Philharmonie
Mozart-Busoni – Don
Giovanni: Overture
Mozart – Concert aria: ‘Ch’io mi scordi di te? –
Non temer, amato bene’, KV 505
Rihm – Piano Concerto no.2
Mendelssohn – Symphony no.4 in A major, ‘Italian’,
op.90
Hanna-Elisabeth Müller (soprano)
Tzimon Barto (piano)
Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
Christoph Eschenbach (conductor)
What a joy it was to hear the
Overture to Don Giovanni with Busoni’s
1908 concert ending. Once one has done so, it is difficult to know why anyone
would prefer any of the more ‘traditional’ solutions. What a joy, moreover, it
was to hear Christoph Eschenbach conduct the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester
Berlin in a performance that was ‘traditional’ in the best, rather than a lazy,
way: no modish – or rather, puritanically orthodox – alla breve introduction, and a full orchestral sound, albeit from
really rather a small band. The important thing, of course, was that the spirit
was there, both in D minor and in D major – and it was. Busoni then plunged us
back into the Stone Guest scene, the music subsiding with dark ambivalence:
then the scena ultima, whose
banishment was ever a stain upon so many ‘Romantic’ interpretations. The first
time I ever conducted an orchestra was in this overture; how I wish I had known
Busoni’s version then!
Hanna-Elisabeth Müller and Tzimon
Barto joined the orchestra then for the wonderful concert aria, ‘Ch’io mi scordi
di te? – Non temer, amato bene’. In the recitative, Müller, Eschenbach, and the
orchestra worked closely to convey a myriad of subtleties in Mozart’s writing,
every note and every word mattering, yet without pedantry. I first thought of
Christine Schäfer (with the Berlin Philharmonic and Claudio Abbado), only for Müller
then – ‘Venga la morte…’ – to prove far more hochdramatisch. No phrase, verbal or musical, was taken for granted.
Barto’s entry, heralding the aria proper, promised much in tone and touch. Alas,
his contribution turned out oddly: at times, sensitive, a true partner, at
other times curiously heavy-handed. Everything else, however, came close to
perfection, the entwining of opera and concerto – not that they are not
entwined already! – as apparent in Mozart’s passages of hushed anticipation as
in his bravura coloratura.
Barto seemed on much surer
ground in the Second Piano Concerto of another Wolfgang: Rihm, which he and
Eschenbach premiered in Salzburg with the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra in
2014. Its single movement proves, as is often the case, suggestive also of a
multi-movement conception, although never quite predictably. The opening
material, piano and orchestral chords initially responding to each other, then
fusing, has a harmonic language redolent of, yet never to be reduced to,
Schoenberg and Berg. Process, however, is certainly quite different, the line
seemingly concentrated in the middle register of both solo instrument and
orchestra – Rihm views a concerto as ‘only’ meaning that ‘there is a soloist
and a collective’ – with bass clarinet in particular offering commentary, and
other lines surrounding. Barto and the DSO Berlin provided welcome clarity,
without evident sacrifice to ‘atmosphere’. Climaxes and indeed the piece as a
whole all seemed very well shaped, Eschenbach clearly having the piece’s
measure. A couple of sweet-toned violin solos suggest an alternative path:
neither taken, nor eschewed. Later, more Bartókian material evolves from what
we had heard, suggestive perhaps of another, related movement, and apparently
more malleable in its nature. Rihm is nothing if not eclectic, and yet never
seems arbitrary here (apart, perhaps, from a strange guest appearance from
temple blocks, but that may well have been my problem). A cadenza passage, underpinned
by double basses, pays homage to ‘tradition’, but then so does much of the rest
of the piece, without being hidebound: rather like Busoni, one might say. The
quiet ending both ‘spoke’ and ‘sang’.
An exhilarating yet never
merely breathless performance of Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony was to be heard in the second half. The DSO’s
sound (or Klang) sounded just right
for this music – as, indeed, it had earlier too, lightness and richness two
sides of the same coin, woodwind a sheer delight. There was a great deal of
pleasure to be taken in the sound itself, albeit never in a Straussian,
materialist sense (and rightly so). Eschenbach ensured that the music breathed
without sagging. The first movement’s formal dynamism was, so it seemed,
effortlessly manifest, art concealing art. Its development proved, much to its
advantage, more overtly Beethovenian than often one hears, the recapitulation no
mere ‘repeat’, almost a second development, so much having changed in the
meantime. Antiphonal violins certainly paid off in the elucidation and drama of Mendelssohn’s counterpoint.
The second movement was on the brisk side, yet retained a strong sense of the
processional, Mendelssohn’s mastery of orchestration wondrously revealed
therein, not least through a variety of articulation. In some ways, the minuet
and trio emerged as more of a ‘slow movement’, although that is only a matter
of degree. A necessary – or at least desirable – hint of slight nostalgia for a
Mozartian world that has passed was beautifully conveyed, not least in the
daringly relaxed trio. And what horn playing there was to savour! There was no
doubting the orchestral virtuosity we heard in the finale, but it was quite
without self-regard, at the service of the musical argument. It seemed over in
a trice, leaving us wanting more.
