Röschmann/VSO/Hahn - Schoenberg and Zemlinsky, 5 June 2024

Musikverein

Schoenberg: Erwartung, op.17
Zemlinsky: Die Seejungfrau

Dorothea Röschmann (soprano)

Vienna Symphony Orchestra

Patrick Hahn (conductor)

What is Schoenberg’s single greatest work? It is a silly question, at least as silly as asking the same of Mahler, of Webern, or of Boulez. Sometimes we ask ourselves silly questions, though; I suspect that Erwartung would come pretty close to the top of any aggregate list for Schoenbergians. Written over an extraordinarily short period of time – Schoenberg was often, though not always, like that – the monodrama comes from his Wunderjahr of 1909. However, it had to wait until 1924 for its first performance, in Prague on 6 June, conducted by the composer’s great friend, advocate, and brother-in-law (I think we can still count him as such, though Mathilde Schönberg had died the previous year) Alexander von Zemlinsky. This Musikverein performance, by Dorothea Röschmann, the Vienna Symphony, and Patrick Hahn, must surely therefore have been the last of its first century-in-performance, coming as it did on 5 June 2024. Aptly enough for so prophetic yet historically rooted a work, its successor the following evening would inaugurate a new performing century.

This, at any rate, made for a glorious finale that could also look forward, surely the equal of any performance I have heard and the superior of many, whether live or on record. In his 150^th year, Schoenberg’s place as the single most important – not necessarily ‘greatest’, whatever that may mean, though certainly a serious contender for that too – composer of the twentieth century is assured. It always was; that, however, has still not translated into broader acceptance from a frankly doltish public. (That his rejection is often, even usually, laced with antisemitism, unconscious as much as conscious, makes it worse; but let us leave that aside for now.) 

First and far from least, it was beautifully sung by Röschmann: beauty, song, and beauty of singing all being involved there. It was astonishingly accurate too, and not only in the vocal part, though one could have taken dictation from it had, somehow, one not been swept away by the experience. Hahn’s expert balancing of the lines – always a tricky, in another sense unsung, business in the music of the Second Viennese School – was such that one almost did not realise he was doing it. That was also, naturally, the accomplishment of the golden-toned VSO, here moreover sounding every bit as ‘Viennese’ as their Philharmonic cousins (to whom I am sure they are rightly fed up of being compared). Structure, moreover, was as at least clear as I can recall, Schoenberg’s scenic division of the work, the fourth and final scene far longer than the others, uncommonly apparent and dramatically meaningful, without making the performance seem anything but a convincing whole. Climaxes were, well, as climactic as one could hope, and then some; yet always something was shifting, conclusion or, as we might now say, ‘closure’, never on the horizon. 

Music arose from drama, and vice versa. Schoenberg never points in merely one direction; nor did he here. The whirlwind third scene in particular seemed but a stone’s throw, if that, from the later Schoenberg of, say, the almost-never-performed op.22 Four Orchestral Songs, yet there was always much of earlier writing too: for instance, the op.8 Six Orchestral Songs and, indeed, Gurrelieder. As we entered the final scene, Röschmann edged closer at times to Sprechgesang, yet only at times. Later, the opera – for let us never forget it is one – we seemed to come close to Wozzeck’s Marie, at least in the voice, for the orchestral writing rightly sounded very different. The chill of the strings following ‘Ich will das nicht … nein, ich will nicht …’ offered aftershock that was terrible, even terrifying, indeed, initiating certain intimations, so it seemed, of Pierrot lunaire. There was great tenderness too; how could one not sympathise with this protagonist? One truly felt, moreover, the transformation of the ‘Dämmerung’ to which she referred toward the end, in a musical breeze that testified to Schoenberg’s mastery of orchestration as well as masterly orchestral playing. And the musical upward spiral with which the score came to a close, if not closure, was just the thing: tantalisingly brief, yet saying all that could be said or played. 

What, then, is Zemlinsky’s single greatest work? I am not sure it is quite so silly a question; the Lyric Symphony would probably have no serious rival in any survey, though it might still beg the question, ‘why are you asking?’ One possible answer might be to help understand why other works by the composer have never quite lived up to its renown, though the operas again seem to be experiencing some of a revival. The symphonic poem – his only one – Die Seejungfrau is also faring better now, though its chequered genesis will probably always count against it. Zemlinsky withdrew the score after only three performances, and suppressed it. The unpublished score was divided, the first movement given to Zemlinsky’s friend Marie Pappenheim, also Schoenberg’s librettist for Erwartung. Zemlinsky retained the second and third movements, taking them with him when leaving Europe for the United States in 1938. Only in the early 1980s did scholars come to realise that the three movements belonged together. Die Seejungfrau was finally published, receiving its first ‘modern’ performance, conducted by one of those scholars, Peter Gülke, only in 1984. It may not be a masterpiece – it can, to be brutally honest, be a little repetitive at times and would, unsurprisingly, have benefited from revision – but it is still very well worth hearing, especially in a performance such as this.

Zemlinsky’s method of motivic transformation came very much to the fore, Hahn showing himself as accomplished a Zemlinskian as a Schoenbergian, building tension here, especially in the first movement, as expertly as he had in Erwartung. In some respects, the work came to resemble a wordless, voiceless opera. Its sepulchral (subaquatic) opening here had something in common with Strauss, without ever reducing itself to imitation or ‘likeness’; any similarities, throughout the score, were just that, no more. Perhaps the closest kinship – this has struck me before – was with Mahler’s Das klagende Lied. Maybe there is some influence there – its first performance came in 1901 – but it was actually the first, long unperformed part of Mahler’s score that more often came to mind, so let us banish any thought of derivation and celebrate commonality. Pacing and balance were equally impressive here, and how the orchestra shimmered, glowed, and glistened, as if the waters were first awaiting and then celebrating the arrival of the mermaid and her subjectivity. Opposing and complementary material were deftly shaped, again with a keen ear for drama, in the second movement. The twin return to darkness and progress to something approaching transfiguration of the third both offered an intriguing echo of Tannhäuser and built to a grand climax and further shadows of its own. For both Schoenberg and Zemlinsky, it was not a case of either/or.

Hardenberger/ORF SO/Storgårds: Schuller, Zimmermann, and Dvořák, 6 April 2018

Musikverein

Gunther Schuller: Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee

Bernd Alois Zimmermann: Trumpet Concerto, ‘Nobody knows de trouble I see’
Dvořák: Symphony no.9 in E minor, op.95, ‘From the New World’

Håkan Hardenberger (trumpet)

ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra

John Storgårds (conductor)

 

Much – not all, but much – of the United States’s Western art music tradition is (Austro-)German in origin. ‘You would say that, wouldn’t you?’ might come the reply to someone awaiting publication of his Schoenberg biography. And yes, I suppose I should – yet not only on that count. Consider the (new) worlds of performance, composition, musicology, musical institutions: less so, now, of course, and rightly so; their roots, however, will often be found embedded in Teutonic soil. To appreciate that, one only need consider the childish, often downright bizarre anti-German sentiment encountered today amongst certain anti-modernist composers and musicologists alike. ‘I’m so daring to write/analyse a tune; Wagner/Schoenberg/Adorno/Stockhausen would never have let me do that.’ ‘Yes, neoliberalism has no tunes; you truly cannot move for total serialism in the world of the Culture Industry…’

 

Not that the traffic has ever been one-way, of course; more complex interchanges have deep roots too. George Whitefield Chadwick, trained in Leipzig and subsequently director of the New England Conservatory, which he re-organised on European lines, for instance instituting an opera workshop, pre-empted Dvořák’s use in his ‘New World’ Symphony of ‘negro’ pentatonic melodies in the Scherzo to his Second (1883-5) Symphony. Interestingly, however, Boston audiences reacted far less favourably than New York to Dvořák’s Ninth Symphony, the critic William Apthorp notoriously decrying its use of ‘barbaric’ plantation songs and native American melodies, resulting in a ‘mere apotheosis of ugliness, distorted forms, and barbarous expressions’, He might have been a typical Viennese critic ten years later, fulminating against Schoenberg; racism, after all, is common to both attacks.

 

Here in Vienna’s hallowed Musikverein, home to more than one such attack in the past, we had a splendid opportunity to hear some of that more complex interchange. Gunther Schuller, born in Queens, to German parents, has always struck me, albeit from a position of relative ignorance, as an especially interesting example of a musician, both performing and compositional, able to straddle ‘jazz’ and ‘classical’ divides; not, of course, that such a ‘divide’ has ever been so clear as many, for varying, even opposed, ideological reasons, might have claimed. In the work heard here, moreover, he turned to Paul Klee (a Swiss painter, of course, whom many of us are fond, sometimes all too fond, of comparing to Webern). Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee was heard for the first time at the Proms three years ago (almost), under Oliver Knussen. It was a joy to reacquaint myself with the music, and not only to find my admiration for it undimmed, in so fine a performance as this, from the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and John Storgårds, but also to observe it so warmly received in the hall which, just over a century earlier, had played host to the notorious Skandalkonzert, at which anti-modernist protests against the Second Viennese School had landed some of the participants in court. (Would that… No, I had better stop there.)

 

The first movement, ‘Antique Harmonies’, certainly had an air of the undefinable antique to it. That can cover a multitude of sins and virtues, ranging from Debussy to Birtwistle; there is little point in attempting definition of such a ‘mood’ or ‘air’. Fineness of orchestral balance surely helped, though. The following ‘Abstract Trio’ seemed almost to take us from Schoenberg to Stravinsky; I even fancied that I heard premonitions of the later work of Boulez in its motivic working. Coincidence, doubtless, if indeed that, but intriguing nevertheless, for this Old World listener. The cool jazz of ‘Little Blue Devil’ seemed almost as distilled as Mahler does in Webern; it was also just as recognisable. Muted trumpet set up a connection with the Bernd Alois Zimmermann work to come. Febrile, seething, yes, ‘The Twittering-machine’ indeed, came next, with perhaps a little touch of post-Webern Klangfarbenmelodie. A flute solo from above (rather than off-stage in the conventional, unseen sense) beguiled in ‘Arab Village’: simple, yet never predictable, with a true sense of narrative, almost as in Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. ‘An Eerie Moment’ lived up to its name too, Webern perhaps distilling Stravinsky’s Rite, prior to the unsettling – did it or did it not unify what had gone before? – ‘Pastorale’, which again benefited from expert orchestral balancing by Storgårds and his players.

 

Zimmermann’s hundredth anniversary falls this year. (Click here for my feature on the composer in the New York Times.) There is jazz inspiration to his trumpet concerto too, of course, as well as that of the spiritual, ‘Nobody knows de trouble I see’. Zimmermann was adamant that the work, originally entitled ‘darkey’s darkness’ – thank goodness, from our twenty-first standpoint, that that was ditched – played with elements of progressive rather than ‘commercial’ jazz. I think that may be adjudged a perfectly reasonable claim. (We should always remain on our guard concerning what composers say their music may or may not ‘be’. Why might they be making such a claim?) So, at any rate, it sounded here, Håkan Hardenberger – who else? – joining the orchestra.

 

Varying ‘atmosphere’, almost as varying as that of the Schuller Studies, suffused this outstanding performance – played as the repertory work it almost is, and certainly should be. The long line, both for Hardenberger’s trumpet arabesques and for the orchestra, somewhere between ‘jazz’ and ‘symphonic’, was effortlessly maintained, or so it seemed – until, that is, it was no longer required. Controlled riot might then be the order of the day – or something else. Zimmermann’s later, more overt polystilism was almost there, already; perhaps it actually was instantiated, right there, right then. Rightly, neither score nor performance could be pinned down. And yet, there was ultimately, just as rightly, an almost Nono-like sense of bearing witness – even if one were never quite sure who, or what, the ‘subject’ might be. A hushed close did not comfort, nor should it have done.

 

And so, for the second half, we returned to the ‘New World’ Symphony, bastion of many a more conservative concert programme – despite its rocky initial reception in Boston. There was no routine comfort, however, to Storgårds’s performance. One really had the sense, as the cliché has it, that every note had been rethought – and it probably had. The introduction to the first movement sounded unusually dark, almost as if from Weber’s Freischütz Bohemian Woods. So did much of the rest of the movement, although the symphonic dialectic necessitating contrast, even at times negation, was not only observed but dramatised. Ultimately, a good deal of Brahms was revealed beneath the surface, although much that was not him, even opposed to him, too. Indeed, the contrast between first and second groups proved so great, especially in the exposition, as to sound almost Mahlerian. None of that was achieved at the expense of traditional lilt, which propelled rather than inhibited new worlds to come.

 

The second movement’s celebrated, all-too-celebrated cor anglais solo was taken beautifully, yet never just beautifully, likewise other solos. That Largo had all the time in the world to unfold, yet not a second more than necessary. It never forsook the quality of song, of Europeanised spiritual. Fast, insistent, almost brutally so, the Scherzo proved exhilarating, brought into still greater relief by (relative) woodland relaxation and charm. The finale proved a finale in the emphatic sense, as it must, with fury not only in the first but the second group too. Sometimes it can relax a little too much, but not here. Its dynamic telos was maintained until the end, as terse as the first movement, and yet, crucially, utterly different too. Brahms, again, remained, if never without ambiguity. This was a fine conclusion indeed, to an outstanding ORF concert. More soon, please!

 

Bruckner Orchestra Linz/Angelico - Mahler, 23 June 2017

Musikverein

Symphony no.3

Elisabeth Kulman (contralto)

Ladies’, Children’s and Youth Choirs of the Landestheater, Linz

Bruckner Orchestra Linz

Francesco Angelico (conductor)

‘Honoured Herr Direktor,’ began one Arnold Schoenberg, fresh from the dress rehearsal on 12 December 1904 for the first Vienna performance of Mahler’s Third Symphony. Schoenberg continued his letter to the Director of the State Opera, hymning his experience of that concert, from which he dated his conversion to Mahler’s music:

In order to come close, even remotely so, to the unheard-of impression your symphony had upon me, I cannot speak to you as musician to musician, but must rather speak to you as one human being to another. For: I have seen your soul naked, stark naked. It lay before me, like a wild, mysterious landscape, with blood-curdling depths and ravines, and next, bright, comely, sunny meadows and idyllic places of repose.

Schoenberg confessed that he had not found the symphony’s ‘programme’, which he had only read after the performance, remotely in correspondence with his own experience. Instead, he had felt ‘the pain of one disillusioned … truth, the most relentless truth!’ Few encounters with the Third, perhaps with any of Mahler’s symphonies, will prove quite so decisive, quite so transformational, as that: how could they? By the same token, a performance that does not teach one something new, does not present something of a different way of considering, of hearing the work will have failed. I am delighted, then, to report that this performance, from the Bruckner Orchestra Linz, under Francesco Angelico, certainly showed me much that was new, as much about possibilities of listening as about the work ‘itself’.

The first surprise was that Angelico was conducting at all. Most of the audience, me included, had expected Dennis Russell Davies. Angelico, a very late replacement, soon had one thinking, or at least feeling, that, a few occasional slips of ensemble apart, he had always been going to conduct. From the opening of the third movement, we heard a performance that was flexible yet directed: none of the arbitrary, frankly narcissistic pulling around of the score that made a London performance from Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic a few years ago well-nigh unbearable. (Fashion victims went wild, of course; they always do.) This was a monumental awakening, greater than any of us, which could yet incorporate individual subjectivity: Mahler’s, the performers’, our own, even Schoenberg’s. There was something of what I imagine, however absurdly, the spirit of a Mengelberg in this music to have been. Even when I personally – who cares? – would have relaxed a little more, there was always good, supportable reason for what Angelico did. The chorale passages were taken swiftly: light, lucid, transparent even, as if a message from another world. And the marches could both be nervously enjoyed for their own sake, whilst still knowing where they were heading. The golden sound of the orchestra – doubtless the hall’s too, but a great acoustic still needs a great orchestra – was magical, but never gave the slightest impression of being such for its own sake. Just as important, the players and their conductor were not afraid to sound nasty, to snarl, to take the music to the edge. The final climax was almost – I said ‘almost’ – enough to make one reconsider one’s dislike of applause between movements. It would certainly have been preferable to silence, followed by applause (from some) as the soloist came on stage. What were they thinking?!

The second movement perhaps lacked simplicity (however artfully contrived that simplicity may be), but that is better than being simplistic. Angelico showed himself fully aware of colour and its complications. Again, extremity was an option – even to the point of contradiction. There were a few too many rough orchestral edges, but in the greater scheme of things, they barely mattered. The third movement offered a seductive sardonicism in colour and rhythm. Its edges’ sharpness was unquestionably a good thing. If there were a few occasions on which I wondered whether the line were in danger of becoming lost, complexity again certainly registered. The posthorn solo was delivered from above with surpassing beauty, a truly ravishing contrast to the disconcerting weirdness of tricksters or the truly malign to be heard elsewhere. Here there was to be no ironing out of differences.

The colour of Elisabeth Kulman’s voice seemed to me perfect for the fourth movement. Almost reed-like, it spoke with truly Zarathustrian dignity. The Linz orchestra was both a wondrous backdrop and far more than that, speaking as if it were Wagner’s orchestra as Greek Chorus. Kulman could be more imploring, though, too, as she showed later on, when the text suggested or demanded it. The sudden lift of mood for the fifth movement was just the ticket: a signal for duly ambiguous enchantment. It was a fairy-tale – and we all know of what difficult, unconscious desires those speak. There was again, no break before the finale – which nicely highlighted the tonal difference. Angelico kept it moving, never mistaking sentiment for sentimentality. It was not a huge, overwhelming string sound; instead, it sounded like a string quartet writ (very) large. One truly felt, as well as heard, bows on strings. And yes, it did what it needed to do – just as it had for Schoenberg many years earlier. There was an honesty, an integrity to this performance that moved me just as it should.

Mahler, who had already been observing Schoenberg’s career from afar, immediately sent him a ticket for the premiere itself. The rest is musical history.

VPO/Jansons - Dvořák, Strauss, and Stravinsky, 17 June 2017

Goldener Saal, Musikverein

Dvořák – Symphony no.8 in G major, op.88

Strauss – Tod und Verklärung, op.24

Stravinsky – The Firebird: Suite

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Mariss Jansons (conductor)

On paper, this was perhaps a rather strange programme; I am not sure it quite added up in practice either. Yet, with such fine performances of three individual works, I am not sure that that mattered too much really. To hear the Vienna Philharmonic under a conductor it loves – and it clearly loves Mariss Jansons – in the Musikverein is always something special; and so it was here.

Dvořak’s Eighth Symphony has some lovely music, although, like the programme as a whole, it is difficult to discern ultimate coherence in it. The problem, at least for me, lies in the outer two movements, especially the finale. Jansons and his players gave as fine a performance as I have heard, whether in the concert hall or on record, and if they could not turn it into something that it is not, that is hardly their fault. The opening of the first movement sounded almost as if it were an introduction to just how good an orchestra can sound: dark lower strings, magical woodwind, golden violins, and eventually mellow brass too combining with the fabled acoustic of the hall (and its visual aspect too) to create something such as those who have never been here will never know. There was craft, indeed art, in Jansons’s construction of the exposition from what might otherwise seem rather disparate elements. The movement as a whole winningly suggested the world of the operatic overture: perhaps not so bad a way to think of music that does not always bear close formal scrutiny. The Adagio immediately took us into a different world, more profound, more meaningful; it was as if we were entering a dark Bohemian forest, which, as one’s eyes – or ears – adjusted revealed itself to be full of a myriad of colours one might never initially have expected. The forest came to life around or in front of us, sonorities and harmonies seemingly revealing themselves rather than being revealed. Again, that takes performing mastery to do so. The tempo to the third movement sounded just ‘right’, not only in itself, but in the way it appeared to enable all other aspects of the music, its rhythmic lilt, its melodies, its harmonies, to come to life.  Jansons left us in no doubt concerning both its structure and its dynamic form. As for the finale, the playing was magnificent, and the audience clearly loved it. Perhaps I am missing something.

I doubt that anyone, by contrast, would question Strauss’s absolute mastery of the tone poem in Tod und Verklärung – even those who uncomprehendingly decry works such as his Alpine Symphony. (The loss is entirely theirs.) I must admit that I rarely think overtly of the programme, or at least of its potential detail, when hearing this work; on this occasion, however, I did, entirely without sacrifice to the experience of the whole. Jansons shaped the latter so surely, so ‘naturally’ – which, again, disguises a great deal of art – that the flicker of a heartbeat there, the potential song of a ‘soul (how ironic, given Strauss’s materialism) there acquired just enough prominence of their own. Even as music that was at least Tristan-esque was sung, one heard the difference, the strangely Nietzschean liberation from thoughts of redemption. (Wagner, Mahler, or, yes, Schoenberg would doubtless ensnare us again, as soon as we heard their music, but that is another story.) A slight pause – a comma, if you will – might attract attention, but never in a self-regarding way. To make the narrative, musical or otherwise, reveal itself in this way is no mean achievement. Orchestral balances were well-nigh perfect, so much so that one did not recognise them as such, hearing only the music – and, of course, the Vienna Philharmonic playing it to the manner born. Likewise, the unforced nature of climaxes proved an object lesson in Strauss performance.

Strauss and Stravinsky always make for interesting comparison and contrast. Just when one thinks they might have something in common, experience proves one wrong once again. Hearing the 1919 Firebird Suite in this context, one naturally latched on to an occasional melodic tag here, even an orchestral colour, that might suggest similarity, only to be shown that the two composers, and the two works, come from very different worlds. Such was the case despite their respective debts to Wagner, freely acknowledged in Strauss’s case, far less so in Stravinsky’s, even via Rimsky-Korsakov. The opening bars, dark, yet, like Strauss’s, never quite inchoate, were but the first case in point. Full, golden orchestral tone meant something different here, and rightly so; an almost Gallic transparency was also most welcome. Not that that was accomplished with any loss to precision. The Infernal Dance would have woken any slumbering audience member: not through excessive volume, but through musical urgency alone. Even to hear the tone of the bells was a thing of wonder. I rarely long to hear the entire ballet; on this occasion, I should happily have heard it as an additional item to the programme.

Hadelich/Tonkünstler-Orch./Yamada - Haydn, Adès, and Mendelssohn, 24 November 2015

Musikverein, Vienna

Haydn – Violin Concerto in C major, Hob.VIIa/1

Thomas Adès – Concentric Paths
Mendelssohn – Symphony no.3 in A minor, 'Scottish', op.56

Augustin Hadelich (violin)
Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich
Kazuki Yamada (conductor)

This was, as ‘they’ say, a concert of two halves: two violin concertos in the first, in truly excellent performances by Augustin Hadelich; a symphony in the second, let down by uncomprehending conducting by Kazuki Yamada. Unifying the two halves was the splendid, dark-hued, ‘old German’ playing of the Lower Austrian Tonkünstler Orchestra. It had been far too long since I had heard them – three years ago, in fact, in a wonderful Mahler Second – but it was a delight to hear them once again, aided of course by the fabled warmth of the Musikverein acoustic.

 

Let me get the Mendelssohn out of the way: a real pity, given the depth of bass tone we heard from the orchestra. The first movement benefited from a beautifully grave opening, which really seemed to be leading somewhere. Alas, there was far less of a sense to that in the ensuing Allegro poco agitato, which, under Yamada, progressed only sectionally, with little impression of an overarching line, let alone of the dynamism inherent in Mendelssohn’s form. The scherzo is marked Vivace non troppo; not only did Yamada disregard ‘non troppo’ but he substituted Presto. His podium dancing was eye-catching, if unfortunate. The great Adagio, beautifully dark in orchestral colour, again proceeded fitfully, bar by bar. Gravity came through by virtue of the playing, but the conductor needed to make the music sound more at ease with itself. A hard-driven finale made me long to hear the same orchestra play the symphony with another conductor.

 

In retrospect, it became even more clear that the Haydn C major Concerto had been the soloist’s interpretation. Cultivated playing from both Hadelich and the orchestra was a joy from beginning to end: such a delightful change from the world of ‘authenticke’ grotesquerie some curious souls claim to favour in Classical music. In the first movement, everything simply sounded ‘right’: the tempo, rhythm, phrasing, articulation, harmonic motion, and so forth. Hadelich’s double-stopping was despatched with just as much beauty as his more lyrical lines, likewise his cadenza. The slow movement breathed air similar to, although not quite identical to, Mozart’s Salzburg. Lovely orchestral pizzicato heightened the resemblance: delightful! The finale was lively without that wearying need some soloists show to scream ‘high octane’. Most important, it was true to the work’s – and the performance’s – character; it acted as a finale.

I have often felt ambivalent about Thomas Ades’s music, but gained a much stronger impression from this work for violin and concerto, Concentric Paths. Although in the ‘traditional’ three movements, there was nothing Classical about their respective weighting, the second, ‘Paths’, clearly the weightiest as well as the longest. The striking, circling (?) opening put me in mind of a composer wanting – fair enough – to have his quasi-minimalist or indeed his quasi-modernist cake and eat it. As the concerns of this first movement, ‘Rings’, came more clearly into focus, I was often put in mind, not unpleasingly, of Prokofiev. Hadelich’s cleanness of tone was just as striking, however high-lying his part – and sometimes it is very high indeed. Frustrated and sometimes non-frustrated lyricism were often apparent, the intensity of dialogue between the soloist and other soloists from within the orchestra – taking up figures from each other, developing them – a particular joy. Shards, gestures, fragments and more of melodies: the second movement opened as if one were hearing only part of a greater whole, which again seemed to come into focus, and with a particularly strong sense of drama. The tuba, perhaps inevitably, put me in mind of Fafner – but Fafner with a sense of decidedly non-Wagnerian irony. Again, Prokofiev did not seem so very far away at times. Disjuncture of meter offer a decidedly irregular – in more than one sense – basis and/or topping to the third movement, ‘Rounds’. A Prokofiev-like combination of lyricism and the mechanistic is engendered with decidedly more (post-)modernistic means – and that, too, was how it sounded in performance.

VPO/Shani - Bach and Mahler, 23 November 2015

Grosser Saal, Musikverein

Bach – Piano Concerto no.1 in D minor, BWV 1052

Mahler – Symphony no.1 in D major

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Lahav Shani (piano/conductor)

 

What a refreshing change to hear a Bach keyboard concerto not only played on the piano, but by someone who did not sound ashamed of the instrument! In the performance of Bach’s D minor concerto, one needed to make no allowances for Lahav Shani making his debut with the Vienna Philharmonic; this would have been a fine concert from anyone. The orchestra was small – for the Bach, that is – at 6.6.5.4.3, although doubtless enormous enough for the ayatollahs of ‘authenticity’ to order exemplary punishment. Shani took the first movement faster than I had heard before, but without it sounding in the least garbled or harried. Demisemiquavers remained melodic, likewise trills: never mere effect. There was always clear understanding of relative melodic weight within groups, as there was from the Vienna strings, similarly of the work’s greater contours. The Adagio was taken rightly in slow triple time, unmistakeably triple, unmistakeably an Adagio. (If that sounds tautologous, tell that to the zealots!) Shani again proved his own man, the tone of his cantilena noble, almost defiant, always underpinned by the bass. He can certainly spin a long line without detriment to the chiaroscuro. There was a broadly, harmonically, conceived ritardando at the end, which, being harmonically conceived, was not in the slightest excessive. The finale was again fast, but not too fast. Shani’s piano cut nicely through the strings. A duet with solo cello brought a nice element of variation, whilst the light and shade in the piano part was such as one might hear in an excellent performance of Schumann, but hears far too rarely today in Bach.

There was, needless to say, a larger body of strings for Mahler’s First Symphony. From my seat in the right hand-side of the balcony, I could not see the whole orchestra, but there were sixteen first violins, going down to eight double basses (in VPO style, along the back of the orchestra), firsts and seconds split to left and right of the conductor. Shani conducted the work from memory; he is, apparently, about to conduct it in Birmingham with the CBSO. One would expect the Vienna Philharmonic violins to sail through the stiff test of those opening harmonics; it nevertheless remains a stiff test and is always worthy of praise when passed. Shani’s performance was anything but an identikit performance. Again, he proved his own man, but differences from tradition/Schlamperei never sounded different for their own sake; they could always be justified within his conception. During the long introduction to the first movement, a growling bass line, at an unusually – convincingly – slow tempo, had the woodwind sound unusually – convincingly – uneasy above. The contrast with spring-like gambolling thereafter, with wonderfully sweet string playing, was clear, but so too was kinship, calling into question that contrast; Mahler’s playing with sonata form expectations was clearly both understood and communicated, harmonic tension screwed up nicely. The symphony’s Wayfarer roots were clear, but so was their transformation. Moments and passages of unease sounded, not through undue grotesquerie, but through their roots in and deviation from German Romanticism. And when the dam finally burst, there was some magnificent orchestral swagger, perhaps most notably from the Vienna horns, but not just from them. I was a little uncertain about the somewhat throwaway ending, but again, Shani was clearly not hidebound by Schlamperei.

 

It was good to hear the strings really dig in for the Ländler to follow. Here, numbers counted, but still more so did rhythm and its relationship to harmony. Shani clearly, like his mentor, Daniel Barenboim, has a fine ear for harmony and its implications. Beethoven is a sterner test again, but I should be interested to hear what he has to say there. The bass line again proved the root of much questioning. A tender horn call – the German, weich, so often seems the mot juste in such a context – ushering in the Trio, seemed momentarily to look into the future, as far, perhaps as the Seventh Symphony, reminding us that the undeniable charm of the new material was not to be taken without a good dose of irony. The return of the initial material had it thereby sound quite transformed, the showmanship of the conclusion growing out of it rather than imposed upon it.

 

Ghostly kettledrums, taking Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream somewhere it never wanted to go, began their dance of death with solo double-bass. (Thank goodness there was none of that nonsense of employing the entire section, an absurdity for which Sander Wilkens, editor of the so-called critical edition, should hang his head in shame!)  The canon gathered momentum just as it should: with a fragility that proved both real and deceptive. Pyramus and Thisbe indeed! And the Klezmer music was equally well judged; remembered, reimagined, integrated, the tension thereby all the greater than if it sounded, as too often occurs, as if it had come from nowhere. It was sardonic, but the Romantic framing remained: both need each other. There was, moreover, a wonderful stillness thereafter, which put me in mind of the slow movement to the Fourth Symphony. Solo oboe and violin cut through that stillness with cruel beauty. And then: harp intonation of death, returning us to an eerily intensified ‘Bruder Martin’. The end, intriguingly, sounded as if it might disintegrate into the opening of Berg’s Op.6 Orchestral Pieces.

 

The opening of the finale proved quite a wake-up call. This is hardly a time for understatement, and yet, what was to come reminded us that theatrics need a harmonic foundation. A little too much of those theatrics at times? Perhaps, but there is more than one way to skin a Mahlerian cat. I, for one, rather welcomed the sense of a blinding flash, especially – and this was the key in retrospect – when the slow, cloying, knowing sweetness, honest in its desperation for a past that never was, told its own tale. If one has the Vienna Philharmonic’s strings, one might as well use them to full effect! Episodes screamed, but did not just scream; they spoke too. Moments, passages of calm, as in the preceding movement, were not just what they might initially have seemed either. This was an integrative reading, which this movement, its structure perhaps problematical unless powerfully unified in performance, cries out for – in every sense. And so, triumph, when it came, felt and indeed had been earned. I have little doubt that we shall hear more from this pianist-conductor.

 

Perahia/COE/Haitink - Schumann, 20 November 2015

Grosser Saal, Musikverein

Manfred, op.115: Overture

Piano Concerto in A minor, op.54
Symphony no.2 in C major, op.61

Murray Perahia (piano)

Chamber Orchestra of Europe
Bernard Haitink (conductor)

As safe bets go, this all-Schumann programme, with these musicians, would probably have veered toward the extreme end of safe. Yet, however heightened the expectations, they were not to be disappointed by performances whose supreme musicality delighted and edified from beginning to end. The golden acoustic – it really does sound more or less as it looks, albeit without the questionable ornamentation that must have given Adolf Loos severe palpitations – of the Musikverein’s Grosser Saal did no harm either, of course, although the chattering pair of girls behind me certainly did. No number of hard stares seemed to be enough; why do these people bother going?

 

I am not sure that I have ever heard the Manfred Overture in concert before; if I have, I have forgotten the experience, which forgetfulness might well speak for itself. We rarely, if ever, hear the complete incidental music: a great pity, but then much the same can be said of a good deal of Schumann’s music. At any rate, Haitink and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe had nothing to fear from the most exalted of comparisons. Indeed, whilst the orchestra was of course smaller, though not at all too small, and Haitink’s way is not Furtwängler’s – whatever the inspiration, neither is Barenboim’s – the darkness of tone Furtwängler drew from the Berlin Philharmonic did not always sound so distant. The extraordinary drama of such a performance, sounding with no exaggeration as if everyone’s life depended on it, is doubtless unrepeatable, just as no one could or should imitate Furtwängler in the Ninth. However, if the orchestral lines did not ‘speak’ quite like that – how could they do? – there was a noticeable, parallel kinship with Wagner. Two of the very greatest of Wagner conductors, and moreover, two of the very greatest Walküre conductors, impart their different varieties of musico-dramatic eloquence to the same score. Those Neapolitan sixth chords tell so much – which might perhaps resist the attempt to put it into words – because the crucial importance of harmony and, above all, harmonic rhythm is present throughout. It is that greatest wonder of Western music, harmony, which shapes the melodic, almost verbal, contours above. We feel again the loss, Genoveva notwithstanding, of Schumann as opera composer – even if, perhaps particularly if, it could never really have been. And the playing of the COE was just as committed as the Berlin Philharmonic: whether the Freischütz-like brass, the vernal woodwind, or the strings, whose every note pulsed with life – life, which Furtwängler, in his echt-Romantic way, distinguished in his notebooks from ‘vitality’, a second order virtue, longing for something already gone. Ours is largely a secondary lot, or sometimes it seems, but without grandstanding, Haitink and the COE permitted this neglected masterpiece to shine as itself.

 

The Piano Concerto is of course, a different animal. No one could call it neglected; indeed, it is the sort of work I only really wants to hear in a great performance, since otherwise one might just as well return at home to the great recordings of the past. Well, this was a great performance of the present. If I say that the work appeared simply to speak for itself, the claim stands open to objection in any number of ways. ‘Appeared’, ‘simply’, etc. The art that conceals art is in many respects the greatest and most difficult art of all. But there was a wisdom here born not only of lengthy experience, but also surely of the renewed delight in treating again with a masterpiece: finding new things, no doubt, but also, I suspect, finding old things and letting them speak, or sing, anew. Haitink and the orchestra offered the most impeccable of balance, lines weighted as if we were hearing, say, Boulez subtly and yet unmistakeably bring to the surface a Bergian Hauptstimme. Yet beneath that surface, again, lay harmony. So too, it did with Perahia, whose renowned love for Schenker was clearly in evidence. And yet, individual lines sang with Mozartian eloquence, the eloquence of a Mozart piano concerto in which the ‘purely’ vocal has been aufgehoben. A right-hand melody, in which the shadows deepened, lifted, or perhaps in which our standpoint upon them shifted, was crafted in the most apparently ‘natural’ of ways, just as it would be from the outstanding COE woodwind. Transitions, such as that from the Intermezzo from the finale, were a model of their kind, uniting every one of those virtues listed above. Moreover, not the least virtue of the finale would be when a Brahmsian piano chord revealed through its voicing the potentialities of a future later still. Perahia is not noted as an exponent of Schoenberg; indeed, I recall an interview in which he admitted ruefully that he did not understand twelve-note music. This, however, made me long to hear Perahia, Haitink, and – why not? – the Chamber Orchestra of Europe in a performance of that composer’s piano concerto. They might even give Uchida and Boulez a run for their money. Such was not, however, my final thought: that lay with the jubilation of warm, radiant, Musikverein A major: a Romantic battle had been lovingly won.

 

Haitink’s performance of the Second Symphony was to be no less distinguished. (It would by this stage have been surprising indeed, if it had.) Both of the earlier works are in many, although not all, respects ‘symphonic’ of their kind; this, however, was the ‘real thing’, as it were. What struck me – and I might have expected it, but experiencing it in the flesh can surprise one even with the unsurprising – was the structural grasp Haitink and his players displayed not only of each movement but of the symphony as a whole. That was not to paint each movement or indeed each paragraph, each phrase even, in similar shades. There was certainly diversity in unity, and vice versa, here. Again, I think of those chords from the piano concerto, with seeds not only of the future I mentioned, but also, of course, of the past, Bach in particular. Bach is, not without reason, often invoked in discussions of the first movement, but for me, Beethoven is just as important, perhaps more so. Moreover, there is kinship – I am not quite so sure that it is ‘influence’, but that is neither here nor there – with Wagner too. Such aspects were readily apparent, perhaps all the more so for the lack of underlining. Haitink, whatever he might be, is certainly not an ‘underliner’. (I imagine with horror what some of those intent on arbitrarily pulling around symphonic structures would have done with, or rather to, this.) Once again, the freshness, the exhilaration of the COE’s response was a joy in itself, not that it could or should have been heard merely ‘in itself’. The scherzo dazzled, not in a flashy way – again, can one imagine a less ‘flashy’ conductor? – but through the unleashing of kinetic, Mendelssohnian, above all profoundly musical energy. There was nothing sentimental to the slow movement, but nor was it treated in the perfunctory way that some, eager to avoid charges of sentimentality, will inflict upon it. Phrase upon phrase unfolded, almost as if in a poetry reading, until the dam broke and the high yet not un-tortured spirits of the finale flowed, like the Rhine itself. Beethoven again seemed a guiding but not an overbearing inspiration; Schumann spoke for himself.

 

Stemme/Barenboim - Brahms, Wagner, Nadia and Lili Boulanger, Sibelius, 8 November 2015

Großer Saal, Musikverein

Brahms – Liebestreu, op.3 no.1

Botschaft, op.47 no.1
Meine Liebe ist grün, op.63 no.5
Auf dem Kirchhofe, op.105 no.4
Von ewiger Liebe, op.43 no.1

Wagner – Wesendonck-Lieder

Nadia Boulanger – Les Lilas sont en folie
Soir d’hiver
Was will die einsame Träne

Lili Boulanger – Attente
Au pied de mon lit
Si tout ceci n’est qu’un pauvre rêve

Sibelius – Törnet, op.88 no.6
I systrar, I bröder, I äsklande par, op.86 no.6
Den första kyssen, op.37 no.1
Soluppgång, op.37 no.3
Var det en dröm, op.37 no.4
Flickan kom ifrån sin älsklings mote, op.37 no.5

Nina Stemme (soprano)

Daniel Barenboim (piano)

This is one of those occasions when I am essentially entering a personal diary entry rather than a review. The reason is simple enough, and is intended as no disrespect to the artists, quite the contrary: I was not well, and devoted far too much of my attention to stifling a cough to be able to write properly on the performances. It was, as one might have expected, a splendid concert. Stemme was her wonderful self: a little steely, though a good way short of Nilsson, less impeccable with her diction than I might have expected, but more than compensating by the meaning she imparted with the marriage of words and text. We heard more than a little Brünnhilde: not only in the Wesendonck-Lieder, but also on occasion in Brahms. Barenboim was at his best as a collaborative artist: responsive, in no sense domineering, but very much an equal partner. How he must know and feel the kinship with Tristan! I found the Nadia Boulanger songs pleasant, if somewhat generic: a nice reminder of Barenboim’s association with her. Lili Boulanger’s songs, on the other hand, announced the ‘real thing’ from the outset, and the performances sounded all the more committed; there was no doubting the compositional voice, post-Debussyan, to be sure, and with connections one might draw, but never to be reduced to them. (I must hear these songs again, soon!) I am no fan of Sibelius’s symphonies, but am always happy enough to hear his songs, and there was certainly much to be gained in hearing them from Stemme. She sang, I think, another as her first encore; I do not know which. The second, more surprising, was Weill’s ‘My ship has sails’ from Lady in the Dark. More later in the week, when I hope to be recovered! (Alas, a Wien Modern concert tonight had to fall by the wayside this evening.)

Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich/Orozco-Estrada - Mahler, 15 December 2012

Goldener Saal, Musikverein, Vienna

Symphony no.2 in C minor

Juliana Banse (soprano)

Janina Baechle (mezzo-soprano)

Wiener Singverein (chorus master: Johannes Prinz)

Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich

Andrés Orozco-Estrada (conductor)

 

 

Andrés Orozco-Estrada opened his music directorship of the Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich with a performance of Mahler’s First Symphony: an apt choice for new beginnings. Now Orozco-Estrada and his orchestra have moved on to the Second. With residencies in both Vienna (the Musikverein), and in Lower Austria (the ‘Niederosterreich’ of its present name), namely at the St Pölten Festspielhaus and at the Grafenegg Festival, this orchestra nevertheless retains a connection, at least in name and arguably in spirit, with the Vienna Tonkünstler-Sozietät, founded in 1771, and more strongly with the Verein Weiner Tonkünstler-Orchester, whose name I repeatedly come across in my Schoenberg research; indeed, it gave the premiere under Franz Schreker of Gurrelieder in 1913. There was ample Viennese and Austrian tradition, then, upon which to call, but how would the performance turn out in practice? Very well, indeed, as it turned out. Following a period characterised by a double whammy of massive over-exposure for Mahler’s music and for the most part inferior, pointless performances thereof, this concert, along with Daniele Gatti’s truly outstanding account of the Fifth earlier this year with the Philharmonia, helped restore my faith in contemporary Mahler performance.

 

It certainly did no harm experiencing a fine Mahler performance in the Musikverein; no London hall could come close to providing the acoustical advantages. The opening of the first movement immediately emphasised both cleanness of attack and roundness of sonority. Yet one would have to experience a performance worthy of the name too – and, whilst not flawless, this most certainly was. A strong sense of rhythm imparted a sense of fate, of pre-ordination. Unisons, even early on, had a Brucknerian power, though Mahler’s score is of course for the most part far more variegated. The Tonkünstler Orchestra’s tone was very different from that of the ORF Symphony Orchestra, whom I had heard in the same hall a week previously: less golden, but with greater edge and more precise, the sloppiness of the latter orchestra’s playing of Berg’s Three Orchestral Pieces brought into greater relief by the contrast. Sweeter and edgier sounds both have their advantages; here, consciously or otherwise, bitterness and anger came to the fore. Baleful woodwind, oboes especially sounding very much in the Viennese tradition, heightened the effect, though they could contribute equally well to the almost epiphanic contrast of those magical vistas, physical and metaphysical, Mahler conjures up, looking forward to without prefiguring the final Auferstehung. Orozco-Estrada imparted a highly effective dazed impression to sections of the development, before the ‘hero’ lashed out. Battle royal between the two tendencies characterised the drama played out, the recapitulation emerging all the blacker as a result. Indeed, this must have been one of the most chilling accounts of this movement I have heard, at times close to the Sixth Symphony, even to the Second Viennese School. An unfortunate passage of intonational problems during the recapitulation could readily be overlooked in the greater scheme of things. The chorus entered at the end of the movement: not quite what Mahler had in mind in requesting a period of silence; nor was audience chatter, but anyway... At least the orchestra took the opportunity to re-tune.

 

The second movement struck a nice balance between post-Romantic Sehnsucht – almost literally seeking to see – and something nastier, more ‘modernistic’, for want of a better word. Interestingly, however, it was the well-nigh Beethovenian rhythmic insistence Orozco-Estrada elicited from his players, strings in particular, on which that darker side of proceedings was founded. (One moment in which the players drifted slightly apart was soon put right.) Pizzicato playing in this context was not so innocent as one might have suspected, yet without inappropriately beckoning the deathly marionettes of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony.

 

There was greater malevolence to be heard, of course, in the third movement, though again it was not unduly exaggerated and thereby emerged all the more powerful. Mahler’s rhythms were tight and yet humanly conveyed; they did much of the work. The movement was sardonic, at times shading into nihilistic, yet those characteristics came from within rather than being externally applied – as far too often one hears. The end calls for (relative) exaggeration and received it; whilst remaining skilfully integrated into the movement’s overall form, it also looked forward with rightful uncertainty to what was – might be? – to come.

 

Though there were a couple of uncertainties of a less propitious kind to the opening of the fourth movement – both from orchestral brass and from a telephone: when shall we be delivered from such selfishness? – and I initially felt that a more hushed quality would have helped, the more forthright quality adopted by Orozco-Estrada and Janina Baechle had its own rewards. One could certainly hear Baechle’s every word – unlike, say, the soloist in a performance a few days earlier of Mahler’s Fourth – and she exuded a maternal consolation that put me a little in mind of Brahms’s German Requiem. The oboe solo proved magically imploring, its phrasing beautifully shaped. Ideally paced and varied by Oroczo-Estrada, this movement also offered orchestral colours and textures that seemed to peer forward to the later world of the Rückert-Lieder. Above all, it was the patent sincerity of the performances, especially that of Baechle, that won me over.

 

After the relief of ‘O Röschen rot!’ we were immediately plunged back – forward? – into Mahler’s musico-dramatic transformation of the symphony in the finale. (Should that be symphonic transformation of the music-drama? It should probably be both.) There was no doubt that there was a good way to travel yet, reminiscences of material past both tugging back and impelling forward: mid-way, as it were, between Wagner and Beethoven, goal-orientation both immanent and yet questioned. Off-stage brass were excellent, likewise the rest of the orchestra; I especially relished dark-hued bassoons and double basses. A sense of pilgrimage – via Berlioz’s Harold? – was conveyed through steadiness that yet progressed, not least through, or perhaps even despite, the offices of Meistersinger-ish counterpoint. Grave brass evoked Fafner and yet also something more ancient, cutting very much to the core of Mahler’s Dante-like imagination. Shivers were sent down the spine, not out of mere sensuous pleasure, but from the thrill of foreboding, of the apocalypse to come. We talk of Ives, and not unreasonably, as a great pioneer, but much of what the American composer achieved seemed to be present here already: chaotic, yet also far more accomplished, a march of humanity with all its imperfection and yet also its ultimate nobility of spirit. Or so Mahler, the Church to which he would convert, and indeed the Jewish faith in which the composer was raised, would have us believe. (The alternative is simply too dreadful to contemplate, as the twentieth century would discover.) The slick and utterly meaningless manipulations I heard employed by Simon Rattle in a Berlin performance of this symphony had nothing upon this true matter of life and death. Brass from outside the hall again brought Berlioz to mind: this time, the Grande messe des morts. Then an uneasy, yet hopeful, calm descended, needful of somewhere to head, answered by the awe-inspiring grosse Appel and its strange echoes from flute and piccolo. The destination, of course, as in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony – and especially a Wagnerian understanding thereof – was the Word, arguably with a more theological element here too. Impressive unanimity amongst an excellent Wiener Singverein, above which Juliane Banse’s soprano could soar quite magically, prepared the way for redemption of the orchestra. (A Mahlerian answer to Parsifal’s enigma?) Not everything was perfect – should it be in Mahler? Well, only if allied to the musical understanding of a Boulez – for there were occasional imperfections of tone, though nothing remotely serious. Far more important, as authentically Mahlerian a spirit was summoned as I can recall for quite some time, especially in this symphony. (Arguably since I heard it chez Boulez himself.) Baechle’s sincerity – that word again – on ‘O Glaube...’ was deeply moving, the choral response direct and carefully shaded. Orozco-Estrada carefully handled the mounting tension until the release of ‘Sterben werd’ich, um zu leben!’ It was thrilling and consoling, in a performance imbued with the Glauben (faith) of which Klopstock and Mahler spoke. As bells pealed and the organ thundered, my Glauben in Mahler performance was well and truly restored.

 

What we need are fewer, better Mahler performances: special occasions, mouted only when a conductor actually has something to say, not endless cycles from superannuated ‘maestri’ programmed in order to fill much-needed anniversary gaps. On this showing, moreover, the Colombian Oroczo-Estrada is a true Mahlerian: a far more interesting and thoughtful musician than an endlessly-hyped colleague from across the border. I hope that we shall hear much more of Andrés Oroczo-Estrada, not least in the United Kingdom.

Rotterdam PO/Nézet-Séguin - Beethoven and Mahler, 12 December 2012

Goldener Saal, Musikverein, Vienna

Beethoven – Symphony no.2 in D major, op.36

Mahler – Symphony no.4

Kate Royal (soprano)

Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra

Yannick Nézet-Séguin (conductor)

 

 

12.12.12: some of us thought of it as International Dodecaphonic Day. Still, so far as I could ascertain, and despite my privileged position of working for a fortnight at the Arnold Schönberg Center, I could not discover any music by Schoenberg – or, for that matter, by either other member of the Viennese Holy Trinity – being performed in Vienna. Mahler, then, was as close as one might come, though alas he was not served especially well in this performance of his Fourth Symphony.

 

First, however, and rather to my surprise, came rather a good performance of Beethoven’s Second Symphony. Having visited Heiligenstadt on Saturday evening, it seemed quite fitting to hear a work written at the time of Beethoven’s celebrated Testament, even if the symphony bears little obvious sign of the torment the composer voiced in that heart-rending cry. In this performance, from the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, both the introduction and the main body of the first movement were taken at a relatively swift pace, yet sounded proportionate to each other; as Wagner long ago pointed out, such proportions are far more important than absolute tempi. The transition between both sections convinced, not least on account of that clear relation between the two. Strings and woodwind proved nicely responsive to each other. And the music sounded with a sense of fun: a young man’s Beethoven, but none the worse for that. Bar an unfortunate horn fluff in the recapitulation, there was little one could reasonably fault here. The slow movement again flowed convincingly, with winning echoes of Haydn not only in the string dialogue but also in the darker hued passages. (Heiligenstadt? Perhaps?) Occasionally the strings would have benefited from less parsimony with respect to vibrato, but that was not a problem to be exaggerated. If one is going to push hard, it is probably better to do so in the scherzo than elsewhere; certainly Nézet-Séguin’s slight relaxation for the trio made its point. The hall at any rate took off some of the edge, and line was well maintained. Beethoven in Haydnesque mode was again a strong characteristic of the finale, articulated with style, the Rotterdam cellos especially gorgeous. A slightly slower tempo might have heightened the humour, but there was much to enjoy. This was not profound Beethoven after Klemperer or Furtwängler – today, Colin Davis or Barenboim – but that may well come; there was a lovely sheen to the performance and much of the music understanding was already in place. In the manner of those irritating Amazon comparisons, ‘If you like Karajan’s Beethoven, you would probably have liked this.’

 

After the swift tempi of the Beethoven, I was somewhat taken aback by the slow pace of the opening bars to the first movement of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony. It settled down soon enough – or rather, I thought it had, for the abiding problem of this performance was Nézet-Séguin’s apparent unwillingness to convey a sense of an underlying pulse. Tempo fluctuations were extreme, especially in terms of slowing down, at one point almost grinding to a halt. The moment at which the solo violin entered came like a shot in the arm. If the performance livened up after that, however, the damage had been done, and the recapitulation suffered similarly, though to a lesser extent. One could enjoy the somewhat rambunctious woodwind, but Mahler does not need to be milked; nor does he take well to it. The second movement offered a not dissimilar experience. There is of course nothing wrong with tempo fluctuations – think of Mengelberg! – but one still needs a sense of basic pulse. The solo violin skirted dangerous close at times to the merely unpleasant; edge is good, but by definition, it should not be de trop, and scordatura should not be taken as an excuse for questionable intonation. Here and elsewhere, I missed a more characterful, deeply resonant string section.

 

The resultant lack of harmonic grounding was, however, successfully combated in the slow movement: much superior in every respect. (Odd, that, given that it is arguably the most difficult of the four movements to bring off.) There was a sense of scale, of proportion, here; line, whilst not always perfectly maintained, was much more in evidence. The performance showed that variation of tempo is perfectly possible, indeed often highly desirable, so long as a basic pulse has been established. Climaxes can then tell as they should – and they did. The orchestra and Nézet-Séguin were in lively form for the finale: sometimes too much so, the woodwind in particular proving shrill at times, but at least there was character to their performance. That was more than one could say for the lacklustre Kate Royal – even if one had been able to discern more than one word in five of what she sang. This was neither a child’s sense of heaven, nor something more knowing and sophisticated; it was simply inadequate. (Royal’s poor diction has been a characteristic of every performance of hers I have heard; whatever her strengths may be, they certainly do not lie in Lieder-singing.) However, there was a fine sense of orchestral culmination or arrival at the close, Mahler’s progressive tonality vindicated with love.