Biss/Philharmonia/Valčuha - Strauss, Mozart, and Humperdinck, 4 December 2014

Royal Festival Hall

 

 

Strauss – Don Juan, op.20

Mozart – Piano Concerto no.9 in E-flat major, KV 271

Humperdinck – Hänsel und Gretel: Suite

Strauss – Der Rosenkavalier: Suite

 

 

Jonathan Biss (piano)

Olena Tokar (soprano)

Kai Rüütel (mezzo-soprano)

Philharmonia Orchestra

Juraj Valčuha (conductor)

 

As Strauss year draws towards a close, the Philharmonia under Juraj Valčuha offered a rather lovely pendant, two of his own works – the Rosenkavalier Suite sort of counts – paired with excerpts from an opera whose premiere he conducted, and an early masterpiece from the composer he, rightly, adored above all others. I still have two major performances to go: both Der Rosenkavalier and Elektra in Dresden (on which I shall report back soon), but this certainly kept me going in the meantime.

 

So extraordinarily accomplished and characteristic is Don Juan that we can forget how early a work it is; indeed, Strauss was only three years older than Mozart was when he composed his Ninth Piano Concerto. There was certainly nothing jejune to this account from Valčuha’s and the Phiharmonia. The opening was precise, not pedantic, its vitality and indeed vitalism aided by the greatest orchestral clarity and cultivation. Immediately afterwards, Valčuha displayed a commendable, meaningful flexibility that marked out this performance as integrative, in a well-nigh Wagnerian, musico-dramatic sense, rather than streamlined and shoehorned. Perhaps there was the occasional transition which might have been smoother still, but that is really to nit-pick, and perhaps to attempt a trade off with the keen sense of drama achieved. There was a beautifully judged early sunset, always a pertinent Straussian test; this was noble, without a hint of sentimentality, just as the Lenau-Strauss hero should be. A deep string sound worked wonders, passages with violas, cellos, and basses together reminding us that there are gains as well as losses to the now-unfashionable arrangement that has them seated together. Horns at that moment, followed by violins in all their Straussian glory, told us what mattered about this hero. His materialist death, in all its necessary instrumental detail, could not eclipse that memory.

 

As Jonathan Biss was about to come on stage for the concerto, Mitsuko Uchida crept into the Stalls: quite an endorsement, by any standards. The visible keenness of her listening and the generosity of her response would almost have been worth the price of admission in themselves. I was perhaps a little less enamoured with Biss’s performance, although there was certainly much to admire. Valčuha proved himself an expert ‘accompanist’, the opening to the first movement at least as alert as that to Don Juan. The Philharmonia offered wonderfully cultivated playing once again, deftly shaped by the conductor. Biss responded with clear, at times even pearly tone, my principal reservation about this movement simply being the tempo: was it perhaps a little too hurried? One might argue that this is a young man’s music, but I am not sure what that proves; in any case, does not all of Mozart’s music fall into that category? There was no quarrel to be had, though, with the shaping of phrases. Form was very clearly defined; particularly noticeable was the sense of kinship with older concerto forms in the orchestral tutti. Although the second movement was again on the swift side, it did not feel hurried. Operatic sadness and import were well judged. Likewise, there was a fine sense of musico-dramatic impetus, bringing us perhaps closer to Strauss than one might have thought, and certainly reminding us of another of his enthusiasms, the operas of Gluck. Above all, harmonic rhythm was understood and communicated. The finale lifted the spirits with a good nature to rival Haydn’s. Although its minuet was certainly graceful, Biss was perhaps a little cool. There was no doubting, however, his technique; repeated notes, for instance, were an object lesson in performance.

 

It would take a sterner, steelier soul than mine to resist the call of those opening horns in the Overture to Hänsel und Gretel, especially when so tenderly played – the German weich seems so apt here – and so warmly responded to. I was drawn in, just as if in the opera house. Valčuha thereafter served up a lovable pot pourri, perhaps not quite so symphonic as when I heard Sir Colin Davis conduct the opera at Covent Garden, but that is a comparison unduly odious. Olena Tokar, whom I had previously admired in Das Liebesverbot in Leipzig, and Kai Rüütel, whom I heard as Echo in this opera at its Royal Opera revival, both impressed in the opening duet and beyond. Voices and characters were sharply differentiated, Valčuha showing himself to be an operatic ‘natural’. (He is, I later learned, due this season to conduct Parsifal in Budapest, Turandot in Naples, and Jenůfa in Bologna.) And yes, your stern Beckmesser melted in the dance song. The Sandman’s Song followed, Tokar benefiting from breathtaking orchestral stillness at its opening; this certainly had that necessary sense of magic. The sincerity of Tokar’s delivery, when she told of angels bringing down sweet dreams from heaven, brought at least one tear to my eye. Following the Prayer, the siblings left the stage for the concluding Dream Pantomime, whose shaping was undoubtedly symphonic, Wagnerian brass and all. If Valčuha lingered just a little long towards the end, it was a fault readily forgiven.

 

For all one might suspect there to be affinity, what struck with the opening of the Rosenkavalier Suite – yes, I am afraid, the wretched 1945 assemblage, to whom no one ever seems to have owned up – was difference. A glistening edge returned to the orchestra. Romanticism was dead; modernist phantasmagoria – and what phantasmagoria! – was enthroned in all its assiduously pictorial glory. There was no doubt what was being depicted in the Prelude’s thrusting and afterglow. Even without voices, the Presentation of the Rose was well handled. Valčuha could not paper over some of the later cracks, but I am not sure that anyone has ever been able to do so. At least we got to enjoy the luck of the Lerchenaus with a decent swagger and lilt.

 

I hope that we shall hear more from this conductor, both in the concert hall and in the opera house. Both ENO and the Royal Opera would be well advised to offer him engagements.

Biss/LSO/Davis - Beethoven (and Maistorovici), 13 March 2011

Barbican Hall

Vlad Maistorovici – Halo (world premiere)*
Beethoven – Piano Concerto no.3 in C minor, op.37
Beethoven – Symphony no.7 in A major, op.92

Jonathan Biss (piano)
London Symphony Orchestra
Clemens Schuldt (conductor*)
Sir Colin Davis (conductor)


Vlad Maistorovici’s Halo was given its previously unannounced – as is the custom – premiere as part of the LSO’s Panufnik Young Composers Scheme. Doubtless there are very good reasons for the practice: acquiring a full audience for a young composer’s opportunity to be performed by one of the world’s greatest orchestras (whatever one controversy-manufacturing newspaper journalist might say) is certainly a worthy aim. However, I cannot help but wonder whether such new works might also benefit from better contextualisation. There were many influences, or at least connections, one might have discerned from earlier music, but it was not clear to me that the two Beethoven works had anything in common with Halo, nor indeed that the concerto and symphony benefited from such juxtaposition as opposed, say, to being prefaced by a Beethoven overture.

That said, Maistorovici, born in Romania in 1985, and by all accounts a fine violinist as well as a composer, certainly did benefit from the advocacy of the LSO and Clemens Schuldt, who seemed to me to conduct the work as if it were already a classic. (I very much hope to hear more from Schuldt before long.) Halo is in many ways relatively straightforwardly pictorial, opening with a light source (a reference, according to the composer, to Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony, Mahler’s First, and Kurtág’s Stele) with musical motion quickly tending towards the halo’s glow. To say that it is pictorial does not mean that it is not tightly organised; far from it, for audible symmetries and reflections abound. Nevertheless, an audience versed in superior film music would at least have some point of entry. It seemed to me that Mahler and Messiaen were obvious points of comparison, whether ‘influences’ or otherwise. Particular things to listen out for – or rather, which one could hardly fail to hear – were a high-lying violin line, prominent tuned percussion, and low bass lines across the various instrumental families. Though Maistorovici did not mention Ligeti, I wondered whether the strings’ swarming was inspired by the Hungarian master. Whatever the ultimate fortunes of the piece – and it is a fool’s game to say too much after a single hearing – this composer is clearly one who already understands the craft of orchestration and who does not fear bold gestures. I suspect that we shall hear more from him.

The performance of Beethoven’s C minor concerto was in many ways impressive, and the LSO’s performance again proved outstanding, yet doubts lingered concerning some aspects of Jonathan Biss’s reading. Sir Colin Davis was, I am delighted to report, firing on all cylinders throughout, reminding us that he is a Beethovenian of distinction. His Staatskapelle Dresden set of the symphonies is certainly one of the best available in digital sound; his Dresden collaboration with Claudio Arrau on the piano concertos remains a justly esteemed classic. Davis is also, of course, a Mozartian hors concours; it was interesting therefore to note that his opening tutti audibly took its leave from Mozart’s C minor concerto – which Beethoven revered – but also made it clear that the composer was Beethoven, not his predecessor. The orchestral contribution, then, proved urgent and grand. Biss’s piano performance was beautifully shaded and articulated, yet ultimately perhaps a little on the controlled side. (There was a curious mismatch here between the somewhat awkward Romantic flailings one often witnessed and the school of Murray Perahia Beethoven one tended to hear.) The first-movement cadenza illustrated Biss’s approach rather well: relatively big-boned, always clear, yet lacking the sense of physical grit, of metaphysical struggle, that a musician such as Daniel Barenboim would always bring to the work, even when seeming a little out of practice. Davis’s structural command proved impeccable throughout. The slow movement was, again, beautifully delivered, structurally clear. If the piano cantilena occasionally tended towards Chopin, that is only because it does in the score. Bassoon and flute solos from the LSO principals were simply delightful. I missed again, however, in the piano part the Barenboim-like sense of taking the music by the scruff of its neck. Still, as Apollonian goes, this was impressive. What a pity, then, that the inhabitants of an intensive care ward appeared to have descended upon the Barbican, doing their best to obliterate the music with excessive – even by usual standards – bronchial intervention. The finale was taken attacca. Here, as elsewhere, the tempo sounded just right. Perhaps the rondo theme might have exhibited greater cheek than it did in Biss’s hands, but it was always well delivered. The LSO once again sounded magnificent in its marriage of tonal heft and pin-point accuracy; there were some especially lovely cello passages to be heard. Davis remained supportive in his wisdom, the transformation effected by C major release judged to perfection.

Then came Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. The first movement introduction prepared the way not only for the rest of the movement but the symphony as a whole, Klemperer-like in its integrity, doggedly un-Furtwänglerian in the best sense, yet with an equally fine sense of chiaroscuro. Once again, the LSO was on superlative form, its woodwind especially ravishing. Everything combined to render palpable a truly Beethovenian sense of the nobility of the human spirit. (Perhaps this is why we find Beethoven so difficult to perform today.) The growling bass line of that first-movement coda was ominous indeed, yet not for its own sake, but as part of a properly organic whole. Weber – at least according to Schindler – could not have been more wrong: Beethoven was ripe for anywhere but the madhouse. My only frustration concerned the lack of the exposition repeat: I am sure that it can work without, but the grand scale suffered a little, the movement over a little too quickly. However, the gruff opening of the second movement, out of which grew a procession of enormous, indeed overwhelming, cumulative power, was truly a thing of awe. It was as if – and here I thought both of Wagner’s Opera and Drama and Berg’s Three Orchestral Pieces, op.6 – music were actually developing, taking form, out of something less choate. Light and shade had their structural place too; there was nothing of the monochrome to Sir Colin’s reading, nor to the LSO’s execution. That subjectivity which lies at the core of the Beethovenian problematic was here to be sure: defiant yet not unyielding.

I neither know nor care how the scherzo matched up to Beethoven’s metronome marking; what I can say is that the tempo sounded just right in performance. It was certainly fast but undeniably human. There was none of Karajan’s coldness, for the music pulsated with life, just as the Eroica scherzo would or should. Moreover, this was a real dance, with a spring in its step such as one rarely discovers. (I hope that the Almighty will spare me from having to endure Toscanini in Beethoven ever again.) The trio was considerably slower, in the ‘traditional’ manner, and rightly so. It harked back to Mozartian Harmoniemusik, the LSO woodwind again quite magical, but retained Beethovenian force through strings, brass, and kettledrums. The scherzo was then experienced properly as release, the trio again as respite, and so on. An acid test for me concerning a good performance of this symphony is whether I become bored through the twofold repetition of the trio: no chance of that on this occasion. Davis’s command of line and drama once again marked his performance of the finale, yet victory remained, as it must, hard-won. There are no easy answers in Beethoven – and they are certainly not to be found in the ticking of the metronome, as satirised by the composer himself in the symphony that would follow. Rhythm, including harmonic rhythm, is crucial to the success of this and many another movement by Beethoven: Sir Colin provided a masterclass in how to navigate the tricky twists and turns of Beethoven’s ebullience. The LSO’s string section really dug into their strings, as if their lives depended upon it; we were never far from Fidelio. This was a performance that was exciting in the truest sense, as opposed to the merely excitable accounts for which too often we must settle. The Pastoral awaits, next Sunday.

Richard Goode and Jonathan Biss, piano recital, 31 May 2008

Queen Elizabeth Hall

Schubert – Allegro in A minor for piano duet, D.947, ‘Lebensstürme’
Schumann-Debussy – Six Etudes en forme de canon, Op.56, for two pianos
Beethoven – Grosse Fuge in B flat, Op. 134, arr. by the composer for piano duet (but performed on two pianos)
Stravinsky – Agon, arr. by the composer for two pianos
Debussy – En blanc et noir, for two pianos

Richard Goode (piano)
Jonathan Biss (piano)

What a delightful choice for Richard Goode to conclude his Southbank Centre residency! It is sometimes said that piano duets are more players’ than audiences’ music, but try telling that to anyone who cares for Schubert. (Is there anyone who does not?) In any case, music written for four hands on two pianos presents a different genre, although again hardly a fashionable one. However, the choice of his fellow pianist was more important still than the variety of concert. Quoted in the programme, Goode disarmingly confessed that the reason for the latter was simply that he wanted to play with Jonathan Biss: quite an accolade for the young American pianist, although amply warranted. The two pianists formed a considerable partnership, in which it was often difficult if not impossible to disentangle their respective contributions.

Schubert’s Allegro in A minor received an impassioned reading, especially for the opening theme and its reprises; its nickname, ‘Lebensstürme’, seemed highly appropriate. The form was clearly delineated: important in itself and for appreciation of the work’s emotional course. Themes passed flawlessly between the four hands. The typically Schubertian cross-rhythms (threes against fours) were rightly not adjusted so as to lose their edge. When it came to the coda, the minor-key desolation was almost Mozartian. This was a performance of great depth, considerably more involving than the previous week’s Fifth Symphony from Sir Colin Davis and the LSO.

Debussy’s arrangement of Schumann’s canons for pedal-piano was fascinating, inhabiting a shifting ground somewhere between Bach and Debussy: as it happens, not a bad way to characterise Schumann’s music. I was also put in mind of Mozart’s piano works in the ‘Baroque style’ and Schumann’s editions of Bach’s sonatas and partitas for solo violin (with piano ‘additional accompaniments’). Debussy’s division of the canonical lines between the two pianos was made decisively to tell, so that the counterpoint emerged with great, yet never un-Romantic clarity. Chopinesque nostalgia was to be heard to great effect in the second, marked Avec beaucoup d’expression; the two-piano texture heightened the import of its concluding chromaticism. The fourth, Expressivo–Un peu plus mouvementé, was perhaps the most Romantic in character and writing; it received a duly yet never excessively passionate reading. Bach seemed distant here and Schumann himself most readily present; inspiration from the former composer in this canon was the most assimilated and transformed. (It is perhaps no coincidence that Schumann’s canonical writing is less strict here than in some of the other pieces.) The rhythmic bounce given to the fifth canon, Pas trop vite, was infectious. There was a true sense of expansive culmination in the Adagio final canon, which – rather to my surprise – put me briefly in mind of Elgar. This was not merely the sixth piece, but the final movement in a six-movement work. The only drawback was the return with a vengeance of Goode’s curiously tuneless ‘singing’: one can cope, but it is undeniably distracting.

Beethoven’s own transcription of the Grosse Fuge ought to be more often performed. If the final ounce of the original’s strain – near-impossibility? – is absent, then this is really only a matter of degree. I am not sure why it was performed on two pianos; perhaps it was simply in order to avoid a second change-over, although this could readily have been accommodated, given that the performers left the stage after the Schumann canons. It is a very minor point, but I wonder whether some of that strain would have returned with a performance on one instrument. In any case, the playing was of such impressive unanimity that one might often have been forgiven for hearing but the one piano. Having heard the Op.111 sonata from Krystian Zimerman earlier in the week, I was reminded once again of how much more radical Beethoven’s writing is in this fugue even than that of the late piano sonatas. The opening Allegro was brusquely vehement, appearing to presage almost the whole gamut of twentieth-century composition. Then, the second section brought to mind the piano writing of the late Bagatelles and, in its characteristic sublimity, the Ninth Symphony and the Missa Solemnis. Its G-flat major tonality – one of the most enjoyable keys in which to play on the piano, in sharp contrast to nasty F-sharp major – was the perfect setting for Beethoven’s rapt lyricism. Goode’s grunting was more distracting here than it would be in the Allegro molto e con brio, where the sense of such strenuous effort was not entirely out of place. Indeed, this third section boasted an awe-inspiring dialectic between quixotic play and extreme intellectual strenuousness. On the technical side, co-ordination of the trills was impressive, but there was never any question of beauty for its own sake, as had sometimes been the case in the Zimerman Beethoven performance referred to above. Occasionally, I thought that Beethoven’s silences might profitably have been slightly extended, but this was my only cavil, and a minor one at that. The coda was rightly made both to perform its integrative function and also not quite to succeed in doing so, the music proving uncontainable within its form; the Romantics did not err completely in understanding Beethoven as having burst the constraints of Classical – or in this case, quasi-Baroque – form. Both pianists looked appropriately exhausted at the conclusion to this fine performance.

‘Stravinsky’s Agon I’m somewhat obsessed with,’ Goode confided in the programme interview: ‘it’s invigorating and wonderful. It’s one of the most New York things Stravinsky ever write: you can hear the traffic!’ We certainly could during this performance, above all during the Pas-de-Quatre and its reprise in the Coda. The metrical tightness with which Stravinsky’s rhythmic cells were projected was all one might have asked for; the several ostinati were especially well served in this regard. An entirely apt impression of total control evoked that quality, common to the composer’s entire œuvre, in the score. It was, moreover, commendably apparent throughout that these were dance numbers. I missed the orchestral colours – not least the mandolin – and our pianists could not entirely disguise the fact that Stravinsky had arranged the work for rehearsal purposes rather than as a creative re-imagining, yet the losses were not so great as one might have expected. The one occasion when orchestral colour remained was during the Bransle Gay: however, whilst it was fun to see Biss play the castanets rather than the piano this number, his slightly diffident performance suggests that he should keep the day job. A more implacable performance of its 3/8 metre would have allowed the irregular quintuple and septuple semiquaver piano variants to register more bitingly, although Goode projected the grace-note rhythm here with great style. The spirit of Webern truly enters the score during its second half (roughly) and it is sad to note that some quarters of the audience became a little restless. This could not, however, negate the extraordinary and so-very-typical achievement of Stravinsky in creating a Rameau-meets-Webern score that yet sounds only like Stravinsky.

As in Goode’s February solo recital, the Debussy here was painted with primary colours, with little hint of impressionist haze. The technical challenges of En blanc et noir are perhaps more audibly apparent than during the other works, but they were all despatched with aplomb, and musical aplomb at that. Biss may have exhibited a slightly brighter tone than Goode, but this may simply have reflected the distribution of parts; the way in which four hands played as one was far more remarkable than any occasional slightest differences of character. The slow second piece, prefaced in the score by François Villon’s Ballade contre les ennemis de la France, successfully evoked both the spirit of old France and the horrors of the battlefield: Ein’ feste Burg had an implacable onward tread. I do not care for Debussy’s nationalism here, but it would do no one any good to ignore it. The third movement was a true scherzando, all the more remarkable given the participation of two pianists and two instruments. There was ample virtuosity on display, not least in the treacherous repeated notes, yet it was always at the service of the music.

After this triumphant performance, Goode and Biss reverted to one piano, four hands, for an encore: Schumann’s Abendlied. It proved the perfect conclusion to a splendid recital: achingly beautiful and so unambiguously characteristic of the composer (far more so than the earlier canons). The harmonies tugged the heartstrings in a way unique to Schumann, and left this listener wishing for more.