Salzburg Festival (5) - Concertgebouw/Mäkelä: Schubert-Berio and Mahler, 21 August 2025

Grosses Festspielhaus

Schubert-Berio: Rendering
Mahler: Symphony no.5

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
Klaus Mäkelä (conductor)

Images: © SF/Marco Borrelli

Klaus Mäkelä’s multiple orchestral appointments have ignited animated discussion among those preoccupied with such matters. Never having heard him before, I was curious to hear which was (more justified): the sky-high praise or, well, the opposite. On this basis, I am afraid to say the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra does not appear to have chosen well for its artistic partner and chief conductor designate. Not only were Mäkela’s readings of two symphonic works half-baked at (very) best; his flattening effect on the orchestral sound, robbing it of so much of what should have one reaching for superlatives, suggests still more serious problems ahead. A single concert can only give an impression, but it was saddening, even maddening simply to have to wait for the end. Herbert von Karajan would have said he needed a few years away in Ulm, away from the spotlight. There seems, alas, little prospect of that, so Mäkelä’s orchestras will have to work with what they have. I wish them luck. 

Berio’s Rendering showed little at length, other than that Mäkelä’s apparent lack of feeling for either Berio or Schubert, on whose symphonic fragments the work is founded. The first movement opened freshly enough with commendable precision, yet also presented a stiffness that did not augur well. As Schubert ceded to Berio, the latter’s timbral and harmonic invasions were well handled, suggestive of uncertainty and unease, the orchestra’s long pedigree in music written for it evident. The music sounded more and more faceless, though, as time went on. Grave trombones made their presence keenly, magically felt in their big ‘moment’, but this was at best a collection of moments, with mere ‘filling’ in between. The opening of the second movement promised something more, Mäkelä largely letting the music take its course, the orchestra well balanced and pointed. But again, it lost its way—and not in the way Berio intended. A gorgeous oboe solo and, in general, gorgeous wind playing offered some compensation. This, though, was a listless affair that seemed as though it would never end. Strangely thin string sound marked the onset of the finale; it seemed intentional, thoughI could not tell you why. It moved more or less as it ‘should’, albeit without any ear for harmony. Vaguely Mahlerian counterpoint suggested a connection with what was to come, but it was not enough. By the end, it felt as if an hour had passed rather than just over thirty minutes. 

Mahler’s Fifth Symphony is an extremely difficult piece to bring off. I have heard more than a few conductors come unstuck in it; this was to be no exception. Mäkelä again presented a succession of episodes that not only had little connection with one another; they even lacked sharp characterisation on their own terms. The orchestra, steeped in this music since the composer himself, played well enough, but there is only so much one can do in Mahler with such rudderless direction. At first, it sounded as though we might have Mahler as Shostakovich: not the way I hear the music, but a point of view, even a guiding principle, at least. Mäkelä soon began to mould the first movement a bit too obviously and, more to the point, incoherently: unconnected, so far as I could hear, either to what had passed or to what was to come. The storm, when it came, was merely petulant. Tempo changes in general were arbitrary; long passages seemed pretty much to grind to a halt. Very much in the line of his Schubert-Berio, there was little to no sense of harmony, let alone harmonic motion. 

The second movement proceeded similarly, in fits and starts, however admirable the playing in itself. It either felt too fast or too slow; not that there is a ‘correct answer’ for tempo matters, but tempo relationships made no sense, still less relation of tempo to other aspects of the score. Balance was often so askew as to sound uninterestingly bizarre. ‘Much the same’ would, I am afraid, be the verdict for an increasingly laboured attempt at the third movement too. The ‘Adagietto’ fared better, at least begin with. If on the moulded side, it held together for quite a while, with genuinely fascinating echoes of Wagner’s string writing, prior to the masturbatory meal Mäkelä made of the close. The disconnected string of aural images, for want of a better phrase, that made up the finale simply had me long for the concert to be over. Eventually it was, in a performance that lasted about 74 minutes. Again, it felt not far off twice that. What a contrast with this same orchestra, almost exactly two years ago, in Mahler’s Seventh Symphony under Iván Fischer. A depressing evening, all the more so since it was acclaimed by the audience to the rafters.

 

Musikfest Berlin (1) - Nagy/Concertgebouw/Fischer - Widmann and Mahler, 26 August 2023

 
Philharmonie

Jörg Widmann: Das heiße Herz
Mahler: Symphony no.7

Michael Nagy (baritone)
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
Iván Fischer (conductor)

Image: © Fabian Schellhorn / Berliner Festspiele

Musical life in Berlin has been reignited before the summer festival season elsewhere has ended: first the season opening concert of the Berlin Philharmonic, after which the orchestra tours to a number of venues, Salzburg included, and the following night the opening concert of the 2023 Musikfest Berlin, which takes in ‘home’ and visiting ensembles. That concert fell this year to the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Iván Fischer, in music by Jörg Widmann and Mahler, joined in the former by baritone Michael Nagy.

Widmann's short song-cycle, Das heiße Herz, originally written in 2013, was orchestrated in 2018, the new version's premiere being given by Christian Gerhaher, the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, and Jakub Hrůša. Widmann sets five poems, two from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, providing an obvious connection already with Mahler, and one each by Klabund (‘Der arme Kaspar’), Heine (‘Das Fräulein stand am Meere’), and Brentano (‘Einsam will ich untergehn’). Klabund's poem is the first, an ear-catching opening of harp, celesta, crotales, and other percussion leading us (and the voice) into a post-Mahlerian soundscape in terms both of timbre and harmony without, at least here, regressing. Henze was another composer to come to mind, though this is certainly not pastiche, rather allusion and, later, reference. Here, as elsewhere, the orchestra gave a detailed, indeed authoritative performance, Nagy shaping the vocal line well in a similarly authoritative and communicative account. The Wunderhorn ‘Hab’ ein Ringlein am Finger’ gives a still stronger, arguably explicit, sense of refracted Mahler, via Wozzeck. Heine's song has something of the raconteur to it: a different, more popular mode of delivery, matched by Widmann’s harmonies and brass writing. ‘Kartenspiel’, the second Wunderhorn song, steps up its predecessor's demand that the ghost of tonality be acknowledged, though the vocal line in particular still went where it would in a post-tonal universe. A surprisingly jazz-like bass line took us on a path towards more or less fully fledged big band music at the close, via a polystylistic collage of allusion that offered a not entirely dissimilar sense of the disconcerting to Schnittke. 

The first four lines of the Brentano song open with solo voice, in folklike, even hymnal manner; I was put in mind, almost certainly coincidentally, of a nonconformist hymn recalled from my childhood. Solo instruments gradually joined to form a Webern-like ensemble on the path to fuller orchestra. There is here a stronger tonal pull, and increasingly so, an expressionist turn at one point rescuing the tendency from bathos. Whether the balancing act Widmann attempts here is entirely successful will probably be as much a matter of taste as anything else. It is rather what one would expect from him, yet never simply a reprise of earlier rummagings around the debris of German (post-)Romanticism. Reception was enthusiastic.

A considerably longer second ‘half’ was given over to Mahler's Seventh Symphony, in a brilliant performance that confounded expectations and opened up new perspectives on the work. Vigorous, determined, its tread in line with that of its counterpart in the Sixth, the first movement's notably faster initial tempo (faster than usual, I think) sounded a note of ambiguity that would never be shed, but rather joined by many more such notes. As a desperate fury took hold, Fischer embraced Mahler's parodies, self-parody included, and respected them by giving them their due without placing them in inverted commas or underlining them. Much the same could be said of his presentation of the way Mahler 'cuts' his material, not cinematic, but not entirely un-cinematic either. Those crucial liminal passages beguiled and shocked. Rapt hallucination took our breath away in preparation for a recapitulation that threw everything up in the air and saw where it landed, whilst always maintaining coherence. The Concertgebouw Orchestra, steeped in this music, sounded just right for Fischer's approach, doubtless informing it too. 

The opening of the first Nachtmusik was truly a thing of wonder, both in the perfection of the horn echoes and the way they spread, like a contagion. Fischer's conception of ‘night music’ was more of a nocturne than a Bernstein-like house of horrors, nonetheless showing ‘lightness’ to cover a multitude of sins, stylistic, textural, and otherwise, and certainly not without irony. All was finely articulated, without the slightest sense of self-satisfaction. It was strangely exhilarating, with a proper sting, even when one ‘knew’, to the close. A fascinatingly malevolent scherzo ensued, Mendelssohn dropped in acid, with the twin tendencies of control and finish on one hand, and ever threatening to veer out of control, that might imply. Skeletons danced in properly Alpine fashion. Berlioz taking a trip in more than one sense. The ending was similarly equivocal and violent. Listening to the second Nachtmusik, it struck me quite how close we stand here to Webern, but as a process rather than a fixed aesthetic, orchestra distilled into a Webern ensemble in real time, as it were. A host of solo instruments paraded in a rich tableau of the human, or perhaps the divine, comedy. Whilst one can hardly avoid mentioning the violin and mandolin, this held for so many, including almost the whole woodwind section, that it would be invidious to name names.

The Rondo-Finale’s timpani call-to-arms, or whatever it is, imparted a fitting suggestion of Don Quixote to its entire enterprise, continually upsetting the Meistersinger apple-cart in the service of a darker comedy. Perhaps. For there were no certainties here, and justly so. Fischer concentrated on drawing excellent playing from the orchestra and steering the vehicle, declining any attempt to ‘solve’ Mahler's enigmas. Once again, this was a tale of ghosts at the feast: the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, obviously, as well as earlier movements of this, but also the Second and even the Tenth-to-come: if Mahler had earlier showed a path to resurrection, perhaps purgatory, or even limbo, now seemed more fun, as well as more attainable. Bach, Mozart, and others made their bows, but what did it mean? The nihilist answer, ‘nothing’, was not necessarily right or wrong, it seemed, but there came another suggestion, not to be conflated with it, an affirmation rather of scepticism, albeit from one who truly believed. Perhaps that is the true horror of the Seventh.

Musikfest Berlin (1): Fleming/Concertgebouw/Harding - Stravinsky, Messiaen, and Debussy, 31 August 2021

Philharmonie

Stravinsky: Agon
Messiaen: Poèmes pour Mi
Debussy: La Mer

Renée Fleming (soprano)

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

Daniel Harding (conductor)

Image: Astrid Ackermann

Size is not everything, yet to hear—and even to see—my largest orchestra for over eighteen months was certainly not nothing. With a string section extending from sixteen first violins to eight double basses, and plentiful wind, percussion, even a mandolin, this was a treat in itself, a sign, dare we hope, of progress in our return to concert life. That the orchestra in question was the Concertgebouw was a distinct advantage too, as was Daniel Harding’s mouth-watering programme of Stravinsky, Messiaen, and Debussy. 

Harding’s direction of the orchestra in Stravinsky’s Agon was insistent and precise, likewise the Concertgebouw’s response. Manhattan traffic came to Berlin’s Philharmonie for one night only. The three pas-de-quatre, single, double, and triple increased in their menace, even fury, the composer’s wartime Symphony in Three Movements an unusually immanent progenitor. All the while, audible serial processes did their work both mechanical and human. One could well-nigh see their working out in twin homage to Webern and balletic tradition. I was struck by the utter distinctiveness of Stravinsky’s encounter with the French Baroque: so different, say, from that of Richard Strauss, indeed diametrically opposed to it (as in so much else). For all the claims we often hear of the necessity of ‘period’ colour in, say, Rameau, it was striking that use of a modern bassoon could evoke that composer and a whole world without any such requirement. The more shadowy, hieratic passages—a gestures as courtly as they were ghostly—compelled fascination, as did Stravinsky’s inimitable orchestration. And what combinations of instruments one heard: they could only be Stravinsky, however much they played with other expectations and recollections. Harding and the orchestra played with them too, bringing Stravinsky’s games all the more immediately to our attention.

Renée Fleming joined the orchestra for Messiaen’s Poèmes pour Mi. There was an unusual note of freedom—not licence, but freedom—to the first song, ‘Action des grâces’, Fleming’s approach perhaps surprisingly verse-led, without sacrifice to rhythm, indeed to its enhancement. Indeed, there was something chant-like to her despatch of melismata. The orchestra evoked liturgy too: for Messiaen, all was sacred. Delight in Creation was to be heard in ‘Paysage’, both as work and performance. So, in ‘Epouvante’ and its knowing successor, ‘Le Collier’, was keen awareness of malevolent forces at work, Act II of Parsifal coming strongly to mind. Sweetness of harmonic mysticism followed in both cases, in ‘L’Épouse’ and ‘Prière exaucée’. The latter’s closing ecstasies, bells and all, proved a resurrection, so it seemed, not only of flesh but also of fleshly desires. Above all, there was wonder in these songs: not only to be observed, but to be felt.

A vividly pictorial performance of La Mer followed. It boasted both precision and atmosphere, Harding’s picture painted very much a landscape, no mere snapshot. In the opening ‘De l’aube à midi sur la mer’, figures proved busily generative. It seemed a brighter, warmer account than is often the case: later in the morning, perhaps. Whatever the horological verdict, conductor and orchestra left plenty in reserve for the movement’s climax. Mystery and a keen sense of play were twin hallmarks of ‘Jeux des vagues’. Clarity of direction, at least in retrospect, heightened both aspects in what emerged as a scherzo taking its place in French orchestral tradition, Dukas included. Darker thoughts, as presaged in the Messiaen songs, haunted ‘Dialogue du vent et de la mer’; so did further, post-Pelléas ambiguities, up to and including the final blazing of Debussy’s orchestra. Modern symphony orchestras are wonderful things; so is their repertoire.

Happy 90th birthday, Bernard Haitink!

Image: Monika Rittershaus

Of any performing musician alive today, none has had a more formative influence on me than Bernard Haitink. Not only did I hear my first Ring – at the Royal Albert Hall, when the Royal Opera looked in grave danger of never returning to Covent Garden – from him; it has remained musically one of the very best. (Ironically, its sole rival would hail also from that same, unpromising venue, under the direction of Daniel Barenboim.) I took the train down from Cambridge and back every day, and stood right up in the Gallery, seemingly miles from the stage. Not once did my feet tire, let alone my ears and mind. Haitink’s integrity, wisdom, and communicative understanding gripped me from beginning to end. I had barely attended any live opera, let alone Wagner, at the time. Even without his quietly heroic plea on the day of Götterdämmerung, beseeching us in the shortest of sentences to do what we could to defend an institution Rupert Murdoch and philistine New Labour stood eager to consign to the flames, it would have been an unforgettable experience. To me, it seemed, rightly or wrongly, that he saved the Royal Opera. He certainly inspired me early on to continue a Wagner journey that will most likely never end.


Since then, I have tried to hear him whenever I can: mostly here in London, occasionally elsewhere. In Amsterdam with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe for Brahms; in Zurich for Tristan (my one and only visit to date to cripplingly expensive Switzerland, but worth every penny); in Salzburg for Haydn’s Creation; but above all, since what proved, regrettably, his final Covent Garden appearance, for Parsifal in 2007, in concerts with the London Symphony Orchestra: time and time again, his musicianship, his inspiration of musicians and audience alike, have afforded an undemonstrative masterclass in that most unfashionable of virtues, musical ‘greatness’. We can chip away at that all we like, often with good reason. Bernard Haitink reminds us how and why it can still matter: not in terms of some throwback to an age of great ‘maestri’, but now, in the present, in our terms. May I wish him the happiest of ninetieth birthdays, and look forward to the next time I shall share in his artistry?


In the meantime, here is a link to my review of Haitink conducting Mahler’s Ninth Symphony with the LSO at the Proms in 2009: a performance I shall never forget.

And here is his legendary recording of La Mer with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra:

Joseph Haydn wishes you a Happy Europe Day

Haydn is the most un-national, the most European, the most cosmopolitan of all composers. Theresa May would have dismissed him as a ‘citizen of nowhere’ and told him to ‘GO HOME’; Amber Rudd would have included him in one of her lists of ‘foreign workers’; the Daily Mail/Neue Stürmer would have screamed at an ‘enemy of the people’. A few bars from any one of his symphonies contain more invention, more wit, more humanity, more joy, more wisdom than May, Rudd, and their vile, racist party could ever imagine, let alone know. We will not ‘get over it’, we will never, ever ‘accept’, let alone 'respect', the result of David Cameron’s infernal referendum. Haydn can be just as defiant, just as truculent, just as triumphantly victorious, as his most celebrated pupil, if perhaps more subtly so. With him on our side, we can win; it is up to us, though, to make that happen. Listen below to Colin Davis, as sorely missed as ever, conducting the Concertgebouw Orchestra in his Symphony no.86 and remind yourself what Europe and the world beyond are really about. Happy Europe Day!

Gendarmenmarkt, Berlin, 30 April

Mørk/Concertgebouw/Jansons - Haydn and Bruckner, 4 April 2014

Barbican Hall

Haydn – Cello Concerto in C major, Hob.VIIb/1

Bruckner – Symphony no.7 in E major

Truls Mørk (cello)

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

Mariss Jansons (conductor)

 

It was the Haydn C major Concerto, which, despite the massed ranks of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in the Bruckner symphony and the radically smaller ensemble deployed before the interval, received the more compelling performance in this, the second of three Concertgebouw concerto-and-Bruckner programmes. There were occasional slight irritations to be endured in the orchestral performance: a little more string vibrato and longer bows would sometimes have been desirable (too much time with Nikolaus Harnoncourt?), and the odd tapering-off at the end of phrases edged towards mannerism. In the present climate, however, such shortcomings could readily be coped with; moreover, there was nothing whatsoever about which one might complain with respect to Truls Mørk’s performance. The first movement in his hands was naturally phrased, taken at a sensible tempo; every line was shaped so beautifully that it did not sound ‘shaped’ at all, art concealing art. Inflections were meaningful, never unduly emphatic. Mariss Jansons was a sensitive ‘accompanist’, though sometimes one might have wished for a little more than that. (Think of Britten for Rostropovich in this concerto.) What I suppose one might call ‘period’ tendencies – though they have nothing to do with the eighteenth century, and everything to do with latter-day puritanism – were a little more marked in the slow movement: in the orchestra, that is, for there was no sign of such influence in Mørk’s performance. That tapering off of phrases detracted from the overall line, and left for some peculiar near-silences. Again, one hears far worse, but it seemed a pity. There was certainly a great contrast with the richness of solo cello tone, and also with the generally aristocratic tenor of Mørk’s account: clearly from the heart, without a hint of undue emoting. The finale proved an unalloyed delight: dashing without descending into a mere dash. Darker currents – almost proto-Mozartian – were not absent, but nor were they exaggerated. It was a true delight to see and to hear Mørk respond so vividly to the first violins. Best of all, this really had the character of a finale. The Sarabande from Bach’s D minor Cello Suite made for a rapt encore, the single line so all-encompassing, so brimming with perfectly-judged harmonic implication, that it would have been worth attending for that alone.

 

Sad to say, Jansons’s performance of Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony disappointed – and the orchestra was on less than top form too. (Much of the audience seemed to disagree.) There were passages when the Concertegbouw Orchestra sounded gorgeous, but others when string tone was decidedly anonymous; maybe the trials of touring have proved too much. At the beginning of the first movement, there was certainly a warm, febrile sound, but neither the orchestra nor, more noticeably, Jansons’s direction seemed quite able to settle. Moreover, here and elsewhere, the brass blared, rather than blended; this was overpowering in a most unfortunate sense: more a caricature of, say, Chicago, than what one expected from Bernard Haitink’s old orchestra. There was ultimately too much stopping and starting; though not, I suspect, slow by the clock, the music felt drawn out. One longed for Furtwängler – or indeed, Karajan. The slow movement was much the same. Later on, there was a greater sense of inevitability, but much of the movement’s progression had little sense of overall line. There was a cymbal clash, for those who care about such things; my sense was that that climax was very well-prepared and well-executed. It was a pity, that one could not say the same of everything else.

 

The scherzo was better. If it still lacked the dramatic and spiritual tension of a great performance, then it cohered, making musical sense. Once again, though, the brass proved too much: straightforwardly too loud at times, but also lacking in blend. The trio, alas, was too relaxed, almost somnolent at times. It was not so much a matter of speed as such as of lack of tension. Jansons’s rubato, moreover, sounded merely arbitrary. The return to the scherzo came as a relief in quite the wrong sense. And it was difficult not to ask oneself: what does this mean, what is at stake? In some senses, the finale, that most incongruous of movements – whatever was Bruckner thinking of, placing it there? – came off best. I have heard performances with a better sense of line, but there was at least an impression of thematic blocks in friction that was generative rather than a non sequitur. There were a few cases of conductor’s moulding which would have been better left undone, but there was on the whole a greater sense of forward thrust. Alas, it was rather too late for the symphony to emerge as more than the sum of its parts.
 

 

Wishing Sir Colin Davis a very happy 85th birthday...

... and a swift recovery from the illness that, alas, will prevent him from conducting tomorrow's celebratory concert with the LSO.

First, the 'Hallelujah' Chorus from Handel's Messiah. Davis's 1966 recording remains, the singular case of Beecham aside, overall my top recommendation:



The final movement of the Symphonie fantastique, Sir Colin having accomplished more for the composer's cause than anyone since Berlioz himself:



No tribute would be complete, or even begun, without a contribution from the conductor's beloved Mozart. This recording of the Sinfonia concertante, KV 364/320d, with Arthur Grumiaux Arrigo Pelliccia remains the one to which I return most often:




From a recent night of enchantment at the Royal Opera House:



And finally, the end of the 2011 Proms Missa Solemnis, for me the single most revelatory concert of last year:

Concertgebouw/Haitink - Bruckner, 20 May 2012

Barbican Hall

Symphony no.5 in B-flat major (revised version, 1877-8)

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
Bernard Haitink (conductor)

I rarely find myself in the realm of the juste milieu, ever aware of Schoenberg’s dictum that only the middle road does not lead to Rome. Nevertheless, when it comes to Bruckner, I seem to be somewhere along that road, slightly fearful of where its non-Roman destination might turn out to be. I admire the later symphonies greatly; indeed, the final two I find truly awe-inspiring. The earlier works I continue, however, to find problematical, and cannot help but contrast their formal difficulties – devotees will doubtless respond that the difficulties are mine, not Bruckner’s, and perhaps they are – with the unanswerable ‘rightness’ and satisfaction afforded by Brahms. Nor can I bring myself to become hopelessly absorbed in the business of interminable numbers of ‘versions’, though I cannot help but think that some judicious editorial work would not necessarily be a bad thing.

It is testament, then, to the excellence of this performance from the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Bernard Haitink – ‘in the presence’ of a Dutch princess of whom I had never heard, but who required a welcoming committee and police guard – that there were times when I was almost convinced. Not all of the time, I admit, but I do not recall hearing a better sense of the work as a whole, not even from Claudio Abbado and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra last year. From the opening pizzicati, orchestra and conductor were utterly at home. The excellence of playing was such that a split horn note registered more strongly than otherwise it would have done. The weight, both sonorous and historical, of the Concertgebouw’s bass line contrasted strongly with the lighter approach adopted by Abbado. This was Bruckner with a reassuringly traditional, almost mediævalist, character to our pilgrim’s progress. There was, moreover, the inestimable advantage of having a great Wagnerian at the helm, even down to the level of the handling, the resounding, of string tremolos. Haitink’s way with – I am tempted to say, ‘creation of’ – the melos, the guiding thread, almost convinced me that Bruckner could develop here, rather than juxtapose. The splendid peals of rejoicing at the end proved a fitting culmination to a journey led by the surest of guides.

Command of line was equally supreme in the slow movement, likewise Haitink’s ability to conjure so gloriously full an orchestral sound – and, of course, the orchestra’s ability to provide it. Lucas Macías Navarro’s oboe solos were an especial melancholy joy. Indeed, the oases of woodwind stillness had me spellbound. I truly felt that the pathways, thickets even, mattered, as well as beguiled; Haitink again proved a magisterial guide. The abruptness of transition between material in the scherzo I continued to find bewildering, perhaps bizarre, but everything was wonderfully characterised and the menace imparted to peasant dances proved properly terrifying.

Apparent reassurance in the return of earlier material at the opening of the finale, after the model of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, was immediately questioned by the majesty of the Concertgebouw’s brass section in voicing the chorale. One could not doubt the conviction in all the contrapuntal working out that followed, riveting in its way, and yet, does it not actually go on a bit? Does the writing of a fugue not continue to feel like an externally-imposed decision rather than an organic dictate of the material? In a lesser performance, I might have started gazing at my watch, but not here. Nevertheless, longing for a spot, or more than a spot, of Brahmsian developing variation was still felt on my doubtless heretical part. That said, the magnificence of the playing at the conclusion sent shivers down the spine. It was a pity, then, that someone who sounded suspiciously similar to the idiotic purveyor of multiple Bravos at the previous Barbican Concertgebouw appearance(under Mariss Jansons) again contrived to make his presence felt immediately.

Concertgebouw/Jansons - Strauss, 12 May 2012

Barbican Hall

Also sprach Zarathustra, op.30
Metamorphosen
Der Rosenkavalier – Suite (1945)

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
Mariss Jansons (conductor)


I fear that I am about to be grossly unfair, so shall at least try to explain why I am being unfair, or at least grumpy. By all but the most exalted standards, and I suspect that many would say even by exalted standards, this was a fine concert, featuring one of the world’s greatest orchestras and one of the world’s most esteemed living conductors in music which they performed very well indeed. Had this been a run-of-the-mill orchestra, directed by a Kapellmeister-ish sort, I should doubtless have rushed for superlatives. However, that was not who was performing, and I felt just a little disappointed, at least for two of the three items.

Also sprach Zarathustra does not seem to be performed as often as one might expect. I am not entirely sure why. Though I am far from considering it to be Strauss’s finest symphonic poem – if pushed, I should probably opt for Tod und Verklärung – I should have expected it, for a variety of reasons, some good, some less so, to be popular with audiences. Maybe it is, and is less popular with conductors; it is certainly a very difficult work to bring off convincingly. There was nothing really for which I could fault the Concertgebouw Orchestra; its cultivated yet sumptuous sound suits Strauss very well, even if I might long for something a little more closer to Dresden or Vienna. And the feeble organ is a general Barbican curse. (Even for musical obsessives, there would surely be many more pressing cases concerning which one might wish to purloin funds-cum-compensation from the Corporation of London. But it would be a nice gesture all the same, were the hall to be granted a decent example of the King of Instruments instead of having to rely upon a terrible little electronic thing.) However, I did not feel that Mariss Jansons really succeeding in welding the sections into a convincing whole, symphonic or otherwise. Rudolf Kempe, as so often, is a splendid model in that respect. There was little sense either of belief or of irony; one can opt for one or the other, perhaps even both, but I am not sure that ‘neither’ is a compelling option. There was, of course, much to enjoy, and I appreciated the subtlety of programming, the music for solo strings cleverly anticipating the second half’s Metamorphosen. Leader Vesko Eschkenazy’s rendition of the solo violin part was exemplary. And yet, as I tend to do in all but the best performances, I found that the work somewhat outstayed its welcome.

The problem, or rather reservation, I had with Metamorphosen, was rather different. Jansons opted not to conduct it at all. The Concertgebouw strings are wonderful musicians, of course, and do not need someone to beat time. It is, moreover, an interesting idea to assess this work in chamber music terms. There were certainly gains. No one could doubt that they were listening to each other; nor could anyone surely have missed the clarity with which Strauss’s counterpoint was projected. However, the performance ultimately fell between two stools. At times, it was directed from the first violin by Eschkenazy. The passages he directed tended, almost but not quite paradoxically, to sound more ‘conducted’, slightly squarer of rhythm, than if there had been an expert conductor on the podium. On the other hand, there were times when the chamber approach led rise to a slight interpretative anonymity, when I at least longed for more of an ‘idea’ to the performance. Perhaps the idea was to treat this as ‘absolute’ music, to steer clear of difficult wartime associations. I am sure it was not intentionally evasive, but by the same token, I am unsure that it is the best idea for a performance of Metamorphosen. It felt a little like a typical performance of the ‘Indian summer’ Duo concertante, which needs an inspired performance to avert suspicion of note-spinning. Anger and other passion were somewhat lacking, and the Eroica quotation went for surprisingly little. It was nevertheless a pity to have a respectable performance besmirched by some attention-seeking idiot shouting ‘Bravo’ as the final chord still resonated. (He had done the same at the end of Also sprach Zarathustra too, presumably desperate to have his voice heard before applause began.)

The Rosenkavalier suite is a dreadful thing, of course, whoever concocted it. (So, incidentally, is Strauss’s own Symphonic Fantasy on ‘Die Frau ohne Schatten’; one desperately wants it to work, but it never does.) Still, I am sure if I were a conductor I should not be able to resist programming it, and as an audience member I certainly cannot bring myself to avoid listening to it. Here Jansons and the Concertgebouw truly struck gold, or perhaps better, silver. No one plays this music quite like the Viennese, but this was a perfectly valid different tone, cultivated, precise, and warm yet never indulgent. The woodwind section was utterly outstanding, its fluttering in the Overture perhaps the best I have ever heard, whether in terms of the suite or the opera. Alexei Ogrintchouk may have been first amongst equals when it came to his oboe solos, but first he certainly was. Jansons loved the music without smothering it, not only alert to its changing temperament but almost convincing in some of the (non-)transitions. Christian Thielemann doubtless seduces more in this music, but Jansons has its measure as well as anyone else. Even this curmudgeon came away from the Barbican joyfully singing to himself those gorgeous waltz tunes.

Perahia/Concertgebouw/Haitink - Schumann and Bruckner, 15 March 2009

Barbican Hall

Schumann – Piano concerto in A minor, op.54
Bruckner – Symphony no.9 in D minor

Murray Perahia (piano)
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
Bernard Haitink (conductor)

The first of the two Haitink/Concertgebouw concerts had been for the most part very fine. My sole disappointment, albeit a major one, concerned the final movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. I am happy to report that I entertained no reservations whatsoever concerning this Sunday afternoon concert.

It helps, of course, to have a soloist of the calibre of Murray Perahia. His exquisite touch is never merely pretty, though one suspects that he would be incapable of making an ugly sound at the piano if he tried – rather as one can tell the same of Liszt from his compositions. This would be of little import were it not for Perahia’s profound musical understanding, enhanced by his long-term study of Schenkerian analysis. There is more than one way to skin even a tonal cat, but Schenker clearly works for Perahia, as heard in his organicist projection of the work’s fundamental structure (Ursatz) and structural levels.

Perahia and Haitink seemed throughout to be of one interpretative mind, enabling a chamber-musical collaboration between soloist and orchestra, reserving Romantic confrontation for climactic moments, which therefore registered with all the greater musical power. Schumann’s supremely poetic rêveries were often as much orchestral as pianistic, and were sometimes heard at tempi, which, viewed ‘objectively,’ might appear too slow, but here seemed utterly natural. Flexibility was all, so much so that one barely noticed it. The Concertebouw’s woodwind principals sounded at least as fine as they had during the previous night’s La mer. Alexei Ogrintchouk, so fine a soloist at the Proms in 2007 and 2008, almost bade fair to steal the limelight from Perahia with his stunning solos at the openings to the first movement exposition and recapitulation. But then Perahia’s cadenza, building from Bachian polyphony to Brahmsian tumult reminded us who was a little more than first among equals.

The second movement was a true intermezzo, never heavy but likewise never trivial. Beautifully judged rubato from all concerned and exquisite orchestral balancing from Haitink and his players lent the movement the aura of a chamber Kinderszenen. The textural clarity that marked this performance throughout was, if anything, still more marked in the finale, especially in its contrapuntal passages. Perahia and Haitink again located Schumann rightly between Bach and Brahms. The movement was always clearly goal-oriented without falling into the trap of sounding unduly driven. Again, every tempo and every tempo variation sounded just ‘right’. This was a truly distinguished performance. There was even, towards the end, a very occasional wrong note, just to reassure us that Perahia was human after all.

Coming so soon after the Royal Festival Hall performance of Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony from Zubin Mehta and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, comparisons would doubtless have been made by many in the audience. It is difficult to imagine that any comparative odium would have attached to Haitink and the Concertgebouw. Last month’s performance probably captured the palm in terms of ravishing orchestral beauty; Vienna has a tendency to do so. And that performance, as I made clear at the time, was a fine one indeed, never more so than in its final bars, ‘numinous to a degree’. Haitink’s account, however, was not only darker; it was truly devastating.

From the outset, this seemed on the cards, the opening as grimly ominous as any since Furtwängler. The darkness of the orchestral bass line was immediately apparent, contrasting starkly with the once again ravishing work of the orchestra’s woodwind soloists: Ogrintchouk again and the equally magnificient flautist, Kersten McCall. Haitink’s reading of the vast opening movement was impassioned yet never impetuous; it took as long as it needed but not a second longer. There was, as in all of the greatest interpretations, a supreme inevitability to the solemn onward tread: not antithetical to ‘foreground’ colour, but leaving one in no doubt that the latter arose from the former. The silences were as terrifying as the great orchestral unisons; likewise those strange periods of apparent stillness, in reality anything but, as Bruckner approaches the atonal threshold. Fine Mahlerian though he may be, I have often felt that Haitink’s sensibility is more closely attuned to Bruckner: elemental rather than neurotic. Yet I fancied that I heard a premonition of the march of souls on Judgement Day from the final movement of Mahler’s Second Symphony. Intentional or no, the resemblance was striking, albeit with one crucial distinction. Here, in Bruckner’s cosmic drama, the destination was far from clear; greater struggle would be required to attain anything akin to resolution or redemption, let alone resurrection. Approaching the ‘dear God’ to whom the symphony is dedicated seemed at this point almost as impossible as in Schoenberg’s likewise unfinished Moses und Aron. Baleful trombone quasi-equale prepared the way for a final statement of desolation, granite-like in its implacability.

At the opening of the scherzo – no jokes here... – I missed a little the sheer weight of sound from the previous month’s Viennese performance. Haitink’s tempo sounded faster too, arguably more scherzo-like. I was taken by the lumbering, almost outsize playfulness, if I may put it that way, of the trio’s opening: a strange mixture of the consoling and the unsettling. These, we were reminded, are tales of the gods – or of God: almost a Cosmic Pulses of the late nineteenth century. (Both Bruckner and Stockhausen were possessed of a truly mystical faith.) Haitink’s long-term strategy truly made itself felt in the return of the scherzo. Now it was weightier, far from a mere re-statement. As Heraclitus taught us, no man can step into the same river twice.

The conductor’s command of the score and its implications was equally apparent in his tonal-dramatic plan for the ‘final’ Adagio. In the opening phrase, we heard a Wagnerian attempt – Haitink is today second to none in Wagner too – to console, to resolve, to redeem, culminating in the Dresden Amen so familiar from Parsifal. It was less of a lament than one often hears, which intrigued me; all would be revealed, though not quite yet. There was no attempt to tone down the subsequent harmonies, poised once again so very close to the threshold of atonality, albeit always within a firmly established tonal context. When the opening material returned, it now had for more of the klagende Lied to it. Kundry might almost have been voicing it, as if to show that the premature attempt to resolve, like her attempt to convert Parsifal, had not worked, which of course it had not. The Concertgebouw’s Wagner tubas soon made their elegiac presence felt, as, harmonically, did a torment sublimated from Tristan und Isolde. Attempts properly to climax failed, as they were seemingly always fated to do, though we never gave up hope. Unlike Mehta’s ‘finished’ reading of this unfinished symphony, here we were left with the devastation of the unresolved. It was desperate but never Mahlerian, a true (non-)conclusion to a truly great performance. Haitink at eighty has never been greater.

Concertgebouw/Haitink - Mozart, Debussy, and Beethoven, 14 March 2009

Barbican Hall

Mozart – Symphony no.35 in D major, ‘Haffner’, KV 385
Debussy – La mer
Beethoven – Symphony no.7 in A major, op.92

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
Bernard Haitink (conductor)

The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra’s two weekend concerts with Bernard Haitink afford London a slightly belated opportunity to celebrate Haitink’s eightieth birthday, which fell earlier this month. Mozart’s Haffner Symphony opened the present programme, in an excellent performance. (How rarely one can say that nowadays when it comes to Mozart!) The smallish orchestra – ten first violins, with other strings scaled accordingly – was not prevented from voicing a full sound, though that ineffable Viennese sweetness of tone was missing. Nevertheless, the bright, rejoicing sound of D major, open strings and all, was unmistakeably to be heard. The Concertgebouw strings offered commendable lightness of articulation without any of the fussy down-side that characterises so many modern performances. Clarity, Haitink, showed can easily be married to warmth, just as in his treasurable Glyndebourne DVD of Le nozze di Figaro. In every movement, the tempo sounded just right, which is not to say, as I once heard Sir Georg Solti absurdly claim, that, in Haydn and Mozart, there is only one correct tempo for a movement. Haitink, however, convinced us, for the duration of the performance, that this might be the case. He was not afraid, especially during the opening Allegro con spirito, to relax when the music suggested this. The Andante flowed with beauty and grace, light in the sense of an outdoor serenade, a quality further suggested by the ravishing Harmoniemusik. Repeated violin notes were sounded with precision, yet also with an affection that looked forward to Beethoven’s metronome joke in his Eighth Symphony. Resisting modern fads, Haitink took the minuet three-to-a-bar, much to its advantage. The tempo was not slow but it retained aristocratic poise. There was a welcome slight relaxation for the graceful trio. The Presto finale was lively without descending into an absurd dash, as so often it can. Here and throughout the symphony, the inner parts teemed with life. Splendid echo effects attested to the players’ virtuosity. Especially memorable was a delectable oboe solo from Lucas Macías Navarro. I was intrigued also to note the occasional string appoggiatura: not at all what I was expecting but tastefully accomplished.

Debussy is another favourite composer for Haitink, his Concertgebouw recording of La mer a classic of the gramophone. There was a more audible precision to this 2009 reading; it evinced an almost Boulezian clarity, albeit without the impression of X-ray analysis. Certainly the opening of De l’aube à midi sur la mer had not the slightest sense of vagueness. This did not, however, detract from its mystery; there was most definitely a sense that something was about to happen. Woodwind solos from flute (Emily Beynon) and oboe (Navarro again) were breathtaking in their evocative excellence, as was Navarro’s beguiling duet with leader Vesko Eschkenazy. Throughout, Haitink judged orchestral balances to perfection, likewise the music’s harmonic momentum. Thus could the triumph of midday truly sound earned. Jeux de vagues was wonderfully playful, skittish even, a showcase for orchestral virtuosity, which yet always remained at the service of the music. Haitink unerringly caught the sense of the waves’ ebb and flow, and there were magical moments aplenty, not least from the two harps, triangle, woodwind, and the Concertgebouw brass. In the final movement, there was a sense not only of its titular dialogue between wind and sea but also of the battle between them. There was also, however, a great delicacy to be heard, which never veered towards the precious. The ravishing, seamless beauty of high violins provided a perfect setting for Jacques Meertens’s clarinet solo to weave its magic, its ‘winding down’ judged perfectly – once again – by Haitink, without ever sounding unduly micro-managed. I was a little surprised by the degree of vibrato employed by the brass, but it helped acknowledge the often overlooked Russian antecedents to Debussy’s music, Mussorgsky in particular. There was an especially imposing quartet of three trombones and tuba, which did not give the slightest hint of brashness. The final crescendo and accelerando were once again judged to perfection.

Haitink has clearly re-thought his Beethoven, as we heard in his cycle of the symphonies with the LSO. Much of this has been to good effect, yet I did not find his account of the Seventh Symphony entirely successful; that said, my reservations related almost entirely to the final movement. That Haitink meant business was clear from the fact that his purposeful stride to the podium was followed almost immediately by a downbeat and then by a crisp opening chord, pristine woodwind very much to the fore. The introduction to the first movement was nicely persistent, possessed of an absolute surety of where it was heading; release was therefore attained with a minimum of fuss but far from a minimum of effect. Once again, one noted the care with articulation and balances, which yet never drew attention to itself in any of the bizarre ways that so often mar so-called ‘radical’ accounts. However, I found the trumpets a little too prominent. Sometimes, they pointed rhythms to great effect; at other times, they simply stood out to no particular reason. I could not quite work out what Haitink was trying to accomplish there. Ample compensation was provided by the ravishing woodwind solos in the recapitulation. The celebrated coda, of which it is alleged that Weber commented that it showed Beethoven ‘ripe for the madhouse’, provoked a continuous build-up of bass tension, albeit in a more understated fashion than one often hears.

The Allegretto was at least as fast as in Haitink’s LSO reading. There was absolutely nothing of the dirge to this account, yet I wondered whether it was perhaps just too swift. In the end, I thought not, but it would probably be as well not to try this at home. The climaxes were truly awe-inspiring, born of and yet transcending the movement’s inexorable tread. This, then, proved a terrible processional indeed, although the turn to the major mode brought necessary consolation. The string fugato section presented an almost incredible contrapuntal clarity and direction.

Rhythm was king in the scherzo, though it never sounded brutal, as it could, for instance, under Karajan. The trio was considerably faster than ‘tradition’ would have us hear it. There are swings and roundabouts here but the tension Haitink accrued could not be gainsaid. I especially liked the Harmoniemusik, which reminded us of the music’s origins, at least according to the Abbé Stadler, in a Lower-Austrian pilgrims’ hymn. A test of a good performance of this scherzo and trio for me is whether I become impatient with the repeats; I did not on this occasion feel even the slightest temptation to consult my watch. However, the ending had an odd sense of the throwaway to it.

Sadly, as mentioned above, I was not at all convinced by the finale. It was very fast, which can work, but here the speed sounded as if it were allied to unsmiling application of an imaginary metronome. The trumpets, however well they played, did not help in this respect, once again unduly prominent in their underlining of the all-too-grim grim forward tread. I wanted the music to breathe but instead felt bludgeoned, not a feeling I generally associate with Haitink. Yet at the same time, he was curiously unwilling at the end to let the horns have their head, granting a paradoxical impression of ‘restrained bludgeoning’. The unrelenting quality of this movement might well have appealed to those who, incomprehensibly to me, favour the bandmaster approach of Toscanini in this repertoire. I was left hankering after Furtwängler.

Prom 55: Wagner and Debussy (Haitink)

25 August 2007

Wagner - Parsifal: Prelude to Act I and 'Good Friday Music'
Debussy - Nocturnes
Debussy (orch. Rudolf Escher) - Six épigraphes antiques
Wagner - Tristan und Isolde: Prelude to Act I and 'Liebestod'

Tenebrae (women's voices)
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
Bernard Haitink (conductor)

What are we to do about Wagnerian 'bleeding chunks'? Ever since Sir Donald Tovey coined the phrase, and arguably before that, there has been some doubt concerning the appropriateness of performing sections of Wagner's music-dramas out of context, especially when this involves omission of vocal lines. Probably the best course of action is pragmatic: if something works, it does, and if not, leave it well alone, whilst always bearing in mind that one may be doing Wagner less than justice and in some cases even violence.There seem to be few if any problems with a concert performance of the Prelude to Act I of Die Meistersinger; with these Parsifal excerpts, I am less sure. The Prelude to Act I is so much a prelude to what follows, a necessary preparation that can only lead in one direction, that it cannot produce anything like the effect it would in prefacing the drama. Fair enough, one might say; in which case, treat it simply as a concert overture. This might work in theory, although I cannot recall an utterly convincing example. Do we not treasure even Furtwängler's reading above all since we lack a recording of the entire work? However, there was little sense here of a self-standing piece, or even of one which made more sense alongside the 'Good Friday Music'. This is mere speculation, of course, but I wondered whether Bernard Haitink's current preoccupation with Parsifal - he has recently conducted the work in Geneva, and will return to Covent Garden to do so in December - inclined him to hear the music simply as it would be in a reading of the entire drama. The 'Good Friday Music' in particular might well have worked perfectly well in the opera house - with voices - but here it really did seem a 'bleeding chunk'. The orchestra sounded fine for the most part, but on occasion did sound a little drab. We could have done with far more of the Debussian sense of being 'lit from behind'. There was nothing especially 'wrong', but electricity and luminosity were not in abundant supply. It pains me to say so, since there can hardly be a greater admirer of Haitink's Wagner than I, but this was not a memorable account.

Not to worry: matters improved thereafter. Haitink and the Concertgebouw have a long track record in Debussy, their 1979 recording of the Nocturnes having garnered awards. The balance between the three movements was expertly judged, as if one were dealing with a three-movement symphony. Nuages seemed to grow out of the sounds of late Wagner, but with more attention paid to colour. Liszt's extraordinary late piano piece, Nuages gris, much admired by Debussy, also sprang to mind as a source. But the sound was all Debussy's own. Haitink has never been a conductor to exhibit the laser-like clarity of Boulez in such repertoire - or indeed in any other repertoire - but one could hear everything that was going on, especially the delightful woodwind, without any loss of atmosphere. The rhythmic assuredness of Fêtes had almost the implacability of Ravel, again without losing the impressionistic ambiguity so personal to Debussy. Antiphonal placing of the women's voices paid dividends in Sirènes, and once again the woodwind, not least the English horn, shone, as did the beautiful muted trumpets. One could have lingered forever with these dangerous siren sounds, but then that is the point. All I missed was a hint more of Wagner from the strings, which sounded uncharacteristically lean. A little more refulgence would not have gone amiss, although one might well argue that they sounded all the more 'French' for this.

Rudolf Escher's orchestration of the Six épigraphes antiques was also well performed. I am not convinced that the orchestration is quite the last word, although it appears to have become quite popular. It neither sounds quite like original Debussy - how could it? - nor like an imaginative re-creation in a personal voice of the composer's own. The seductive combination of flute and harp is perhaps a little over-used. Still, both orchestration and performance gave some sense of the music's origin in incidental music (to a recitation of poems by Pierre Louÿs), whose material was then reused in the relatively well-known work for piano duet. At the risk of unbearable repetitiveness, this item once allowed the woodwind to exhibit great beauty and individuality of tone.

Fine though the Debussy items were, the climax came with the Tristan excerpts, and with the so-called 'Liebestod' in particular. (The term comes from Liszt, in his piano transcription, not Wagner, who favoured Verklärung, 'transfiguration'. Still, we appear stuck with 'Liebestod', so best not to complain unduly...) Here, Haitink's experience with the work in the theatre - who could ever forget his magnificent account during his last season as Music Director at Covent Garden? - worked dividends. One loses much, of course, by only having the opening and the conclusion, but there was here perhaps enough distancing too, to allow the music to emerge on its own terms. There was never any doubt of the inevitability of where it was heading (Furtwängler's fabled Fernhören), save for the slight awkwardness of transition between Prelude and 'Liebestod'. Nothing can be done about that really, for the two do not really belong together, as Tovey pointed out. Here at last the strings shimmered with the vibrato of Nietzsche's 'voluptuousness of Hell', with no sacrifice in terms of the rest of the orchestral playing, which was uniformly superb. Haitink's wisdom shone through in the marvellously judged ebb and flow. If the climaxes were not so shattering as they might have been in the theatre, here they benefited from his expert musical shaping. There was never any question of transforming the music into an orchestral showpiece; in that, I was reminded of Claudio Abbado's Mahler Third a few nights earlier. It may be a forlorn hope, but we must fervently hope nevertheless that Haitink will once again have and take the opportunity to conduct the entire work. Responding to the warmth of the reception that will surely always be his in London, Haitink then allowed the orchestra to show off in a blazing encore: the Prelude to Act III of Lohengrin.