Louise Farrenc: Overture no.2 in E-flat major, op.24 Beethoven: Piano Concerto no.2 in B-flat major, op.19 Brahms: Symphony no.4 in E-minor, op.98
Martha Argerich (piano)
Munich Philharmonic Orchestra
Lahav Shani (conductor)
Images: BBC/ Chris Christodoulou
With the best will in the world, much of
the audience in such a concert will be there for the soloist. That intends no
disrespect to Lahav Shani or the Munich Philharmonic, but Martha Argerich is,
well, Martha Argerich—and one takes whatever opportunity one can to hear her.
It took me several false starts in the face of cancellation before finally I
did, but I have never regretted it and certainly did not now. Whether rehearsal
time had been targeted accordingly, I do not know, but Beethoven’s Second Piano
Concerto proved the unquestionable highlight of the evening, alongside deeply
disappointing Brahms and a well-played nonentity of a concert overture by
Louise Farrenc.
An interesting historical figure both as
pianist and composer, Farrenc has her advocates, but this E-flat Overture
proved little more than a series of introductions to introductions, wearing a
little too obviously influences on its sleeve, from Gluck and Beethoven to
Cherubini and Rossini. It began impressively, implying a true curtain-raiser,
even without an opera to come. Its over-reliance on tonic-dominant harmony –
yes, Beethoven can do this too, but how! – might not have mattered too much,
but the lack of anything in the way of intrinsic musical interest did. Still,
it was a welcome opportunity to hear this music for oneself, and the orchestra
was on good firm, powerfully directed by Shani.
The Albert Hall offers an ideal acoustic
for very little, if anything, certainly not for an early Beethoven concerto performed
with chamber-orchestral forces (ten first violins down to four double basses). One
had to listen in here, but rewards were many for having done so, from the fresh
opening tutti onwards. Argerich’s entry had it all: chiaroscuro, beautifully
pointed, and unerring line, Beethovenian goal-orientation never in doubt. In
that, it offered a prospectus for the whole, the first movement in particular
notable for counterpoint as crystal-clear as it was harmonically founded and
directed. It was often a more inward account – these things are relative – than
one might once have expected from her, but it was not without vehemence either,
the world of the later composer summoned and very much with us in the cadenza.
If the opening of the second movement exposed Shani’s inability, as yet, to
work out how, in this acoustic, to present Beethoven simply, balances awry and
much a little too fussy, then things settled soon enough on the return of the
soloist. Thereafter, Shani proved a sure and sensitive accompanist. Perhaps the
close was a little too drawn out, a little too loved, but if so, that is a
fault in the right direction. Cultivated, directed orchestral playing and
flashes of the tigress of old characterised the finale, its Scotch snaps worth
the price of admission alone. ‘Le Jardin féerique’ form Ravel’s Ma Mère l’Oye
made for a slightly surprising encore. It took a while to find its feet—or better,
its balance, but Argerich’s glissandi will linger long in the memory of all who
heard them.
Brahms’s Fourth Symphony brought out the
best in neither orchestra nor conductor. If the first movement opened
wistfully, its lack of textural clarity presaged one of several recurrent
problems. That may have been in part an acoustical matter, but general listlessness
and dissipation of tension were surely less so, likewise surprising thinness of
string tone. At times, we heard more committed playing, but it was unclear
where it had come from or why. Such issues were carried forward into a second
movement whose mixture of petulance and strange balance – often, downright lack
of balance – meant it never really had a chance. It suggested Brahms, here at
the height of his powers, had simply given up. The third movement began more
promisingly. It bounced along, a little too jolly but with greater precision—until
tone thinned again and it became merely hard-driven, disintegrating thereafter.
The finale likewise seemed to have a stronger sense of structure at its
opening, but that was not to be maintained. A strange emptiness at its heart
was engendered by scrappy playing and Shani’s apparent lack of musical
understanding. What presumably was intended to sound hushed sounded merely
uncertain. It was all a bit of a mess, and though it gathered a reasonable head
of steam later on, that was too little, too late. Contrast with the courageous
witness of Ilan Volkov at least year’s Proms could not have been starker.
Beethoven: Piano Concerto no.2 in B-flat major, op.19 Brahms: Symphony no.3 in F major, op.90
Martha Argerich (piano)
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
Daniel Barenboim (conductor)
Images: Monika Rittershaus
Seventy-four years ago they met in Buenos
Aires. They continue to play together, here in Beethoven’s Second Piano Concerto,
and continue to delight audiences. For my final concert of the year, it was a
treat to hear Martha Argerich and Daniel Barenboim, this time – and, I believe
for the second time ever – with the Berlin Philharmonic. The warmth of applause
at the beginning, let alone the close, offered testament to a special evening.
Although I have heard Barenboim many times
in Beethoven, as pianist, as conductor, and as both, I do not think I had heard
him conduct the BPO in Beethoven. Even with him, it offers a different sound
from the Staatskapelle Berlin, but needless to say, there was absolutely no rebarbative
faddishness to it, whether in tonal quality or tempo. Instead, the opening tutti
spoke in a heart-rending beauty of tone in direct line from Mozart, and owing
as much in its fundamental harmonic rhythm to Klemperer as to Furtwängler (as
has generally been the case in Barenboim’s Beethoven of the last decade or so).
Every note mattered—and meant: as noble as the Fifth Symphony or Fidelio,
though with requisite lightness of touch. Argerich responded in kind, though
not without (quite rightly, as soloist) a certain wresting of initiative that yet
always furthered collegial, chamber-music give-and-take. The piano part sang
and scintillated, Barenboim and Argerich both bringing particular,
complementary gifts to the performance. How a pivot chord from the piano told;
how an orchestral sequence built harmonically; and how left-hand bass rumbling led
us toward the tonic for the moment of return. The music continued to ‘grow’,
not only to develop, throughout the recapitulation, Berlin strings truly
digging in, preparing the way for Beethoven’s own cadenza, a missive from the
Beethovenian future, lying gloriously beyond the language of the concerto ‘itself’.
The Adagio’s opening tutti, in
contrast, complement, and development, was consoling as well as dramatic, a new
frame for a new yet related painting. Argerich’s solo grew from within, its ethical
subjectivity both singular and in accord with that of Barenboim’s wise narration.
Together, their voice, Beethoven’s voice, had one believe – and so one should –
that it was the voice of truth, its hushed tones and awe prefiguring the ‘late’
voice of the Ninth Symphony or even the Missa solemnis, piano
elaboration nonetheless reminding us of the different nature of this music.
Spun from finest Egyptian cotton, it was a sensuous delight as well as a
musical necessity.This was the very model of a Beethoven slow movement.
The finale was forthright as ever, from all concerning. After Elysian reverie,
fun and goodness were to be had back on earth—and how. Like sparks of the
divine, they were present in the detail as well as the broader contours, in
articulation and acciaccaturas as in the tonal plan, in orchestral syncopation
and in Haydnesque conversation. Civilisation matters, perhaps especially in our
terrible historical moment, and the wonder of modulation is part of it, as triumphantly
displayed here.
A surprise encore came in Schubert’s A
major Rondo for piano four hands, D 951, Barenboim taking his seat next to
Argerich, their page-turner none other than concertmaster Daishin Kashimoto. Here,
in confidences whispered more softly than ever before, was a very different
subjectivity, its fragility no less touching, an act of remembrance nonetheless
in the here and now rather than an act that was ‘about’ remembrance. Episodes
unfolded in their own time, and according to their own necessity. Indeed, time
almost stood still, but not quite.
A larger orchestra assembled after the
interval for Brahms’s Third Symphony, twelve first violins now fourteen, four
double basses now seven, and so forth. Anyone expecting something sedate would have
been immediately put to rights, the opening of the first movement not only
febrile but angry, albeit quite without the trivial hysteria some, though never
Barenboim, seem to think constitutes musical emotion and ‘excitement’. The
second group retreated to the world of Schubert’s Rondo; here was music we over-heard,
in a dialectical conception of the movement taking us between public and
private. All the while, life was to be found in the inner parts, rather as if
in a string quartet—or in Wagner. Sinews, honed again on Klemperer and Furtwängler,
unleashed still greater anger in the development. This, for me at least, was
music for and of Palestine, a musical land of beauty almost ‘occupied’, a heart
of darkness terrifying in its truth. The grim determination of the recapitulation,
and not only that, would not have been out of place in the composer’s Fourth
Symphony. It was not without consolation, but need for that consolation had
been immeasurably heightened.
Heard in a veiled dignity that enhanced riches both textual and textural, the Andante possessed a majestic intimacy
suggestive somehow both of an expanded string quartet and, at times, of an
imaginary ballet, Tchaikovsky closer than one might think. Once again, so much
grew, motivically but also harmonically, from those glowing inner parts. Strange
dissonances registered a pain both inner and inward. The third movement proved
a sad serenade, whose eternally transforming song bore post-Beethovenian witness
to the eternal – and eternally troubled – spirit of humanity. Did it meander?
Perhaps a little, but not if that be taken to mean lack of clarity as to destination;
rather, this was a musical stream, with twists and turns, yet undeniable,
directed flow. The subdued opening of the finale only heightened the impact of subsequent
bursting of the banks. Again, the Fourth was foreshadowed in darkness, even in
tragedy, though that remained only one side of the coin. There was hard-won
Beethovenian joy too, if briefly. Stubborn as well as graceful, this was a
reading of thoroughgoing integrity, whether in those echt-Brahmsian half-lights,
in ghostly reminiscences, or under a winter sun that just occasionally
suggested spring might come. Above all, it was a struggle, a necessary one at
that.
Schumann: Symphony no.1 in B-flat major, op.38, ‘Spring’ Piano Concerto in A minor, op.54 Symphony no.2 in C major, op.61
Martha Argerich (piano)
Staatskapelle Berlin
Daniel Barenboim (conductor)
There are worse ways to
celebrate one’s birthday than to hear Martha Argerich, the Staatskapelle
Berlin, and Daniel Barenboim in an all-Schumann concert. In truth, there are
few, if any, better. Tastes vary, of course; there is notoriously no account
for them. Taste, a merely personal matter, aside, though, there are no musicians
alive any reasonable listener would esteem in this music. What a treat,
moreover, to have Barenboim defiantly—whether in the face of endemic ‘period’
talk or pandemic viral contagion—deploy a full-scale symphony orchestra, from
sixteen first violins down to eight double basses, on the Staatsoper stage.
An echt-Romantic horn call, full of expectancy, repeated by full
orchestra heralded the Spring
Symphony. This introduction had such depth of tone and palpable drama, one knew
it would be a special evening. Freshness, precision, and depth characterised
playing throughout, the first movement development’s counterpoint clear,
directed, and above all meaningful. The music fairly danced, even balletically,
when called for. Festal, with inwardness where required, its balances were just
right. The second movement flowed tenderly, Barenboim here and elsewhere often content
to let the players play with little or no direction from him. Shifting moods
were always, rightly, founded on harmonic change. The scherzo was on the grand
scale, wanting nothing either in vigour nor in ravishing woodwind solo playing;
likewise its trios. Magnificent! A finale full of picturesque incident,
Mendelssohn and even Elgar coming to mind, revealed its not uncomplicated structure
readily, Barenboim never losing sight of the wood for the trees. A Tristan-esque ripeness to the
Staatskapelle horns recalled former nights in this very house. Splitting
violins left and right truly paid dividends in antiphonal statement and
response. The closing flourish alone was worth the price of admission.
Lyricism and grandeur, urgency
and expanse: that was only the first few bars of the Piano Concerto. This was
both chamber and orchestral music, with again extraordinarily fine woodwind
solos. Argerich’s shading of a single phrase was eloquent, never fussy, never
for its own sake. Even at the height of reverie, there was no question of line
and direction. Voice-leading beguiled yet with clear purpose. The
first-movement cadenza has its own trajectory, of course, verging on Brahms—and
so it sounded here. Just to hear Argerich’s trills was (almost) enough. Eusebius
responded in the slow movement, taken attacca,
thereby heightening the impression of two sides to the same coin of personality.
Its tricky mix of skittishness and Innigkeit
suited Argerich to a tee. Strings, above all cellos, shone with equal
brightness. It seemed over almost before it had begun, transition to the finale
begun. It was ever inch a concerto finale, full of light and shade, for there
was quite a journey still to go, ever more exhilarating, infections even (in a
good sense!) Piano and woodwind ravished alike, counterpoint and harmony directed
as one. If again the piano sometimes sounded close to Brahms, that is only
because it should. What strength and delicacy there was in those fingers, so
ably supported by Barenboim and his orchestra. As an encore—yes, an Argerich
encore—we heard the first of Schumann’s Kinderszenen,
‘Von fremden Ländern und Menschen’. Limpid, warm, and directed, it sounded as
if a microcosm of the Concerto.
If counterpoint were crucial
before, it was at least doubly so in the Second Symphony, which opened in
strikingly Bachian style: not the lamentable, enfeebled Bach of today’s ‘specialists’,
but Schumann’s Bach, the world’s Bach. And so it continued, with well-nigh
Beethovenian strength of purpose, urgency something born from within, not
applied from without. (You know the sort of performance and conductors I have
in mind.) To hear this string section in all its glory was everything. One
heard afresh, moreover, quite what a complex, radical opening movement this is,
imbued with post-Beethovenian humanism that by now is almost Barenboim’s own.
Fast need not mean dehumanised, though all too often it does in a culture that
prizes all things other than spirit. The scherzo thrilled at quite a tempo,
virtuosic, but in a musical sense, Beethoven steel added to Mendelssohn-like
effervescence. The first trio relaxed, not too much, but enough, Tender and
colourful, it looked back to the First Symphony and the Piano Concerto. Its
successor sang beautifully, string counterpoint propelling it on its way. The
dash to the finish was duly exhilarating: a force of nature, one might say,
save for the artistry involved. A gravely beautiful slow movement was richly
sustained throughout, strings once again tugging at the heart strings. Bach’s
example was felt throughout the counterpoint: calling his name in declaring it
anew. If anything, the orchestra sounded still more miraculous in the finale.
Weight and warmth, vigour and virtuosity: music poured forth like Wagnerian
molten lava, form created in the moment, yet unerringly prepared. We need
Barenboim to return to Bach—and, as Edward Said urged him, finally to conduct
the St Matthew Passion.
Martha Argerich
notwithstanding, this was, I am afraid, a disappointing concert: in the vein of
Zubin Mehta’s Berlin Philharmonic Bruckner Eighth in the autumn, only more so. Perhaps that was
because what can to a certain extent pass muster in Bruckner, at best letting
the music flow without interference, leads to scrappiness and other lack of
necessary control in Ravel.
At any rate, near collapse at
two moments in the first movement of the G major Piano Concerto can hardly be
accounted a positive; likewise bizarre orchestral balances, seemingly resulting
less from an eccentric hearing of Ravel than from an inability to hear him at
all. It was difficult to escape the view that the concerto and especially this
movement would have been better off without a conductor. Once the fabled
tigress of the keyboard took the lead, there was much to enjoy in terms of
pellucidity, drive, and clarity, not least of the rhythmic variety. Her opening
solo in the slow movement was everything one could wish for: line, voicing,
nobility, a refusal to mistake sentiment for sentimentality. Beating time,
Mehta did a reasonable job for the most part, despite a couple of audibly
difficult corners to turn. The Staatskapelle Berlin’s woodwind nevertheless sounded
gorgeous. Argerich’s pianism proved in equal measure muscular and variegated,
spot on throughout the finale. When she was not playing and occasionally even
when she was, Mehta’s tendency was to let the orchestra fall behind.
La
Valse, preceding the
concerto, had perhaps fared better, so long as one were not looking for
revelation. Growling double basses – eight of them – at the opening augured
well, but soon the performance had fallen strangely rigid. When Mehta
intervened a little more, it helped; that is, until he drove the score too
hard. Again there were wonderful woodwind solos, often allied to string playing
of sheen and depth: recognisably this great orchestra. Overall form, however,
remained elusive in a performance that seemed simply to move from phrase to
phrase, sometimes even bar to bar. The sign-off was, by any accounts, bizarrely
plodding.
To my surprise, The Rite of Spring probably came off
best, albeit in strictly relative terms. So long as one were not expecting
Pierre Boulez or Esa-Pekka
Salonen, there would have been enough to make sense of the piece. Its
opening in particular verily teemed with signs of rebirth, capturing
fascinating instrumental combinations and balances and relationships between
freedom and metrical precision prophetic for later-twentieth-century modernism.
For most of the first part, there was nothing eccentric about Mehta’s tempi,
nor did he lose momentum. Indeed, tension increased, notwithstanding a few
strange decisions concerning balance. Stravinsky’s rite became more involving,
seemingly of its own ‘volition’ or at least material: that is surely the trick
here, at least to mainstream Rite
interpretation. There was something properly horrifying to the apparent
automation of the Procession of the Sage, although its immediate aftermath fell
oddly flat. The final dance of the first part, however, perked up. Alas, the
second part was somehow rather on the dull side. There was nothing really to
complain about, save for an overtly sectional approach. It was neither
involving nor intriguingly ‘objective’, just ultimately rather nondescript and
lacking in cumulative power. I have never felt less thrilled at the close.
Martha Argerich returns to
town: for chamber music with Guy Braunstein and for the Ravel G major Piano
Concerto with Zubin Mehta (to follow). My heart went out to those in the lengthy
queue for returns at the Pierre Boulez Saal, but certainly not so much as to
relinquish my ticket. Was it worth it? Yes, as ever. All three sonata
performances elicited thoughtful, committed performances from Braunstein and
Argerich in this, their first joint recital.
First, though, we heard the
first of Schumann’s three late violin sonatas: enigmatic works, for which many
seem unable to find the key. (I battled with all of them at one time or another
as a student pianist, always finding at least one movement well-nigh impossible
to bring off.) From the off, this was clearly a true partnership, well
balanced, moving forward together, offering dialogue and contrast as required.
All three movements benefited from a rightness of tempo and of tempo variation such
as enabled much that can often sound problematical simply to fall into place.
Argerich’s piano part in the first put me in mind of a cauldron from which
Schumann’s witches’ brew could rise and seep into our consciousness – not,
perhaps, entirely unlike Wagner’s contemporaneous conception of the orchestra
as Greek Chorus. Motivic working seemed to nod on either side to Beethoven and
Brahms, without ever sounding like anyone other than Schumann. The central
‘Allegretto’ was taken swiftly, yet with commendable flexibility. Surprises,
modulatory and otherwise, at the ends of phrases registered with all the
freshness in the world. If ultimately, the music remained enigmatic – that word
again – then so it should. In the finale, fantastic, even impetuous flight and
traditional lyricism alike rested on rock-solid foundations, harmonically and rhythmically.
With so distinguished exponent of the Piano Concerto at the keyboard, we should
not have been surprised, but there was no sense that this was something other
than music-making between friends on which we were fortunate to eavesdrop.
Prokofiev’s Second Violin
Sonata (the violin transcription of his Flute Sonata) followed. I noticed
immediately a difference of voice, not only concerning the composer but also his
performers, its first movement speaking with idiomatic bitter-sweetness – such exultant, lyrical sweetness from
Braunstein – and romanticised modernism. Mood swings were more abrupt, even
cinematic, without compromise to underlying continuity. Potentiality in the
piano part, simultaneously vertical and horizontal, was vividly generative. And
still there remained some of the composer’s old Fiery Angel bite; perhaps there might have been a little more at
times, but relative subtlety had its own rewards. The scherzo spoke more
clearly of demonic possession, piano scampering taken up by violin and vice versa. There was plenty of sulphur
here, however neoclassicised. Uneasy placidity characterised the side-slipping ‘Andante’,
perhaps the movement that went deepest, so long as one listened. The finale
proved fantastical, swashbuckling, and not without a little grotesquerie. Argerich’s
seductive hammering of Prokofiev’s chords said it all.
Opened the Franck
Sonata sounded as if one old friend was greeting another – and it her, a third, Braunstein, responding in kind. Not that the music was taken for granted, but
that the score had been thoroughly internalised as material for recreation.
Outpouring and subsiding were two sides of the same Argerich coin, sometimes
even within the same phrase; its spinning would often find itself caught in
magical, almost Brahmsian half-lights, though never for long. Tracing and
shaping of the first movement’s contours and indeed those of the rest of the
sonata were undoubtedly a dual effort, partnership once again apparent from the
outset. The second and third movements both offered intensification and due
attention to particular character. There was wonder in their transformation
too, not least in the myriad of colours revealed in piano chords and their
progressions. Braunstein’s violin recitative in the third movement was eloquent
and alluring, Argerich already having forestalled the danger of premature
climax at the close of the second by taking this music attacca – and what attack this was! The finale offered refreshment
in well-nigh Mozartian response, thereafter taking its own path, our guides
both knowledgeable and passionate. As encores we heard not one but two Viennese
dances by Fritz Kreisler, played, as Braunstein now informed us, on Kreisler’s
own violin: a lilting, poignant Liebesleid
and a Schön Rosmarin whose notes flew
off the page with all the time in the world.
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.
Schubert:
Symphony no.8 in B minor,
D 759, ‘Unfinished’
Tchaikovsky:
Piano Concerto no.1 in
B-flat minor, op.23
Lutosławski:
Concerto for Orchestra
Martha Argerich (piano)
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra
Daniel Barenboim (conductor)
Image: Salzburger Festspiele / Marco Borrelli
Most likely our greatest living Schubert
conductor, Daniel Barenboim lent credence to the claim in this
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra performance of the Unfinished, the best I can recall since Bernard
Haitink and the LSO ten years ago – and with the benefit of a far superior hall
and acoustic to the Barbican, let alone the Royal Albert Hall, where Barenboim
and his musicians had given the same programme a couple of nights earlier.
Opening truly de profundis – an orchestra
with a string section of this size truly helps here – and febrile, generative,
it was clear from the outset that this would be special. This, it seemed, was
music that had always been – waiting, Schopenhauer-like, to be voiced. Teeming
with melody, ever grounded in harmony, it was music that both could not wait,
yet must, until the abyss: the onset of the development section. Dark, rich
strings and brings, offset by forest woodwind took us by the hand, grabbed us
by the scruff of the neck: they did what was necessary, as did Schubert. Battle
royal ensued, the intensity such as to have thoughts of Furtwängler well-nigh
inescapable. Intimations of Wagner were doubtless not unrelated. In the recapitulation,
all had been changed – forever. That is what happens when music, when
music-making, matters. We had seen death, but this was no place to be maudlin,
for we had looked it, ‘whatever ‘it’ may be, in the face. The coda’s grave
beauty told us all we needed to know. Balance and progression were felt, experienced in the second movement. Its
debts to Haydn were rendered lovingly clear: rusticity, yes, but also method, a
method that helped render Schubert’s farsighted Romanticism all the more
remarkable and poignant, not least in woodwind solos and string responses. It
was perhaps, though, the transitions that told us most, not least those that
might have seemed ‘mere’ silence on the page. Fernhören, then, as Furtwängler would have put it, but also Fernspielen.
Martha Argerich joined the
orchestra for Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto. These players, Barenboim too,
have a lengthy and distinguished track record in Tchaikovsky’s music, which
showed in the assured swagger of the opening, to which those piano chords were the only possible response. The depth of
tone on which Argerich could draw, and did, was as remarkable as ever, likewise
the variety of meaningful articulation. Her soulful skittishness rubbed off on
the woodwind, and vice versa, so much
of what we heard chamber music writ large. Lest all we heard seem a little too
Mendelssohnian, there were Schumannesque reverie, muscle too, and backbone: this
was a piano tigress of surpassing versatility, with double octaves that would
have had Liszt himself sit up. I am no friend of applause between movements,
but could readily have forgiven it here. There was none; instead, a good few
audience members elected to chatter during the pizzicato opening to the second movement.
Insofar as I could tell, it sounded lovely. A fine balance was struck, at any rate,
between subsequent simplicity and complexity (not least but certainly not only
metrical). There was little doubt where the finale was heading, urgent without
a hint of the hard-driven, like the final flow of a mighty river and the human
life gathered on its banks. For this was a performance full of delightful
incident, first to be savoured, then fondly recalled. As an encore, Barenboim
and Argerich treated us to a few minutes of decidedly superior domesticity: the
Schubert A major Rondo, D 951, its lengths above all heavenly, Barenboim’s
closing trill to die for.
A Concerto for Orchestra makes excellent
sense as repertoire for a youth orchestra. The young players certainly seemed
to relish the challenges of Lutosławski’s, in this splendidly vivid
performance. Foreboding was in the air of the opening: foreboding that perhaps
already had a sense of something beyond, a possible destination, Barenboim
hearing and communicating form and possibilities, horizontal and vertical, as
vividly as he had that of the Schubert symphony. Bartók’s spirit was present,
of course; how could it not be? Prokofiev’s too, probably. These, however, were
welcome guests at the feast, unease always present enough to prevent any
folkloric elements from cloying. Scurrying and slide-slipping, the second movement
again brought Prokofiev to mind. Fantasy and obstinacy were held in excellent
balance, such as could only have resulted from playing of considerable
excellence. Barenboim captured to a tee the decidedly post-war mood of the
finale’s passacaglia section: Zimmermann as much as Shostakovich, though that
is not in any straightforward sense to ascribe ‘influence’. Likewise the
toccata, whose fantastical qualities – colour, rhythm, harmony – again brought
Prokofiev to the fore, perhaps above all in a cacophonous passage that might
almost have come from The Fiery Angel,
or Le Pas d’acier. It was Bartók who
emerged most clearly in the closing chorale section, yet with space and clarity
that enabled us to hear difference as well as similarity. If the finale still sounded
a little drawn out to me, that is doubtless my problem; I cannot recall a
performance that made greater sense of it.
Bach: Concerto for two violins in D minor, BWV
1043
Schumann:
Piano Concerto in A minor,
op.54
Beethoven:
Symphony no.3 in E-flat
major, op.55, ‘Eroica’
Anne-Sophie Mutter, Maxim Vengerov (violins)
Martha Argerich (piano)
Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra
Marios Papadopoulos (conductor)
A curious concert this: three
star soloists, any one of whom would likely prove a highpoint of most orchestras’
seasons; an excellent yet, to many, unknown orchestra; and, sadly, a conductor
who proved at best mediocre. Quite how the Oxford Philharmonic and Marios Papadopoulos
had been able to enlist the services of Anne-Sophie Mutter, Maxim Vengerov, and
Martha Argerich (!) for the orchestra’s twentieth-anniversary concert, I have
no idea. Even if I could not help but wish that I had left at the interval, it had
been an unusual, or rather unique, opportunity to hear all three.
Bach’s Double Violin Concerto
was performed without conductor, violins and violas standing. The orchestra
instantly revealed a cultivated string sound, matched and indeed led by Mutter
and Vengerov. The first movement was taken quickly indeed: too fast, I am
afraid, with much of Bach’s music simply skated over. Solo ornamentation was
not unduly distracting, but largely unnecessary. Still, compared to what one
often hears today in Bach, there was nothing especially perverse. The central Largo ma non tanto was again on the fast
side, but perhaps not entirely unreasonably so. Mutter’s tone proved more
Romantic, although Vengerov’s rich, viola-like tone on the G string offered its
own allure and pleasure. It was a musical, if not especially profound
performance. (We shall always have the Oistrakhs.) Much the same might be said
of the finale, again very quick, but with better reason than the first
movement. Mutter showed a naturalness in her phrasing I have not heard from her
in years.
Argerich, however, seemed far
more in tune with Schumann and his demands. A full, Romantic orchestra, large
by today’s standards and all the better for it, joined her in an emphatic
opening paving the way for poetic flights of fancy from piano and woodwind
soloists alike. The problems, such as they were, lay with Papadopoulos, who
drove the orchestra mercilessly, quite unmusically, and unquestionably at odds
both with its playing and with that of the soloist; that is, until, he suddenly
his direction started meandering. Insofar as Argerich regained (infinitely
flexible) control, there was much to enjoy. Her direction of what became
essentially chamber music was as much to be savoured as her solo playing; a knowing,
confiding nod to the principal cello would have been heard, even had it not
been seen. Innigkeit and fire,
dialectically related yet apparently spontaneous, reminded us once again what
we miss, given her withdrawal from the solo platform. So too did the cadenza,
despatched with a well-nigh Brahmsian integrity and vehemence, yet fresh as
ever. If only, here and elsewhere, she had been partnered by a musician with a
superior sense of harmony, of form, of tempo: a Barenboim, for instance. The
Intermezzo benefited greatly from being essentially led by Argerich: these were
her dreams, her phantoms. The finale’s opening bars proved surprisingly martial,
yet not unreasonably so. Would that the same might have been said later on of hard-driven
orchestral tutti, blaring
brass much in need of reining in.
There was little faulting the
orchestra in the Eroica Symphony. Admirable
heft, variegation, unanimity of ensemble, and much more were all on display. Not
to have the first movement taken at currently fashionable breakneck speed
proved a relief in itself. Alas, neither here nor in any of the symphony’s
movements did Papadopoulos convey so much as a hint of structure becoming
dynamic form. The harmonic motion on which the symphony’s progress is founded
passed for nothing, so too did much phrasing, especially during the slow
movement. One phrase just followed another, one paragraph another. What did it
add up to? What did it mean? Very little, so far as I could discern. The
Funeral March and finale seemed interminable: not on account of having been taken
particularly slowly, but from a lack of formal logic and impetus. Merely pleasant
Beethoven barely registers as Beethoven at all: given the
excellence of the orchestral playing as such, a great pity. As for the tedious, allegedly ‘humorous’
encore, the less said the better.
(This essay was originally written as a programme note for the 2016 Salzburg Festivalfor this concert, originally to have been performed by Martha Argerich, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, and Daniel Barenboim.)
In the
Shadow of Beethoven: Widmann, Liszt, and Wagner
JÖRG WIDMANN • Con brio, Concert overture for Orchestra (2008)
FRANZ LISZT • Concerto for Piano and
Orchestra no.1 in E-flat major
RICHARD WAGNER • Overture to Tannhäuser und der Sängerkrieg auf Wartburg
RICHARD WAGNER • “Morgendämmerung” from
Götterdämmerung
RICHARD WAGNER • “Siegfrieds
Rheinfahrt” from Götterdämmerung
RICHARD WAGNER • “Trauermarsch” from Götterdämmerung
RICHARD WAGNER • Prelude to Act I, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg
Unveiling of Beethoven monument, Bonn, 1845. As so often, Liszt's doing...
Before Wagner, before Liszt, before every
other noteworthy nineteenth-century composer save for Chopin, stands and stood Beethoven.
He now stands before Jörg Widmann too, although with the twist that Widmann
also stands between Beethoven and Beethoven. Con brio, Widmann’s 2008 Overture, was commissioned by Mariss
Jansons and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra to accompany Beethoven’s
Seventh and Eighth Symphonies. It plays intriguingly with the remains of
tonality without lapsing into neo-tonalism. Moreover, it plays with Beethoven’s
tonalities, A major and F major, a third apart, a relationship with distinctly
Beethovenian, also Schubertian, resonances. There is throughout a strong and
yet elusive sense of Beethovenian presence: allusion wins out over quotation;
longing, haunting, perhaps even resistence, over recreation. This is no
pastiche. Audible ‘cuts’, as well as a few instances of extended instrumental
techniques, are perhaps the most audible signals of Berio-like ‘modernity’ in a
temporal sense. What we post-Romantics most associate with Beethoven, symphonic
development, is, it seems, no longer possible. Did not Thomas Mann’s Adrian
Leverkühn, after all, revoke the Ninth Symphony, as a necessary break with the
‘German catastrophe’ that had led him, as composer and as German, and his
country, as cultural and political entity, to the darkest night of its soul?
The road to Leverkühn’s act is in good part
the road of German musical Romanticism, to which we now turn, although we
should recall the problematical nature of ‘Romanticism’ here: a term taken from
literature, it does not quite ‘fit’ music analogously, or at least
contemporaneously, whilst apparently serving it all the better. It was, after
all, Beethoven whom ETA Hoffmann and many other Romantics had most firmly in
mind when considering music and elevating it to the status of most exalted of
all the arts.
Liszt was one of those Romantics; amongst
composers, he perhaps remains still the most underestimated. Some critics, far
less so audiences, seem jealously unable to accept that the greatest pianist in
history could also have been a great composer, let alone, in a very modern
sense, a great sex symbol; they seem unable to appreciate that Liszt, who
turned his back on the celebrity and fortune of a world-touring piano
recitalist to concentrate upon composition, used his virtuosity, at least in
his finest works, to defeat ‘mere’ virtuosity, not to enthrone it. He might, as
a nineteenth-century performer, have taken his leave from Paganini’s devilry,
but Liszt’s Transcendental Studies
have more musical interest in a few
bars than all of the violinist’s Caprices; likewise Liszt’s piano concertos
vis-à-vis the concertos of Paganini, or indeed those of ‘mere’ piano virtuosi.
The First Piano Concerto was nevertheless
written for Liszt to perform in the first instance, its 1855 Weimar premiere –
Liszt, in order to work with an orchestra, had ‘retreated’ from the bourgeois
marketplace into court employment – conducted by Berlioz. It suggests, both in
construction and in the ‘transcendental’ calls made upon the pianist, that, to
quote the celebrated motto of the Leipzig Gewandhaus, ‘Res
severa est verum gaudium’: true pleasure is a serious thing. Such might in many
respects have been the motto too of Liszt, ever conscious of Beethoven’s ghost,
ever unable to ignore it, even had he wished. In 1823, the composer was said to
have given the twelve-year old Wunderkind a kiss of consecration (Weihekuss).) Beethoven’s was a mantle he must grasp with new means, or perhaps, in
Beckettian fashion, continually fail better in his attempt to grasp it. As
Liszt put it, new wine – whether that occasioned by new instruments, new
instrumental techniques, or different musical material – demanded new bottles.
That
meant, above all else, formally. Liszt’s fondness not only for one-movement
structures which contained within them ‘traditional’ multi-movement form was
partly inspired by what he and many Romantics saw, rightly or wrongly, as
Beethoven’s dissolution of Classical forms and still more so by Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy;
however, he was never one to rest content, ensuring that the formal dynamism of
each work varied according to its material, or at least attempted to do so. The
four short ‘movements’ resemble in some ways those of Beethoven – although he
would never have written a four-movement concerto
– but their interconnection is crucial. Themes are transformed, one of Liszt’s
greatest legacies to the twentieth century, the technique fascinating serial composers
beyond Schoenberg, at least as far as Boulez, so that what one hears initially
as contrasting lays claim also to unity. The transformation and combination of
all the work’s principal themes in the final Allegro marziale animato is
no simple matter of recollection, but above all of binding together, within a
twenty-minute span, a plethora of musical material – retrospectively or
otherwise. Schoenberg’s First Chamber Symphony is but a stone’s throw away.
Apparent
lack of chamber music in Liszt’s output is only apparent, for, as with Wagner,
there is a great deal of chamber music in his orchestral writing; such, in one
respect, is the Gesamtkunstwerk.
Listen, for instance, to the duet for piano and clarinet in the opening Allegro maestoso of
the writing for string quartet in the third section. The ludicrous, malicious
claim by Joseph Joachim – he, Clara Schumann, and Brahms were adamant that
Liszt was in no way an heir to Beethoven, and behaved quite appallingly to him
– that Joseph Raff had orchestrated the piece is utterly false. There are many
felicities and originalities of orchestration that we now think of as
quintessentially Lisztian, the scherzo’s opening use of the triangle as solo
instrument only the most celebrated. Liszt was equally concerned that
orchestral blend and rhythm should match that of the soloist. He wrote to
Alfred Jaëll that he should only consider performing the concerto after two or
three ‘through rehearsals. … In Berlin [a performance by Hans von Bülow] there
was still a little hesitancy in the attack of the woodwind instruments, which
must function like trumpets at this moment, in a military style,
and not like the national guard, helter-skelter!’ Technological, technical, and
musical developments were for him, as for Wagner, as for Widmann, as for
Beethoven, at least in his imagination’s ear, as one. Even that triangle solo
must use an instrument ‘not of too base extraction’ and have ‘not too vulgar a
vibration’. The triangle player, then, must too be a virtuoso – to defeat mere
virtuosity.
Wagner
was no piano virtuoso, although his deficiencies as a pianist and indeed as a
composer of piano music have been exaggerated. Where he unleashed his
virtuosity, again to defeat the ‘mere’ virtuosity of Parisian grand opéra
was, above all, still more so than onstage, in the opera orchestra, the ‘Greek
Chorus’, as he put it, of his music dramas: commenting, foretelling,
precipitating, contradicting, recollecting, reflecting. Wagner wanted to
combine the dramatic means of the greatest of spoken drama, above all Aeschylus
and Shakespeare, with the symphonic achievement of Beethoven, whose works, he
believed, at least for some time, had taken purely instrumental music as far as
it could go. Both music and drama now needed each other. That is, perhaps, less
so for the relatively traditional TannhäuserOverture, although the composer’s subsequent
musico-dramatic theorising would often be as much based upon what he had
written as upon what he intended to write. Liszt relished transcribing for
piano – extremely faithfully, as in the case of Beethoven’s symphonies too – the
Overture, and it is remarkable how little is lost. Nevertheless, Wagner’s
orchestral writing retains its own allure and majesty, never more so than in
the wind. The sturdy, moral, ‘German’ Pilgrim’s Chorus, assailed by the
disintegrative, perhaps Parisian tendencies – timbral, harmonic, frankly sexual
– of the Venusberg, seems to emerge victorious, but do the brass, does the
diatonicism, protest too much? Even in concert, we are both satisfied and longing
for more: the sign of a successful Overture.
Joseph Tichatschek (Tannhäuser) and Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient (Venus); premiere, also 1845
The extracts from Götterdämmerung
– ‘bleeding chunks’, in Donald Tovey’s phrase – tell the story of the hero, at
least his story in this concluding Ring drama, in miniature. We are
first presented with ‘Dawn’ – in Wagner, time, weather, everything, are to be
understood materially and metaphysically – on Brünnhilde’s rock. Siegfried has
braved the fire, won Brünnhilde, and now must go back into the world ‘to new
deeds’; but first, an evocation of that glorious first morning together. His
Rhine Journey sends him out into the world, as he must, and as even Brünnhilde,
who tragically believes the ring to betoken her marriage to the freest of
heroes, recognises, indeed bids him. Where, in the first part of the Ring,
Das Rheingold,
the Rhine music had sounded relatively uncomplicated, home to the Rhinemaidens,
now the contrapuntal complexity of Wagner’s late music – Bach increasingly a
rival to Beethoven – is well suited to the greater complexity of the hero’s
descent into the world of ‘civilisation’, the realm of the Gibichungs, in
which, through Hagen’s machinations, he will find betrayal and death. Political
modernity, as Wagner, student of Hegel knew, was as complex as the musical
modernity he knew as student of Beethoven. So it is, still more so, in
Siegfried’s Funeral March, which dramatically (in every sense) extends Liszt’s
method in his own revolutionary tribute, the symphonic poem, Héroïde funèbre.
In Götterdämmerung, the weight of memory, the
outpouring, combination, in some cases culmination, of motifs is of a different
order. Thomas Mann summarised Wagner’s genealogical method here as ‘an overwhelming celebration of memory and
mind, from recalling ‘the longing questions of the boy [Siegfried] about his
mother’ to the present ‘earth-shakings and thunderings, with the body
borne high on its bier’.
The
programme ends not, however, with the myth of Siegfried’s obsequies, but with
the ‘real-world’ comedy of Wagner’s maturity. In the opening Prelude to Die Meistersinger, we hear five of the work’s principal motifs
adumbrated, three of them combined in brazen tour de force contrapuntal mastery at the moment of return to the
work’s deceptively wholesome C major tonality. That moment is humorously
signalled by the triangle: a recollection of Tannhäuser’s Overture or Liszt’s concerto? It need not be
either/or. Wagner’s counterpoint, like his reckless hero, Walther von Stolzing,
disregards tradition, themes yoked together as much out of ‘dramatic’ as what
he derided as ‘purely musical’ necessity. Sometimes, the better to honour
Beethoven (or Bach), it is necessary to disregard him.
Liszt – Piano Concerto no.1 in
E-flat major Wagner – Tannhäuser: Overture Götterdämmerung: ‘Dawn’ and ‘Siegfried’s Rhine Journey’ Die
Meistersinger von Nürnberg:
Prelude to Act One
Martha Argerich (piano)
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra
Daniel Barenboim (conductor)
For once, my precautions paid
off. Having – extravagantly, insanely, whatever you wish to call it – booked to
hear this concert both in Salzburg and at the Proms, I managed to hear Martha
Argerich once. Having cancelled the previous week’s concert, Martha Argerich no
longer had to call upon the services of Daniel Barenboim as substitute pianist.
Barenboim had given, under the circumstances, a fine account of Mozart’s final
piano concerto, but this performance of Liszt’s First Piano Concerto was in
another league. And I think that, if comparisons must be drawn – I have not
looked again at my
earlier review before writing this – that the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra
was on even better form in the Wagner extracts too.
I relished the opportunity to
hear Jörg Widmann’s Con brio for a
second time in such close succession. Its performance certainly sounded every
bit as incisive as in Salzburg, the quality of ‘cinematic cuts’, if anything,
still more apparent. Barenboim played new music, as his wont, as repertoire
music, and it benefited greatly from the lack of ghettoisation. Once again, the
West-Eastern Divan’s percussionist proved mesmerising. We heard here a
post-expresisonist soundscape, on which Beethovenian fragments – not quite
ruins – were eerily and yet wittily displayed, or viewed, even set in motion.
Beethoven seemed still more expertly misremembered; we think we recognise what
we hear, but we do not actually. Interestingly, with Liszt to come, the piece
and its progress seemed more akin to a symphonic poem than an overture.
The Liszt Concerto’s orchestral
opening was forthright, Argerich’s piano response quite simply defying any
reasonable – and perhaps unreasonable – expectations. I was quite taken aback, as
I have been before when hearing her play a piano concerto, by the way she
manages to cut through an orchestra; I really do not know how she does it,
especially with an acoustic such as the Royal Albert Hall’s. There were depth
and clarity to rival Sviatoslav Richter on his legendary recording with the LSO
and Kyrill Kondrashin. And how she then yielded, much as one might imagine
Liszt having done so himself. (Just imagine that world premiere, with Berlioz
conducting Liszt’s own orchestra in Weimar!) Barenboim supplied, supported
motivic integrity to remind us how rightful an heir to Beethoven Liszt is, and
there was Wagnerian flexibility from both conductor and soloist. We were
reminded – not that any Lisztian would ever forget – how much of his orchestral
writing is chamber music too, not least by the superlative clarinet solo
against Argerich’s ever-sensitive piano. The slow movement brought nobility and
depth – again echoes of Beethoven – from the opening string utterances onwards.
(I could not help but think there of Beethoven’s Fourth Concerto.) Argerich’s
piano soliloquising might have come from one of Liszt’s own solo works; the
example of the Années de pèlerinage
loomed large, and there were even hints of the Piano Sonata. The triangle-led
transition brought us scherzo skittishness from all concerned, the orchestra
notably sardonic, the piano increasingly moving towards something more
devilish, Totentanz-like. The depth
of Liszt’s musical argument was never in doubt as we moved into the finale,
brimming full of musico-theatrical excitement, all courtesy of the composer’s
transformative genius.
As an encore, we were treated
to an intimate duet performance of Schubert’s A major Rondo, D.951. This is not
public music; instead, we felt as if we were eavesdropping on some exalted
music-making en famille. The length
of the piece – which can readily seem repetitive to the listener, as opposed to
the performer – was on this occasion, in Schumann’s all-too-oft-repeated
description, ‘heavenly’ indeed. And Barenboim had practised.
It was, then, again, to Wagner,
Liszt’s musical comrade-in-arms, that we moved for the second half. I recalled
the woodiness of the opening wind from the earlier performance of the Tannhäuser Overture. Strings replied,
initially sounding, as if continuing from Liszt’s example, like an enlarged
chamber group, gradually swelling to become fully, undoubtedly orchestral.
Barenboim’s shaping of this and the subsequent pieces was as expert as ever; he
knew exactly how to provide impetus, how to communicate Wagner’s melos. One could, in this context,
especially in the music of Venus, hear the seductive languor that so attracted
Liszt. The frustrations of attempted climax were frankly sexual; how could they
not be? The final peroration glowed and, prefiguring Götterdämmerung, burned.
Dawn from that opera’s Prologue
(or rather the period just before Dawn) had lugubrious mystery, which yet
remained admirably clear. Muddiness is the last thing this music requires, as
Barenboim’s revered Boulez would always have argued – and more, to the point,
shown us. There was glorious string tone in the approach to the climax,
responded to just as gloriously by the WEDO brass. An excellent horn solo
(taken from the organ) led us to Siegfried’s Rhine Journey. It was graceful and monumental, full of incident, yet
sure of purpose. Gibichung malevolence began to draw us in, before another
brutal close to the first act. The Funeral March’s opening sounded still
darker, still graver than before, prior to the memorial grandeur that so
impressed Thomas Mann, the Volsung genealogy leading us through ‘an overwhelming celebration of memory and
mind, from ‘the longing questions of the boy [Siegfried] about his mother’ to ‘earth-shakings
and thunderings, with the body borne high on its bier’. In Barenboim’s
hands, the music developed from what had gone before, and continued to develop,
before once again descending into potentially nihilistic darkness.
Finally, at least so far as the
published programme was concerned, we heard the Prelude to Act I of Die Meistersinger. I think it may have
been taken, initially, at a brisker tempo than in Salzburg; it certainly felt
that way. At any rate, it relaxed considerably, when appropriate, without
damage to an underlying pulse. Tempo variation was, as Wagner demanded, never
arbitrary, always meaningful. And here it was often considerable, Barenboim at
his most Furtwänglerian. There was nevertheless Mendelssohnian lightness – what
delightful woodwind playing! – to be heard in the development, and a general
ease to the despatch of the composer’s virtuosic, anything-but-textbook
counterpoint. The encores were as in Salzburg; first a darkly noble, later
blossoming, Prelude to Act III of the same opera, then a swashbuckling Prelude
to Act III of Lohengrin, with a
strikingly courtly central section. Magnificent!
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