Argerich/Munich PO/Shani - Farrenc, Beethoven, and Brahms, 5 September 2026

Royal Albert Hall

Louise Farrenc: Overture no.2 in E-flat major, op.24
Beethoven: Piano Concerto no.2 in B-flat major, op.19
Brahms: Symphony no.4 in E-minor, op.98

Martha Argerich (piano)

Munich Philharmonic Orchestra

Lahav Shani (conductor)

Images: BBC/ Chris Christodoulou

With the best will in the world, much of the audience in such a concert will be there for the soloist. That intends no disrespect to Lahav Shani or the Munich Philharmonic, but Martha Argerich is, well, Martha Argerich—and one takes whatever opportunity one can to hear her. It took me several false starts in the face of cancellation before finally I did, but I have never regretted it and certainly did not now. Whether rehearsal time had been targeted accordingly, I do not know, but Beethoven’s Second Piano Concerto proved the unquestionable highlight of the evening, alongside deeply disappointing Brahms and a well-played nonentity of a concert overture by Louise Farrenc. 

An interesting historical figure both as pianist and composer, Farrenc has her advocates, but this E-flat Overture proved little more than a series of introductions to introductions, wearing a little too obviously influences on its sleeve, from Gluck and Beethoven to Cherubini and Rossini. It began impressively, implying a true curtain-raiser, even without an opera to come. Its over-reliance on tonic-dominant harmony – yes, Beethoven can do this too, but how! – might not have mattered too much, but the lack of anything in the way of intrinsic musical interest did. Still, it was a welcome opportunity to hear this music for oneself, and the orchestra was on good firm, powerfully directed by Shani. 

The Albert Hall offers an ideal acoustic for very little, if anything, certainly not for an early Beethoven concerto performed with chamber-orchestral forces (ten first violins down to four double basses). One had to listen in here, but rewards were many for having done so, from the fresh opening tutti onwards. Argerich’s entry had it all: chiaroscuro, beautifully pointed, and unerring line, Beethovenian goal-orientation never in doubt. In that, it offered a prospectus for the whole, the first movement in particular notable for counterpoint as crystal-clear as it was harmonically founded and directed. It was often a more inward account – these things are relative – than one might once have expected from her, but it was not without vehemence either, the world of the later composer summoned and very much with us in the cadenza. If the opening of the second movement exposed Shani’s inability, as yet, to work out how, in this acoustic, to present Beethoven simply, balances awry and much a little too fussy, then things settled soon enough on the return of the soloist. Thereafter, Shani proved a sure and sensitive accompanist. Perhaps the close was a little too drawn out, a little too loved, but if so, that is a fault in the right direction. Cultivated, directed orchestral playing and flashes of the tigress of old characterised the finale, its Scotch snaps worth the price of admission alone. ‘Le Jardin féerique’ form Ravel’s Ma Mère l’Oye made for a slightly surprising encore. It took a while to find its feet—or better, its balance, but Argerich’s glissandi will linger long in the memory of all who heard them. 

Brahms’s Fourth Symphony brought out the best in neither orchestra nor conductor. If the first movement opened wistfully, its lack of textural clarity presaged one of several recurrent problems. That may have been in part an acoustical matter, but general listlessness and dissipation of tension were surely less so, likewise surprising thinness of string tone. At times, we heard more committed playing, but it was unclear where it had come from or why. Such issues were carried forward into a second movement whose mixture of petulance and strange balance – often, downright lack of balance – meant it never really had a chance. It suggested Brahms, here at the height of his powers, had simply given up. The third movement began more promisingly. It bounced along, a little too jolly but with greater precision—until tone thinned again and it became merely hard-driven, disintegrating thereafter. The finale likewise seemed to have a stronger sense of structure at its opening, but that was not to be maintained. A strange emptiness at its heart was engendered by scrappy playing and Shani’s apparent lack of musical understanding. What presumably was intended to sound hushed sounded merely uncertain. It was all a bit of a mess, and though it gathered a reasonable head of steam later on, that was too little, too late. Contrast with the courageous witness of Ilan Volkov at least year’s Proms could not have been starker.

Salzburg Festival (3) - ‘Hommage à Kurtág’: Brahms, Kurtág, Schumann, and Ligeti, 22 August 2026

Grosser Saal, Mozarteum

Brahms: Trio for violin, horn, and piano, in E-flat major, op.40
Kurtág: Hommage à R.Sch. for clarinet, viola, and piano, op.15d
Schumann: Märchenerzählungen for clarinet, viola, and piano, op.132
Ligeti: Trio for violin, horn, and piano

Noah Bendix-Bagley (violin)

Tabea Zimmermann (viola)

Daniel Ottensamer (clarinet)

Stefan Dohr (horn)

Kirill Gerstein (piano)

Images: © SF/Marco Borrelli

This is what I call programming. Kirill Gerstein essentially brought together two unusual chamber ensembles, him common to both, to perform works by two celebrated pairs of composers: contemporary master and disciple (though more complicated than that) themselves in some sense responding to their predecessors. Joined by Noah Bendix-Bagley and Stefan Dohr for the Brahms and Ligeti for violin, horn, and piano, and by Tabea Zimmermann and Daniel Ottensamer for works by Kurtág and Schumann, Gerstein wrought a moving centenary tribute to György Kurtág, whose life and work in many ways offer a conspectus of the Western classical tradition, such as one would only find at a festival such as Salzburg’s. 

For the Brahms Horn Trio, opening balance sounded a little odd, or perhaps it was more a matter of my ears adjusting. At any rate, this was a fine performance of a work with nowhere to hide—and no reason to need such a place. The first movement’s metrical and harmonic ambiguities offer difficulties for players and listeners alike, but there was no problem at all on the former side. This is difficult music and should never be thought easy listening, but these were musicians who enabled form to emerge as emotional as well as structural progression. The scherzo came to life as an ebullient, even disturbing homage to Mozart and Beethoven, wild in its Brahmsian discipline and in the occasional hint, never realised, that such discipline might be overruled. Its trio offered darkly Romantic balance and, within, a new world of chiaroscuro, prior to a still more intense reprise of the scherzo. The slow movement was darkly introspective to begin with, developing into defiance rather than merely stating it, whether outwardly fragile or overtly impassioned. More than once, I could not help but notice affinities with Die Walküre, its material as well as its mood. (I must consult the score for myself.) The sense of musical ‘lighting’ – slightly different, I think from shading – offered by all three players was exquisitely expressive, founded in yet never to be reduced to harmonic motion. The release of the finale was no less felt, or more remarkable, for its complexity, striking a keen balance between hints of the cyclical and the developing variation that is the essence of so much Brahms. Here was the culmination of a mighty river’s flow. 

Kurtág’s Hommage à R.Sch. brought the ‘other’ ensemble onstage. The first miniature, ‘(merkwürdige Pirouetten des Kapellmeisters Johannes Kreisler)‘ created a scurrying theatre stage of the mind, unmistakeably in the line of Webern, but equally unmistakeably Kurtág. Semi-whispered, hyper-Romantic confidences in the second effected a beautifully moving synthesis at the close, to be disrupted immediately by Florestan/Schoenberg’s third, equally beautiful in Pierrot-like violence, and further balanced or rather sublated in fourth and fifths movement in which semi-return to the mood of the second was, in nicely Schumannesque fashion, complicated by helter-skelter response. The sixth movement, longer than the first five combined, though still relatively brief, brought a properly Kurtágian haunting in response to Pierrot’s comings and goings, crystalline perfection in work and performance the means to emotional and intellectual integrity and depth. This was the air and indeed landscape of another planet, our revels ending with the unshowiest, yet most certain of drumstrokes from Ottensamer: a soldier’s tale, perhaps. 

After the interval, Gerstein, Zimmermann, and Ottensamer returned for Schumann’s late Märchenerzählungen, the first in context offering a whimsy not unrelated to Kurtág’s. This was unmistakeably a fairy tale opening, the page turned: ‘once upon a time…’, the story told with palpable delight from all concerned, and in as ultimately harmonious a world we can imagine this side of Mozart. Its successor proved similarly touching: this may not be music ‘for children’, but there seemed little doubt they would like and ‘get’ it. The rapt euphony of the third piece was also touching in its simplicity. (Again, few composers after Mozart have had that gift, although Kurtág does.) It brought tears to my eyes. Similarly good-humoured, the fourth and final tale was more overtly fantastical, even Hoffmannesque—which returned us to Kurtág and his homage. 

For the Ligeti Trio, the players seemed more immediately at ease than in the Brahms, their instruments ‘speaking’ and indeed singing eloquently from the off. If any other composer occasionally came to mind, it was first Berg (especially on violin), later Bartók (especially on piano); but in reality it could have been none other than Ligeti—and ‘late’ Ligeti at that.  Every note and every relationship between them enchanted as strongly as Schumann’s or Kurtág’s. Such Mozartian ease with such unusual forces announced in the first movement continued throughout all four, the second offering a riveting walk on the post-Bartókian wildside. Bendix-Balgley’s harmonics, Dohr’s contrapuntal lines, Gerstein’s well, everything combined to mesmerise. Talk about having rhythm, Ligeti included—and harmonic rhythm just as much. The third movement sounded at first as if a response to an imagined Schumann march, before pursuing other, very different, though not less fantastical paths in a directness that again suggested the smiling ghost of Bartók. And if hearing this work in the same concert as Brahms’s Trio for the same forces rightly brought difference rather than kinship more strongly to the fore, there was an undeniable Brahms-like satisfaction in what we heard here, ever more so in the final movement: simply itself and unanswerable. Bells tolled for someone or something: maybe for us. If so, the composer of Le Grand Macabre might have reminded us that it would not have been the first time we had failed to notice.

Salzburg Festival (2) - Hadelich/VPO/Thielemann: Brahms, 22 August 2026

Grosses Festspielhaus

Violin Concerto in D major, op.77
Symphony no.1 in C minor, op.68

Augustin Hadelich (violin)

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Christian Thielemann (conductor)

Images:© SF/Marco Borrelli

A frustrating concert, this: on account of neither Augustin Hadelich nor the Vienna Philharmonic, but rather of Christian Thielemann’s conducting, which certainly had its moments, its passages even, yet could readily have offered much more. Consistency can over over- and underrated: no one wants consistent mediocrity and the twin curiosity and courage not to rest on laurels and thus to try something different are often to be lauded. Proof of the pudding lies in the eating, though, and difference for its own sake will rarely be a good thing. Here, above all in the First Symphony, a strange eschewal of harmonic rhythm, tracing Brahms – of all composers – at worst as if this music were merely a succession of melodies and at best in a fashion born more of operatic than symphonic drama, culminating in a strange two-movement dash to the finish, as if Thielemann had simply had enough, fell some way short of the deep, intense satisfaction that is this composer’s wont. If it would be unjust to speculate that his mind might have been in Bayreuth, it was difficult to escape the conclusion that his heart was. 

I shall return to the Symphony. The Violin Concerto offered better news, although that was mostly Hadelich and the orchestra’s doing, Thielemann showing himself an able, sensitive accompanist rather than equal partner. How much can one tell from an opening phrase and, more broadly, an opening tutti? Here, quite a bit: it was rhetorical, theatrical even, something of a curtain-raiser, without really leading to what the curtain might reveal on Hadelich’s entry. Throughout, all in Hadelich’s interpretation felt born in the notes, in their connection, and what that created, constituting the work’s form as both structure and emotional fabric. Hadelich’s golden tone, variegated yet centred, harked back to a mythical yet enduring idea of a Golden Age of violin playing, intriguingly set against a somewhat darker toned VPO (not something one especially associates with that orchestra). Thielemann proved ever attentive, visibly and audibly listening and responding, yet rarely assertive, as will often, ideally, be called for; and when it was, skirting slight mannerism. It was telling, no doubt, that the truest instrumental drama came in the cadenza: not one I recognised—I wonder whether it was Hadelich’s own. At any rate, it learned lessons from celebrated predecessors, whilst treading its own path with confidence and genuine rejuvenation. The way Hadelich built tension through counterpoint that became harmony, extending Brahms both as himself and as a true disciple of Bach, was invigorating, yet pointed to an apparent lack of harmonic interest on Thielemann’s part. It was not grievous; one hears far, far worse, especially from the ‘authentic’ brigade, but something was missing, if here more by way of contrast. It was Hadelich, doubtless rightly, but perhaps to an undue extent, who gave the impression of inviting the orchestra back in. 

Wind playing – not only the oboist’s, though certainly his – of the highest distinction marked the second movement. There was a definite lateness without mawkishness to this ‘Adagio’: a heartfelt tribute and even a farewell to a Classicism that underlay all and yet was no longer quite within reach. That beautiful yet melancholy thought elicited string (solo and section) consolation before darkness emerged beneath the surface. This, then, was truly a movement of Romantic anguish, born from within rather than applied to it. Hadelich’s song – and how his violin sang – was an achievement rather than a given, however little it lay in doubt. Thielemann imparted a strong sense of what might have been—in more than one sense. A strong turnout from the Phlegm Liberation Front notwithstanding, Brahms ultimately won out in a finale launched with little rather than no break. It may have been a matter of where I was seated, but early on the VPO’s tone sounded oddly harsh here. Transitions and other shifts were generally well handled, but ultimately this was a movement (for me) more observed than shared—again, largely on Thielemann’s account. For an encore, Hadelich gave what I believe to be his own arrangement of Schumann’s ‘Träumerei’: unfussy, resourceful, and closing on magical harmonics. 

Thielemann initially seemed more obviously at home in the Symphony, conducting from memory and shaping the opening of the first movement into a compelling, if not truly harmonically founded, drama. (The greatest Brahms conductors from Furtwängler and Klemperer to Barenboim would immediately show what was missing.) A palpable sense of tragic narrative was present, though, whatever slight reservations one might have felt. A strange noise from within the audience – electronic interference? – disrupted a little, but orchestra, composer, and, here at least, conductor emerged victorious from that tussle. Had the performance continued in similar terms, one might well have located it broadly as lying within the tradition of Karajan—and there are far worse things than that. Hints of motivic Beethoven towards the close already suggested, though, a little of what else might have been underplayed earlier. There was, though, undeniable eloquence to the second movement, not least through the way the orchestra ‘spoke’—again, perhaps a little operatic, but there is more than enough room for different approaches here. The emotional ambivalence of its opening well established the contest to come, even if overall tone was a little on the bright side for Brahms (at least to my taste). 

Following a further barrage of coughing, the third movement began at a tempo that felt faster than any I could recall. If it was difficult objectively to square with ‘Un poco Allegretto e grazioso’, it had its own logic in lifting of mood and proved surprisingly convincing—until textures became more congested than flowing. Its later course, though, was straightforwardly odd: slowing massively and ending in perplexing disappointment. The finale likewise began well enough, laying out its material clearly and bringing an undeniable sense of suspense. That horn call was all one could wish for, and the principal theme sounded beautifully, if in oddly soft focus. ‘Più Allegro’, though? It was certainly più, but to my ears considerably troppo. What ensued was driven in a way one might have thought – hoped – had gone out of fashion with Toscanini, albeit without his preparation and aesthetic. Harmonic understanding and communication seemed to have gone out of the window in order to catch the next train home.

Bendix-Balgley/Delepelaire/BPO/Sokhiev - Mendelssohn, Brahms, and Berlioz, 27 February 2026

Philharmonie

Mendelssohn: Overture: The Hebrides, op.26
Brahms: Concerto for violin, cello, and orchestra in A minor, op.102
Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique, op.14

Noah Bendix-Balgley (violin)

Bruno Delepelaire (cello)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Tugan Sokhiev (conductor)

Images: Stephan Rabold

How I miss hearing the Berlin Philharmonic more weeks than not. Perhaps absence makes the heart grow fonder, but I have little doubt I should have found this an outstanding concert on matter what. It showed, moreover, how the orchestra, especially under the right conductor, can draw on the best of its great tradition without in any sense being hidebound on it. Mendelssohn’s overture The Hebrides was a case in point. I was surprised to see it had not been performed by the BPO for nearly fifteen years, the last time being in October 2011 under Pablo Heras-Casado. Mendelssohn may be oddly unfashionable, but his music came up as fresh as new in an absorbing performance under Tugan Sokhiev. The opening sounded ‘right’ in every respect: balance; warmth and variegation of orchestral tone; the changing nature of the seas, relatively calm yet with elemental menace in their depth; and tempo, which, whilst slower than usual, worked just as well. Later prominence of bass heightened the drama without overwhelming, though one could say much the same of strings after that. Though were considerable shifts in tempo, they lay within a coherent whole; indeed, they helped form it. First among solo equals was clarinettist Wenzel Fuchs, whose duetting proved just as delectable. It was as fine a Mendelssohn performance as I had heard for some time. 

Noah Bendix-Balgley and Bruno Delepelaire joined their orchestral colleagues for an excellent performance of Brahms’s Double Concerto, showing that surpassing suavity in solo performance need not in any sense preclude depth of response, quite the contrary. Again, an orchestral sound announced itself that, whilst not to be identified directly with that of Karajan (or, in this repertoire, Jochum) suggested tangible relation. Delepelaire’s opening solo statement likewise ‘might’ have been that of a great soloist of the past, save that it was very much of the present, Bendix-Balgley’s response that of an equal. The soloists watched and listened to each other as chamber musicians, making music with each other and their peers, speaking of things, as Mendelssohn put it, that were too definite rather than too vague for words. Drawing-room intimacy both contrasted with and yet grew out of more public statements. Tempi again sounded just right, without being noticeable in themselves. Throughout this first movement, there was plenty of space for the music to unfold, though no loss of urgency, broadening to the moment of recapitulatory return a fine example, unleashing a veritable second development.

A darkly post-Beethovenian reading of the second movement followed: ‘late’, but not too late Brahms. It sang and developed in tandem, very much as chamber music writ large, albeit within a Sophoclean framing of evident kinship with the Fourth Symphony, Nietzsche’s idiotic claim that Brahms’s music spoke with the ‘melancholy of incapacity’ effaced by the melancholy of supreme compositional mastery. The finale ensued with unerring rightness: lighter in one sense, yet anything but carefree. It was more ambiguous and yet also more ‘public’: how is that for ambiguity? The major mode, when it came, moved precisely because it incorporated prior struggles rather than attempting to overcome or even reconcile them. This was not an easy ride, nor should it have been. Too often nowadays, concerto performances are followed by irrelevant encores, serving only to prolong departure from the hall. Bendix-Balgley and Delepelaire judged theirs just right: their own arrangement of a Brahms Hungarian Dance. Alas, I noted down the number incorrectly and am now not sure which one. At any rate, it was spirited, idiomatic, and balanced wienerisch origin with a paprika seasoning of fun. 

It is not only Mendelssohn who seems to be out of fashion; so does Berlioz, doubtless because a number of distinguished champions are no longer with us. Sokhiev and the BPO left us in no doubt what we are missing, with a superlative performance of the Symphonie fantastique, its burning radicalism suggesting even Helmut Lachenmann might yet learn a few tricks from this earlier orchestral master. An augmented orchestra, a larger string section more than matched by considerably more varied as well as larger wind and percussion sections, immediately sounded different, giving the lie to claims that ‘tradition’ somehow makes everything sound the same. It might, but only in the guise of poor playing, which can be old or new. Silkier strings suggested somewhere between opera and ballet, perhaps born of the very different traditions of French theatre music, whilst still honouring the composer’s idiosyncratic yet unmistakeable symphonic ambition. Tension was screwed up in the first movement introduction, exposition release just the thing. Here was form rather than formula, seemingly emerging from the instruments of the orchestra themselves. We never forgot, nor did our guides, that this was Berlioz the Romantic with a capital ‘R’, heir to Byron and Beethoven alike, from double bass growls here to later piccolo shrieking. 

Sokhiev captured to a tee not only the dance of the second movement, but also its subjectivity, islands of unease such as the appearance of the idée fixe included. It and its successors benefited from a beautifully captured sense of scene as a whole and detail within it. Dominik Wollenweber’s cor anglais solo and Albrecht Meyer’s oboe response announced an involving ‘Scène aux champs’, full of musical and dramatic tension, far from always the case in a movement that can readily drag, yet here sounded very much a cousin to the great slow movements of Beethoven. Ghosts of the operatic past – Gluck, Mozart, and Beethoven too – imparted great eloquence to the orchestral ‘speech’. Not that programmatic elements were diminished, far from it. This is not a zero-sum game; different aspects should heighten one another and here did. 

That was certainly also the case in the fourth and fifth movements. Timpani, nicely prefigured in the third, rightly took a different turn on this stage of Berlioz’s trip. I was put in mind of the ‘organised delirium’ of which we heard so much with respect to Pierre Boulez last year. Relish of woodwind grotesquerie characterised both movements, but the whole gang was here: bells from above, Dies irae brass, and the most rumbunctious of fugal writing from all concerned, Sokhiev pointing up aspects of character where necessary, yet also knowing when to leave the orchestra alone. It made for a magnificent ending to a magnificent evening.

Gerstein - Liszt and Brahms, 7 January 2026

 Wigmore Hall

Liszt: Three Petrarch Sonnets, S 158; Années de pèlerinage, Deuxième année: Italie: ‘Après une lecture du Dante’, S 161/7
Brahms: Scherzo in E-flat minor, op.4; Piano Sonata no.3 in F major, op.5

Kirill Gerstein (piano)  

Kirill Gerstein’s visits to the Wigmore Hall are fast becoming – for many, have fast become – highlights of its season. His captivating Busoni series was certainly that. Ringing in a New Year, more or less, with Brahms and Liszt was no less impressive, technically or poetically. Indeed, as with all the best performances of such music, to distinguish between technique and poetry would have been complete to miss the point. 

The first half was Liszt’s: the three Petrarch Sonnets and the ‘Dante’ Sonata. A splendid opening flourish signalled the pianist’s arrival, response coming in held-back, almost laid-back fashion: quasi-improvisatory, as if we were invited to an exclusive salon concert in which the composer-pianist were to treat us to his paraphrases. Fresh yet considered, it sang beautifully, as did the others. They emerged as kindred spirits, yet with very much their own characters and souls. The second was similarly bold and convincing in its rhetoric, with a ravishing core, its climaxes still more exultant. Synthesising and extending qualities from both, the third could be heard almost as another face of the same mountain. Romantic freedom, eloquence, and rapture, but also rigour held the audience in the performer’s – and composer’s – hand. Perhaps the penultimate note was hit a touch too hard for the closing sigh, but really that only showed the performer to be human. 

At the beginning of 2026, most of us have long abandoned all hope, yet still we entered the Dante-Liszt Inferno. Here, the opening was, if anything, still more declamatory: as befits the subject, one might say. Detail, structure, and expressive content were inextricably related in the immediacy of the moment, the narrative as vivid as in any symphonic poem, only here with the added white heat of pianistic virtuosity. Underlying pulse was rock-solid, permitting great freedom in its variation. The story was not only told but felt—and what a story it is. 

Brahms’s E-flat minor Scherzo, op.4, is not his most characteristic work, though it was interesting to hear something akin to his more mature voice coming through, just as it might have done when the composer introduced it to Liszt in 1853, two years after its composition. Gerstein’s performance took its leave, as does Brahms, from Beethoven in propulsion and Schumann in occasional parenthesis, Brahms as ‘Brahms’ emerging from within in muscular energy that yet preserved space for poetic rumination. Here, undoubtedly, was a Classicist in Romantic clothing—though never formulaically so. 

The Third Piano Sonata, itself dating from 1853, underlined Brahms’s difference from Liszt, also coming as a kindred spirit to the Scherzo. If the mature voice were still only intermittent, Gerstein certainly brought it out when he could, in a performance of the first movement that at times seemed already to look forward to the First Piano Concerto. Its contours were traced with fidelity and illumination, as were those of the following Andante espressivo. Its shadow seemed to fall further into the future, although there was plenty of Schumannesque Innigkeit to savour too. The Scherzo, like its solitary predecessor, was both pianistic and straining towards the orchestral, sprung rhythms key to that combination. The Intermezzo united tendencies from both second and third movements, settling with greater simplicity than the second in a darkly compelling reading. Equally compelling was the finale, its relative complexity never eclipsing clarity of trajectory. Gerstein proved a sure guide in what can often prove highly treacherous terrain. That it ended with just a touch of well-judged, Lisztian grandiloquence was both meet and right. Schumann’s Blumenstück tied together various threads as a substantial encore, beautifully voiced, with Chopin’s A-flat major Waltz, op.42, a delightful, generous response.

 

BBC SSO/Volkov - Gabrieli, Stravinsky, and Brahms, 11 September 2025

Royal Albert Hall

Gabrieli, arr. Maderna: In ecclesiis
Stravinsky: Requiem Canticles
Gabrieli, arr. Maderna: Canzone a tre cori
Brahms: Symphony no.2 in D major, op.73

Jess Dandy (contralto)

Ashley Riches (bass-baritone)

National Youth Choir

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

Ilan Volkov (conductor)

Images: BBC / Andy Paradise

A splendid Prom, whose programming was not only fascinating on paper, but grew in fascination, connection, and meaning as the evening progressed, aided no end by fine performances from soloists, the National Youth Choir, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and Ilan Volkov. Both halves opened with Bruno Maderna orchestral arrangements of works by Giovanni Gabrieli. First was the polychoral motet In ecclesiis, published posthumously in 1615, and arranged by Maderna in 1966. The variety yet consequential nature of Maderna’s choices concerning antiphonal responses shone through in ravishing performance. A Monteverdian sultriness to chamber passages, the grandeur of a fuller orchestra, adept handling and communication of metrical changes, and the sheer wonder of hearing this music – at long last – on modern instruments made for a wonderful curtain-opener resounding in Venetian splendour. Less ‘faithful’ passages with woodwind, harp, and eventually tubular bells brought similar joy to the ears. It built magnificently and subsided with discernment. Those sectional and consequential qualities were also to be heard in Maderna’s 1972 revisiting of the Conzon XVI à 12. Warm, lively, and highly rhythmical, it was again full of colour, not in an over-the-top Respighi-like way, which has its place, but in an unquestionable effort to communicate the essential qualities of the music to a modern audience. The intrinsic qualities of Gabrielian brass, married to warm, incisive strings and unfailingly well-chosen tempi, would have given pleasure to all but the most narrow-minded of authenticists. 

In between came one of the greatest jewels not only of Stravinsky’s late, serial period, but of his career, the Requiem Canticles heard at the composer’s Venetian funeral in 1971: of the same time, then, as Maderna’s arrangements and hailing from a less dissimilar musical world than some might suspect, old and new similarly united and inseparable. Intensity of drama and excellence of playing marked the opening Prelude: a clear indication of ‘serialism, Jim, but not as we know it’. It could only ever be Stravinsky, of course, and so it sounded, with fresh energy and commitment. The ‘Exaudi’ came to our ears as the Symphony of Psalms heard through a prism of Webern. There was something also of a musical object, even of a religious icon, to it: fitting in so many ways. The National Youth Choir’s warmth, diction, and intonation here and elsewhere were striking, as for instance in the distilled, almost homeopathic power of the following ‘Dies irae’. Ashley Riches joined trumpets and bassoons for an implacable yet human ‘Tuba mirum’, bassoon duetting continuing, amongst a quartet of flutes, and others in a duly hieratic ‘Interlude’ that unmistakeably echoed the music of Gabrieli (at least in this context). The ‘Rex tremendae’ said or sang all that need be said or sung, serial process joyously apparent. Was that Mother Goose putting in a guest appearance, courtesy of a rich-toned Jess Dandy, in the ‘Lacrimosa’? The composer’s direct Verdian homage in the ‘Libera me’, partly fragmented through unforgettable chatter of choral souls, brought us to a world of crystalline, celestial perfection in the ‘Postlude’, Messiaen a closer kindred spirit than I had ever previously imagined. 

The final work on the programme was Brahms’s Second Symphony, here given a thoughtful, striking, never less than coherent reconsideration by Volkov. It was fascinating to hear the lines of its opening texture after – in more than one sense – Gabrieli, whose music Brahms programmed amongst much alte Musik in his Wiener Singakademie concerts. The first movement unfolded relatively swiftly, though never unreasonably so; indeed, the composer’s marking ‘Allegro non troppo’ would be a pretty good summary of what we heard. Volkov handled the many tempo changes convincingly, likewise other, related changes of mood. Here, quite rightly, was a world of perpetual motivic transformation, always ‘becoming’ in developing variation: Schoenberg rather than Schenker, one might say. This was not an especially autumnal Brahms, but rather vernal music – horn calls and all – with decidedly darker undercurrents. It surprised, though never for the sake of surprise – telling phrasing here, a sudden diminuendo there – and cohered throughout, the BBC SSO’s multifaceted strings an ever-shifting backbone, if such a thing can be imagined. 

An involved (emotionally, intellectually, and texturally) second movement again brought the quality of Brahms’s counterpoint to the fore, the composer moving closer still to Schoenberg, yet also to Mozart. I am not sure I have heard this music sound more volatile, ever threatening to bubble over, its deep melancholy and Innigkeit part and parcel of a greater humanism. The third movement’s inheritance from Mendelssohn and Schumann was beautifully clear, though the other side of the coin was a tale of twists and turns, of continued suppression of darker truths. Its darkness was quite different, say, from Furtwängler’s, yet I could not help but think the older conductor might have appreciated it and nodded approvingly. And for all its ambiguity and complexity, there was a not entirely dissimilar overall clarity, even simplicity, to it. When the final movement erupted, hard driven at times yet always flexible, it proved thrilling and satisfying in equal measure, conceived both dramatically and symphonically, yet perhaps closer in scale and even temperament to a homage to Haydn rather than to Beethoven. It made, at any rate, for a winning, boisterous way to close a concert full of treasure.

And yet, meaning no disrespect to this excellent concert, the most electrifying and necessary item was yet to come: not an encore, though a return to the podium by Volkov, in which, visibly and audibly anxious, he, as an Israeli, addressed the audience in heartrending fashion concerning the genocide in Gaza. He gave those who did not wish to hear opportunity to leave, even in the face of abuse from malcontents. It would be remiss of me not to report this, though the BBC, it seems, has declined to do so. (The broadcast had by that time finished, it seems, although footage is widely available from elsewhere.) By the same token, I do not think this is quite the place to enter into any discussion of his words, other than to say I marvelled at and was inspired by his courage and stand in solidarity with him. His words (I hope I have transcribed them correctly) should now speak for themselves: 

In my heart there is great pain now, every day for months. I come from Israel and live there. I love it: it’s my home. But what’s happening is atrocious and horrific on a scale that’s unimaginable. I know that many of us feel completely helpless in front of it. Innocent Palestinians being killed in thousands, displaced again and again, without hospitals and schools, not knowing when's the next meal. Israeli hostages are kept in terrible conditions for almost two years and political prisoners are languishing in Israeli jails. Israelis – Jews and Palestinians – won’t be able to stop this alone. I ask you, I beg you all, to do whatever is in your power to stop this madness. Every little action counts while governments hesitate and wait. We cannot let this go on any longer; every moment that passes puts the safety of millions in risk. Thank you.

Thank you, Ilan (if I may). The conductor has since announced that he will no longer work in Israel.

WEDO/Barenboim - Mendelssohn and Brahms, 4 November 2024

Royal Festival Hall

Mendelssohn: Symphony no.4 in A major, op.90
Brahms: Symphony no.4 in E minor, op.98

West-Eastern Divan Orchestra

Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

Images: Pete Woodhead

A performance from Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra has always been an experience hors concours. That has not changed; it is arguably all the more so than ever. The warmth of applause Barenboim received coming on stage was in itself striking, arguably beyond even that Bernard Haitink did during his later years; that with which Barenboim and the orchestra met on departing was something else again. The reasons for this are obvious and do not need rehearsing, but they are very much part of the context in which any listener from this planet, perhaps even from beyond, would experience this concert. 

Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony was not a work I associated with Barenboim, but that was clearly a matter of my ignorance, since he conducted it, as he would Brahms’s Fourth Symphony, without a score. The manner in which it opened banished any such doubt for good: buoyant, transparent, directed, at an ideal tempo, and imbued with chiaroscuro. Ravishing woodwind solos characterised not only this first movement but the performance as a whole. Split violins brought the dialogue further to life—and what a luxury it was to hear this music with an orchestra ranging from sixteen firsts to eight double basses. That depth of strings truly told in the struggle of the development, more Beethovenian than one generally hears, and all the better for it. Indeed, it was not only Beethoven but the Beethoven of Furtwängler who increasingly came to mind: surely a matter not entirely dissociated from the state of the world around us and, above all, around these extraordinary young musicians and their wise guide and mentor. It was likewise perhaps my imagination, but I am not sure I have heard the second movement sound so mournful. It was neither slow nor lugubrious, but told of an underlying pain that could never be put into words (thinking of Mendelssohn’s own aesthetic claim). This processional, steeped in the deepest melancholy, maintained its line from beginning to end, detail and broad sweep in perfect equipoise. Moving to the major mode brought Schubertian bitter-sweetness. The close, alas, brought a less than welcome intervention from mobile telephone. 

Was the minuet too loving? I imagine some might have thought so. For me, as a one-off, it offered a fond backward glance to a world before, ever vanished, yet tantalisingly close, whether to Mozart or whatever one might choose politically. Again, woodwind were to die for. Horns and bassoons in the trio, beautifully hushed, seemed to recall the world of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, building to a stern climax with militaristic trumpets and drums. In that context, the finale offered a wake-up call in several senses. Fast, furious, unrelenting, it had never terrified me as it did here. String figuration again darted from the Dream music, the Scherzo in particular, yet turned to acid, disturbingly close to the world of, say, Mahler’s Fifth. Throughout, the sense of purpose evoked Beethoven and anticipated Brahms.

 

The first concert I heard Barenboim conduct was of Brahms, in this very hall: not the Fourth Symphony, but rather the Third and First. He still has much to tell us and much to surprise us with. If the candle occasionally flickers, as here in the great finale, which almost yet not quite fell apart; it continues ultimately to burn, perhaps all the more movingly for its infallibility. There is little doubt that the Divan musicians would follow him to the end of the earth and there is hope in that. The first movement, deeply sad without sentimentality, felt well-nigh overwhelming. It may have been on the slow side, but it pulsed with life both in its harmonic fundamentals and in the motivic working of inner parts: Schenker and Schoenberg united, as so often in the best of Barenboim’s (and anyone else’s) performances. It became more frightening, more vehement, its insistence frightening, sweeter passages arguably still more so. Its fragility remained deeply moving. The development opened as if showing us a musical (and political) wasteland, from which the world somehow, just about, picked itself up. Horn calls and massed string portamenti sent chills, properly ambiguous, down the spine. Battle between first and second violins towards the close told its own unmistakeable story.

The second movement, intriguingly, seemed to take up whether the inner movements of the Mendelssohn had left off, building rhythmically (those hemiolas!) and harmonically into a tragic statement of Beethovenian stature, whose virginal tenderness troubled still more than external defiance. Truth, here, was the essence. It was not beautiful; nor was it intended to be. Yet in the richness of Brahms’s inner parts, there lay hope, as there did in something later, warmer, aptly (given Barenboim’s history) Elgarian. He may not have seemed to be doing very much, yet detail remained within his hands, as witnessed by a subtle signal to the firsts to tone down, instantly obeyed. The scherzo-like third movement offered ebullient contrast, as if a thunderbolt from Zeus. In dialectical contrast, it became almost balletic, only adding to the sense of what humanly was at stake. The passacaglia was as implacable, as naked in its honesty: the final, complete tragic utterance, laden with all the cares of the world and yet still able to speak, to resist, to bear witness. At times, it almost stood still; at others, it pressed on. All was part of the same flow, all rooted in harmony, musically Sophoclean. 

The Scherzo from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as at the Waldbühne this summer, made for a fitting, featherlight encore: charming, yet with depth rarely achieved and perhaps never surpassed. Encapsulating so much of what had gone before, it also offered something refreshingly new. Again, a sign of hope.

Levit - Bach, Brahms, and Beethoven, 27 September 2024

Royal Festival Hall

Bach: Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in D minor, BWV 903
Brahms: Four Ballades, op.10
Beethoven-Liszt: Symphony no.7 in A major, op.92, S 464/7

Igor Levit (piano)

The Royal Festival Hall can seem too large for a solo piano recital. It needs a pianist to fill it, which, as anyone acquainted with the monstrous Royal Albert Hall will testify, is more a matter of drawing one in to listen than of external projection. Fortunately, Igor Levit showed himself fully able to do so, in a fascinating programme, given without an interval, of Bach, Brahms and Beethoven, the latter arranged by Liszt. 

A highly declamatory opening to Bach’s Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue presented it unabashedly as ‘Steinway music’. Equally noteworthy, though, was the sense of its chromaticism, of all twelve notes of the chromatic scale coming into play. Not for nothing did Schoenberg call Bach the first twelve-note composer. This was not simply a matter of Bach, but of Levit too, inviting us to immerse ourselves in melodies, harmonies, in the workings of Bach’s modulatory tonal plan, both in a properly improvisatory fantasia and in a fugue whose subject emerged tenderly, wandering, to build and ultimately find resolution. Featherlight, almost Mendelssohnian playing combined with grander rhetorical delivery, as composer and pianist patiently and capriciously combined the learned and the mercurial. 

Twilight, experienced in certain Bach passages, characterised much, though not all, of the Four Ballades, op.10, of Brahms, one of its greatest kindred spirits. The first, in D minor, proved gravely beautiful, Ossianic in spirit, with tantalising hints already (1854) of the Schoenbergian future. Its rhetoric became surprisingly (yet faithfully) Lisztian before withdrawing into the shadows. In its D major sibling, it was Chopin’s turn to be revealed, not as an eccentric visiting stranger, but summoned from Brahms’s own material. It was an intimate, at times almost diffident portrait that led to more ardent, Schumannesque Romanticism. The B minor Intermezzo sounded in context as if its predecessor had been turned inside out, in a strange, Gothic transformation, only to turn itself inside out subsequently. All three seemed in some way to prepare the way for the fourth, in B major, a more mature Brahmsian butterfly emerging from its chrysalis. There was a deeper sadness here, which one might compare to Chopin, but which was in reality very much Brahms’s own. If there was a reluctance to fly freely in the sun, that was perhaps as much composer’s as the pianist’s. It was a markedly interior vision, which some may have felt a little too introverted, but I found it compelling. 

Liszt’s Beethoven symphony transcriptions are fascinating tributes, which take a peculiar combination of talents and insights to bring alive. The piano can of course only imitate the orchestra, but in some cases that can be a good thing. After all, one thing an orchestra cannot do is imitate an orchestra; it can only be one, at least before the later twentieth century. Here we heard the Seventh Symphony, which Levit gave (rightly, I think) as a symphony on the piano, not a sonata manqué. The chords announcing the first movement’s introduction necessarily sound different; Levit relished that difference with ear-catching detached playing, recapturing an element of surprise. And yet, thereafter, there was an increasingly Lisztian (and sustained) sound and style to chords and octaves, propelling us toward the exposition, whose provenance became unusually clear. The movement developed and returned as it should, yet heard anew. If anything, the coda sounded all the more of Weber’s ‘madhouse’. 

Even on the piano, the opening chord of the second movement sounded grey as the North Sea. It was given relatively swiftly, the marking Allegretto taken at Beethoven’s (disputed) word, without sounding rushed. Indeed, one felt as well as observed the processional element at work in all its multifarious glory—and dignity. Line was maintained throughout, and we were treated at times to just a little – a Goldilocks amount of – Lisztian grandiloquence. The ghostly quality to the fugato was spot on, making me keen to hear Levit in the third movement (and the rest) of the Fifth. Remarkable in its pianistic success, the scherzo’s performance was founded on great virtuosity that was nonetheless a mere beginning, a necessary given. Its Tiggerish quality and propulsion almost had one regret that Beethoven did not offer yet another reprise. The Trio relaxed, as of old, the Austrian pilgrims’ hymn truly felt as well as heard. 

It took my ears a little while to adjust for the finale: probably the most difficult movement to bring off, whether from orchestra or piano. I have heard some horribly merciless renditions, incomprehensibly praised, which have sacrificed the humanity without which Beethoven is traduced. Levit showed that one can have a thrilling ride, imbued with Lisztian spirit, which will ultimately grow into Beethoven’s too. His choice of encore was perfect, both in itself and for highlighting the contrast between Beethoven arranged for the piano and the composer’s own piano writing. The Adagio cantabile from the ‘Pathétique’ Sonata wedded lyrical impulse to Haydnesque roots in a performance at least as moving as anything heard previously.

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.

 

Batiashvili/BPO/Harding - Schubert, Brahms, and Beethoven, 26 April 2024

Philharmonie

Schubert: Die Zauberharfe, D 644: Overture
Brahms: Violin Concerto in D major, op.77
Beethoven: Symphony no.5 in C minor, op.67

Lisa Batiashvili (violin)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Daniel Harding (conductor)

Image: Stephan Rabold

The Berlin Philharmonic’s European Concert has since 1991 taken place every year in a different European location ‘of cultural and historical significance’, also marking the anniversary of the orchestra’s foundation on 1 May 1882. This year, the orchestra will travel with Lisa Batiashvili and Daniel Harding, to the amphitheatre at Tsinandali in Georgia, repeating the concert the following day at Tbilisi Opera House. This will be the orchestra’s first tour to Georgia, a candidate member for European Union membership, at which hopeful status we British non-xenophobes can only nod wistfully. Two performances were also scheduled before departure in Berlin, Harding replacing Daniel Barenboim, for whom health problems alas precluded him from conducting.

Schubert’s Zauberharfe Overture, once thought to have been part of his incidental music to Rosamunde, began promisingly, with grand, dramatic opening chords and broad lyricism from characterful wind and cultivated strings (with, unless my ears deceived me, a little portamento). It was a different sound from that which Barenboim would have drawn from the orchestra, a little more ‘period’, even Harnoncourtish, but there is no point in attending a concert wishing it were something else, and I doubt Barenboim would have taken this introduction any slower. For the Allegro vivace, Harding imparted a fine, almost Mendelssohnian sense of release. He drove hard, but it made sense on its own, alternatively Romantic terms, with stylish articulation, the close clearly anticipating the ‘Great’ C major Symphony. Where it fell down for me was in the admittedly difficult transitions, which emerged somewhat stop-start; there was little sense of hearing (and communicating) the piece as a whole. 

The Brahms Violin Concerto immediately offered a more ‘traditional’ sound, depth of the Berlin strings all one could ask for, without forsaking prior virtues. Harding once again showed himself a fine ‘accompanist’, supportive yet doing far more than merely following. He could certainly whip up a storm when required, if occasionally edging into the realm of the rhetorical. Batiashvili’s entry confirmed everything one might have hoped for: dead-centred focus, springing from the orchestra, and asserting her as first among equals. Every note of her part was not only present and correct, but meaningfully so. Harding yielded more than in the Schubert, preparing the way for deepest melancholy in the solo performance. Indeed, the dialectics of Batiashvili’s richly conceived and rewarding reading, arguably Harding’s too, were strongly Beethovenian. Busoni’s cadenza offered a wonderful surprise, beginning with timpani rolls that turned it into a quasi-duet, still more so when strings entered. It was typically fascinating, neither bound by tradition nor out of keeping, more concise than Joachim’s; it made the return of Brahms’s full orchestra all the more poignant, bathed in afterglow. For the slow movement, Berlin woodwind – Albrecht Mayer, Emmanuel Pahud, Wenzel Fuchs – fully lived up to expectations, fruity, post-Mozart Harmoniemusik also offering songful Innigkeit, a slightly backward glance seemingly taken forward by Batiashvili and subsequent interplay. Balance between structure and spontaneity was well judged throughout; there was nothing rhapsodic here, yet in the best, most secure sense it sounded free. Following a smattering of baffling, rather unsettling applause – there had been none following the first movement – initiative was regained in an incisive and joyous account of the finale, lilt and heft emerging naturally as required. It sounded newly minted, having one wonder how Hans von Bülow or anyone else could ever have thought this a ‘concerto against violin’. The inevitable Bach encore, the Andante from the A minor Sonata, BWV 1003, proved anything but superfluous, as calming as it was rigorous. 

Harding’s Beethoven had much to commend it, albeit without scaling the heights of Barenboim’s. The Fifth Symphony is an extraordinarily difficult work to bring off; in my concert-going experience, only Barenboim has truly captured its spirit as well as letter, though Harding was certainly not disadvantaged by other comparisons. Indeed, the first movement came close to exemplary, urgent without mannerism, born of evident trust in the score and ability to bring it off the page. Rhetoric grew out of motivic drive and cohesion, rather than being imposed upon them. I never cease, save in the worst of performances, to be amazed by its concision; this was no exception. Split violins helped too, as they had earlier and would later. The second movement made for a flowing, highly contrasted processional, although just occasionally, at least for me, that fondness for rhetoric got the better of it. Otherwise, it unfolded with commendable inevitability and a keen ear for detail. Playing was throughout magnificent, not least splendidly ‘present’ cellos and double basses, which continued into the scherzo and trio. Here, especially in the scherzo, and even more so in the transition to the finale, I missed a sense of something deeper, or what the music might mean, with due regard to those whose aesthetics insist vainly that it does not. The trio’s counterpoint fairly flew off the strings, and the scherzo’s reprise was ghostly enough. A musicianly account of the finale grew out of what had gone before; it was well paced, balanced, and articulated. There was little doubt in my mind that Harding achieved what he wanted to, yet the sublime exultancy of light vanquishing darkness for me never really registered. Now more than ever, this seems to be a message only Barenboim – and his impossible yet ever-more-necessary West-Eastern Divan – can offer.

Batiashvili/BPO/Petrenko - Brahms, Szymanowski, and Strauss, 15 February 2024

Philharmonie

Brahms: Tragic Overture in D minor, op.81
Symanowski: Violin Concerto no.1, op.35
Strauss: Symphonia Domestica, op.53

Lisa Batiashvili (violin)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Kirill Petrenko (conductor)

Image: Lena Laine

For me, the highlight of this concert from the Berlin Philharmonic and Kirill Petrenko was the performance of Szymanowski’s First Violin Concerto, for which they were joined by the equally outstanding violinist Lisa Batiashvili. Almost any few bars – the sound and the direction it took – would have been enough to justify attendance; it was not, though, necessary to choose. Its opening, a fairyland in which orchestral children of Mendelssohn and Debussy took flight to the emergent strains of a silken violin line spun with longing and languor presaged what was to come, such interactions, melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, and timbral the stuff on which dreams were made on—at quite a temperature. Whatever its twists and turns, there was no doubting the musical line and one’s compulsion to follow it. Metamorphoses magical, martial, and more proved gorgeously beyond good and evil in their phantasmagoria, form created before our ears. It seemed both old and new, all the while played as to the manner born, balances both perfectly projected yet constantly shifting. Fantasy became reality, or perhaps vice versa. 

Brahms’s Tragic Overture preceded it. Here I was somewhat more uncertain. It was tremendously played, of course, though perhaps driven a little hard at the beginning. (Such matters are mostly a matter of taste, yet even fate need not be quite so remorseless.) There was certainly contrast to come, not least in a charming, surprising echo of Schubert in onward tread before Brahms’s Beethovenian inheritance reasserted itself. What I never quite grasped was how the tragic pageant hung together. 

In the second half came Strauss’s Symphonia domestica. Of all Strauss’s tone poems, even Aus Italien, it is the one I know least well. Indeed, I am not sure I can claim to know it in an emphatic sense at all; I do not think I had been to a live performance before this. I was therefore hoping for some sort of ‘eureka’ moment, or at least a shift in my response to a work that has somewhat baffled me on previous hearings. Alas, it was not to be on this occasion—and that is not necessarily any reflection on the performance.  There were times, especially earlier on, when I thought it was. It is not often that Strauss is bested for great washes of orchestral sound, yet after Szymanowski he was; precision and clarity in the opening were therefore all the more valuable by way of contrast. The composer’s antiromanticism was here strongly to the fore, as it was when the music, more strongly than I can recall, presaged the operatic Strauss of a decade or more hence: Der Rosenkavalier, Ariadne, even Intermezzo—which, in terms of subject matter, makes sense. Darker passages proved as ambiguous as the music at its more playful; the Mendelssohn quotation might almost have been filtered by Reger, save that it would surely have been the other way around. The sheer strangeness of Strauss’s tonal journey registered, though ultimately I am not sure I followed it, nor the work’s form (as opposed to mere structure) more generally. The ‘finale’ at times sounded intriguingly close to the enigmatic exuberance of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, written at more or less the same time, yet an element of failing, as it were, to conclude here seemed less part of the narrative than, well, an inability to conclude. I am doubtless missing something and have little doubt Mahler would have relished the Berliners’ virtuoso handling of Strauss’s counterpoint. (He conducted the  Viennese premiere in 1904.) Sometimes, though, one must wait until a piece comes knocking on the door—which, judging by the reaction accorded this performance, it already had for most of my fellow concert-goers.