Salzburg Festival (2) – Argerich/Barenboim/Members of the WEDO - Prokofiev and Schumann, 15 August 2019

Haus für Mozart

Prokofiev: Overture on Hebrew Themes, op.34

Schumann: Piano Quintet in E-flat major, op.44

Schumann: Violin Sonata no.1 in A minor, op.105

Schumann: Andante and Variations for two pianos, two cellos, and horn in B-flat major, WoO 10

Martha Argerich, Daniel Barenboim (pianos)

Michael Barenboim, Mohammed Hiber (violins)

Miriam Manasherov (viola)

Astrig Siranossian, Adi Tal (cellos)

Jussef Eisa (clarinet)

Ben Goldscheider (horn)

Schumann chamber music, with a Prokofiev overture: in this case a chamber overture, that ‘on Hebrew themes’, op.34. Martha Argerich and members of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra treated us to a faithful, captivating performance, through the piece’s various twists and turns. Clarinettist, Jussef Eisa offered a sinuous Klezmer solo, set nicely against rhythmically insistent playing from the rest of the small band, all of whose solo passages made their mark keenly when required. It is a work I have long held dear, having played the piano part a few times for a sixth-form ensemble. Had I heard Argerich then, I may well have given up in despair – which may or may not have been a good thing.

Schumann’s Piano Quintet likewise brought out the best in its players, the first movement opening forthright, yet soon melting as it should in Argerich’s hands. It would be more or less impossible for her presence not to be first among equals here, but this was true chamber music playing from all concerned, with no sense of being overwhelmed. A cello and viola duet could be just as wonderfully ‘accompanied’ by her – and was. A proper sense of structure becoming dynamic form was felt, the exposition ‘repeat’ no mere repeat, the development duly exploratory. There was sadness, too, in the recapitulation, Schubert’s example perhaps especially apparent both there and in a searching, enigmatic account of the second movement. There were visions of other worlds, yes, but it was not necessarily vouchsafed to us what they were. Argerich on piano proved the securest of foundations for a propulsive scherzo, exultant, whilst nonetheless bearing memorial traces of what had preceded it. Instrumental poetry, ever the key to Schumann, characterised in different ways the two trios. The finale’s character can be difficult to judge, or at least to convey: not so here, its corners navigated with skill and conviction, motivic working and poetic mood as one. Brahms may at times have been but a stone’s throw away, but this remained unmistakeably Schumann. Affinity is not, after all, identity.

Having served ably as first violin in both of these works, Michael Barenboim took the stage with Argerich after the interval for the first of Schumann’s violin sonatas. They proved well matched, not unlike the first movement’s Romantic turbulence and Innigkeit. Barenboim’s tone was beautifully centred, with well-judged vibrato and occasional portamento; Argerich was, well, Martha Argerich, the nagging motivic insistence of her part never too much, though how it mattered. The central Allegretto benefited from rapt yet never precious lyricism and an elfin fantasy that again foretold the world of Brahms. Quicksilver changes of mood in the finale, never quite to be likened to one another, were effected by both musicians with ineffable musicality. Instrumental balance was, quite simply, never an issue. (If only I might say the same for student performances I should rather forget…)

The 1843 Andante and Variations for two pianos, two cellos, and horn in B-flat major, WoO 10, is an engaging rarity. In performances that seemed already to look forward to a welcome brace of encores, Argerich and Barenboim senior imparted different yet kindred ‘voices’ to their instruments, without one necessarily being able to say how, let alone why. Much the same might be said of cellists, Astrig Siranossian and Adi Tal. Together with horn player, Ben Goldscheider, the unusual ensemble offered mercurial yet responsive performances; the players drew us in, led us on paths both familiar and surprising. A quotation from Frauenliebe und –leben – aptly, perhaps, for the two female cellists – drew me up sharp. What are we to make of it? Whatever we wish, I suppose. It must surely have made Clara Schumann smile when the work was first played, likewise her piano partner, Felix Mendelssohn.

Prom 10: Eisa/WEDO/Barenboim (2) - Beethoven and Boulez, 21 July 2012

Royal Albert Hall

Beethoven – Symphony no.4 in B-flat major, op.60

Boulez – Dialogue de l’ombre double
Beethoven – Symphony no.3 in E-flat major, ‘Eroica’, op.55

Jussef Eisa (clarinet)

Gilbert Nouno (IRCAM computer music designer)

Jérémie Henrot (IRCAM sound engineer)

West-Eastern Divan Orchestra

Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

Images: BBC/Chris Christodoulou
Daniel Barenboim conducts the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in Beethoven's
Fourth Symphony at the BBC Proms

This second instalment of the Beethoven symphonies from Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra reversed the chronological order, so that the Fourth was to be heard in the first half, along with Boulez’s Dialogue de l’ombre double, with the second half given over to the Eroica. Fair enough, one might say, the latter symphony being an obvious work with which to conclude the programme. I wondered whether it might therefore have made sense to mix up the programming a little more, rather than to present an almost-but-not-quite chronology, but any ordering will possess its particular advantages. As it was, even though the Fourth came first, I could not help but hear it to a certain degree in the light of what was yet to come.

Its first-movement introduction sounded deliciously dark, spacious, mysteriously flowing in a fashion that almost inevitably brought Barenboim’s hero, Furtwängler to mind. Zum Raum wird hier die Zeit? The transition was thrillingly navigated to a spruce, well-articulated, yet dramatically charged exposition. Six double basses marked a larger orchestra than that employed for the First and Second Symphonies (with four), but somehow there was already a sense of slight scaling down from the Eroica we had not yet heard; and so it would come to pass, with eight players after the interval. There was an occasional slight thinness to the WEDO’s string tone, not simply to be ascribed to numbers or the acoustic, and especially if one had in the back of one’s mind Barenboim’s recording with the Staatskapelle Berlin, but for the most part this was cultured, cultivated playing. More important was an ever-present sense of teleology, without which Beethoven makes no sense whatsoever. Equally crucial, indeed indissolubly interlinked, were rhythmic propulsion and the concision that is such a hallmark of this symphony and this movement in particular. There was an abiding sense of the processional – ghosts of the French Revolution? – to the slow movement, woodwind rightly to the fore. What a joy it was to hear again after the years of ‘authenticke’ terror a Beethoven in which the metronome played no part; music in the sense of score and performance progressed according to its own requirements and possibilities. It was as free and goal-oriented as one might expect from Barenboim in one of the piano sonatas. Other ghosts – the Eroica, late Haydn – haunted the sterner moments; humanity and the present always won through, with woodwind playing of truly heart-stopping beauty. The scherzo sounded as a successor to the funeral games of its Eroica counterpart: athletic, heroic, what the Olympics might be, were their vile commercialism to be jettisoned. There was a ‘traditional’ slowing for the trio, rightly pointing to its premonitory kinship with the Seventh. The finale was certainly swift, but also graceful, Haydn’s example far from banished – and why should it be? By turns lithe and muscular, this exuded vitality.

Jussef Eisa performs Boulez's Dialogue de l'ombre double at the BBC Proms

Boulez’s Dialogue de l’ombre double, performed by Jussef Eisa with IRCAM design from lbert Nouno and sound engineering from Jérémie Henrot, received a revelatory performance: an achievement from any musician, let alone a clarinettist so young. The Royal Albert Hall came into its own here, the ‘double shadow’ enveloping the audience – amongst whom, there were, sadly, a few disruptive influences – and evoking all manner of historical resonances from plainsong versicle and response in a great basilica to Boulez’s own Répons. The relationship between ‘original’ and electronic sound was by turn blurred and rendered clear, intelligent lighting adding a helpful visual element. Truly magical passages of transition between strophes provided some of the many highlights. Eisa – and Boulez! – offered arabesques of ravishing beauty, delivered with a virtuosity that would surely have impressed Berio, to whom the score is dedicated, though here the virtuosity tends towards a more gentle kind than is essayed in the Sequenzas. I was also put in mind of Nono’s Venetian evocations, whilst the spatial movement of electronic sounds, at some points almost dizzyingly fairground-like, sounded as if transformed Gabrieli or Monteverdi. This was a remarkable performance of a remarkable work, which survived coughing, sneezing, chattering, even the man next to me who insisted on eating his sandwiches.


The first movement of the Eroica took a little while to get into its stride, the only (relative) disappointment to the concert. Accents, surprisingly for Barenboim, sounded a little over-emphasised, more akin to the artificial ‘excitement’ lesser musicians impose upon Beethoven. Counterpoint, however, was clear and harmonically propulsive, and momentary apparent desertion from Furtwängler’s path was put right with yearning voicing – and working – of the second subject. The magic tended to be reserved for hushed moments, at least until echt-Beethovenian defiance was voiced in the recapitulation. Gloriously apparent was the status of the coda as second development – perhaps a link, despite the formal perfection of Beethoven’s scheme, to the open-endedness integral to Boulez’s æsthetic. Klemperer, hewn from granite, remains the model for so many of us in the Funeral March, but Barenboim’s more fluid approach more than justified itself. There was some especially fine playing from the WEDO’s woodwind principals. The episodes unabashedly evoked Furtwängler, not just in their shaping but in their organic growth from existing material. Nobility of utterance verged upon the supreme. This was Wagnerian Beethoven, and all the better for it; several times I heard intimations of Die Walküre. Wagner’s 1851 programmmatic explanation of this symphony came to mind:

... the term ‘heroic’ must be taken in the widest sense, and not simply as relating to a military hero. If we understand ‘hero’ to mean, above all, the whole, complete man, in possession of all purely human feelings — love, pain, and strength — at their richest and most intense, we shall comprehend the correct object, as conveyed to us by the artist in the speaking, moving tones of his work. The artistic space of this work is occupied by … feelings of a strong, fully formed individuality, to which nothing human is strange, and which contains within itself everything that is truly human.

I wonder whether I heard the scherzo differently, following that of the Fourth. At any rate, Beethoven’s life-force was wonderfully apparent. The Romantic grandeur of those horns announcing the trio acted as a reminder that Der Freischütz is not so very far away. Beethoven’s finale followed on with truly musico-dramatic inevitability, as did each variation from its predecessor. Beethoven cannot be given with cynicism, yet our own, cynical age needs him more than ever. I doubt that any musician today could square that circle as well as Barenboim. The very existence of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra stands as testament to that.