warmth of the LSO's string section erased memories of that slight acid, which, somewhat surprisingly, had affected it under Haitink. Previn showed how the second movement could gracefully flow without being subjected to the perverse fast speeds of so many contemporary, modish performances. Likewise, the minuet can - and should - be taken three-to-a-bar, without any sense of dragging; this simply requires musicianship. The final movement was taken relatively slowly, yet it never seemed too slow and we were thereby permitted to savour the true Mozartian grace.

Similar virtues characterised the great E-flat major symphony, for which the strings were of course joined by woodwind, brass, and kettledrums. The surprise of the performance was that hard sticks were used for the latter. I should have preferred this not to have been the case; however, they were not used in the typical aggressive, exhibitionistic style of the 'authenticists' and this was my sole cavil. The relatively small number of strings had no trouble in sounding almost as warm in bloom as their Viennese counterparts, whilst the woodwind led us into a veritable garden of sonorous delights, especially during the third movement's trio. Tempi throughout were expertly judged; there was little in the way of rubato, but there did not need to be. Sterner moments, for instance the extraordinary minor-mode outbursts in the slow movement, were given their due, yet remained integrated into the whole; likewise, the strong, measured introduction to the first movement, whose unerring sense of direction governed the entire movement, indeed the entire symphony. Again, Previn did not seem out to make points, to present 'his' interpretation; yet, at the same time, this did not indicate a lack of imagination, merely a willingness to let this miraculous score speak (more or less) for itself.

Anne-Sophie Mutter was on exceptional form for the Brahms concerto. There could be no doubting the virtuosity and musicianship of her response to that violin concerto which I am tempted to describe as the greatest of all. Her tone was without fail expertly modulated to the requirements of the score, without this precluding great excitement. Moreover, she was -audibly and visibly - able and willing to engage in chamber music with the orchestra's principals when required. The same must be said for her dialogue with the conductor and orchestra as a whole. Mutter and Previn must have performed the concerto a good many times together and it showed; however, this appeared to inspire rather than to suggest any sense of routine. The lengthy phrases and paragraphs of the first movement were expertly handled, with an unerring sense of their place in the greater whole. Previn showed that there is absolutely no need to rush and, indeed, every reason not to do so, so long as one knows what one is doing. Needless to say, the cadenza was flawlessly despatched. In the second movement, there was an interesting impression of a Schumannesque intermezzo, suggesting delicacy, intimacy, and repose rather than the more typically weighty response to the score. Both approaches, it seems to me, can work, but I was fascinated to hear a somewhat lighter reading that worked rather than skimming over the musical surface. I had been about to claim that the gypsy fireworks of the finale were electric - although never in a shallow, merely virtuosic sense - when I realised that some metaphors were better left unmixed. The give and take between Mutter and the orchestral strings was often breathtaking, whilst all musicians' sense of the movement's harmonic progression ensured that Brahms's unerring sense of form won through. May we hear her - and Previn - in London again soon!