RSB/Brabbins - Mendelssohn and Stravinsky, 16 March 2024

Konzerthaus

Mendelssohn: Symphony no.4 in A major, op.90, ‘Italian’
Mendelssohn: Hymne, op.96
Stravinsky: Symphonies of Wind Instruments
Stravinsky: Symphony of Psalms

Denis Uzun (mezzo-soprano)

Berlin Radio Chorus (chorus director: Philipp Ahmann)

Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra

Martyn Brabbins (conductor)

Mendelssohn and Stravinsky might not seem the most obvious bedfellows, but this Berlin Radio Symphony (RSB) concert, originally planned with Andrew Davis but conducted by Martyn Brabbins, offered pause for thought as well as enjoyment. Both composers had fraught relationships either with Wagner or his music—and, by extension, with that strain of musical Romanticism. (Even Liszt, that most generous spirited of composers, could refer dismissively to the ‘opposition’ as ‘leipzigerisch’.) The nature of their (neo)classicism is far from the same, but it offers an interesting perspective, even when the music performed is not so markedly in that mould. One could certainly spill a good deal of ink in discussing the relationship of the two Stravinsky works here to ideas and practice of neoclassicism. That, you will doubtless be relieved to know, must await another day, but such initial thoughts offered a frame through which to hear the works concerned. 

The RSB played Mendlessohn’s Italian Symphony with irresistible élan, string sheen and sunny woodwind a delight throughout. Brabbins was surely on the fast side for ‘Allegretto vivace’, but many conductors are.  Throughout, he imparted a proper sense of development to Mendelssohn’s writing, nowhere more so than in the featherlight counterpoint of the development section proper, though that certainly continued in the recapitulation. There was Abruzzo-like heat too in a reading full of colour and incident, aptly foreshadowing the processional of the second movement, which similarly benefited from transparent textures and a keen sense of direction. A graceful minuet, replete with trio that went properly beyond it in more than one direction, led to a saltarello both disciplined and wild, its contagion as impressive as its chiaroscuro. 

The op.96 Hymne, ‘Three Spiritual Songs’ (as they are known in the version with organ) plus a concluding ‘Fuga’, received a winning performance, mezzo Deniz Uzun and the Berlin Radio Chorus joining Brabbins and the orchestra. Telling detail could be heard without exaggeration, variety in scoring (the opening of the second, an especially lovely ‘hymn’, setting solo voice against woodwind consort) registering in every case. A lively third, with growing sense of jubilation, revealed once again what a fine chorus this is: ideal in weight, balance, and clarity. Much the same could be said of the concluding fugue. 

Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments sounded as seductive and rebarbative as ever, a perfect objet trouvé that find itself somehow chiselled to still further perfection. Apparently ossified lines suggestive of The Rite of Spring were imbued with radically new life, the performance as a whole splendidly alive: a liturgy in itself, to which we were permitted audience if not participation. If Boulez was an ideal interpreter (celebrant?) of this hieratic music, I could not help but think Stockhausen must have loved it too. At any rate, it made for a splendid introit to the Symphony of Psalms, whose similar strangeness registered visually in orchestral layout (famously, no violins and violas, nor clarinets) before a note had been heard. 

It proved another labyrinth, as full of incident in its way, above all in the first movement, as Mendelssohn’s Symphony. Glorious choral sound was well complemented by the orchestra; if there were occasions when the two threatened to go their separate ways, it never quite happened. More to the point, the inscrutability of Stravinsky’s musical devices – utterly characteristic ostinato in the first movement, the double fugue of the second – proved once again to pass all ‘expressive’ understanding, the composer’s ever-surprising ear made musically manifest. What a strange ‘response’ to the text Stravinsky offers in the words from Psalm 150 in the third movement. He would doubtless have said he was not responding at all, but simply setting them. That can readily become play with words, for ‘expression’ here, if hardly Romantic, was no less powerful for being what it was: quite the contrary. Brabbins took the opening daringly slow, providing all the greater contrast with what was to come. Music seeming at times to circle the worlds of the Symphony in Three Movements and even the Circus Polka never seemed remotely incongruous; roots and essence led to a hypnotic, even sanctified close.

Aimard/RSB/Popelka - Schoenberg and Mahler, 9 March 2024

Philharmonie

Schoenberg: Piano Concerto, op.42
Mahler: Symphony no.1

Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)

Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra

Petr Popelka (conductor)

Images: Peter Meisel

The world’s near-silence for Schoenberg’s anniversary year continues to deafen. Perhaps everywhere is waiting for September, when his birthday falls, and all will be revealed in a flurry of ‘new season’ announcements. And perhaps eternal Friede will descend upon the Erde this Christmas. In the meantime, Berlin, mostly at the Philharmonie, where there is an exhibition from the Arnold Schönberg Center in the foyer, continues to do better than most. Pierre-Laurent Aimard, who is certainly doing his bit, joined the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra (RSB) and Petr Popelka for an outstanding performance of the Piano Concerto, probably the best I have heard live—and a match for the best on record.


The opening was unusual: difficult to put my finger (or ear) quite on how, but Aimard’s solo put me in mind a soliloquy, with a melancholy hint of exile. Perhaps it was recently having seen a dramatization of Exil by Schoenberg’s fellow Californian exile Lion Feuchtwanger at the Berliner Ensemble, though I do not think it was only an external matter. Other voices joined from the orchestra, conversationally, also as if recalling, yet with a distinct hint of foreboding. In general, I have not found Schoenberg’s ‘programme’ for the work especially helpful. Indeed, looking at what I wrote in my ‘critical life’ of the composer, I see I went so far as this: ‘Whether the programme is of any help is highly debatable. Schoenberg, speaking vaguely of war, in a way that could readily be made to fit an almost infinite number of pieces of music, described the work’s expressive content as follows: “1. Life was so easy; 2. Suddenly hatred broke out; 3. A grave situation was created; 4. But life goes on.” Perhaps it assisted his overall conception; there is no more reason for us to dwell on it than Schoenberg had found there was, all those years previously, to dwell on Mahler’s for his Third Symphony.’ (For that, I am afraid you will have to read the book!) Mahler’s programmes are another issue, of course, and I tend to feel similarly about them, probably more so; for whatever reason, the programme of Schoenberg’s concerto seemed to speak more readily than I have previously experienced. The performance was not bound to it; it is not a performance indication. It is also highly subject to criticism, were one to take it too literally as about the world; of all people, Schoenberg knew there was nothing sudden about the outbreak of hatred. Yet here, in this performance, these suggestions and their expressive implications proved almost suddenly precise. It is always good to re-learn something one thinks one knows.

There was close to ideal clarity of texture, which certainly did not preclude weight, but rather proved the key to understanding it. Very much like Brahms, one might say. One could hear the extraordinary ear for orchestration, combinations of instruments sounding as if newly invented, not unlike one of Schoenberg’s Bach transcriptions. Ever-transforming in developing variation, the first section built subtly—and, as Schoenberg does so often, for those who care to listen, it danced too. As the mood darkened, increasing rhythmic angularity made its point in performance as well as work. Echoes of the Golden Calf scene from Moses und Aron were stronger, not only in tuned percussion, than I can recall. It was a (controlled) riot, but there was something still more unsettling behind it. We should not be unduly reductive about such matters, but the deceptions of too-ready communication and the fanaticism it breeds stand with us now almost as strongly as they did in 1942. When the orchestra sang what came across as a great song of protest, it was difficult not to think of current predicaments, all the more so as Mahlerian echoes issued from a twilight zone. All the while, Aimard had a pianistic work-out to give Prokofiev a run for his money.


The Adagio section emerged as consequent, then, as its counterpart in the First Chamber Symphony, reminding us of the deep roots of many of Schoenberg’s formal preoccupations. It was just as songful and soulful too, though seemingly still under assault from all around, Bachian string figures weaponised with terror. They spoke from Hell, and they spread. Aimard’s piano part seemed nonetheless to bind everything together, enabling a turn around. It was not easy, but that made it all the more a Schoenbergian triumph of the human spirit, Popelka’s collaborative stewardship of the orchestra as important in that success.


For an encore – I once heard, in another context, Maurizio Pollini give this as one of several (!) – Aimard played the complete op.19 Six Little Piano Pieces, introducing them by saying several people had told him, in their hearts, they hated Schoenberg’s music; he however, loved it. (Imagine saying that to anyone. Why would you ‘hate’ music in that way, let alone some of the most influential and rawly expressive music of the twentieth century? There continues, alas, to be no better place to find freely expressed antisemitism than in Schoenberg reception.) If anything, this proved a conception more heroic still, not only on account of some of the most determined bronchial disruption from around the hall I have ever heard. From the first, heard as if in a single, ever-variegated breath, through a pulverising miniature fourth (its joy is that one cannot become too heavy, its curse that one cannot become heavy enough), to the evocation of Mahler’s funeral bells in the sixth, a bridge to the second half: it was clear-sighted, unsentimental, but imbued with true sentiment in every note and its manifold connections.

That Mahler’s First Symphony had a performance in many ways admirable, if ultimately lacking the volcanic necessity of both Schoenberg works, yet was received with considerably greater enthusiasm by the audience tells its own tale, on which there is no further need to dwell. It certainly suggested that Popelka is a young conductor to be reckoned with, who has already made significant progress in his conception of a work whose difficult corners have defeated many, as well as confirming and renewing the excellence of the RSB. String harmonics, at the opening, imparted a sense of something that has always been there, of Nature – to which (human?) subjectivity had yet to be added, which it was by interjections from elsewhere. The first movement as a whole received a lyrical, characterful performance, which, whilst one should be wary of essentialisation, seemed rather in the line of Bohemian traditions of Mahler performance. Some might have found it too leisurely; for me, there was a keen sense of finding one’s way, perhaps through woodland, and with moments of existential loneliness to match (so long as one listened). Did it sometimes lose its way? I do not think so, though there were occasions when it might have been more clearly traced. That will come, though. And the eight horns of the RSB sounded glorious.


There followed a vigorous, buoyant, ‘naturally’ rustic Ländler: full of character once more, if slightly sectional and just a touch hard-driven at the close of its first iteration. The  trio evinced grace and Schwung, though it might have had greater depth. The reprise of Ländler material was on the brash side: deliberately so, I am sure, though veering a little too close to the ‘orchestral showpiece’ tendency driven by past decades’ Mahler-saturation. The third movement came off better, its opening taken (thank God) by solo double bass rather than the frankly idiotic practice suggested by editor Sander Wilkens of employing the entire section. The mood, as it and Mahler’s writing developed, was nicely twilit. Ensuing stylistic contrasts were well handled and integrated, a hushed, languorous sweetness imparted to the second trio. It was, perhaps, a bit listless, but that seemed to be the point, to evoke a world of dreams, disrupted by the return of Bruder Martin. The final mostly fell into place very well, balance, weight, and momentum well judged, whilst permitting space to enjoy the ride. These are very tricky balances to strike; if at this stage, Popelka’s conception lacked the last measure or two of formal integration, orchestral excellence and compensation offered fine compensation.

Gay/RSB/Jurowski - Telemann, Boismortier, Ravel, Ibert, and Strauss, 12 October 2023

Konzerthaus

Telemann: Bourlesque de Quixotte, TWW 55:G10
Boismortier: Don Quichotte chez la duchesse, op.97: ballet music
Ravel: Don Quichotte à Dulcinée
Ibert: Quatre chansons de Don Quichotte
Strauss: Don Quixote, op.35

Paul Gay (bass-baritone)

Alejandro Regueira Caumel (viola)

Konstanze von Gutzeit (cello)

Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra

Vladimir Jurowksi (conductor)

Images: Robert Niemeyer

‘Wie klingt “Don Quijote”?’ was the question posed by (and in) the programme to this splendid tour through musical depictions of Cervantes’s would-be knight-errant. To answer the question, we discovered that Don Quixote sounds in various ways, yet always colourfully and, aptly enough, endearingly too. Vladimir Jurowski’s gift for programming, so strong a feature of his time as Music Director of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, has not deserted him in Berlin. The Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra/Rundfunksinfonieorchester Berlin (RSB) is clearly thriving under his leadership, here in music ranging from Telemann to Ravel. 

Telemann’s turned twice as a composer to Cervantes’s novel, in 1761 writing a one-act opera on an episode from it: Don Quijote auf der Hochzeit des Camacho. (The young Mendelssohn would also turn to this same episode.) This ‘burlesque’ orchestral suite from 1739 takes in different episodes over the course of its seven movements and proved in performance both splendidly enjoyable and vividly theatrical. Its opening French overture might indeed have been the curtain-raiser to an opera of its own, here driven in fine balance between rhythm and harmony. We heard – and may have felt we saw – horses hooves in our hero’s celebrated tilting at windmills, Sancho Panza’s bruising and his donkey’s gallop, dragging and then absurdly accelerating, and much more, the final movement a well-earned sprint to the finish. Well-chosen percussion effects from triangle to tambourine added to the pictorial jollity. 

Joseph Bodin de Boismortier write his ‘comédie lyrique’ Don Quichotte chez la Duchesse on an episode in which Telemann found courtly repose and perhaps a greater emotional depth than elsewhere in his suite. Here we heard only some of the orchestral (ballet) music: the overture, a sequence of march, two tambourins, and second march, and a chaconne. (An old BBC broadcast with splendid cast may be found here for the eighty minutes or so of the entire work.)  Another arresting overture, this time actually written for the theatre, had us all but see the curtain and its rise. Notes and drama, even in this purely instrumental music, fairly flew off the players’ pages. Jurowski and the orchestra, moreover, conveyed the composer’s voice, close in some ways to Rameau yet quite different in others, with great élan, the conductor himself leading from tambourine in the first march. Oboes, bassoons, and harpsichord offered a fine Gallic contrast in the second tambourin. The chaconne proved piquant and full of surprises, from its opening gong stroke onwards. Through its twists and turns of mood and material, Jurowski never forgot this was a single dance; nor did we. 

Bass-baritone Paul Gay joined the orchestra for two sets of songs intended for Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s film starring Feodor Chaliapin. Ravel’s short song-cycle, his final completed work, was written too late for inclusion, but Jacques Ibert’s four songs were sung both in the film and in a recording made by Chaliapin and Ibert. Neither composer sets Cervantes: Ravel opted for contemporary texts by Paul Morand, whereas Ibert’s selection mixed old and new with Pierre de Ronsard and Alexander Arnoux. Both composers, even with small orchestra, Ibert’s (saxophone included) somewhat larger than Ravel, could offer a more varied instrumental palette; yet one could readily fancy one heard something of a ‘French’ ear for colour continued from their eighteenth-century predecessor. Gay presented resolutely unsentimental, communicative performances, relishing the melismata in third of Ravel’s three songs, the ‘Chanson à boire’, in which the composer’s ‘Spanish’ voice comes to the fore one last time, as much as the keen narrative of Ibert’s ‘Chanson à Dulcinée’ and the undeniably filmic qualities of the farewell, ‘Chanson de la mort de Don Quichotte’. 

And so we came to Strauss’s tone-poem, the excellent Alejandro Regueira Caumel and Konstanze von Gutzeit stepping forward as ‘soloists’, yet acting collegially as much as highlighted leaders of their sections. The RSB’s versatility, on show throughout, was certainly evident here, immediately sounding, for want of a better word, Straussian. Jurowski’s way with the score was fascinating, more modernistic, even strangely Stravinskian, than I can recall having heard. Generally brisk and admirably clear, I could not help but feel there was loss as well as gain, but we shall always have Karajan, Kempe, and others to return to when we wish. His trademark formalism certainly paid off in delineation of the work’s variation form and sharp individual characterisation of each episode. In any case, as the mood darkened, the orchestra’s colours, especially from the RSB brass, spoke increasingly for themselves. Quite a storm was whipped up, not only via the wind-machine. In the later duet of two bassoons it was, strangely, Stravinsky who once again came to mind. Woodwind in general were pleasingly rumbunctious. If this were ultimately a somewhat distanced performance, Caumel and Gutzeit notwithstanding, like the rest of the programme, it had me think—and, in a number of ways, reconsider.

Musikfest Berlin (3): Stefanovich/RSB/Jurowski - Stravinsky and Hindemith, 4 September 2021

Philharmonie

Stravinsky: Symphonies of Wind Instruments
Stravinsky: Abraham and Isaac
Stravinsky: Concerto for piano and wind instruments
Stravinsky: Variations for Orchestra (Aldous Huxley in memoriam)
Hindemith: Symphony: Mathis der Maler

Tamara Stefanovich (piano)
Georg Nigl (baritone)
Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra
Vladimir Jurowski (conductor)

Images: Peter Meisel

A darkened hall, monochrome lighting, considerable distance between conductor and orchestra (strings absent): Symphonies of Wind Instruments, given in its superior, 1920 version, looked as well as sounded hieratic. It was as precise as it was hieratic, only adding to the aggression that lies only just beneath the surface, presaging so much neoclassical Stravinsky as well as echoing the Russian ballets. Strange flute solos recalled the Rite in particular. Combinations of instruments surprised, enchanted, and drove Stravinsky’s quasi-liturgy. In its intense drama of sounds, it looked forward to Birtwistle and others. And yet, Vladimir Jurowski was equally alert to the crucial role of the static. By the close, it was possible that much had changed, but had it? Here was something implacable, unanswerable, quite beyond the Austro-German aesthetic.

 

When does one have opportunity to hear Abraham and Isaac? In my case, never before this Musikfest concert (apart, of course, from recordings, of which there are few). Webernesque violas met woodwind from the previous piece, introducing Georg Nigl as soloist. Here was a narrative one could follow even if one did not understand it verbally (that is, in Hebrew): a ‘sacred ballad’ indeed. There was no sense of Nigl ventriloquising, but there were times when I fancied I could hear this was a piece ‘for’, or at least first performed by, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (here in Berlin, in 1964). I could not help but notice that, time and time ago it was the RSB strings that evoked Webern and Schoenberg, wind and voice in almost another world. Canons abounded, as did melismata. Once again, Stravinsky and his performers said all that needed to be said, no more, no less.

 

Tamara Stefanovich, fresh from her wonderful performance of Movements with George Benjamin and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, joined the orchestra for Stravinsky’s 1923-4 Piano Concerto. The mock, neo-Baroque ostentation of the wind opening did not mask an underlying darkness that may or may not have been yet another Stravinskian mask, yet seemed real enough—until it too was banished (or was it?) by the energetic vehemence of the piano and new material. It was very ‘white’, irrespective of the keys. If Benjamin’s intriguing Pulcinella Suite had sometimes, seemingly on purpose, lacked bite, it was to be heard here in spades from all in ricochet and incitement. The strange synthesis of material at this first movement’s close pulled no punches either; it was thrillingly immediate. The opening chord of the slow movement teased: it might so easily have become late Beethoven, yet absolutely did not. There was, at least implicitly, a proper note of disdain for that path. Another mask? At any rate, its gravity seemed real. Provocative cadenza writing—where does it lead?—transformed the mood, as we heard when the orchestra returned. Static, like Symphonies of Wind Instruments? It was genuinely unclear, in a good sense. The third movement was very much a finale. What intransigence there was in those ostinatos—and in so much else. Throughout, this was a performance that understood and communicated the very particular qualities of the work. I was no clearer at the end than the beginning whether I liked it, but that is not the point. The final flourish came as a genuine surprise, even when one supposedly ‘knew’.

 

Much of what we had heard previously appeared both compressed and liberated in the ‘Aldous Huxley’ Variations. Everything counted in a gem such as Stravinsky saw—heard—crafted (Crafted too, for better or worse) in Webern. Here is an imagination just as extraordinary as that heard in the Symphonies of Wind Instruments, and so it sounded. What strange string writing there is too, as one could not fail to hear. It was a labyrinth as enticing as those of Berg, Birtwistle, and others. Jurowski then announced he would play the piece, too seldom heard, again, this time with an illuminating spoken introduction. The character of different sections emerged, at least for me, more strongly than ever, in line with Jurowski’s astute guidance to follow the balletic muse. It was, even on a second hearing, less hermetic, more lyrical, and with all the potential for the visual imagination of Petrushka. More please!

 

What could be more of a Berlin piece than the Mathis der Maler Symphony, premiered by the Philharmonic and Furtwängler in 1934, a regrettable milestone in both artists’ relations with the Nazi regime and Goebbels in particular. Not that one heard any of that here, though one certainly noted from the outset a very different sound and compositional method from that heard in Stravinsky’s music. The first movement flowed well with no suspicion of worthiness, let alone dullness (however unfair the charge to Hindemith). And then, almost before one knew it, the motoric side of Hindemith kicked in, suggestive less of Stravinsky than of earlier Hindemith, Cardillac in particular. That conflict of material seemed to be what was at stake. Might Jurowski have bowed a little more to the dictates of sentiment? Perhaps, but the lack of sentimentality was welcome. The second movement likewise benefited from clarity and interest in delineating timbre as well as counterpoint. Well shaped, it emerged as an intermezzo almost distinct from its role in the opera. Jurowski imparted to the opening phrases of the finale an almost Mahlerian weight, though the music travelled in a very different direction. Here, as elsewhere, he was aided by excellent orchestral playing, both weighty and vivid. There was drama aplenty. What, after all, is ‘symphonic’?

Musikfest Berlin (6) - RSB/Jurowski: Bach, Berg, Webern, and Schnittke, 5 September 2020

Philharmonie

Bach-Webern: Musical Offering, BWV 1079: ‘Ricercar a sei voci’
Berg: Three Fragments from ‘Wozzeck’
Webern: Variations for Orchestra, op.30
Schnittke: Concerto grosso no.1, for two violins, harpsichord, prepared piano, and chamber orchestra

Anne Schwanewilms (soprano)

Erez Ofer, Nadine Contini (violins)

Helen Collyer (piano and harpsichord)

Children’s Choir of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden (director: Ralf Sochaczewsky)

Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra

Vladimir Jurowski (conductor)

Only connect. Vladimir Jurowski has a longstanding talent for programming that does so—and ensures active participation from the listener in doing so too. Some connections in this programme were obvious, some less so, only revealed in performance and listening (at least for me). Whatever small reservations I may have had about some of Jurowski’s interpretative choices, they were outweighed by the illumination of his programming as a whole.


First up was Webern’s extraordinary orchestration, if we may call it that, of the six-part Ricercar from Bach’s Musical Offering. Clarity, both in itself and with respect to transition of lines between instruments, was a hallmark of this performance. There were times, especially earlier on, when I wished for a greater sense of flow, but Jurowski’s formalistic determination to have one hear processes, here and beyond, had its own rewards. There were many purely orchestral joys, in any case, from the sound of the RSB’s four double basses in pizzicato to any number of solos and transitions. There were also presentiments of much that was to come, the inner dialogue of string principals prefiguring Schnittke’s first Concerto grosso. The glorious full sound at climaxes, truly golden at the close, was moreover never a mere wash of sound, an idea utterly foreign to Webern; it was, like this concert as a whole, the sum of many parts.


Process was strongly to the fore in Berg’s Three Fragments from ‘Wozzeck’, for which orchestra and conductor were joined by Anne Schwanewilms and a thirteen-strong children’s choir—unlucky for some, Wozzeck’s child included—from the Staatsoper Unter den Linden. Jurowski’s deliberate way with this music worked well as an introduction to the labyrinth. In the first piece, Berg emerged in more Brahmsian fashion than I think I have ever heard (save, perhaps, in the songs). It became increasingly difficult not to see an imaginary stage in one’s head, even before the military parade and Schwanewilms’s full-blooded delivery of her part. If not note-perfect—is it ever?—it was vivid in its communication, which is surely the more important achievement. The second movement proved touching as ever, even to the point of the unbearable. Hearing this music after Bach, seven variations and a fugue, was revelatory; it offered a pathway to subsequent Webern too. Schwanewilms’s voice, an instrumental thread like that of the strings, offered musical as well as verbal argument. Workings were again clearly exposed in the final movement, generating musical drama in the absence of staging. That extraordinary build-up to Berg’s D minor climax could hardly fail, in our plague-ridding world, to have profound emotional force; it shattered, as it should, as it must. The orchestra, necessarily smaller than one would often hear, tended towards wind and somewhat away from strings, but that had its own fascination. To hear, finally, the world of children, innocent yet cruel, ready to pass on cruel gossip and doubtless other viruses too, chilled to the bone. Back to school, with that most terrifying of musical stops.


Webern’s Variations for Orchestra, op.30 followed, tension high from the opening double bass line, initiating such a variety of responses, through to the gestural mirrored intervals of the close. Again, process was paramount. This is not really how I hear the music in my head, or even in the score, but again, Jurowski’s way had its own justification, its analytical strength undeniable, vertical and horizontal unmistakeably apparent. That is not to say that it was cold, far from it, but rather that it was less flexible than Webern’s Romantic heritage—and practice—would suggest. There is no one way, and this remained Romanticism sublimated rather than banished. Different characters were imparted strongly to different variations: more than ever an heir to the op.27 set for piano. And those harmonies! I wanted to hear it again immediately, for what astounding music this is. Webern remains, as Stravinsky put it, ‘a perpetual Pentecost for all who believe in music’. Now, perhaps, we need that more than ever.


The equally extraordinary, postwar sound of the prepared piano ushered in the Prelude of Schnittke’s Concerto grosso no.1. Its sinister childishness had one recall the close of Wozzeck, yet here, quite rightly, meaning was more enigmatic. Initial, non vibrato string response underlined a sense of the sinister, eventually relieved yet never replaced by violin vibrato: from a cruelly reimagined past to the here and now? Tension gradually screwed up over a chillingly clear pedal. The following Toccata offered fiddling writ large—and writ wrong: quite memerising. And yet, before we knew it, we were once again in a sinister nursery world. Integration of those tendencies, or at least its attempt, unleashed a veritable house of horrors. Machines collapsed, though had they ever been intact? Schnittke’s ‘Recitativo’ properly spoke, ever uneasy, its growing intensity continuing into the Cadenza, which then spun off the rails in other directions, many of them. What could have been a better introduction to the idea of polystylism, whether in work or performance, than the hyper-Romantic surprise of the Rondo? There was nothing remotely amusing about Brahms’s appearance—just as it should be. Incongruity was the name of the game. The closing ‘Postludio’, return of prepared piano and all, seemed both to mean something and nothing. This was a commanding performance, intrinsically the finest of all four, although connection was the key throughout.

RSB/Storgårds - Schumann, Scenes from Goethe's 'Faust', 16 February 2020

Philharmonie

Szenen aus Goethes Faust, WoO3

Faust, Pater Seraphicus, Doctor Marianus – Markus Eiche

Gretchen, Una Poenitentium, Solo – Christina Gansch

Mephistopheles, Böser Geist, Pater Profundus, Solos – Stephan Klemm

Ariel, Pater Ecstaticus, Solos – Bernhard Berchtold

Sorge, Not, Jüngerer Engel, Magna Peccatrix, Solos – Sophie Klußmann

Mangel, Muller Samaritana, Solos – Stefanie Irányi

Marthe, Schuld, Penitent, Mater Gloriosa, Maria Aegyptiaca, Solos – Katharina Magiera

RIAS Chamber Choir (chorus director: Gregor Meyer)

Children’s Choir of the Georg-Friedrich-Händel-Gymnasium, Berlin (chorus directors: Jan Olberg and Vera Zweiniger)

Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra

John Storgårds (conductor)

Schumann’s Scenes from Goethe’s Faust is a curious work. How would one conceive of it if one did not know Goethe’s ‘original’? Whether we like it or not, such will doubtless be the experience of an increasing number of listeners (relatively speaking, for how many will ever come to it all?) just as some will come to the St Matthew Passion or Messiah without knowledge of the Gospels. They will make what they will of it, of course, just as all of us will do what we can in similar situations; none of us knows everything, nor should any of us be expected to. But how much is this a meta-work, of which deeper understanding is dependent on a broader knowledge of Goethe? The ‘scenes’ set by Schumann do not always seem the most obvious to form a whole of their own without some further frame of reference. Even with that frame, proportions might also be thought peculiar, especially when – as here – using the second version of the final chorus, which I do not think I had heard before.

Each of the three performances I have heard in the flesh has brought something different to the task of bringing Schumann’s score to life. Schumann did not live to hear the work performed in full, although partial performances were heard for the 1849 Goethe centenary in Weimar, conducted by Liszt; in Leipzig, by Julis Rietz; and in Dresden, by Schumann himself. Much was added thereafter, and it is hard to believe that those three performances were not in themselves very different. It is probably fair to say that this is one of those works that offers more possibilities, some of them at least on the verge of the contradictory, than can be reconciled in a single performance. Daniel Harding, with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, proved the most dramatic in a quasi-operatic sense. There are arguments for various approaches. Notwithstanding the decidedly mixed blessing of a staging from Jürgen Flimm, Daniel Barenboim seemed less concerned to present an opera manqué – there was, to be fair, a good deal of spoken dialogue – and more interested, in general productively so, in presenting something akin to symphonic incidental music. On this occasion, John Storgårds and his Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra (RSB) forces seemed, as a far from inviolable rule, especially attuned to the intimacy not only of Schumann’s writing but of his broader conception. Not that this sounded necessarily like Lieder-performance writ a little larger; rather it took its leave from a smaller-scale, German (in the best sense, provincial) oratorio tradition than many of us have since become accustomed to, vocal, choral, and indeed orchestral writing springing, so it seemed, from just such a source. Such domesticity and traditions surrounding it had much that was compelling to tell us about the nature of the work and, indeed, the relationship between Faust and Gretchen.

Darkly Romantic, then, though the Overture may have been, its D minor tonality surely acknowledging predecessors such as Mozart and Beethoven, if not necessarily on so cosmic a scale, it was leavened aptly enough by a ‘feminine’ second group, so as to provide context for much of what would unfold in the first part of the oratorio. There was thus, in the garden scene, bright-eyed sincerity to Christina Gansch’s Gretchen, readily matched by a freshness to lines such as ‘Ja, mein Kind! Lass dieses Blumenwort’ from Markus Eiche’s Faust. It was not clear here – nor, if one thinks about it, throughout – who or what would emerge victorious; such is neither Goethe’s nor Schumann’s true concern. Before the picture of the Mater Dolorosa, Gretchen’s sadness was clear –colouring, for instance, of the word ‘Schmerzensreiche’ – but the sweetness of orchestral playing, strings and woodwind alike, more than hinted at a force in counterpoint. There was undoubted tragic vehemence to the cathedral scene, not least in fine choral singing of the ‘Dies irae’ material, but it struck me as a particular strength of the approach offered by Storgårds and his performers that it told without unduly overwhelming. This is not a music of cheap thrills.

I was especially taken by the affinity with Lohengrin at the sunrise opening of the second part, Bernhard Berchtold’s tenor Ariel a public-facing counterpoint to a more innig, perhaps even more truthful orchestral part. Storgårds’s handling of transitions here, for example between the chorus and Ariel’s response impressed; so too, did the increasing darkness and continuing verbal acuity of Eiche’s performance. Further highlights included a beautifully, even magically sung Sorge from Sophie Klußmann, her third-part angel also possessed of a fine spring in its step; an excellent contribution from the Children’s Choir of the Georg-Friedrich-Händel-Gymnasium; and a heart-rending sense of idealism from Faust in his final confrontation with Mephistopheles.  The third and final part benefited greatly from a subtle yet undeniable feeling of upward movement, as well as Eiche’s turn to Doctor Marianus. As for the Chorus Mysticus in its second version, knowing Mahler’s Eighth Symphony doubtless presents a problem of expectations, but I confess to having found Schumann’s setting a little drawn out here. Schumann preferred it, though, so I should doubtless give it another try.

Musikfest Berlin (2) – RSB/Jurowski: Die Frau ohne Schatten, 1 September 2019

Philharmonie

Images: © Monika Karczmarczyk

Emperor – Torsten Kerl

Empress – Anne Schwanewilms

Nurse – Ildikó Komlósi

Spirit-Messenger – Yasushi Hirano

Barak – Thomas Johannes Mayer

Dyer’s Wife – Ricarda Merbeth

Apparition of Youth – Michael Pflumm
Voice of the Falcon – Nadezhda Gulitskaya

Voice from Above – Karolina Gumos
Guardian of the Temple Threshold – Andrey Nemzer

The One-Eyed – Tom Erik Lie

The One-Armed – Jens Larsen

The Hunchback – Christoph Späth

Night-Watchmen – Christian Oldenburg, Philipp Alexander Behr, Artyom Wasnetkov

Maids, Unborn, Children’s Voices – Sophie Klußmann, Verena Usemann, Jennifer Gleinig, Alice Lackner, Vizma Zvaigzne

Children’s Choir of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden (chorus director: Vinzenz Weissenburger)

Berlin Radio Chorus (chorus director: Benjamin Goodson)

Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra

Vladimir Jurowski (conductor)

Concert performances of opera are strange things. So too, of course, are stagings of opera, albeit often in different ways; Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal knew that better than most, on which see (and hear) Ariadne auf Naxos. Yet a concert performance will likely ever remain ‘ein sonderbar Ding’, as the Marschallin might have put it. Important also is the way one comes, either individually or as an audience, to such a performance. Does one view – a fraught verb, here, but I shall stick with it – it as closer to an audio recording, in which one follows the libretto, even the score, and perhaps goes so far as to stage it in one’s head? Does one take the more overtly reactionary view of expressing relief that the work is not being messed about by a stage director who may be clueless or may just have ideas other than one’s own? Or does one view the situation in more positive terms, as an opportunity to concentrate on the opera’s musical qualities, not so much undistracted, as heard in superior performing conditions? Symphony orchestras may have the opportunity to fill in harmful gaps in their repertoires: does it make sense for an orchestra to play Beethoven and Mahler, without ever touching more than a Wagner overture or prelude, or to play Strauss tone poems without reference to Strauss’s operas? It may be a matter of cost, too, and the only way some works will gain a hearing at all, especially in countries less blessed operatically than those of the German-speaking world.

Those and other positions are, of course, far from mutually exclusive. Moreover, one’s aesthetic stance may well be called into question: generally a very good thing. Much, for instance, as I know and feel the Ring should be staged; much as I long for a production that begins to do it justice (alas, only one to date in my live theatrical experience); I also know that two of the most powerful Wagnerian experiences of my life have been ‘concert stagings’ and concert performances of the Ring, both in the distinctly unpromising terrain of the Royal Albert Hall. Ultimately, a performance is what it is: a unique event, with affinities to others, yet never quite to be reduced to them. Why such ruminations, then? Partly to try to understand my reaction; I have not, Parsifal-like, come from nowhere. But also, I hope, to try to help readers who may have been more involved than I found myself by this Frau ohne Schatten to understand.

Ultimately, I wonder whether this is an opera that lends itself especially well to concert performance. One may well, with equal justice, wonder from its stage directions whether it lends itself well to staged performance. But most of us by now have, thank God, moved on from any conception of slavish adherence to such directions. Directors as different as Robert Wilson, Claus Guth, and Krzysztof Warlikowski have all brought imaginative and communicative standpoints to bear on the work. There have, of course, been less successful stagings, a nadir surely being Christof Loy’s ‘I cannot be bothered to stage the work at all’ production for Salzburg, but that will always be the case. This is a musical drama, in many ways a complex musical drama and for many a problematic one too. That need not in itself entail staging, but I felt too little dramatic thrust as a whole on this occasion: not so much from the singers, most of whom tried to inject a degree or two of such dynamism, as from Vladimir Jurowski.

As with much other opera I have heard from him, in and out of the opera house, Jurowski’s conducting seemed not only oddly formalist but, within that framework, sectional sometimes to the point of dramatic inertia. It was not so much a lack of longer line, a common problem among lesser conductors, but what came across as a definite aesthetic stance, only undermined by whipping up of highly conventional ‘excitement’ – getting louder, faster – at the ends of many sections: the close of the second act a case in point. I am not sure one can have it both ways; or rather one can, but should one? More conversational passages, moreover, seemed strangely underplayed, as if they were acres of undistinguished recitativo secco (an exaggeration, I know, but never mind), for which tightness of orchestral control might be relinquished not for flexibility as for nonchalance and even slight fuzziness (if nothing on the scale of Zubin Mehta’s recent unhappy way with the work, also in Berlin). There were passages of great interest, to be sure, although more timbral than harmonic. Jurowski seemed happiest when able to apply unusually hard-edged, even brittle, tone to the work, as if to undermine its sumptuousness. Strauss as ’20s Hindemith has a certain fascination: except such a conducting stance seemed sooner rather than latter forgotten, whatever the excellence of playing, whether in solo or ensemble, by the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra. Such excellence was not quite, however, accompanied by the familiarity that an opera house orchestra would have brought to the score, for how could it be? Likewise, the singing of the Berlin Radio Chorus, very fine in its way, did not and could not speak of the immersion a stage run could. Interestingly, the Staatsoper children’s choir suggested stronger memories of the stage (in that Guth production, as conducted by Mehta).

Ildikó Komlósi as the Nurse

What of the solo singing? In London, Jurowski has made some very odd choices with singers. That was perhaps less the case here, although amongst the principals, it was only really Ildikó Komlósi’s Nurse whose musico-dramatic star shone as brightly as any on stage. The role is a gift, of course, Strauss and Hofmannsthal at their collaborative best, but Komlósi grabbed the gift and made it her own as a singing actress who can, unquestionably, sing. Ricarda Merbeth also gave a good account her role in a sincere, musical, verbally attentive performance as the Dyer’s Wife. If Thomas Johannes Mayer’s Barak sometimes would have benefited from greater heft, he nonetheless brought similar verbal acuity to his performance. Torsten Kerl and Anne Schwanewilms were more awkwardly cast, Kerl’s Emperor often sounding distinctly elderly, sometimes overwhelmed by an orchestra Jurowski did a great deal to keep down. Schwanewilms had some wonderful moments; there was no doubting the dedication of her performance. There were other moments, however, in which the role now sounded sadly beyond her. ‘Supporting’ roles were generally very well taken, though Nadezhda Gulitskaya’s Falcon will not have appealed to all vocal tastes. I have not heard a countertenor sing the Guardian of the Temple Threshold before, but Andrey Nemzer certainly made his presence felt in an intriguingly florid account.

Much to ponder, then, and the audience reacted with enthusiasm less alloyed. This seems to be the beginning of a Strauss opera series for the orchestra, akin to that of Wagner’s ‘canonical’ dramas under Marek Janowski. There was certainly enough of merit here to warrant keeping an eye – and ear – open for future instalments.

(This performance will be broadcast on 7 September 2019, 18.05 CEST, across Europe, including UKW, Kabel, and Digitalradio in Berlin.)

RSB/Hrůša - Dvořák, 17 November 2017

Philharmonie

Stabat Mater, op.58

Simona Šaturová (soprano)

Elisabeth Kulman (contralto)

Steve Davislim (tenor)

Jan Martiník (bass)

Berlin Radio Choir (chorus master: Rustam Samedov)

Schola of the Berlin Radio Choir (chorus master: Benjamin Goodson)

Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra

Jakub Hrůša (conductor)

For whatever reason – I could speculate on a few, but shall not do so here – many, if not all, large-scale choral works from the nineteenth century seem to have fallen out of fashion, perhaps especially in Britain. Brahms’s German Requiem will surely always have a following, and rightly so; but I have managed to hear Elijah – formerly, at least to the Victorians, ‘“the” Elijah’ – precisely once, and St Paul never. Nor had I ever heard Dvořák’s Stabat Mater before in concert. (As for the following Verdi’s Requiem has, it can only be accounted for by the following mysteriously acquired by the rest of his regrettable œuvre.) It was a delight, then, to hear such a fine performance from the Berlin Radio Choir and its ‘Schola’, the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra (RSB), and Jakub Hrůša. Even if I had my doubts about some of the solo contributions, they were largely on matters of taste rather than anything more fundamental.

To ascribe grief – and ultimately, consolation – in such a musical setting straightforwardly to personal circumstances will usually be to sentimentalise; artistic creation is never, thank God, quite so straightforward as that. Nevertheless, it is difficult to avoid the suspicion that the sequential loss of his three children may have had some connection with what Dvořák wrote, even though it goes far beyond that, to what we might at a pinch – before deconstruction sets in – still consider a (more) universal message. His setting is certainly an unusually powerful, focused work for a composer whose unevenness and, sometimes, formal inadequacy are often skated over by apologists of nationalist and other hues. (That hapless Seventh Symphony, for instance, whatever its incidental pleasures!) At his best, Dvořák is excellent indeed; all too often, however, he is not at his best. He comes at least close to that best here, I think, and often indeed reaches it.

Its opening sadness – first, those extraordinary repeated F-sharps, the sharp sign a longstanding piece of musical crucifixion iconography, then a crucial, as it were, descending figure – registered not only powerfully, but, in a dynamic sense, dramatically. Icy or, better, cold – since it is certainly human – that descending orchestral figure grew ever more intense with every sequential or developmental reliving of its pain. Here, as often in this work, Dvořák proves more ‘symphonic’ than in any of his symphonies, or at least more consistently so – with, as ever, the great exception of the deservedly popular Ninth. Or maybe, I began to wonder, given the distinction of the performance, it was just that I had not heard Hrůša conduct them. The music seeped into, formed the foundation, motivic and dramatic, for the first movement (choral and soloists): soft at first, building to beautifully shaped climaxes, without merely determining it. Indeed such was the distinction of the choral singing, words and notes equally well projected, that one had the retrospective sense that the words of the poem had determined the music of the introduction too.

Alas, soprano Simona Šaturová’s first entry was, quite frankly, weak, and both the tenor (Steve Davislim) and bass (Jan Martiník) proved rather ‘operatic’, in an almost Verdian way, for me. Only Elisabeth Kulman’s predictably excellent way, rich of tone, thoughtful of words, seemed in keeping with the rest of the performance. Davislim and Martiník sang very well on their own terms, though, and I can only presume that Hrůša had no problem with those terms either. It does one no harm, in any case, to listen to performances of high quality that do not correspond to how one instinctively, or indeed otherwise, hears a work in one’s head. In that sense, only Šaturová was disappointing, and she improved as the work proceeded. If her vowels were odd, and her consonants often indistinct, in her later duet (‘Fac, ut portem Christi mortem), her line was much cleaner by then.

A great strength to Hrůša’s reading was that there was always a strong sense of the work as a whole, just as in a symphony. Individual movements, or numbers, or whatever we want to call them, were sections of the poem, not poems in themselves. And so, the second movement Quartet followed on, related to, intensifying, certainly not repeating the mood of its predecessor. Even if I did not always care for the style of the solo singing, the RSB’s playing was second to none, not least the sweetness and warmth of the strings. (Czech music is no better served by ascribing some birth right to ‘national’ orchestras, than English music is. Who, after all, is better with Elgar today than Daniel Barenboim?) Fundamentals, in the harmonic and a more general sense, were always well taken care of: generative, again just as they would be in a symphony. The following chorus continued in similar vein: which, again, is to stress ‘continued’, with the kinship and difference that implies. The cries of ‘fac’ were every bit as ‘dramatic’ as one could have hoped for, not least since they were presented in context, no mere ‘effect’.

Different characters were to be heard in the following movements: never unnecessarily contrasted, but likewise never quite drawn from the same colours. Brahms, for instance, haunted the tenor solo and chorus, ‘Fac me vere tecum flere’, but in the orchestral sound itself, orchestral and textures themselves simpler, yet undeniably radiant. As the work progressed, transformation, even perhaps transfiguration, crept upon us. It was difficult to say precisely where or when: doubtless as it should be. Hrůša’s control of large-scale structures proved just as un-showily impressive as it had earlier this year when I heard him conduct – magnificently – the Beethoven Violin Concerto.

The neo-Baroque character of the penultimate movement, the solo contralto ‘Inflammatus’ was for me very much a highpoint – both of work and performance. Compassion here seemed very much to the fore, both for Kulman and the orchestra. Perhaps unsurprisingly by now, but certainly not to be taken for granted, Hrůša proved masterly in binding together the work in its final quartet and chorus. It was not merely a recognition of reappearance of earlier material, but of its developmental quality; contextual difference spoke just as strongly as similarity. There was ambiguity, quite rightly, at the close: exultant, yet not unalloyed. That one could – and this listener, at least, did – read back into what we had heard before. This, then, was an excellent concert; I was sad only to have had to miss the bonus concert of a cappella works scheduled immediately afterwards.

Musikfest Berlin (8) - Tetzlaff/RSB/Jurowski - Yun, Schoenberg, Nono, and Beethoven-Mahler, 17 September 2017

Philharmonie

 

Images: Kai Bienert

Isang Yun: Dimensionen, for large orchestra with organ

Schoenberg: Violin Concerto, op.36
Nono: Julius Fučik
Beethoven, retouched by Mahler: Symphony no.5 in C minor, op.67

Christian Tetzlaff (violin)

Max Hopp (speaker: Fučik)

Sven Philipp (speaker: Officer)

Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra

Vladimir Jurowski (conductor)

 

My final – although not quite the final – concert of this year’s Musikfest Berlin fell on the hundred birthday of Isang Yun. Having heard some of his chamber music that afternoon, it was an interesting prospect to hear a work for full, indeed large, orchestra, with organ. (Alas, I was unable to find the name of the organist anywhere in the programme.) Dimensionen, or Dimensions, was commissioned by the city of Nuremberg, as part of the 1971 celebrations for the five-hundredth anniversary of Albrecht Durer. I wish I had been able to respond more than I had, but found myself a little nonplussed; perhaps I needed to give it another hearing or two, or indeed to do a little homework rather than coming to it cold. The idea seemed to encompass three different planes of sound: the organ and high, often very high, strings; deep percussion and brass; and woodwind in between, less static than either. I was certainly struck by the passages in which woodwind really took on the ‘persona’ of highly tremulant organ stops. One section, in which loud organ was offset by vigorous percussion sounded oddly like avant-gardist Poulenc, but I doubt that was the intention! There was a good bit of (considerably earlier) Ligeti- or Xenakis-like violin swarming too. It all, however, seemed to me a great deal of trouble to have gone to for relatively little reward. And then, it stopped.

With Schoenberg, though, I found myself back very much on home territory, and should have no hesitation in saying that this was the finest performance of the Violin Concerto I have heard in the concert hall. Indeed, I am not sure that I have heard a better one on record, either. Opportunities are rare to hear the work; even I have only heard it ‘live’ twice before. The last time had been in 2009, in which Nikolaj Znaider had – sadly, if all too predictably – been let down by a clearly unprepared Valery Gergiev. There was no such question of that being the case here. Vladimir Jurowski and the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra (RSB) were just as much party to the success of this performance as the outstanding Christian Tetzlaff. The first movement very much set the tone for what was to come: precise, yet dancing idiomatically. Textures were almost incredibly clear, so much so as to have one wonder whatever the ‘problem’ might ever have been with this work. More than once, there seemed to be a strong orchestral affinity with the more or less contemporary world of Berg, albeit more Lulu than the Violin Concerto. (Schoenberg was anxious to make clear, in a 1936 letter to Webern, that he had conceived of the idea of his work at the same time as Berg had his.) Tetzlaff’s tone could hardly have been more centred; one might readily have taken dictation, however dazzling the virtuosity. The Andante grazioso brought a winning match of doggedness and sublimity to the long violin line, dance again never far away. Developing variation was here so much more than a mere description; it was something one could hardly fail to experience. The mood of defiance to the finale was brilliantly captured too. Perhaps there was just a little ‘formalism to Jurowski’s conducting, but to be able to hear so much of this wondrous score was more than ample compensation. Mahler seemed almost resurrected in its militarism, and yet to very different purposes. Tetzlaff’s despatch of the cadenza seemed almost calculated to echo Schoenberg’s workds: ‘Yes, yes. That will be fine. The concerto is extremely difficult, just as much for the head as for the hands. I am delighted to add another unplayable work to the repertoire. I want the concerto to be difficult and I want the little finger to become longer. I can wait.’ And the soloist’s choice of Bach’s D minor Sarabande as an encore was perfect. Not only could one read back Bach’s line into Schoenberg’s, and vice versa; the choice of D minor picked up on and responded to Schoenberg’s hints at that key – always a ‘special’ one for him – in the concerto.

 

I had heard Jurowski conduct the British premiere of Nono’s unfinished Julius Fučik in London in 2011. ‘Pointillism’ was what had immediately come to mind in the opening then; so it did now; far more so, say, than in the later Il canto sospeso, heard earlier in this festival. Its melodramatic quality inevitably puts one in mind of Schoenberg: for instance, A Survivor from Warsaw. There was certainly no doubting the violence and the human ‘provocation’, such as Nono said he always needed: ‘an event, an experience, a test in our lives, which provokes my instinct and my consciousness, as man and musician, to bear witness’. In this case, the witness borne is to a Czech communist and literary critic, hanged by the Nazis in 1943. (Fučik’s words would also be used in Intolleranza 1960.) Drums and trumpets again suggested Mahler (and Schoenberg), as the music led us to one of those typical Nono passages of agonising beauty. The German ‘Schönheit’, spoken shortly after, made the point clearly. And then, to hear the phrase ‘ein Motif von Beethoven’ alerted us, with savage irony, to where we were heading.

 

Jurowski had followed that London performance too with Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. The great difference here was that it was performed with Mahler’s retouchings to the score – and with a much larger orchestra. Interestingly, Jurowski now seemed liberated, no longer hidebound by self-imposed ‘authenticke’ restrictions. It was, of course, a splendid experience in itself to hear Beethoven via Mahler, but it was not just that; we heard more, I think, of Beethoven ‘as Beethoven’ too. Moreover, simply to hear a full-sized orchestra, still more one on such splendid form as the RSB, let loose on this music – sixteen first violins down to eight double basses – is an opportunity all too today too. Doubling of wind made perfect sense in such a hall and on such an occasion too. Yes, of course it is not strictly ‘necessary’, but what is? If we go down that route, we might as well all stay at home and listen to recordings – or indeed to nothing at all. To hear, for instance, the oboe solo in the first movement not as a solo at all was fascinating, especially when played as well as it was here. We doubtless will not hear it like that next time, but we might have the memory in some sense with us, offering a different, reflective standpoint on what we hear. Moreover, the first movement as a whole burst forth with all the radicalism of Beethoven’s almost incredible gift for concision. Perhaps Jurowski might have yielded a little on occasion, but one might say the same about Klemperer.

 

It was glorious to hear the lower strings, so full and rich, so songful and soulful, at the opening of the second movement. Even the slightly static approach Jurowski brought to the music seemed to work, although I could not quite tell you how or why. I was less convinced that this was really a ‘Mahlerian’ approach, but so what? To attempt to imitate, whether something imaginary or otherwise, is an approach for pedants, not for artists. The performance, moreover, benefited from all the clarity we had heard in the Schoenberg. I very much like the stateliness, the strength – I dare not invoke ‘stability’ here! – of the Scherzo, transmuted into something similar yet different in the Trio. The reprise of the scherzo material sounded as ghostly as ever; alas, the transition to the finale remained somewhat foursquare, lacking in mystery. If there were times in that final movement when Jurowski seemed to hold back – rather oddly, and overtly, in forced ritardandi – many earlier virtues remained, showing clarity, strength of purpose, and numbers to be anything but antithetical. (It is extraordinary that one has to make such a point, but given the current fashionable climate, alas one must.) And this time, the surprise would be that the oboe solo was – yes, an oboe solo. Two piccolos, four flutes, four oboes, four clarinets (including bass and E-flat clarinets), four bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones: I have no doubt whatsoever that Beethoven would have been overjoyed to hear his music relished by and through so many. If, ultimately, I was perhaps more impressed than moved by the performance, it gave me much to be impressed by – and to think about.