Salzburg Festival (1) - Volodos: Mompou, Liszt, and Scriabin, 18 August 2023

Grosser Saal, Mozarteum

Mompou: Musica callada, nos 1, 2, 27, 24, 25, 11, 15, 22, 16, 6, 21, 28 

Liszt: Ballade no.2 in B minor, S 171

Scriabin: Études in F-sharp minor, op.8 no.2; in B-flat minor, op.8 no.11; Préludes in E-flat minor, op.11 no.14; in B major, op.16 no.1; in E-flat minor, op.16 no.4; in B major, op.22 no.3; in B-flat minor, op.31 no.1; Deux Poèmes, op.63; En rêvant, op.71 no.2; Flammes sombres, op.73 no.2; Piano Sonata no.10, op.70; Vers la flamme, op.72

Image: © SF/Marco Borrelli

Opportunities are rare to hear the music of Federico Mompou, and from a pianist of the stature of Arcadi Volodos rarer still. My friend and colleague Erik Levi, who also wrote the excellent English-language programme essay for this recital, described Mompou to me as ‘Webern meets Satie’: a good and intriguing starting point. In this selection of twelve pieces from the twenty-eight that make up Musica callada (1959-67), the aphoristic Schoenberg also came to mind, though Mompou’s writing (and Volodos’s performance) tended to suggest brevity rather than aphorism. Melting tone, more forthright as and when necessary, and startling clarity and conviction were key to this performance, each piece seemingly haunted by what had gone before, whilst remaining very much its own utterance. A sense of song, of breath and of breathing too, informed even the more ‘external’ sounds: bells tolling, for instance. All seemed fresh, even provocatively so, every gesture counting. Melodic or not, with Debussy and Liszt often present and occasional appearances by Poulenc in old-French mode, this music will surely have won a good few new converts.

For me, the only real disappointment on the programme was Liszt’s Second Ballade. It began promisingly, Volodos’s colouristic wizardry transferred to a larger stage and scale. Some harmonies sounded strangely familiar, others entirely new. It was, to be sure, aballadic utterance, but where for me it increasingly fell short was in formal command. Volodos clearly has a strong affinity to what we might, with due Romanticism, call the Lisztian soul, but quite why things were happening when they were, what connected them with what had gone and what followed, remained elusive. The audience, though, went wild.

In Volodos’s wide-ranging, almost chronological selection from Scriabin’s piano music, he seemed absolutely at home, assembling and vividly communicating a programme that felt like a vast symphonic poem of its own, developing in technique and harmonic language, yet again strangely consequent on what had gone before. That was true of individual pieces too, from the two Études of 1894-5 onwards, the latter, in B-flat minor, sounding like the perfect love-child of Chopin and Tchaikovsky. Time was bent, yet direction was ever-clear, indeed clearer. Subtlety and detail were second to none, likewise tumult when it came (as often it did). As time passed, and Scriabin’s musical personality darkened and deepened, a sense of proximity to, perhaps even influence from, composers such as Debussy and Schoenberg heightened, Klingsor’s magic garden and its implications very much in the background, though perhaps that says as much about me as the composer (or pianist). This was extraordinarily eloquent and committed advocacy, and in pieces such as the Tenth Piano Sonata, with a formal command beyond question. We were taken not only vers la flamme, but through and beyond it.

Volodos/Gewandhaus/Chailly - Brahms, 13 October 2013

Neues Gewandhaus, Leipzig

Symphony no.2 in D major, op.73

Piano Concerto no.2 in B-flat major, op.83

Arcadi Volodos (piano)

Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra

Riccardo Chailly (conductor)




Players of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra just prior to the
Saturday evening rehearsal for this concert

Riccardo Chailly’s recent Decca recordings of the Brahms symphonies and assorted other orchestral works are being heavily promoted by symphony-and-concerto cycles – the concertos do not appear in the Decca set – first in Leipzig, and later in London, Paris, and Vienna. I cannot claim to have been a devotee of Chailly’s Beethoven, much though I love the sound of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and so, not having heard the Brahms recordings, approached this concert with some trepidation. Perhaps I should have recalled a Prom a good few years ago, in which Beethoven and Brahms were combined, for I had found the latter far more to my liking. At any rate, if the inevitable list of favourites from the past remains unchallenged, a problem almost as great for Brahms as for Beethoven, this concert offered rewards beyond the undoubted pleasure of this great orchestra’s ‘old German’ sound.

 

The first movement of the Second Symphony was certainly not slow, but nor was it unduly driven. Tempo variations were properly transitional, with none of the abrupt gear changes one often hears in this music from ‘period’ conductors attempting to sound ‘Romantic’. Chailly’s reading focused attention upon Brahms’s concision, at least during the exposition; yet there was room for expansiveness later on too. Counterpoint was not merely ‘busy’, but urgently propelling. This remained Brahms somewhat in the mould of Schumann, even Mendelssohn, but there was strength where required. Here and elsewhere, the Leipzig woodwind ravished in properly post-Mozartian mould; such was Harmoniemusik to melt the heart of the most sceptical of listeners. Schumann seemed still more to haunt the second movement, more an intermezzo than an Adagio, even with the caveat non troppo. Yet it worked; it seemed properly ‘placed’ within Chailly’s conception of the whole. Impressively shaped, Brahms’s melodic transformations had a necessary sense of ‘rightness’. Much the same could be said of the third movement in its different way. Balletic to an extent that on occasion suggested Tchaikovsky, it is not how I should always want to hear the music; here, however, it made sense. The finale opened in what was perhaps overly excitable fashion, and remained urgent throughout. Despite occasional lapses in ensemble, the Gewandhaus Orchestra once again displayed a fine pedigree in Brahms. The first of the composer’s Hungarian Dances made for a swashbuckling and surprising encore – given that this was only the first half.

 

Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto is not so often heard as one might expect. Though I have loved it since I first heard it as a sixth-former, I cannot recall having attended a single concert performance, though I have often heard its D minor elder sibling. Its ferocious technical demands were met with ease by Arcadi Volodos; yet, however impressive on its own terms, such pianistic prowess is only a starting-point for a musical performance. Technique, as Sir Peter Pears once remarked, is the liberation of the imagination – or at least it should be. If Chailly and Volodos did not plumb the metaphysical depths of, say, Gilels and Jochum, in what remains to my mind the greatest recording I have heard of the greatest piano concerto since Beethoven, they nevertheless offered a thoroughly musical traversal. The orchestra sounded lithe in its exposition, Chailly’s occasional rhetorical inflections convincing and purposeful rather than attention-seeking. There was strength, truthfulness even, to Volodos’s performance when he re-entered. If, hearing his tone ‘blind’, I might have thought it more apposite to Liszt than to Brahms, that was perhaps as much a matter of his Steinway as anything else. (I cling in principle to my preference for a Bösendorfer here, though a great performance will soon rid my mind of such thoughts.) Moreover, the ‘fullness’ of Brahms’s piano writing was felt, understood, and communicated without heaviness. Trills were to die for too. And what a gloriously full-blooded string sound was unleashed on occasion. The scherzo was urgent, though not unduly driven. Volodos’s phrasing and shading were just as intelligent here. That difficult transition to the trio was well handled by Chailly, the ensuing cross-rhythms making their point. The slow movement was flowing, never rigid. Hand on heart, I found it difficult to warm to the tone of the principal cellist, relatively thin, with wide vibrato apparently employed to compensate. His solos were well shaped however, and taste is certainly a factor in such matters. Volodos displayed rich variation in piano tone, from half lights that peered forward to the late solo works to a full Brahms thunder that evoked the First Piano Concerto. There were wonderful moments of rapt stillness too, from orchestra and soloist alike. The finale was well judged, with a winning lilt that eludes a good number of performers. Once again, the Leipzig woodwind proved an especial joy, prompting memories of the symphony in the first half, helping to impart further unity to an impressive Sunday morning concert.

 

Volodos - Schubert, Brahms, and Liszt, 22 May 2012

Royal Festival Hall

Schubert – Sonata in A minor, D 784

Brahms – Three Intermezzi, op.117

Liszt – Sonata in B minor, S 178

Arcadi Volodos (piano)

Though I have long been aware of his reputation, this was the first time, whether on disc or in the concert hall, that I had heard Arcadi Volodos. I suspect that it will turn out also to be the last. There were peculiarities, which is arguably to put it mildly, to the first half, but I had assumed that Liszt would play more to Volodos’s strengths; as it turned out, I should have been better advised to have left at the interval.

The first movement of Schubert’s A minor sonata, D 784, added up to considerably less than the sum of its parts, even when the parts were often distinctly odd. There were fine moments, such as a beautifully quiet opening, though the sonority seemed more suited to Tchaikovsky than to Schubert. Moreover, Volodos showed himself alert to, or at least suggestive of, those weird foreshadowings of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. However, one often, for instance at the opening of the second group, had a sense of him holding back, afraid – doubtless not without reason – of unleashing his firepower upon a composer whose temperament might seem somewhat less than an ideal match. That said, there was certainly little holding back in the development section, which sounded, if hardly idiomatic, at least impressive. Volodos, from his outward appearance, was clearly committed to what he was doing, apparently lost in his own reveries. But as for what Schubert’s music might mean, let alone how it might add up… The slow movement had ultra-Romantic tone lavished upon it, and I can imagine that many would think it drawn out. Yet at least – and certainly by comparison with its predecessor – it had purpose and coherence. It sounded rather like a Liszt transcription of a Schubert song: not quite right, perhaps, but not so bad either. The finale had a surprisingly Brahmsian tone to its opening, not at all unfitting. Melodic oases were exquisitely voiced, moving in their way, though it was really too late by now.

The Brahms Intermezzi, op.117, received an individual reading by any standards, yet arguably provided the highlight of the evening. Each of the three pieces followed a similar trajectory: voicing as exquisite as that mentioned in the final movement of the Schubert sonata, with half-lighting – or perhaps rather less than half – wondrously evoked. I am not sure that I have ever heard the opening of the E-flat intermezzo so meltingly beautiful. Were the performances distended? Almost certainly, yet they intrigued rather than infuriated. Brahms sounded closer to Chopin, and in the central section of the third, to Liszt, than to Schoenberg; however, there was at the end a sense of loss, of aching longing, that stood not entirely unrelated to Brahms.

The Liszt B minor sonata opened with great promise, the piano sound apparently just right. Unfortunately, even that soon descended into bludgeoning, the delicate passages coming off much better. Why, however, I soon asked myself, all the agogic accents? Why the inserted pauses? Why was everything pulled around to no apparent purpose? This of all works, certainly the most extraordinary piano sonata in formal conception between Schubert and Boulez, requires a musician who will project both its overall structure and its motivic cohesion. Volodos turned the work into something resembling an over-extended operatic paraphrase. He did not deserve the minute or so when an audience member declined to answer the telephone, just as he had not deserved the barrage of coughing here and in the first half, but this was as uncomprehending a performance of Liszt’s towering masterpiece as I have ever heard. That many members of the audience could greet it with a standing ovation for me simply beggared belief. Whatever would they do, were they, to cite two recent outstanding performances on the South Bank, to hear Maurizio Pollini or Pierre-Laurent Aimard perform the work? Here, alas, there was not the slightest sense of an Idea. Most of the recapitulation was simply brutalised. Oddly, the first encore, Liszt’s En rêve sounded, if a little sugary, at least conceived of in a single breath. As for the other encores, I think I have said enough already.