Tamestit/MCO - Bach, Hindemith, Schnittke, and Shostakovich, 2 March 2026

Kammermusiksaal

Bach: Chorale, ‘Von deinen Thron tret’ ich hiermit’, BWV 327
Hindemith: Trauermusik for viola and string orchestra
Bach: The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080: Contrapunctus I and III
Schnittke: Monologue for viola and string orchestra
Bach: The Art of Fugue: Contrapunctus II and IV
Shostakovich, arr. Rudolf Barshai: Chamber Symphony, op.111a
Bach: Chorale Prelude, ‘Von deinen Thron tret’ ich hiermit’, BWV 668

Antoine Tamestit (viola)

Mahler Chamber Orchestra

(My photograph)

The Berlin Philharmonic’s International Chamber Orchestra series, its home in the Philharmonie’s younger sibling, the next-door Kammermusiksaal, always offers a rich and rewarding selection of programmes. This Mahler Chamber Orchestra concert, given with artistic partner, violist Antoine Tamestit, was very much a case in point, music by Bach interspersed with works of lament and mourning by Hindemith, Schnittke, and Shostakovich. Bach of course offers life, death, and the beyond. Here we began and closed with him approaching God’s throne, beseeching the Almighty for hope, forgiveness, and the promise of everlasting life, including a transcription of his deathbed chorale prelude, with the first four Contrapuncti from the Art of Fugue offering a taste, even a banquet, of the music of the spheres. ‘Bach, c’est Bach, comme Dieu c’est Dieu,’ in the words of Berlioz. 

The opening chorale, BWV 327, bears no words in the surviving text and sets a melody associated with the hymn ‘Herr Gott, dich loben alle wir,’ the alternative words given to it by the editors of the Bach-Gesellschaft Ausgabe. If you were expecting a rousing ‘Old Hundredth’ opening, nothing could have been further from the reality. Instead, front desks only from the string orchestra offered a slow, veiled, vibratoless, Passion-like introduction, soft humming suggesting a congregation, perhaps even of the netherworld. In a sense, it brought together old and new Bach, the speed more Klemperer-like than anything one might hear today, the total lack of vibrato looking back (or so we imagine) to early consorts as well as forward to the present, the difference being that this proved to have been an artistic rather than a dogmatic choice. 

The chorale is quoted in Hindemith’s Trauermusik for George V. The British monarch may not seem the most promising object of a musical tribute, but there have been far worse—before, in Bach’s age, Hindemith’s, and our own. Trauermusik was written on 21 January 1936, following news of the king’s death the night before (as we now know, killed by his physician in order to make the following day’s newspapers). The concert in which Hindemith had been due to play his own viola concerto was cancelled, but this new work, conjured up at Mozartian speed in a BBC office for the occasion, was given in a broadcast instead, with the same performers: Hindemith, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and Adrian Boult. I have not especially warmed to the piece before – indeed, last time I heard it, I found it rather dull – so was delighted to find myself far more involved this time around, no doubt on account of the excellent performance from Tamestit and the MCO. The effect of the ‘new’ orchestral sound was of coming into ‘modern’ focus that yet intangibly built upon Bach. The four brief movements were dignified, at times passionate, yet never lachrymose, always guided by melody, harmonic rhythm, and their combination. This was recognisably the world of Mathis der Maler, with Bach’s chorale (which Hindemith was unaware had not set the words printed in the BGA) sounding as a reminiscence of the world in which it had been set as well, obviously, as of Bach. Played initially with low – not no – vibrato and gradually intensifying, it imparted a sense not only of coming ‘up to date’ but also of a life gathering force until its close, at which the music duly receded. 

Contrapunctus I followed, each of the Art of Fugue pieces given by four solo strings, Tamestit one of them. Each begins in a different voice, this therefore initiated by the ‘second’ violin (actually, front desk first violinist, but not leader) Alexandra Preucil, to which Matthew Truscott soon responded as ‘first’. It was interesting, even before the entry of viola and cello, to note how different the two violinists’ playing was: not in any sense predictably so, but in response and complement. In a sense, it offered a microcosm of a concert in which nothing was taken for granted. This was warm, intelligent, unaffected playing, in which the illusion of the music ‘speaking for itself’ could readily be believed in, though it offered subtle insight aplenty as soon as one listened, just as in, say, music from the ‘Golden Age’ of vocal polyphony. The following fugue sounded as if a long-range ‘answer’, which in a way it is. Procedural relationships were clad in both flesh and the emotions that attend it. It was deeply involving and affecting. 

Like Contrapunctus III, Schnittke’s 1989 Monologue begins with a viola line, albeit against a backdrop of orchestral second violins and violas. Written for Yuri Bashmet, it is as well that it has been taken up by other violists, since we are unlikely to hear Bashmet in the ‘West’ for the foreseeable future. Tamestit, in any case, had nothing to fear from comparisons, leading a performance it was not difficult to think ‘definitive’ (however vain the idea), every note being made to count without a hint of pedantry. The piece’s darkness was apparent; so too was the happenstance of kinship with Hindemith, at least in initial retrospection, though its ghostliness extended, as one might expect, far further. Indeed, it offered a kind of bridge between Hindemith and Shostakovich. If sometimes I had doubts about the quality of the material ‘itself’, performance rendered such doubts, as it were, more or less immaterial. 

Bach returned for Contrapunctus II and IV. No such doubts here, of course, the extraordinary, unanswerable invention and integrity of harmony and counterpoint reminding us once again of Berlioz’s dictum. What struck me on coming to the fourth was how the player first intoning the subject had apparently taken the lead for the way in which the fugue would be played as a whole: not, of course, that this had not been playing of mutual responsiveness, but that it had rightly made its mark (just as voicing would necessarily do so on the piano). Chromaticism naturally offered its own seasoning. 

Rudolf Barshai’s Chamber Symphony arrangement of Shostakovich’s Eighth String Quartet has long been admired, not least by Shostakovich himself. It sounded here in no way as if it were ‘merely’ an arrangement, but rather as if it were what had always been intended. Moreover, it would be difficult to imagine a better or more committed performance than that we heard from the MCO, Tamestit in its ranks on the first viola desk. The opening ‘Largo’ seemed, perhaps inevitably, to speak to our current predicament, little more than two days after the shocking attack on Iran. It was sad, bleak even, but human. Detail and the longer line were unerringly drawn, contributing to one another. The second movement as hysterical outburst knocked Schnittke into distant second place, its astonishing string playing further vindication of Barshai’s work. Capturing letter and spirit to perfection, the third movement performance moved from initial innocence to something lunging and sardonic; for once, comparison with Mahler did not seem beside the point. The weird after-life of this ‘Allegretto’ seemed more like hell on earth. For the two remaining ‘Largo’ movements, the first lament was icy yet warm, briefly brought into a winter sun that was swiftly banished; the second, kindred in spirit, also performed its function of quasi-cyclical return. Even for someone such as I who is not in general Shostakovich’s greatest fan, this was haunting music and haunting music-making. 

And so, to Bach’s final work, the last of the ‘Leipzig chorales’, moving effortlessly in true Bachian fashion from organ to strings, binding together the programme in various ways, not least since it was also the chorale with which Bach closed but not completed The Art of Fugue (albeit under the name ‘Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein’), allegedly on his deathbed. Hindemith was, of course, unaware that Bach had always used a different melody for the chorale that he included in his work. This true ‘Von deinen Thron’ therefore effected a kind of historical as well as aesthetic reconciliation, albeit of a properly complex variety. I have simplified the above, perhaps to the extent of distortion, for which please accept apologies if necessary. There was no distortion and certainly no need for apology, though, in the profoundly moving music-making that concluded this outstanding concert. The whole string orchestra, Tamestit included, gave an intimate, unveiled performance of ultimate integrity, reminding us that Bach offers as close to ein’ feste Burg as we shall come in this life: not in stoicism, which may or may not be all we have, but in faith.

Musikfest Berlin (3) - Lynch/BRSO/Rattle: Hindemith, Zemlinsky, and Mahler, 3 September 2024

Philharmonie

Hindemith: Rag Time (wohltemperiert)
Zemlinsky: Symphonische Gesänge, op.20
Mahler: Symphony no.6 in A minor

Lester Lynch (baritone)

Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra

Simon Rattle (conductor)

Image copyright: Berliner Festspiele / Astrid Ackermann

In a concert of two unequal halves, the first, shorter part proved the better bet. Incisive accounts of Hindemith’s Rag Time and Zemlinsky’s Symphonische Gesänge sat unfortunately with a performance of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony that suggested Simon Rattle’s lengthy post-Birmingham spell, amply demonstrated in Berlin and London, of pulling music, Mahler’s included, around to no discernible end has some way to go in Munich too. One aspect of interest was of course simply to hear Rattle with his new orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony. There was some excellent playing to be heard. To my ears, though – it was not only the hall, since I have heard Rattle and the LSO sparkle at the Philharmonie – the Mahler sound proved strikingly similar to that from the Berlin Philharmonic during its last, somewhat truculent days with the conductor. This new partnership, enthusiastically acclaimed by many in the audience – as seems to be the case for any old Mahler performance, good, bad, or indifferent – seemed as yet a work-in-progress. 

Hindemith’s Bach-inspired Ragtime made its point without overstaying its welcome. As with much music of the 1920s, the ghost (even when alive) of Busoni hovered over harmony and orchestration. Hard-edged and not a little outrageous, it made for an apt prelude to Zemlinsky’s 1929 settings of texts from the collection Afrika singt. Lester Lynch made for an eloquent, sincere, often moving soloist, sympathetically accompanied by Rattle, in a work that, musically, seemed to take up where the composer’s Lyric Symphony left off, albeit sparer and darker. The first song’s opening woodwind lines, excellently performed by BRSO principals, were a case in point. The deep sadness of one of several Langston Hughes settings (in translation) set the tone for much to come in music whose invention proved thoroughly equal to the task, Zemlinsky’s brass writing (and the BRSO’s playing) in ‘Erkenntnis’ striking indeed. When dark, it was a multicoloured darkness, as in ‘Totes braunes Mädel’; when contrast came, as in the scherzo-like ‘Übler Bursche’ and the defiant menace of ‘Afrikanischer Tanz’, it registered as meet and right. The final ‘Arabeske’ offered Twenties’ Neue Sachlichkeit with a heart, solidarity with a fine intellect, crystallised in performances that exulted without naïveté. 

It was a brisk funeral march that opened the Mahler: nothing wrong with that, although in this symphony, few have matched and surely none will surpass the incendiary results of Pierre Boulez’s more measured opening, both on record and in concert. With Boulez, as with few others, the whole of Mahler’s tragedy is implicit, even inevitable in the first bars. With Rattle, there was certainly much, though the general ‘tone’ seemed odd: a ‘midsummer night’s Mahler’ perhaps. Rattle’s way with the chorale that connects the first and second subjects was truly a thing of wonder, turning mysteriously inward. The aftermath of the second, ‘Alma’ theme, lost all momentum, slowing to the point of exhaustion, although picking up for much of the development. Moreover, the hard-edged, Weill-like sonorities that had characterised performances before the interval, seemed increasingly out of place here. There was something else missing, though. Once I realised what it was, its fatal precedent the work as a whole could not be escaped: an unwillingness to let harmony in general and harmonic rhythm in particular ground, inform, and incite the music’s progress. What we heard was a series of unconnected passages, some more nightmarish than others, in a somewhat loud and overbearing stream of consciousness. This is a symphony and Mahler’s most Classically conceived symphony at that; lose that and you lose much of its point. 

There was an irony, then, to Rattle’s insistence on placing the ‘Andante’ second: a common pseudo-literalism nowadays, one that rarely if ever convinces. It benefited from excellent solo playing, horn and violin in particular. Quite a head of steam was whipped up at the close, arguably excessively so. What it all might mean, regardless of whether that can or should be put into words, eluded me. Despite its placing third, the scherzo fared better, at least to begin with. Its opening had a stronger sense of rhythm, harmonic rhythm included, and the orchestral playing displayed a broader range of colour. Alas, Rattle’s inclination to pull material around soon got the better of him; the deliberate became merely mannered. 

The finale had its moments, but it needs more than moments. It needs to be heard as a single, unbroken span, or will ultimately be little more than a waste of time. A nightmarish opening augured well, but Rattle failed to establish a fundamental pulse. Listlessness may have been the idea, but general ‘mood’ was no substitute for what was lacking. That might work, or fail to work less badly, for two or three minutes, but for thirty? The movement’s form and structure were simply not there; nor were those of the symphony as a whole. People visibly thrilled to the two hammer-blows and, to be fair, the first for a while seemed literally to have knocked the music into shape, but why was it there? In any case, the old listlessness soon reasserted itself and the second went for less. A pity.

West-Eastern Divan Ensemble/Barenboim M. - Hindemith, Carter, Hensel, and Beethoven, 9 November 2023

Pierre Boulez Saal

Hindemith: Trauermusik for viola and strings
Fanny Hensel: String Quartet in E-flat major
Carter: Au Quai for bassoon and viola; Duettone for violin and cello
Beethoven: Septet in E-flat major, op.20

Michael Barenboim (violin, viola)

Miriam Manaserhov (viola)

Assif Binness (cello)

David Santos Luque (double bass)

Daniel Gurfinkel (clarinet)

Mor Biron (bassoon)

Ben Goldscheider (horn)

Images: Peter Adamik

9 November is a date full, too full, of resonance for German history. From the proclamation of the Republic in 1918 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, it takes in also the Munich putsch of 1923 and the November pogroms of 1938. At the best of times, whenever they might be, it is impossible not to feel conflicted and at times close to overwhelmed by the imperatives of remembrance; and these, I hardly need add, are anything but the best of times. On the 85^th anniversary of what English-speaking countries still refer to as Kristallnacht, although in Germany the term is now generally held to conceal the full horror of what happened that night, even the West-Eastern Divan Ensemble playing Beethoven might have struggled to impart much in the way of hope. Yet somehow, ultimately, these musicians did: not in the sense that they offered a solution to our world’s cruelty, carnage, and apparently irredeemable darkness, whether then or now, of course not. As Daniel Barenboim, co-founder with Edward Said of the orchestra from which this chamber ensemble draws its members, noted in a typically inspiring piece written for the programme, they ‘never intended … [it] to be a political project. It was always a humanistic one, a call against ignorance. It may have seemed like a utopian idea then and perhaps appears even more so today.’

But that they were still here at all, let alone playing, listening and responding was something—and increasingly so. ‘Here, in this building, this utopia,’ Barenboim continued, ‘is alive every day. Our young musicians, whether they come from Tel Aviv, Ramallah, Damascus, or Cairo, work and study under the same roof and learn to listen to each other, in music just as in daily life—something that is impossible in their home countries. It takes courage for them to be here.’ It does indeed, and their courage as well as their broader example offers an example to the audience too, although it is for us, not for them, to lead our struggle to listen rather than merely to hear.

 

A late addition to the programme was Hindemith’s Trauermusik: in Barenboim’s words, ‘our collective expression of grief, but also of hope’. And so it sounded; so it felt. Indeed, the sadness in the first of its four short movements seemed almost unbearable. Was it ‘there’, in the work, or was it what we brought to it? Impossible to answer, and not the most relevant of questions. Michael Barenboim, leading from solo viola, and a string quartet representing Hindemith’s orchestra inhabited the composer’s universe fully, dignity of craft, ensemble, counterpoint, and harmony, and what they might mean to the fore—and beyond that, the universal musical imperative to listen. Hindemith’s use of music from Mathis der Maler reinforced all the more the importance of witness against fascism, against murderous, antihuman ideology. Crisis tends to reinforce what is essential, if only we will take time to find out. Inner movements’ lyricism in particular grew out of that early material, a necessary, human development. The final chorale, ‘Für deinen Thron tret ich hiermit’, offered not triumph, but modest climax in human fragility. It was met with prolonged silence and, eventually, respectful applause. 

Fanny Hensel’s 1834 E-flat major Quartet was an interesting choice, its first movement, ‘Adagio ma non troppo’, opening again with nobility and dignity. Was the sadness with which it seemed to be imbued…? We have already answered that question, or rather observed that answer there can be none. At any rate, the proportion of time spent in the minor mode seemed fitting. Expansive, without dragging, the quartet, again led by Michael Barenboim, seemed very much to have its measure, subtleties telling without exaggeration. The following Allegretto comes closer to Mendelssohn, though it is perhaps both a little more conventional yet also quirkier. Beethoven too came to mind at times (as he often does in Mendelssohn’s own quartets too). There was scope for considerable virtuosity, well taken, within a collegial framework. An eloquent account of the ‘Romanze’, Barenboim first melodist among equals, again permitted reference to other composers, Mendelssohn and Mozart among them, without ever being reducible to them and their ‘influence’. The finale came as close as anything had yet done to good cheer. Sometimes smiling, sometimes sterner, even vehement, it offered plenty of light and shade in a finely directed performance.

 

Either side of the interval came two short works by Elliott Carter. Barenboim’s viola and Mor Biron’s bassoon were very much equals in Au Quai from 2002, Carter a still relatively young 93 at the time of writing. A game of post-Webern ping-pong led to almost Stravinskian melodic flowering, not that the music ever sounded ‘like’ either. Instead, it emerged as something akin to a reinvention, as it were, of a Bach Two-Part Invention, and was despatched as well as composed with a good deal of dry wit. For Duettone, Barenboim was joined by the similarly excellent cellist Assif Binness. It is perhaps too easy to romanticise, but this little gem from Carter’s 101^st year truly sounded like the distillation of a lifetime’s work, not least with respect to his metrical discoveries and explorations. Within its modest frame – though think again of Webern – it seemed to come close to possessing the weight, contrasts, and journey of a symphony. Every combination of notes, and indeed of other parameters, was both fresh and deeply considered. Here, in two solo lines, was something suggesting comparison with one of Bach’s mirror fugues. 

It is difficult to characterise Beethoven’s Septet without resorting to ‘sunny’, and why try? After all, sun affects us in different ways at different times, and necessarily casts a shadow too. The ‘Adagio’ introduction to the first movement was strikingly expansive, rather as if it were taken ‘after’ Barenboim père, and frankly all the better for it. Neither faster nor slower than it ought to be, the movement as whole offered space for a lightness of touch and responsiveness lying at the heart of ethical and musical challenges alike. Line was present throughout in a performance replete with contrasts and sheer delights. The second movement, taken a little slower than is often the case, again benefited from greater space: heavenly length maybe, heavenly without question. Initially led by Daniel Gurfinkel’s quicksilver, liquid clarinet, it afforded all members of the ensemble opportunities to shine, to support, and as ever to listen and respond. Lilt properly verging on swing, conveyed via excellent textural balance born of such listening and response, characterised the minuet and trio. The ensuing theme and variations, in their transformational variety of instrumental combination similarly proposed a lightly worn moral as well as ‘purely’ musical lesson. Buoyant and in the best sense infectious, the scherzo, led by Ben Goldscheider’s miraculous horn playing, was both directed and collegial. Likewise a finale of stature and character which, like the performance as a whole, never forgot the sheer enjoyment to be had from such music, enjoyment that spilled into an encore performance of the Scherzo from Schubert’s Octet.

 

To return to Daniel Barenboim’s words in the programme, ‘We must, want, and will continue to believe that music can bring us closer together as fellow human beings.’ For all who continue to believe, there is no alternative.

Shaham/LPO/Jurowski - Ustvolskaya, Hindemith, and Prokofiev, 19 April 2023

Royal Festival Hall

Ustvolskaya: Symphonic Poem no.1
Hindemith: Violin Concerto
Prokofiev: Symphony no.6 in E-flat minor

Gil Shaham (violin)

London Philharmonic Orchestra

Vladimir Jurowski (conductor)

 

The LPO welcomed back Vladimir Jurowski, former Principal Conductor, now Conductor Emeritus, for a typically enterprising programme of mid-twentieth-century works subtitled ‘War and Peace’, executed superbly and, in a broader sense, performed just as well. First was Galina Ustvolskaya’s 1958 Symphonic Poem no.1, a strange work: in many ways compelling, if at its close perhaps falling a little way short of coherence (at least to my ears). It was a splendid opportunity to hear the piece, though, and difficult to imagine a contemporary performance bettering this. Its dark, bleak opening, low cellos and basses, high woodwind, doubtless reminds many of Shostakovich, though for me it sounded more genuine, less overtly manipulative. The way it built, both as work and performance, likewise had much in common with Ustvolskaya’s teacher, though unlike him, its harmonies became the more surprising the more closely one listened—or tuned in. There were similar enigmas, slightly zany marching and cartoonish rejoicing offering obvious examples, but its lack of screaming was welcome. The greatest enigma of all lay for me in the ‘late-Romantic’ echoes of its closing section. Presumably they had their own rationale, but for now at least they eluded me. It was never less, though, than intriguing. 

Gil Shaham joined the orchestra for Hindemith’s 1939 Violin Concerto: like much of Hindemith’s music – everything other than the Weber Metamorphosis? – heard far less often than it might be. I am not sure, indeed, that I have ever heard it in concert. There is, as might be expected, an easier, less problematic mastery here, reflected in the urgent, directed unease with which the first movement opened, craftsmanship and only that winningly celebrated. It lies within the orbit of Mathis der Maler, no doubt, and is certainly none the worse for that. Shaham’s violin line, here and throughout, offered a fine thread, strong and flexible, to follow the work’s narrative; we were left in no doubt from Shaham and Jurowski as to the consequentiality of melodies and harmonies alike. Cooler, semi-Stravinskian woodwind – though arguably Hindemith got there first in the Twenties – formed the bedrock for a more intense solo lyricism in the slow movement. The orchestral climax offered a veritable post-Mathis whirlwind, its economy worthy of Strauss and even Mahler. Invention and incident were relished in the finale, defiant without a hint of grimacing. Shaham relaxed where required, bending time and line without disruption, his cadenza highlighting yet also typical of his rich, focused playing. The encore was not really for me; I shall leave it at that. The concerto certainly was. 

The second half was given over to an outstanding performance of Prokofiev’s Sixth Symphony from the LPO and Jurowski. Precision and, as ever, firm direction were key to realisation of the ambiguities of the opening to the first movement. Prokofiev’s strange doublings, such as cor anglais and bassoon, really told: no massaging here. And if it seemed as if this would be a somewhat foursquare reading – if that makes any sense at all for a movement in compound duple time! – Jurowski’s trademark formalism proved compelling on its own terms. A strong emphasis on the responsorial qualities to Prokofiev’s writing and, again, to the surprising hints of Stravinsky teased out in the woodwind writing, lent an air of neoclassicism not at all at odds with darker impulses. A development climax of great power and unnervingly spectral recapitulation suggested the ‘peace’ of 1946 was at best provisional. 

Jurowski screwed up the tension just right at the opening of the slow movement, the long release equally well judged. Fullness of tone and general excellence of playing helped make this a match for any performance, live or recorded, I have heard, Mravinsky included (albeit very different). It was lugubrious yet still full of spark, debris from The Love for Three Oranges sublimated in the arduous experience of wartime years and uneasy peace. It was highly dramatic too: more reminiscent of wordless opera than ballet, occasional shards of Cinderella moonlight, harp and all, notwithstanding. 

Taken faster than I can otherwise recall, the finale and its speed, allied to unremitting tightness of control imparted new, if quasi-automated life to Prokofiev’s motor rhythms of old, yet also ultimately extended beyond them. Jurowski penetrated to the distinctive heart of Prokofiev’s writing here, engaged in a dance to death, or some other fate, of Soviet marionettes come briefly alive. It was as Mahlerian in spirit as Prokofiev gets. Sharp on detail – how the double basses dug into their strings in counterpoint with splendidly idiomatic brass – it led us to a veil of almost-final darkness, chilling rather than protective, which, when lifted, revealed something terrible indeed.

’20 Sonatas’ – Stefanovich: Bach, Soler, Scarlatti, CPE Bach, Ives, Bartók, Eisler, Hindemith, Scriabin, Roslavets, Janáček, and Ustvolskaya, 27 February 2022

Queen Elizabeth Hall

Bach: Sonata in A minor, BWV 965, after Reincken
Soler: Sonata in C minor, R.100
Busoni: Sonatina seconda
Scarlatti: Sonata in C minor, Kk.158; Sonata in G major, Kk.13
CPE Bach: Sonata in G minor, Wq.65/17
Ives: Three-Page Sonata

Scarlatti: Sonata in C major, Kk.406
Bartók: Sonata, Sz.80
Scarlatti: Sonata in G minor, Kk.450
Eisler: Sonata no.1, op.1
Soler: Sonata in D-flat major, R.110
Hindemith: Sonata no.3 in B-flat major

Soler: Sonata in G minor
Scriabin: Sonata no.9 in F major, op.68, ‘Black Mass’
Scarlatti: Sonata in G minor, Kk.8
Roslavets: Sonata no.2
Scarlatti: Sonata in B minor, Kk.87
Janáček: Sonata in E-flat minor, 1.X.1905, ‘From the Street’
Ustvolskaya: Sonata no.6

Tamara Stefanovich (piano)

Twenty piano sonatas over three fifty-minute-long recitals; avoiding the ‘core’ Classical and Romantic (broadly speaking) repertoire, from Haydn to Liszt; asking why composers might time and time again have returned to this genre, if indeed it can be considered the same genre at all. What would you choose? Why? There are no answers, of course, or rather no definitive answers, only an almost infinite host of opportunities. Such is the embarrassment of riches, usually a blessing but just occasionally a curse, of the piano/keyboard repertoire more generally. Tamara Stefanovich’s selection proved typically imaginative, committed, and both spiritually and intellectually nourishing, as well as an outstanding feat of musicianship and pianism.

The first selection began with Bach. (Does not everything?) Here we heard him in the sonata ‘after’ Johann Adam Reincken’s Hortus Musicus trio sonatas: some distance, perhaps, from what we generally think a sonata to be, but perhaps that was part of the point. No one would deny the glories of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, et al., but they can sometimes obscure other paths, especially earlier ones. Stefanovich left us in no doubt that this was a performance for the piano. (If you want to give a harpsichord performance, surely you should do that on the harpsichord.) Voicing gave the sense of a small orchestra at her disposal, a flute answering an oboe, a cello a viola. ‘Ornamentation’ was shown to be melody. There was declamatory joy, a strong sense of harmonic motion, and throughout a vivid, directed performance, culminating in a splendidly ‘present’ Gigue. Antonio Soler offered a very different voice, with both greater pathos and lightness. Stefanovich’s performance drew one in to listen. Busoni’s Sonatina seconda grew out of its close. Restless, diabolical, or better Faustian, it took us to the edge of atonality in a performance of virtuosity entirely at the service of the music, recalling what we know of Busoni's own pianism. Long-range coherence and incident of the moment were two sides of the same coin. 

Domenico Scarlatti made the first of several appearances, with a finely contrasted pair of sonatas (as we often hear his music). The first notes of the C minor Sonata, Kk.158, sounded truly disorienting, emerging as they did from Busoni. Where were we? In a liminal zone, so it seemed, in which eighteenth-century tonality reassembled itself. Both performances seemed thought out from first principles, from individual materials. What joy there was to be had in hearing the second’s repeated notes (more difficult on the piano than they sound). A sonata by CPE Bach, in G minor, followed. Its opening benefited from the grandest, most magnificent opening to a work of his I can recall, rhetoric harnessed as if to the rise of a velvet curtain. The first movement’s fantasia-like swings of mood and material were disciplined, just about, into a whole, yet never too much. This justly lived on the edge. The central Adagio sarabande, still duly involved, nonetheless offered some sense of relief, its arioso quality finely captured. The sheer strangeness (Sturm und Drang, one might call it, I suppose) of the third movement was again relished, never tamed. From one avant-gardist to another, we moved to Charles Ives’s Three-Page Sonata. Strikingly Schoenbergian language—close, not identical, and only for a moment or two—unleashed a parade of restless, radical, and wry freedom, whose chimes were almost the least surprising feature. The vehemence of disciplined chaos to its close made it almost impossible, had I not seen it for myself, to credit that there were only two hands at work here. 

The second recital was announced by Scarlatti: full of incident and pictorial character and contrast. ‘Percussive’ is a word we often hear used to describe Bartók’s piano-writing. One can understand why, but in reality it begs still more questions. (No bad thing.) For here, in his strangely neglected Piano Sonata, there were such profusion of melody, such variegation in the entirely unfussy weighting of each chord, propelled by rhythm and harmony alike, it seemed more than usually inadequate. A relentless first movement paved the way for a second of equal (at least) emotional intensity. The finale was every inch a finale in its substantive release. Rightly, for the first and only time within a recital, the pianist paused for applause. Returning to Scarlatti, it was fascinating to hear his repetitions and other, lighter obstinacies through the shadow cast by Bartók. 

Hanns Eisler’s opus one brought us fascinatingly close in its first movement to the language of the serial Schoenberg, yet held its distance too: more skittish, Scarlatti an excellent preface. Structure on paper became living form in liquid performance. Prokofiev seemed close at times too, perhaps particularly in the second of the three movements, its line unerringly traced and projected. The care and abandon with which not un-Schoenbergian idiosyncrasies were integrated in the finale typified the performance as a whole. Following an unexpectedly fragrant ornamental flowering from Soler, its harmonies taking a while to get used to after Eisler, we moved to Hindemith’s Third Piano Sonata. In its first movement, siciliano rhythms immediately standing out, they sounded as if formed by their surrounding harmonies. A scampering scherzo and two deliberate yet purposeful movements to follow led us to a sense of hard-won victory. 

Soler opened the third and final instalment: courtly yet capricious, ornamentation speaking of a freedom of which we stand in greater need than ever. Scriabin’s ‘Black Mass’ Sonata suggested dissolution as another, more dangerous form of emancipation, even through the burning fire of Bakunin-like anarchism (very different from Ives’s). There was wayward alchemy, though, and direction to be appreciated looking backwards from where we had come, even if we were uncertain at the time where we were heading. Command of detail was crucial to that greater sweep, just as it was in the dignified pathos of the Scarlatti sonata that followed. The post-Romantic constructivism of Ukrainian Nikolai Roslavets took a different path from Eisler (or Schoenberg) yet could nonetheless be felt as something of an antidote to Scriabin. There were moments of languor, yes, but motivic construction and transformation won out. Once more, the strangeness in context of Scarlatti’s harmonies was to be relished as a pendant.

Janáček’s Sonata, 1.X.1905 could hardly fail to have particular resonance given the state of the world around us. It went beyond that, though, in a moving performance of proud dignity and deeply communicative humanism, fusing the subtle and the direct. Its second movement was more songful, yet no less impassioned, through rather than despite its fragile nerve endings. For the final work of the day, Stefanovich donned black gloves to tackle the immediate yet reflective violence of Galina Ustvolskaya’s 1988 Sonata no.6. More unremitting than Bartók, blacker than anything we had yet heard or wished to hear, it duly bludgeoned, yet spoke of and with an integrity that refused to offer easy answers. Was there, perhaps, a glimmer of hope in there somewhere? It was probably something more equivocal than that. And then it was gone.

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’?

Boulez Ensemble/Guggeis - Bach, Hindemith, Haddad, and Stravinsky, 31 January 2020

Pierre Boulez Saal

Bach: Brandenburg Concerto no.1 in F major, BWV 1046

Hindemith: Kammermusik no.1 for twelve solo instruments, op.24 no.1

Saed Haddad: Sombre, for thirteen musicians (world premiere)

Stravinsky: Concerto in E-flat major for chamber orchestra, ‘Dumbarton Oaks’

Boulez Ensemble

Thomas Guggeis

My final concert as a European citizen; hereafter, to quote the text of Zemlinsky’s Lyric Symphony, I shall be ‘ein fremder im fremden Land’. All the more so, of course, when I return, to put it mildly, reluctantly to ein ganz fremdes Land, most likely never to escape it. The twin blows of defeat on 12 December and departure on 31 January have at least cured us of hope, perhaps the cruellest of tortures: coinciding, in typically savage irony, with Beethoven’s anniversary year. To have heard the Ninth Symphony next door, at the Staatsoper, on New Year’s Eve was an experience emotional enough; that, Fidelio, or anything else Beethovenian would probably have been too much. Instead, at the Pierre Boulez Saal, we heard music by the ever-rooted yet aesthetically cosmopolitan Bach and by three other composers who (have) found themselves in fremden Ländern. Hindemith and Stravinsky both spent periods of their lives in exile, while Jordanian-born composer Saed Haddad lives and works in Germany.

This was the first concert I had heard conducted by Thomas Guggeis. He impressed just as greatly as in his work in the opera house. Having the excellent Boulez Ensemble, drawn from members of the Staatskapelle Berlin and West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, did no harm whatsoever, of course, but Guggeis’s preparation, understanding, and communication of that understanding proved equally important for another fine collaboration.

The First Brandenburg Concerto was a case in point, blessedly free of ‘period’ affectation, yet Bach as ensemble music – this is, after all, the Boulez Ensemble – rather than small- or, for that matter, large-scale orchestral music. The first movement offered somewhat odd balances at times, but I think that was in part owed to where I was seated, a little close to the horns. (Perhaps, at last, I had found a minor disadvantage to this performing space ‘in the round’.) At any rate, a bright, energetic, performance benefited from a sensible tempo that sought not to draw attention to itself but rather to permit Bach’s music to come to life – and succeeded. Dignified and well articulated, with a fine sense of chiaroscuro, the Adagio also benefited from Guggeis’s unobtrusive command of the longer line. Dialogue between Jiyoon Lee’s excellent violin piccolo solo and three similarly excellent oboes (Gregor Witt, Charlotte Schleiss, and Katharina Wichate) proved a fine centrepiece around which the immanent qualities of Bach’s score could happily shine through. There was similar yet different joy in counterpoint, harmony, and their combination in the third movement, likewise in the interplay between solo and ripieno writing, any balance problems now resolved. A courtly and characterful procession of dances brought the work to a close, reminding us that Bach’s idea of progression in a multi-movement work is often very different from ours. Sometimes that can cause problems for modern listeners or performers; here the question never arose. Musically directed virtuosity from oboes and horns (Samuel Seidenberg and Sebastian Posch) in ‘their’ Trio proved but one of many delights.

To hear one of Hindemith’s 1920s Kammermusik pieces immediately afterwards was instructive, perhaps above all because it suggested contrast rather than underlying affinity (at least to my ears). The first movement was frenetic and sardonic, knife-edge precision as expressive as it was impressive: quite the introduction. The second movement calmed down somewhat, if only comparatively. That calming permitted one to savour the estimable musical qualities, which are in truth at least as much harmonic as rhythmic and as anti-Bachian as they are Bachian. The opening clarinet-flute duet (Assaf Leibowitz and Silvia Careddu) sounded as if a slowed-down Twenties sequel to The Rite of Spring, the appearance of bassoon (Mor Biron) only rendering it more so. Here was an oasis of neoclassical calm; and yet it moved. It was tonal, yes, yet closer to something non-tonal in function than perhaps one might expect, at least at times. Such ambiguities were fruitfully explored under Guggeis’s wise direction. The unease of that movement seemed to be inherited by a finale of high tension, maintained and if anything increased until finally something had to give. Its dislocations disconcerted, indeed puzzled. Then all was over, siren and all.

Saed Haddad’s Sombre, commissioned by the Daniel Barenboim Stiftung, here received its world premiere. It seemed to me to speak throughout of an incisive grief, a grief that certainly spoke to me. Nimrod Ron’s opening tuba solo, dark yet not without implied hope, endured slings and arrows surrounding it, evolved into an ensemble danse macabre, subsiding, tuba handing over to bassoon, whose role as solo bass instrument would later be assumed by double bass, and so on. In between, harp, bass drum, and other percussion enlarged the reach of a dark ensemble that yet resisted something external, even deathly. At times, I was put in mind of the finale to Mahler’s Sixth Symphony, though that may say more about me than the work. A viola lament, joined in duet by arabesquing oboe; bells of hope, sweetest yet cruellest of tortures; patterns of material that seemed ready to repeat yet never quite did; a related sense of having to pick oneself up, only to fail: perhaps it was not fanciful to hear this music as tragic. It was certainly an accomplished work afforded accomplished performances; I should be keen to hear more.

Stravinsky’s Dumbarton Oaks Concerto rounded off the concert in fine fashion. The busy automation of its first movement seemed still more distant from Bach than Hindemith’s response. That discrepancy is surely where the music’s interest lies – and so it proved in performance too. A little more overt aggression might occasionally have been welcome; however, I can see and hear the case for a more Apolline approach, as in the composer’s earlier Octet. Here, the Rake rather than the Rite beckoned, the controlling mastery of Stravinsky as watchmaker, divine or otherwise, apparent and polemically so at that. Likewise in the central Allegretto, whose spareness usefully highlighted the passing of ideas in mid-statement between different instruments. If one wanted to hear where Stravinsky’s later interest in Webern had come from, here was a strongly suggestive possibility. Aggression was, doubtless justly, more overt in a finale which at times seemed to approach the wartime anger of the Symphony in Three Movements, as well as its sonorous delights. There were no easy answers to be gleaned through the mechanical swing. Art is no mere refuge, however fremd our current Länder.

The Long Christmas Dinner and A Dinner Engagement, Guildhall, 4 June 2018

Silk Street Theatre

Lucia – Alexandra Lowe

Mother Bayard, Ermengarde – Carmen Artaza

Roderick, Sam – Michael Vickers

Brandon – Bertie Watson

Charles – Frederick Jones

Geneviève – Emily Kyte

Leonora – Madison Nonoa

Nurse – Meriel Cunningham

Lucia II – Lucy Anderson

Roderick II – Eduard Mas Bacardit

Earl of Dunmow – Samuel Carl

Errand Boy – Filipe Manu

Mrs Kneebone – Emily Kyte

Countess of Dunmow – Lucy Andreson

Susan – Zoe Drummond

Prince Philippe – Eduard Mas Bacardit

Grand Duchess – Lucy McAuley

Ashley Dean (director)

Cordelia Chisholm (set designs)

Kevin Treacy (lighting)

Laura Jane Stanfield (costumes)

Victoria Newlyn (movement)

Orchestra of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London

Dominic Wheeler (conductor)

Stuck record time again: much of the best London opera comes from our conservatoires. That is not to belittle what I have heard at Covent Garden since returning to London; much has been of a very high standard. ENO: let us hope the benighted rule of Cressida Pollock has now been put behind it. Opera Holland Park continues to go from strength to strength, most recently with perhaps the finest all round Così fan tutte I have seen and heard for well over a decade. These things are not competitive, whatever capital might tell you. Moreover, our conservatoires tend to offer rather different, complementary fare. A particular strength of the Guildhall has been its repertoire choices – and so it continued to be here. If, in this double bill of two operas I had neither seen nor indeed heard, one proved far superior to the other, I was immensely grateful to be afforded the opportunity to acquaint myself with both, especially in such fine performances as these.

Hindemith and Thornton Wilder might not seem the most obvious of collaborators. The Long Christmas Dinner, however, works very well. Wilder, it seems, worked hard to convert his 1931 play into a libretto. (I say ‘it seems’, since I am relying on secondary literature; I shall certainly try to read the play before long.) The concision is striking, but so is its suitability for Hindemith in particular. That may, of course, also be a matter of Hindemith’s adaptability too. At any rate, what came across strongly, in work, performances, and indeed staging was the somewhat tedious repetition of Christmas in a bourgeois New England family, the Bayards, over ninety years – without in any sense proving tedious itself. The cyclical aspect may be seen in a revolving set, centred on the dinner table, to which characters in slight decline – far less dramatically so, and surely this is deliberate, than in Buddenbrooks – come and from which they go. Behaviour varies and repeats; one feels a certain sympathy, and yet a certain ennui, or rather feels their ennui. Hindemith’s forms mirror and/or incite this: softened Kammermusik, in a sense, the post-Bachian motor rhythms still present, albeit without noticeable aggression, drawing one in to action and atmosphere alike, in a harmonic language that is, doubtless unsurprisingly, closer to Die Harmonie der Welt. Time passes: their time and the world’s. Until, that is, Ermengarde, the final member of the family resident, learns that another branch – by now, with children Roderick III and Lucia III – are building another house, another story. Whilst reading the letter informing her, she dies. It is a very difficult task to bring off, to portray such people in such a situation whilst retaining one’s interest, but the company – and this seemed to me a true company achievement – did just that. For that reason, I shall single no one out in particular, other than to say Dominic Wheeler’s conducted framework proved just what the team required.

Hindemith’s opera was first performed in Mannheim, in 1961; its first performance in English came two years later, at the Juilliard, in 1963. Lennox Berkeley’s A Dinner Engagement had its premiere a few years earlier, in 1954, at Aldeburgh’s Jubilee Hall. It seems, frankly, to be very much an opera written for the insular, xenophobic world to which those trying to force us out of the EU would have us return. Not out of intent, I am sure, whether from Berkeley or his librettist Paul Dehn. But its fluent, pleasant, vaguely Gallic boutique musical style palls after a while, not least on account of the absence of any dramatic grit. A diplomat and his wife plan to marry off their daughter to the son of the Grand Duchess of Monteblanco. (Don’t ‘foreign’ places have funny names?) That son, Prince Philippe, thinks the daughter is a maid; they get on, and they decide to marry, the lack of a handsome dowry notwithstanding. His mother does not even object. If ‘heartwarming romantic comedies’ are your thing, even you might look for a little more in the way of a plot twist. The only ‘joke’ is that the ‘foreigners’ are – well, foreign, so speak or rather sing with ‘silly’ accents. Some food burns too. Performances were again very fine, Eduard Mas Bacardit and Zoe Drummond skilfully teasing out what level of lyrical excitement the score permitted as the two lovers. Once again, moreover, there was an excellent sense of company. But there are limits to what might be achieved, even with a resourceful kitchen set design, when the material is sub-Carry On – without the jokes.

BPO/Gatti - Hindemith and Brahms, 29 September 2017

Philharmonie

Hindemith: Symphony: ‘Mathis der Maler’

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

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Daniele Gatti (conductor)

Two works strongly associated with the greatest Berlin Philharmonic conductor of all: Wilhelm Furtwängler. The Mathis der Maler Symphony owes its very existence to Furtwängler’s request for a work from Hindemith, its material originating in the opera on which the composer was working at the time. The premiere, on 12 March 1934, was, of course, an event of great historical as well as artistic importance; neither the conductor’s nor the composer’s relations with the Third Reich authorities would ever be the same again (ironically, given its tonal and, as many remarked, frankly ‘German’ qualities). The work, then, has a long association with the orchestra; fine recordings exist from both Herbert von Karajan and Claudio Abbado. Today it was Daniele Gatti’s turn to lead an estimable performance (conducted from memory, for those interested in such matters).

The Symphony’s opening sounded very much like Busoni: not just the score, but its performance too: yet another occasion when I found myself wishing ‘if only these musicians would also play…’. Much inter-war music does at times, although that, alas, never seems to result in more performances of Busoni. But process, Hindemithian process, was immediately apparent, shaping the material and its dynamism, rendering any ‘similarities’, whether to Busoni or anyone else, of interest, yet hardly deterministic. I must admit to finding the glockenspiel’s appearance in this first movement, its designation as an ‘Engelkonzert’ notwithstanding, a bit odd, but that is doubtless my failing. Can honest, superior ‘craft’ be ‘art’? Yes, of course, and that seemed both to be proved in performance, but also to be dramatised therein – as in the opera too. It is not all counterpoint, of course, but it inevitably registered strongly, the Bach of Neue Sachlichkeit especially apparent. So too did what fun that can be. And no, there is no sarcasm in that claim. Res severa verum gaudium.

The second movement, and indeed the third, shared many of the virtues of the first, not least the luxurious – never remotely narcissistic – tone of the Berlin Philharmonic, especially at climaxes, and Gatti’s guiding, unobtrusive musicianship. The general moods of the movements were naturally very different. Woodwind solos took, I think, more of a leading role in the ‘Grablegung’, which made sense. And the brass sounded, in context, unmistakeably of a Lutheran tradition. The richness and vehemence of the finale’s opening strings ‘spoke’ wonderfully, as if the language of an opera related to, yet distinct from, Mathis der Maler itself. It sounded like a finale too: often easier said than done.

The Hindemith was premiered with C.P.E. Bach’s A minor Cello Concerto (soloist Paul Grümmer) and Brahms’s Third Symphony. Here we heard Brahms’s Second. No one in his or her right mind would fail to consider Furtwängler one of the very greatest Brahms conductors. It is difficult to imagine why (s)he would not consider him the greatest of all. There is no good reason to draw straightforward comparisons here; Gatti’s Brahms has little in common with Furtwängler’s – and why should it? What I can say is that I found it an outstanding performance, of greater interest than any I know from this orchestra – I can hardly speak of those I do not know! – since Eugen Jochum. I say ‘greater interest’ because it genuinely had something new, at least to me, to say, without that novelty appearing to be for its own sake, or indeed for the sake of anything other than ‘the music itself’, whatever that might be.

‘Motivic clarity’, if that is not too odd a term, struck me at the opening of the first movement. Themes sounded almost as if they were Wagnerian motifs: with great potential for malleability, (just, perhaps not entirely incidentally, as Wagner speaks of his own Ring motifs), yet distinct and with character, introducing us to the drama ahead. One might, I suppose, say the same about Beethoven, common inspiration lying therein; yet for some reason, perhaps unusually, it was Wagner who came to mind. There was an undeniable elegiac quality (good!), yet it was one amongst many and never uncontested, the ‘character’ of the movement, and indeed of the symphony as a whole, ever transforming, according to the requirements of the symphonic drama. Earlier, undeniable influences, not least Mendelssohn and Schumann, might be heard, without that meaning the music could be reduced to them. A symphony does not proceed according to a recipe; nor, thank goodness, does a performance, at least not a good one. And how gorgeous – again, non-narcissistically – the opening of the second subject sounded from this orchestra (which has been playing it regularly since 1887, most recently with Simon Rattle last November). It had heft, too, when required, but there was nothing ‘heavy’ to the performance, having been thoroughly thought through, without pedantry. There was often a Klemperer-like sturdiness – quite different from Furtwängler, in some respects even antithetical to him – to this movement; yet, like Klemperer himself, Gatti nevertheless had the music flow. The development, for instance, was a battle royal, possessed of a tragic note clearly, perhaps even surprisingly, foretelling the Fourth Symphony. And the weight of utterance – which, I should stress again, does not speak of ‘heaviness’ – truly made this a worthy successor to the more overt titanism of the First.

The opening cello theme of the second movement was clearly loved – and why not, especially with the Berlin Philharmonic? It emerged with a nobility I am tempted to call Elgarian. Woodwind counterpoint seemed to peer forward into the more obvious modernism of Schoenberg and Berg. (It is doubtless no coincidence what a fine conductor of their music Gatti is.) The passion was as great as anything in their music too. The Classical dialectic between major and minor was given new – and old – meaning: how very Brahmsian! Clouds lifted, it seemed, for the third movement, its character different, yet clearly following on from what we had already heard. It danced, Brahms’s metrical games clearly relished. Haydn would surely have smiled.

As for the finale and the alleged ‘finale problem’ after Beethoven: ‘problem, what problem?’ Not that triumph was not hard won, of course not, for this was anything but merely genial. Rather, Brahms’s material, method, and yes, character were put to good work here in a thrilling, defiant, and ultimately jubilant reading – which seemed to me just as successful as, say, the brilliant live LSO recording with Karl Böhm. Gatti was more daring, however, in his extremes, here perhaps owing more to, or at least having more in common with, Furtwängler than with Klemperer (or Böhm). He could be, because the fundamentals – in every sense – were sound. Brahms was not being pulled around; rather, dialectical method inherent and implicit in the score was released to do what it could, even should. I am not sure that Adorno would necessarily have ‘liked’ this; indeed, he might have had reservations similar to those he voiced concerning Furtwängler’s Brahms. I suspect, though, that, just as he appreciated Furtwängler’s Brahms, he would have done so Gatti’s. Perhaps that semi-notorious Brahms-sceptic, Pierre Boulez, might have done too. (Yes, he conducted some, but not very much, and soon gave up.) The greatest revelation came, quite fittingly, at the end: well prepared, and thus with all the necessary illusion of something coming naturally. The horizontal and vertical seemed to become one: more Schoenbergian – and behind Schoenberg, there will often come a little Brahms and Wagner – than any performance I can recall hearing. It made sense, both in itself, and of what had come before. This, I think, was a great Brahms performance, no qualification required.