Mutter/Vengerov/Argerich/Oxford PO/Papadopoulos - Bach, Schumann, and Beethoven, 12 January 2019

Barbican Hall

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.

Polish CO/Vengerov - Mozart and Tchaikovsky, 18 November 2013

Barbican Hall

Mozart – Violin Concerto no.4 in D major, KV 218

Violin Concerto no.5 in A major, KV 219
Tchaikovsky – Sérénade mélancolique, op.26
Souvenir d’un lieu cher, op.42 (orch, David Walter)
Valse-Scherzo, op.23

Polish Chamber Orchestra

Maxim Vengerov (violin/conductor)

 

I had greatly been looking forward to my first opportunity to hear Maxim Vengerov live. Sadly, the reality proved somewhat disappointing. It is not that there was not in many respects a good deal to admire; this was no catastrophe, nor indeed anything remotely akin to that. However, I came away thinking that the concert itself had been somewhat ill-conceived, and that that had led to a number of more immediate performing shortcomings.

 

First, the programme transpired to be as imbalanced in practice as it had appeared on paper. To have two Mozart violin concertos in one half was odd, but doubtless could have been made to work in an outstanding performance. To have a second ‘half’, though – in reality, more akin to a final ‘third’ – which comprised three slight, encore-style pieces by Tchaikovsky really did not make any sense at all. Would it not have made for a more balanced, if still not especially revealing, programme to have had Mozart and Tchaikovsky in both halves?

 

Vengerov has devoted a considerable amount of time in recent years to conducting; indeed, he will, as part of the Barbican’s Artist Spotlight, conduct Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade later in the season. On this occasion, though, and especially in the Mozart works, it was difficult to avoid the conclusion that he would have been better served by having a separate conductor. The Fourth Violin Concerto opened promisingly, Vengerov noticeably attentive to the need to elicit a variegated sound and textures from the players of the Polish Chamber Orchestra. However, once he began to play, the players were largely left to fend for themselves. Acting as soloist and conductor is an enormously difficult task, and in reality, few musicians prove fully equal to it. (Daniel Barenboim would be an obvious example; at this stage in his career, having someone to conduct him in Mozart would most likely prove superfluous. Brahms, though, would be another matter.) The Mozart that emerged, in both works, proved somewhat on the bland side: pleasant enough, but alas, that is not nearly enough. There are certainly, contrary to the strange claim made by Richard Wigmore in his programme note, darker undercurrents in these works, which demand the performers’ – and the audience’s – attention. The D major concerto’s slow movement sang sweetly, but the Rondeau seemed to run out of steam, sounding rhapsodic rather than full of integrated contrasts. A firmer hand at the helm would surely have helped. Perhaps what most surprised, though, were the occasional passages in which Vengerov’s intonation was at odds with the orchestra’s, or indeed, in the first-movement cadenza, with what he had just played.

 

A similar pattern was followed in the A major concerto. Vigour arrived at last in the ‘Turkish’ section of the finale, but given the listless quality of what surrounded it, sounded more incongruous than anything else. The Polish players were generally excellent, sectional leaders in particular, but at least in this hall, a larger body of strings (we had 7.6.4.4.2) would often have been welcome. Throughout, I could not help but contrast the performance with the Mozart we had heard recently across the road in Milton Court, from the Royal Northern Sinfonia and Thomas Zehetmair. Then, every phrase, every note, had been invested with life, with meaning; Mozart had scintillated and beguiled in equal measure, even when I might in the abstract have queried Zehetmair’s tempi. Vengerov is not yet, at least, a soloist-director of that calibre, and Mozart requires no less.

 

I could not help but wonder whether Vengerov had imbibed too much of Tchaikovsky’s view of Mozart as all sweetness and light, a nineteenth-century confectioner’s view of a composer whose true essence is fathomless profundity, however lightly worn at times. That might have made at least for a programming idea: a concert, for instance, including Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Orchestral Suite, ‘Mozartiana’. The collection of three pieces we heard, though undoubtedly more stylish, did not add up to more than the sum of its parts. There were wonderful touches, for instance of portamento, never overdone, and there were virtuoso fireworks to be savoured, for those who care for such things. The latter were despatched with the aplomb one would have expected, though elsewhere, intonational problems occasionally resurfaced. The central Souvenir d’un lieu cher, here orchestrated for strings by David Walter, was charming and well-proportioned in performance, yet the Sérénade mélancolique emerged, despite the idiomatic if somewhat small-scale string sound, as meandering and longwinded. In that respect, the fault is probably Tchaikovsky’s. Vengerov’s admirers, and they clearly remain numerous, went wild following the Valse scherzo, which at least was not inflated into something that it is not. It was difficult, though, not to ask whether they would have have reacted similarly, irrespective of what they had heard. A concert, then, more for fans of the violinist then for Mozartians.