RPO/Petrenko - Messiaen, 23 April 2026

Royal Festival Hall

Turangalîla-Symphonie

Steven Osborne (piano)

Cécile Lartigau (ondes Martenot)

1927 Studios (animation)

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Vasily Petrenko (conductor)

Images: Andy Paradise

Messiaen was never one to do things by halves. We might think his Turangalîla-Symphonie offered enough in sensory overload without adding further to it; we might have good reason for doing so. Yet, for one night only, in the particular setting of the Southbank Centre’s Multitudes ‘multi-arts festival powered by orchestral music’, it gained – doing things by doubles rather than halves, one might say – a silent film and narrative from 1927 Studios. Their work may be familiar from a Magic Flute and Petrushka/L’Enfant et les sortilèges double-bill for Berlin’s Komische Oper during its Barrie Kosky years; it is inventive, witty, and absorbing. Here, a film engaging with some varieties of ‘love’ – ‘whatever that means’, as once upon a time a prince might have said – accompanied or, perhaps, was accompanied by a performance of Messiaen’s irresistible, outrageous exploration of still more of those varieties, from the human physical to that of the universe itself (in whatever sense you can imagine). 

As the film, beautifully, intricately put together and acted, starring Jake Cecil as a dashing Tristan-ish knight and Esme Appleton as his tragic, Isolde-like bride, unfolded, so did its soundtrack ‘live’. Of course, that has problems from a purely musical perspective. I began to feel guilty about the lack of attention, or perhaps better the divided attention, I was according the performance ‘itself’. But would I feel that if it were an opera? (There is an LPO Wozzeck to come this weekend, though I shall not be attending.) Does it matter? The two did not merely mirror or follow one another, but for the most part they complemented. And when I decided to focus my visual gaze on the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Vasily Petrenko, I could still do so and hear what was a fine, tautly conceived and executed Festival Hall performance. 

Petrenko, moreover, gave a well-judged, engaging spoken introduction to the event, as well as making a knowing, winking cameo as the wedding’s music director on film. Messiaen in any case, was still very much there, in all his multicoloured, synaesthetic, infectious craziness. No one will have failed to feel the motor rhythms, the repetitions and variations of figures, the confrontations between different conceptions of time, nor have been seduced by the array and interaction of harmonic and timbral colour—whether from the RPO, Steven Osborne’s titanic, all-encompassing interpretation (this was no mere execution) of the piano part, or the soaring presence of Cécile Lartigau’s ondes mardenot. There were passages of extraordinary magic, the cool blue and hue lingering glances at sleeping bodies in the ‘Jardin du sommeil d’amour’ finding music and animation in perfect complement. The crazy flower-(power)-love of the preceding ‘Joie du sang des étoiles’ may never quite be the same again, though whenever is it? No artwork stands still in a world of performance; nor should it. This was a journey to the cosmic such as one could imagine Stockhausen dreaming, albeit with a little – just a little – more self-control. 

Messiaen doubled, then, or halved? Both are a little extreme as perspectives. Having seen and heard Turangalîla like that, I should probably rather do so on its own, ‘neat’, next time. (Or perhaps, I should rather have done that first, ‘progressing’ to the ‘augmented reality’ of this evening’s show.) No one, however, is claiming that I should do otherwise. This was, by its nature, a one-off, even if it finds itself repeated elsewhere—as I suspect it will be (and probably should). I loved the Stravinsky-Ravel double-bill nine years ago, whilst feeling circumspect about the Magic Flute than many. Nothing will be for everyone; more to the point, works will always survive and usually grow from such encounters. So, we should hope, will audiences. This was not simply an outreach exercise, but a fascinating experiment in its own right; if it has worked as the former too, we shall all be the better for it.

RPO/Petrenko - Beethoven and Mahler, 22 March 2023

Royal Festival Hall

Beethoven: Fidelio, op.72: Overture
Mahler: Des Knaben Wunderhorn: ‘Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen’, ‘Der Schildwache Nachtlied’, ‘Revelge’, ‘Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt’
Beethoven, orch. Mahler: Symphony no.9 in D minor, op.125

Elizabeth Watts (soprano)

Claudia Huckle (contralto)

Nicky Spence (tenor)

Matthew Brook (bass-baritone)

The Bach Choir

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Vasily Petrenko (conductor)

This was a fascinating programme of Beethoven, Mahler, and Beethoven-meets-Mahler, performed with verve and conviction by a fine quartet of soloists, the Bach Choir, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and Vasily Petrenko. Petrenko had stepped in at relatively short notice, substituting from an indisposed Andrew Davis, but especially during the second ‘half’, Mahler’s ‘retouching’ (Retusche[n]) of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, one would surely never have guessed. He and the orchestra fully entered into the spirit of the enterprise, viewing or rather hearing Beethoven via Mahler, without merely attempting to recreate. Such ‘recreation’ – ‘as close as possible to Mahler’s vision’, according to Petrenko’s spoken introduction – must remain a starting point, as opposed to a destination; the music still requires choices to be made, standpoints to be taken, just as in any performance. The crucial thing was that Beethoven and the Ninth in particular were rescued from their current malaise, in which deeply unsatisfactory, often plain inadequate, performances rob the music not only of its meaning, which will after all always be contested, but of any meaning whatsoever. 

But first came the Overture to Fidelio and a selection from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, introducing, as it were, our two principal musical characters. The RPO immediately sounded on top form, and what a joy it was to hear this music with so large an orchestra. (The recent, domesticating onslaught on Beethoven has been entirely negative, leaving what should go almost without saying as a rare luxury.) Attack and polish were impeccable; tension was maintained throughout. A slight absence of greater line immediately after the start was soon rectified, in an impressive performance all around.

Each vocal soloist from the symphony was allotted a Wunderhorn song: a nice idea, though having applause after each song, the next singer only then coming on stage, broke continuity and might have been reconsidered. Moving downward from soprano to bass(-baritone), the selection began with Helen Watts’s ‘Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen’. I quite liked Petrenko’s deliberate way with the song, though sometimes solo instruments were not entirely together. At any rate, Watts offered a sincere, communicative performance, intimate despite or perhaps even on account of the number of strings. A more alienated, unquestionably ‘later’ world than that of Beethoven was upon us, trumpets ironically connecting it with Fidelio. When the girl began to weep (‘Das Mädchen fing zu weinen an’), the accent, orchestral as well as vocal, on ‘weinen’ truly hit home. Claudia Huckle’s true contralto proved just as communicative in ‘Der Schildwache Nachtlied’, the sardonic note of the performance, pursued and intensified in the two songs yet to come, arising ‘naturally’ from Mahler’s writing, not least the orchestral marching; there was no need to ‘apply’ anything from without. Nicky Spence’s dark, urgently compelling ‘Revelge’ took us to the brink of Wozzeck, bones grimly rattling. Matthew Brook engagingly played the (holy?) Fool in St Anthony’s sermon to the fish, his face even offering a close-up glimpse of the open-mouthed congregation. Petrenko’s supply of orchestral colour and continuity was spot on. I could even hear Berio waiting in the wings: further time-travel, all the better for it. 

The opening of the Ninth – surely the only Ninth in which even now one might not seek clarification, ‘do you mean Mahler’s?’ – sounded duly possessed, Petrenko’s judicious tempo ensuring urgency was not conflated with excessive speed or, worse still, metronomic inflexibility. Harmony and detail – Mahler’s as well as Beethoven’s, the former’s radical rewriting of some inner parts in particular immanent as well as merely apparent – once again emerged ‘naturally’, however much hard work may have been necessary to give that impression. Where earlier generations spoke of restoration of Beethoven’s letter, here one could experience restoration of his spirit. Whilst it may seem strange to speak of concision in this vast first movement, one can and should, unless something has gone horribly awry; one certainly felt it here. The battle royal of the development was won through counterpoint old and new, as much as harmony, Mahler (at times) winning the upper hand. The moment and section of return were cataclysmic, even carnivorous, for this was certainly no Beethoven for vegans. Mahler’s additions sounded close, at least, to necessary—and utterly convincing. The coda terrified as it must, yet nowadays rarely does. 

A scherzo as energetic as any, awe-inspiringly so, judged to a tee the particular qualities of ‘a’ Beethoven scherzo as well as this particular one. How the horns, doubled in number, rollicked, strings danced, and timpani bounced! The trio was its bubbling and consoling self, its propulsion, crucially, an ethical as well as ‘purely’ musical imperative. The Adagio molto e cantabile may have been a little lacking in the ‘molto’ department; it felt swifter than, say, Furtwängler or Barenboim. But who knows what Mahler did? Petrenko rightly took his own approach, concentrating on the ‘cantabile’, enabling not only song but nobility to emerge, not least through fine command of line. The crucial thing was that Beethoven mattered once more. And if one heard much of what must have inspired Mahler, all the better, whether in the role of woodwind, sounding hear close to a celestial organ, perhaps played on by one of those Wunderhorn saints, in harmony, or indeed in form. Presentiments of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony in particular seemed unusually apparent. 

Terrible sounds, against which the sincerest, most eloquent entreaties of cellos and basses inveighed in vain, opened the finale. When those strings reached the ‘right’ theme, relatively swift in Petrenko’s hands, yet never too much so, it proved infectious for the rest of the orchestra, as if the gift of music (and, thank goodness, string vibrato) had been discovered anew. Brook’s verbal intervention set the scene for a conclusion that took us not only from Beethoven to Mahler, but also from Beethoven to Mozart; Don Giovanni hinted at previously, we could now hear generations of response to The Magic Flute. In context, the Turkish March seemed to hint also at Mahler’s own ‘Revelge’. Clarity and commitment from the Bach Choir, as well as the solo quartet, ensured, in wonderful fullness of sound, that Schiller also received a due hearing. If this were Beethoven in brighter colours than we imagine, say, Wagner’s to have been, why not? Ultimately, it needed to be Petrenko’s Beethoven as well as Mahler’s, and so it was. Musical history is never drawn, or at least never should be, in a straight line. To do so would be to rob it, as well as music, of its humanity. The speed of the final bars, whilst not prepared in Furtwängler’s way, nonetheless echoed it from a distance. ‘Seid umschlungen, Millionen!’ That applies to interpretation too.

McCawley/RPO/Davan Wetton - Mozart and Haydn, 12 April 2016

Cadogan Hall

Mozart – Le nozze di Figaro, KV 492: Overture

Mozart – Vesperæ solennes de confessore, KV 339: ‘Laudate dominum’
Mozart – Piano Concerto no.21 in C major, KV 467
Haydn – Missa in tempore belli, Hob.XXII/9

Leon McCawley (piano)

Grace Davidson (soprano)

Anna Harvey (mezzo-soprano)

Mark Wilde (tenor)

Ashley Riches (bass-baritone)

City of London Choir

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Hilary Davan Wetton (conductor)

 

A wonderful concert, quite the tonic (if you will forgive the Classical pun, initially unintended). Hilary Davan Wetton and the RPO began with the Figaro Overture. ‘Authenticists’, although not the late Nikolaus Harnoncourt, would probably have described it as ‘sedate’, but it was not; there was life to it and real symphonic stature too (lack of a development section notwithstanding). Crisp, warm, with nothing exaggerated to the accents, nor to anything else, it sounded just right. There was some gorgeous horn-playing too.

My only complaint about the next item was that we did not get to hear the entire KV 339 Vespers. No matter: we heard a lovely account of the most celebrated ‘number’, ‘Laudate Dominum’. Grace Davidson offered a clean, honest, stylishly ornamented performance of the soprano part, her bell-like voice ideally suited. Warm playing and choral singing from the City of London Choir were equally appreciated.

Leon McCawley joined the orchestra for an excellent performance of the C major Piano Concerto, KV 467. Davan Wetton imparted a fine sense of the martial quasi-neo-Classicism (think La clemenza di Tito, but not quite) to the opening tutti. Sternness but also a willingness to yield were hallmarks of the performance as a whole. Lovely wind playing was answered by McCawley’s pearly tone, every note weighed for its colour, without a hint of pedantry. The music ‘flowed like oil’, as someone once said. Trills were an especial joy. The second group was, rightly, both related and contrasted to what had gone before, form assuming its own dynamism and balance. The piano writing looked forward at times to Beethoven, without ever sounding quite ‘like’ him. Nina Milkina’s cadenza here (and in the finale) offered a winning sense of fidelity through Romantic anachronism. The slow movement benefited from beautiful string playing, a perfect marriage of arco and pizzicato redolent of warm evening serenades. If that evoked Salzburg, McCawley’s piano evoked Vienna, and rightly so. Phrasing was inobtrusively ‘right’, a tribute to soloist, orchestra, and conductor alike. Above all, the music sang. The finale emerged as heir to both its predecessors, the RPO woodwind leading us into a veritable garden of delights. Chamber and orchestral tendencies were held in splendid balance throughout.

Haydn’s Missa in tempore belli received an equally fine performance. Its opening ‘Kyrie’ already seemed to speak both of the composer’s warm humanity and of his symphonic-developmental genius. Davidson’s soprano entry presented us with a change of tempo and mood, with all the virtues of her solo performance. Davan Wetton took the movement at quite a lick, yet without hurrying, let alone harrying, it. And how could one not fall in love, were one not already, with the composer of those responsorial (now soprano/alto to tenor/bass, now vice versa) eleisons? The ‘Gloria’ likewise had a proper sense of Haydn’s gloriously civilised eighteenth-century nature, with serious symphonic backbone lest one fall back on clichés of ‘Papa’. Davan Wetton’s choral experience was very clear – and welcome, as was the discipline of the singers themselves. The cello solo for the ‘Qui tollis’ section had its richness matched – sorry about another unintended pun – by that of the bass-baritone of Ashley Riches. Clarity and warmth were, again, shown to be anything but antithetical. There was a gloriously rich choral sound too on ‘suscipe’, followed by hushed by ‘deprecationem nostram’ premonitions of the Missa solemnis, also to be heard upon the imprecation ‘miserere nobis’. Highly convincingly, the ‘Quoniam’ section was taken at the tempo of a typical Haydn symphonic finale. Those ‘Amens’: again, how could one not adore them?

The opening of the ‘Credo’ was taken slower, the sturdiness of the Church as Rock of St Peter vividly communicated. Haydn’s neo-Baroque tendencies were here given their full due. The dark orchestral writing of the ‘Et incarnatus est’ section, not just its harmonies, but also its neo-Handelian writing for bassoon (I thought of the Witch of Endor), was splendidly conveyed. Mark Wilde’s Italianate manner and Anna Harvey’s richness of tone somehow both seemed to prepare the way for the firework-like ‘Et resurrexit’. The final fugue, quite rightly, returned to that opening sturdiness, again evoking Handel. Out of that, the ‘Amens’ sounded gorgeous: fruit that was almost Mozartian in its indecency.

 

Sweetness and vigour characterised the ‘Sanctus’, Wilde’s contribution finely balanced. The ‘Bendictus’ sounded both tragically imploring and imploringly tragic, prior to the balm of the major mode, properly post-Mozartian in its ambivalence. Musical values were never sacrificed to the merely ‘theatrical’ in the ‘Agnus Dei’, although the military music was played for everything it was worth. (Again, Haydn seemed to steal from the Beethovenian future.) Choral consolation was as real as it was lovable. We all need more Haydn in our lives; we all need more choral Haydn in our lives. Next stop: The Seasons on Sunday, from the LSO and Simon Rattle.

 

 

 

R.I.P. Jon Vickers, 1926-2015

My first Siegmund (the Karajan recording) and much else besides.

Merry Christmas!

RPO/Zukerman - Bach, Schoenberg, Mozart, and Mendelssohn, 27 June 2014

Cadogan Hall

Bach – Violin Concerto in A minor, BWV 1041

Schoenberg – Verklärte Nacht, op.4

Mozart – Exsultate, jubilate, KV 165/158a

Mendelssohn – Symphony no.4 in A major, op.90, ‘Italian’

Arianna Zukerman (soprano)
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Pinchas Zukerman (violin, conductor) 

Pinchas Zukerman is joining the RPO for a ‘Summer Music Festival’ at Cadogan Hall, involving chamber as well as orchestral music, the former with musicians from the Royal College of Music. This was the opening concert, in which we were treated to Zukerman as violinist as well as conductor. There was a great deal to enjoy, and we were treated to a previously unadvertised bonus, a performance of Exsultate, jubilate, with Zukerman’s daughter, Arianna.

Bach came first: the rarest of rare treats in the insanity of modern symphonic programming. Would that one could believe this to be a harbinger; alas, it seems more likely to be a late, if not quite last, hurrah from a generation of musicians who understood and experienced the necessity of performing a repertoire spanning as many centuries as possible. Zukerman’s recordings of the Bach violin concertos with Daniel Barenboim and the English Chamber Orchestra remain a choice recommendation, as do those of David Oistrakh with the RPO. Here, in a sense, then, we gained the best of both worlds, and this was for the most part a delightfully assured, musical performance, which sought to make no especial ‘points’ and was all the better for it. The tempo taken for the first movement had a sense of ‘rightness’ to it, setting up a performance whose variegated articulation was not the least of its virtues. Zukerman’s intonation was perfect throughout. (It is surprising how many violinists’ intonation is not.) Varied flourishes of vibrato were rightly the icing on the cake. And throughout, crucially, the continuo line (Clare Williams on harpsichord, Tim Gill leading the cellos) provided the foundation upon which Bach’s miraculous score was re-created. The slow movement was a little more problematical: taken at a very brisk pace and, more to the point, at times disconcertingly brusque. Matters improved as time went on, but tutti passages retained more than a little of that character. Zukerman could occasionally be a little fierce too, though there were some truly exquisite moments: diminuendi, in particular, and some especially rich tone in the lower registers of the instrument. Some might have found the finale a little on the sturdy side, but Zukerman’s tempo permitted musical values to eclipse the merely or mostly flash. Again, that perfectly centred tone of his was something truly to savour – and again, the RPO played with unflashy excellence. 

A good number more strings joined the orchestra for Verklärte Nacht. This proved to be quite an unusual performance. In many, though not quite all, it paid off, but Zukerman certainly proved himself no slave to received tradition. The veiled opening, dark, even ominuous, seemed all the more so for being taken at an unusually slow tempo. It actually made the music sound closer to Mahler, recalling the first movement of the Second Symphony and even looking forward to the Sixth, despite the different keys involved. The opening, at least, was quite different in its lack of Brahmsian flexibility, though that would come later, Zukerman showing himself willing both to linger and to press on. Indeed, different sections of the work exhibited clearly differentiated character, the programme coming across more strongly than often. Despite one passage in which conductor and orchestra seemed to lose their way – I am not quite sure what happened – climaxes and turning-points were handled with musical and dramatic understanding. Graver passages seemed especially to benefit from Zukerman’s approach; some others might have benefited from more in the way of late Romantic abandon, sounding a little studied by comparison with other performances. I was not entirely convinced by the considerable slowing towards the end, suggesting almost an formal arch rather than a journey toward transfiguration, but the final bars themselves somewhat redressed the balance.

 

Arianna Zukerman showed herself a winningly forthright soloist: not flawless, but with a nicely operatic spirit. In the first movement of Mozart’s motet, the lower range showed a degree of strain, and the cadenza’s intonation was unfortunate. But her phrasing was musical, and was clearly conceived of in tandem with Zukerman’s exquisite direction of the orchestra, woodwind in particular. Even when, once again, as in the third movement, the soloist’s intonation wandered, the RPO sounded gorgeous. The final ‘Alleluia’ was taken with evident relish; it was difficult not to smile, in Haydnesque fashion, at the prospect of the Divinity.

 

Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony received a lovely performance with which to finish. The first movement opened with real attack, a true sense of life. Bright and bushy-tailed, Mendelssohn’s score benefited once again from splendidly variegated playing. The vivace in Allegro vivace was properly heeded. There was a delightful, subtle slowing for the advent of the second group, but the exposition repeat was not taken and was missed (at least by me!) The development section was admirably clear with an excellent sense of direction, the recapitulation offering a real sense of arrival – and also of difference, bubbling woodwind nicely to the fore. What one might call the ‘light inexorability’ of tread to the second movement was perfectly captured. It was interesting to note that often Zukerman felt no need to conduct at all, suggestive of well-directed rehearsal. The minuet received a loving, old world performance. Too relaxed? Perhaps just a little, at times, though certainly not by much. Its trio continued in similar vein, boasting especially fine Harmoniemusik, which inevitably had one think of Mozart’s serenades. Any slight doubts had evaporated by the return of the minuet. The finale wanted nothing in vigour, urgency, or, where required, lightness of touch. A fine sense of chiaroscuro ensured that it was not unrelenting, indeed that it was blessed by musical ‘character’.

 

Graham/RPO/Dutoit - Ravel, Berlioz, and Saint-Saëns, 14 May 2014

Royal Festival Hall

Ravel – Valses nobles et sentimentales

Berlioz – Les Nuits d’été, op.7

Saint-Saëns – Symphony no.3 in C minor, op.78

Susan Graham (mezzo-soprano)

Stephen Disley (organ)

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Charles Dutoit (conductor)

The orchestral version of Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales opened promisingly, the first waltz glossy, its surface properly shimmering, inviting and yet evading the question of what lay underneath. Properly responsive to Charles Dutoit’s direction, the Royal Philharmonic sounded on excellent form. This was not the probing, modernistic Ravel of Boulez but, on its own terms, it worked well. And if that first waltz was a little too driven, there was plenty of languor to its successor. Rubato was well judged, direction maintained. Phrasing was nicely pointed in the third, and there was much to admire throughout. It was a pity, then, that, on a few occasions, the strings were oddly tentative, a greater pity that Dutoit did little to rectify the problem. The Epilogue, however, was intriguingly crepuscular; fragments and memories were often menacing, at the very least ambiguous.

 

Susan Graham joined the orchestra for a spellbinding performance of Les Nuits d’été. Nervous energy from all concerned marked the opening and indeed the entirety of ‘Villanelle’. Berlioz’s individualty was celebrated, not masked, still less apologised for, melodic and harmonic twists relished, though not unduly exaggerated. Graham’s diction and sense of style, here and thereafter, were quite simply beyond reproach; Dutoit’s partnership showed him at his very best. The orchestral writing of ‘La Spectre de la rose’ – one simply cannot separate instrumentation from melody – looked forward, as it should, to Roméo et Juliette, even to Les Troyens. Graham’s sincerity of vocal delivery offered a fine example of art concealing art; it sounded as if this were an unmediated witness. ‘Léger parfum’, as heard from the harps, was properly beguiling indeed. Darkening of mood was immediately palpable in Sur les lagunes. Graham’s voice darkened and blended with a very different orchestral palate. At times, this might almost have been a contralto, not least when the voice sank for the night’s extending ‘comme un linceul’. Thereafter, there was Romantic defiance, the orchestra vividly ‘operatic’. A true sense of calling out, not just of recounting someone having done so, was to be heard with the opening – and subsequent – ‘Reviens, reviens, ma bien-aimée!’ of ‘Absence’. In its way, it emerged as a touching counterpart to the Marschallin’s melancholy concerning time’s passing. ‘Au Cimietière’ offered orchestral weirdness: positively in the subtlest of refractions from the Symphonie fantastique upon ‘rayon tremblant’, less so in the less than ideal balance to the close, the clarinet unduly prominent. But the latter was a minor blemish indeed, soon eclipsed by the experience of new horizons afforded by ‘L’Ile inconnue’.

 

Saint-Saëns’s Third Symphony is a peculiar work: to my ears, a more or less irreconcilable mixture of styles and material. It is difficult to rid oneself of the suspicion that many respond more to the sound of the organ than to the music itself. And indeed, the writing for the King of Instruments is decidedly peculiar, still more so, given that the composer, an excellent organist, wrote plentiful music for it. The first movement, at any rate, had a welcome air of Mendelssohn to it, the RPO admirable in its precision. To English ears, there are perhaps in some turns of phrase, even harmonic shifts, presentiments of Elgar to be heard too. Motivic construction was clearly conveyed – though is perhaps this construction not a little too obvious? (If so, that is the composer’s fault, not the performers’.) The slow movement made its unhurried progress – again not entirely unlike Elgar – with great conviction. Dutoit offered a fine sense of line, and balance between organ and orchestra was well achieved. There was, again, more than a hint of Mendelssohn to the scherzo, impressively darkened second time around. The trio sounded unduly hurried, though I am not convinced that it displays particularly successful writing in any case. Be that as it may, the transition to the finale was convincingly shaped. Counterpoint was clear and well directed. There was splendid timpani playing at the end too. As for the rest of the movement, well: if you like this sort of thing, then this is the sort of thing you will like. I cannot for the life of me understand what those loud organ chords are supposed to achieve, but the Royal Festival Hall audience was clearly impressed, roaring its approval at the end.

Kennedy/RPO/Litton - Brahms and Elgar, 12 June 2012

Royal Festival Hall

Brahms – Academic Festival Overture, op.80

Elgar – Enigma Variations, op.36

Brahms – Violin Concerto in D major, op.77

Nigel Kennedy (violin)

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Andrew Litton (conductor)

Few in the audience would, I suspected, have been present specifically for the first half of this concert, so I was a little surprised to see a few seats vacated after the interval. When it came to what made the concert memorable – and I wonder whether ‘unforgettable’ will prove nearer the mark – would be Nigel Kennedy’s performance of the Brahms Violin Concerto, and indeed what would come thereafter. Nevertheless, I ought to say something about the first half too. 

Andrew Litton’s account of the Academic Festival Overture opened in intriguing Mendelssohnian fashion, its lightness putting me in mind of his fine London Philharmonic recording of the Midsummer Night’s Dream music. Later, the performance turned more excitable, closer to Tchaikovsky. I am not sure that it really added up to Brahms, but at least it was not dull. (Thank goodness, though, that that treatment was not meted out to the Tragic Overture, or the Haydn Variations.) As for Litton’s podium manner, it threatened to make the late Leonard Bernstein seem restrained.

The Enigma Variations worked better, though the emphasis tended to lie upon sharp characterisation of each individual variation as opposed to a guiding thread running through the work as a whole. Oddly, however, and despite such discontinuities, the music often sounded closer to Brahms than the overture had. The Theme was a case in point, darkly beautiful, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s cellos exhibiting great depth of tone, its violins commendable sheen. Another case would be the dark tones of ‘R.P.A’. Strauss, quite properly, had a look in for the first variation (C.A.E.); admiration of course ran both ways between the two composers. The brass, especially trombones, proved splendidly raucous in ‘Troyte’. ‘Nimrod’, though its opening was perhaps a little too febrile, received a warmly Romantic rather than pious reading, followed by a ‘Dorabella’ both whimsical and sardonic. A telephone did not quite succeed in disrupting the welcome air of mystery in the fourteenth variation (*** - Romanza), ‘E.D.U.’ proving excitable rather in the manner of the preceding overture. It was good to hear the tones of the Royal Festival Hall organ ring out here.

Now for Kennedy’s ‘half’. Though I have long admired his musicianship – far, far more serious, in the best sense, than he is often given credit for – this was my first opportunity to hear him in the flesh. I was certainly not to be disappointed. Doubtless there is hyperbole in his programme booklet declaration that ‘Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms are the raison d’être of classical music,’ but it remains refreshing to hear voiced so unapologetically the broader point being made, namely the centrality of Austro-German music: ‘At the Yehudi Menuhin School, it as made clear to us that central Europe is central to all that is good in classical music.’ And I find it difficult to disagree with Kennedy’s opening gambit: ‘It is a privilege to be playing what is probably the greatest violin concerto of them all for you guys this evening.’

It seemed as though Kennedy’s thoughts had rubbed off on Litton, for the opening tutti of the first movement sounded far more traditionally ‘Brahmsian’ than the Academic Festival Overture had. That is not to say that it was dull, or even sturdy, for it proved full of light and shade, but crucially there was a far stronger sense of harmonic rhythm, answered in turn by an electric – no, not in that sense – appearance of musical virtuosity on Kennedy’s part. (As he so rightly and indeed necessarily put it in the programme, ‘Unfortunately, for some modern proponents of violin playing, a fantastic technique and sound production are not (as in some other concertos) sufficient to tackle the philosophical demands of Brahms’s composition.’) Kennedy’s performance was to prove a standing riposte to emphasis ‘purely on gaining technique’, which he associates with much conservatoire teaching, not least ‘at the Juillard School of Boredom,’ where he studied alongside Litton. For, from the outset, his shaping of phrases and his sounding of the connections between them, spoke of true musical understanding. The sweetness of his tone, moreover, spoke of a wonderfully ‘old school’ approach, sounding almost midway between Heifetz and Menuhin, if you can imagine such a thing. Soloist and orchestra were palpably alert to the demands of the score as musical drama, to its playing out within and through Brahms’s concerto form. It was clearly above all Kennedy’s reading: Litton visibly followed his soloist’s rubato. Yet, in a performance that balanced formal demands with quasi-impovisatory calls arising from Kennedy’s not unreasonable belief in the importance of the gypsy tradition, there could be no complaint on that account.

That sense of the improvisatory came to a head in the cadenza. Kennedy, perhaps unsurprisingly, prefers the fantasy of Kreisler here to Joachim’s standard version, ‘very strong structurally but sadly lacking in pathos’. However, he elected instead to provide his own, apparently improvised, cadenza. Alarm bells might have rung upon reading the statement, ‘During this, you might detect my belief that Brahms loved gypsy music and that, therefore, if he had had the same access as we do to, say, Indian music or the blues, he would probably have incorporated these equally important types of community music into his work as well.’ What we heard proved rather less outrageous than one might have hoped or feared, at least during the purely solo part. Hints of ‘world’ music manifested themselves more strongly as the cellos began to sound a pedal point, cellos joined by other strings, and eventually by the entire orchestra. Yet there was surprisingly little sense of incongruity, and what there might have been was more than outweighed by the soloist’s personality and sheer communicative skill.

The slow movement was blessed by beautiful, characterful woodwind playing, not only from the oboe (John Anderson). Kennedy’s spinning of the violin line was ardent yet variegated, vocal yet indisputably instrumental. It was a more rhapsodic approach than one often hears – a characteristic that on occasion slightly foxed the orchestra – but there were no grounds to associate that with any lack of structural sense, line being maintained as if this were a great aria, or perhaps better, a song without words.

Likewise, in the finale, clearly channelled through the personality and to an extent the delivery of a gypsy musician, form remained clear and meaningful. The orchestra sounded reinvigorated and the results were thrilling. Though there was nothing wilful or distended about the performance, quite the contrary, it would probably have been more likely for Kreisler – or the ever-open-minded Menuhin – to smile upon it than for Joachim to have done so. Frankly, it was a struggle, and I am sure that Kennedy would maintain it to be a futile struggle, to keep one’s foot from tapping along with his. If Nietzsche maintained that much of the problem with German music was its dissociation from the dance, famously celebrating Carmen against Wagner, he perhaps should have heard this.

There was more, of course, to come. After a little joking around, including a proposal of marriage to leader, Clio Gould, Kennedy engaged in an utterly spellbinding duet with principal cellist, David Cohen. As scintillating, in-authenticke a performance of the Handel-Halvorsen Chaconne as one could every hope for – and then a great deal more – was our treat. Virtuosity and musicianship sounded in equal measure from both parties; what was perhaps most enthralling was to observe, indeed viscerally to feel, their response toward each other as chamber musicians. How rehearsed it was, I do not know – Kennedy referred to a ‘sort of rehearsal’ in Nottingham – but it sounded, if you will forgive the cliché, newly minted. A gypsy-style medley ensued, first with Cohen ‘accompanying’, but soon joined by the rest of the RPO strings, some of them also offered solo spots. It was great fun, and more than that: testament to Kennedy’s very real sense of music as a communal activity. Truly, there is only one Nigel Kennedy.

Hanslip/RPO/Slatkin - Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky, 17 May 2010

Royal Festival Hall

Prokofiev – Symphony no.1 in D major, op.25, ‘Classical’
Prokofiev – Violin Concerto no.2 in G minor, op.63
Tchaikovsky – Symphony no.6 in B minor, op.74, ‘Pathétique’

Chloe Hanslip (violin)
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Leonard Slatkin (conductor)

A disappointing concert, alas: I hope that this was a one-off rather than being indicative of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s fortunes since the departure of Daniele Gatti. Memories of Gatti’s Mahler Ninth will, I am sure, remain me for a long time; those of this performance will, I hope, prove more fleeting. Leonard Slatkin has often had a bad press in this country, contrasting starkly with his fortunes in his native USA. His tenure as Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra was less than happy, but he has found a new London home with the RPO. On the evidence of this concert, however, there did not seem to be much rapport between orchestra and conductor.

The first piece, Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony began promisingly enough, the RPO’s cellos digging deep and the orchestra as a whole exhibiting crucial precision. Mendelssohnian woodwind added to a favourable initial sound world in the first movement. However, the music soon began to sound a little mechanised. A valid interpretative strategy? Perhaps, anticipating the motor rhythms of later or indeed some contemporary Prokofiev. But there are places at which the music benefits from some relaxation, which was not afforded here. A tempo that was arguably excessively fast led to more than a few imprecisions as the music progressed. The Larghetto simply sounded too fast, equivalent to a latter-day ‘authenticke’ approach to Classicism; whatever one thinks of that, it is hardly germane to Prokofiev’s concerns. Violins often sounded thin, perhaps under strain from their relative lack of numbers. The abiding impression was unyielding: more Stravinsky than Prokofiev. Ditto the gavotte, which certainly benefits from greater heft than was permitted here; it sounded ultimately inconsequential. The finale was much better, bolting like a Mannheim rocket, to mix a couple of metaphors. Part of the problem, I think, was that the RPO was somewhat scaled down – ten first violins, if I remember correctly – which made it neither a full-scale symphony orchestra such as Karajan’s Berlin Philharmonic, peerless in this work, nor a crack chamber orchestra performing at full throttle. The half-way house, as so often, does not quite satisfy.

That said, the symphony received a better reading than Prokofiev’s second violin concerto. Here the fault lay squarely with the soloist, Chloë Hanslip. Maybe she was having an off day, but on the evidence of this performance, this was music that lay beyond her reach, both technically and interpretatively. Her opening phrase encapsulated both strains of shortcoming: far too slow, strangely deliberate, and highly uncertain of tuning. Thereafter tempo changes, which seemed largely to be dictated by how fast she was able to play, lacked motivation, and double-stopping generally exceeded her capabilities. There were times when the first movement, marked Allegro moderato, almost ground to a halt: more of a Shostakovich-like Moderato or even Andante. The slow movement started more promisingly, less ponderous and with greater orchestral warmth. However, Hanslip’s solo line soon exhibited the vibrato of a particularly wobbly soprano, especially on high notes. The tempo began to sag towards the middle of the movement – and continued to do so, torpor being the order of the day by the end. A better job was made of the finale, though it remained on the light side. There were, however, nice touches of ‘Russian’ vibrato from the trumpets. One of the great twentieth-century violin concertos never had a chance here though.

Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique Symphony benefited from a larger body of strings. The first movement was the most convincing: rather impressive even. Its introduction was taken slowly but convincingly so, with real depth to the violas. The exposition proper commenced with urgency, though there was sometimes a certain edge to the violins, which dissipated as the work progressed. Brass blared a bit too. From the moment we reached the second subject, however, the movement really hit its stride. In a soulful reading, the strings could really shine. And this wound down beautifully, so that the opening of the development could shock. Perhaps the movement as a whole sprawled a little, lacking the utter inevitability of a Mravinsky, but it was unquestionably the highpoint of the concert. There was something hauntingly funereal, cortège-like, to the coda, even though it sounds in the major mode. The waltz was not bad, but, ironically given its celebrated 5/4 time signature, somehow remained resolutely foursquare. It lacked easy-going charm, sounding all too effortful. The march was similar, the RPO’s response impressive enough in purely orchestral terms, though Slatkin’s direction was unduly metronomic. Yet there was no sense of subtext. Where was the anger? Should this sound merely enjoyable? Some members of the audience took Slatkin at his word, not only applauding, but cheering. (To his credit, the conductor was having none of it.) The final Adagio was songful, most convincing when the (more or less) full orchestra sounded, but it was hardly a threnody. Applause intervened immediately, presumably from the same morons who had made their presence felt after the march. Slatkin’s hands remained raised, leading to the somewhat farcical outcome of the applause dying down, before resuming. And whatever this symphony might be, a farce it is not.

RPO/Gatti – Mozart and Beethoven, 18 March 2009

Royal Festival Hall

Mozart – Symphony no.41 in C major, ‘Jupiter’, KV 551
Beethoven – Symphony no.9 in D minor, op.125

Joan Rodgers (soprano)
Catherine Wyn-Rogers (mezzo-soprano)
Andrew Kennedy (tenor)
David Wilson-Johnson (baritone)
London Symphony Chorus
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Daniele Gatti (conductor)

Daniele Gatti’s final London concert as Music Director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra presented, aptly enough, the symphonic swansongs of Mozart and Beethoven. There was much to recommend these performances but I wonder whether I was alone in wishing that he had bade farewell with his penultimate concert, a truly devastating performance of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony.

The Jupiter symphony opened somewhat unpromisingly, with tentative violins, apparently unsure whether they should be aping ‘period’ manners, or rather mannerisms. However, such fears were banished once they began more freely using vibrato and adopting a wider range of dynamic contrasts, encouraged, it would seem, from the podium. The repeated exposition was much better than the first time around, the second subject presented with echt-Mozartian charm. Gatti imparted a strong rhythmic sense throughout, at times eliciting an almost Klemperer-like sturdiness to the bass line. Contrapuntal clarity and direction enabled one to understand that the contrapuntal miracle of the finale should not be viewed in isolation but as a culmination of the work. In the Andante cantabile, Gatti’s experience in opera doubtless assisted his shaping of long, vocal lines, although I have heard many ‘operatic’ conductors fail utterly in this respect. Phrases were carefully shaped, without fussiness. There was no nonsense about taking the music at breakneck speed; here one could bask in its utter loveliness. Sometimes, I wished that the strings would dig more deeply; there remained occasions when they sounded a little inhibited. The minuet was graceful, poised, and possessed of a nice swing. It was taken at a gentle one-to-a-bar but was not rushed. Phrases clearly answered one another, something which ought to go without saying but sadly not. The trio was also nicely swung, its minor-key episode making its presence felt without standing out unduly. Again, the imitative phrases of the finale were presented as answering one another, adding to an admirable sense of freshness and vitality. Any inhibitions on the part of the string section were now banished, leading to an entirely convincing account of this movement. The contrapuntal nature of so much of the composer’s material was brought out, enabling – as I remarked with respect to the first movement – the miracle of the coda’s quintuple invertible counterpoint to register as a cumulative, climactic tour de force rather than simply appear, as a deus ex machina. The movement boasted a real sense of triumph: exciting yet always dignified.

After the interval came the Ninth Symphony. (There is no need to say by whom.) Furtwängler has a lot to answer for here. A few months ago, I was talking to a distinguished philosopher and critic. We agreed that, after hearing Furtwängler, in whichever of his recorded accounts, no subsequent performance, not even Klemperer’s, matched up. One hopes against hope, of course, but nor did this, despite a number of musical virtues.

The first movement was in many ways most impressive, certainly when compared with the general standard of what one hears today. Gatti’s reading certainly gave the sense, as Furtwängler did so unerringly, of hearing the music as a whole, but there were times when he might have yielded, which went for very little, if anything at all. Wind instruments – woodwind as well as the blazing brass – could readily be heard without any sacrifice to depth of string tone. The latter could never fool one into believing that one was hearing one of the great German orchestras but, for a London band, it was not bad at all. The clarity of contrapuntal writing that had marked the Mozart symphony was once again apparent here. If one considered the movement as a demonic and at time lyrical rather than metaphysical drama it worked well, but is this really what the Ninth should be? There was fury throughout and the development section evinced a sense of titanic struggle, but what does this mean? One might not be able to answer that with words – although it is arguable that Beethoven eventually tries to do so – but one should certainly try with music.

The scherzo was fast, but energetic rather than mercilessly hard-driven. Matt Perry took his chance to shine on the kettledrums and ran with it, musically as well as theatrically. I felt a little short-changed by the lack of relaxation in the trio, although somewhat paradoxically, this made for relatively light relief in its games of counterpoint. Still, if one is not going to be Furtwängler, there is no point in straining for simulated ‘profundity’.

One might say much the same about the slow movement. But could this really qualify as Adagio molto e cantabile? Cantabile, yes: it was lyrical throughout, flowing beautifully, if hardly plumbing the metaphysical depths. The lyricism was rapt in a fashion that recalled – or rather presaged – the slow movement of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, a work in which Gatti has excelled. But ultimately I think it really was too fast for adagio, let alone adagio molto. Beethoven’s variation form was more clearly delineated than is often the case, with no sacrifice to the overall line. There was an unfortunate horn moment but these things happen. More troubling was the sense of a pleasant intermezzo, a harking back maybe to the Pastoral Symphony’s ‘Scene by the Brook’, instead of the revelatory experience that this movement can, or perhaps once could, provide.

The finale began like the proverbial bat out of Hell, but should we not be vouchsafed a glimpse of Hell itself rather than a mere creature fleeing therefrom? There was, however, a nice hush for the initial ’cello/double-bass statement of the theme. Again, it flowed beautifully, though one might wonder whether that in itself is really the point. The intervention ‘O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!’ evinced a splendid sense of rhetoric. Unfortunately, superb as his – and the other soloists’ – diction might have been, David Wilson-Johnson was not so impressive at hitting the actual notes. Indeed, the soloists often seemed to put rhetorical values ahead of ‘purely’ musical ones. They also proved more than a little ‘operatic’ in an alien, Italianate sense. There is, I admit, a good case for discerning irony in Beethoven’s writing. As Stephen Hinton notes in an interesting article (‘Not “which” tones? The crux of Beethoven’s Ninth,’ in 19th-Century Music, vol.22 no.1 (Summer 1998), pp. 61-77), ‘the contamination of the instrumental music by operatic gestures and by words and the nature of those gestures – the recitative of the bass instruments and the baritone’s exaggerated melismas – all reinforce ... [a] sense of self-consciousness’ (p.69). This is not, however, what happened here. The soloists were not ironically operatic. The Ninth Symphony can justly be seen, in some though by no means all senses, to mark a staging-post on the road to Wagnerian music drama; it is certainly not a link between Beethoven and Verdi, or indeed Rossini, to whose music Beethoven nursed considerable antipathy. I have no such reservations, however, concerning the work of the London Symphony Chorus, which was, quite simply, stunning. The weight of choral tone was all one could have wished for and every word was not only heard but meant. There was an apt militaristic, marching character to the ‘Turkish’ music, which too often sounds merely bizarre. After that, the movement proceeded on its way, certainly exultant, often exciting.

But is this all that the Ninth means or can mean to us today? What I fear is that we have, in a sense more monstrous even that of Adrian Leverkühn in Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus, revoked – or perhaps, worse, in this administered society, neutralised – its message. I pray that it will not require a second coming for Wilhelm Furtwängler to prove me wrong.

RPO/Gatti - Mahler, 14 January 2009

Royal Festival Hall

Mahler – Symphony no.9

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Daniele Gatti (conductor)

I have been privileged to attend two performances of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony that have verged upon greatness: from Sir Simon Rattle with the London Symphony Orchestra, and Daniel Barenboim with the Staatskapelle Berlin. In one of his final performances as Music Director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Daniele Gatti did not join their company; he surpassed it. Orchestrally, there may have been a very few minor blemishes, Moreover, the RPO, even at its best as here, may not quite rank with the aforementioned orchestras, although the gap was not so wide as many might suspect; it could also have done with just a few more strings. Nevertheless, Gatti’s reading swept all before it, going beyond very fine performances I have heard from him and this orchestra of Mahler’s Fourth and Fifth Symphonies.

If there was occasional slight wiriness from the violins earlier on in the first movement, the RPO achieved a rounded tone for its climaxes. The sound was appropriately string-saturated, though certainly not to the exclusion of opportunities well taken for solos, the woodwind in particular looking forward to Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire. Indeed, an expressionistic menace, to which brass interjections and powerful timpani blows contributed, characterised the entire movement: not exaggerated but, by the same token, not underplayed. Tempo fluctuations were well handled, never abrupt, and nothing was rushed; more than that, one had the sense of an epic unfolding, as if in one breath. Silences played their haunting part, yet they never marked caesuras; that miraculous single breath went unbroken. For an onward tread marked Gatti’s reading of this movement, recalling the procession of souls in the final movement of Mahler’s Second Symphony, albeit bathed in the apparent world-weariness of Parsifal’s harmonic language. When the bells sounded, both of these earlier works were recalled, brought together, and transmuted into something old yet new. Towards the end, Emer McDonough’s newly strange flute solo stopped just short of crossing over from Mahler’s side of atonality to Berg’s; however, one could imagine that a stone’s throw might have changed everything. Seemingly subsiding into a nothingness that presaged the latter composer’s Three Orchestral Pieces, Op.6, it was left to other instruments – violin, clarinet, and horn – to proffer some consolation in the final bars. Whatever were certain members of the audience thinking of when they applauded? (Sadly, they would twice turn out to be recidivists.)

From the opening bar of the second movement, Gatti displayed a strong sense of rhythm. Again, there was no question of rushing, rendering Mahler’s Ländler all the more rustic – and modernistically constructed. For the first episode, there was a nicely judged upward shift in tempo, yet this never came at the expense of rhythm and style. Relaxations were never abrupt, always telling. Before long, we heard nasty, expressionistic shrieks from the woodwind, again looking forward – though, of course, not so very far forward – to Schoenberg. Silences provided a sense of heart-stopping stillness until the ghostly marionettes resumed their play, coming to truly horrifying life – or should that be death? It was by now apparent that this was a great performance of the symphony, a realisation that crept upon me, rather as in some of Claudio Abbado’s Mahler performances, though perhaps a little less slow-burning. The close of the movement brought a similar sense of onward tread as that heard previously, yet it was now less world-weary, more a bringer of death. A fine example of this was the superb viola solo from Andrew Williams, suggestive of a more malign version of the Fourth Symphony’s scordatura fiddle.

In the Rondo-Burleske, the strings could not dig quite so deep as those of the Staatskapelle Berlin had for Barenboim, but they were not so very far off and their tone stood still closer to the expressionism of Wozzeck. Gatti’s rhythmic command was once again impeccable and I include harmonic rhythm in that observation. The savage counterpoint was truly nasty, akin to a Bergian Mahler Fifth – or Bach on acid. Sweetness came in the episodes but within limits. It remained a dubious sweetness and would be undermined afterwards and sometimes even simultaneously, for instance by Douglas Mitchell’s clarinet, straight out of Pierrot. There was a marionette-kinship with the second movement, for clearly, Gatti not only heard each movement in one, but the symphony as a whole. The terrible dances acquired an unstoppable force –which does not mean that the performance became inflexible, anything but. Vouchsafed an hallucinogenic vision of another world (the after-life?), this I found both beautiful and terrifying. Gatti understood that Mahler’s questions are metaphysical; the recent, Shostakovich-derived cheap thrills of Valery Gergiev in this repertoire could not have been more distant. And when the climax came, it was truly horrific. The subject – whoever or whatever that might be – attempted to escape, increasingly frantic; yet there was nowhere to hide. Implacable Fate proved the victor.

Then came the Adagio. The richness of tone in the violins’ opening phrase harked back to Parsifal and looked forward to the first movement of the unfinished Tenth. There was consolation in four-part comparatively diatonic harmony but this was a noble, strong account. Sentiment was not confused with sentimentality; there was still a fight to be had. Fate, however, was now more benign, allowing this extraordinary slow movement to unfold with inevitability towards something quite different from the conclusion of the Rondo-Burleske. Leader Simon Blendis’s violin solo exhibited an icy beauty, beneath which Mahler’s grand harmonic plan continued to work itself out – here, of course, in the surest of hands: Gatti’s. At times the espressivo nature of the strings’ vibrato threatened to become unbearable, as it should. Against this passionate warmth, we heard a still-beautiful spareness of death from the RPO’s woodwind. Brass and percussion brought us towards the precipice, enabling Mahler to cross over into another world, to somewhere we are not permitted to go. His progressive tonality leaves us unsure, even as we are consoled. The Second Viennese School, of whose music Gatti has proved an ardent advocate, is almost upon us. There is a Nietzschean sense of uncertain freedom, evoked in the following passage from The Gay Science:

... we philosophers and ‘free spirits’ feel, when we hear the news that ‘the old god is dead,’ as if a new dawn shone upon us; our heart overflows with gratitude, amazement, premonitions, expectation. At long last the horizon appears free to us again, even if it should not be bright; at long last our ships may venture out again, venture out to face any danger; all the daring of the lover of knowledge is permitted again; the sea, our sea, lies open again; perhaps there has never yet been such an ‘open sea’.

It was finally, understandably, as if Gatti – and Mahler – did not want to let go, yet ultimately must. This was shattering.

Prom 31: Brahms, Elgar, Strauss

5 August 2007

Brahms: Variations on a theme by Haydn, Op.56a
Elgar: Variations on an original theme ('Enigma')
Strauss: Oboe Concerto in D major
Strauss: Suite from Der Rosenkavalier

Alexei Ogrintchouk (oboe)
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Gennadi Rozhdestvensky (conductor)

This concert should have been conducted by Daniele Gatti, but illness had caused him to withdraw, leaving Gennadi Rozhdestvensky to deputise. I could not help thinking that it might have been a different occasion without this intervention from Fate; nor could I help thinking that Rozhdestvensky would have been happier conducting Prokofiev, or some other music with which he was more closely associated. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is not London's finest, but I have heard it perform more than creditably under Gatti, in Mahler and Berg. Here, for much of the time, it did not.

The concert opened with a weak performance of the Brahms Variations on a theme by Haydn. (Brahms used this title, so I do not think we need modishly change it, now that we believe that Haydn composed neither the theme, nor the divertimento in which Brahms discovered it.) It was not perverse, as was the performance Sir Simon Rattle gave with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra at the Proms a few years ago, when far too much was fussily underlined, or italicised, or both. However, the orchestra sounded lacklustre, and whilst certain variations received a degree of characterisation, others went for little, and there was almost no sense of forming part of a greater whole. It is not an easy thing to characterise and yet to integrate into a great symphonic sweep, yet the piece demands it. Furtwängler was able to do this, as have quite a few subsequent conductors, but it was not to be. Throughout, the strings, although hardly few in number, sounded faint and watery; that echt-Brahmsian dark-mahogany richness of tone was never to be heard. The final peroration sounded brighter, but when the most impressive things were a suitably rustic contrabasson and the sonorous ringing of the triangle, more than a little was amiss. Here, as elsewhere throughout the evening, members of the orchestra were sometimes alarmingly out of kilter with their colleagues.

The Enigma Variations were less lacklustre, though hardly memorable. This was not a typically 'English' reading. There is nothing wrong with that, for different perspectives can shed interesting light on well-known works, but it did not seem a fully considered alternative. Flashes of orchestral colour, often surprisingly brash, alternated with a great deal of run-of-the-mill playing. 'Nimrod' was deeply felt, an almost Beethovenian oasis of noble calm, but little of the rest lived up to its promise. The brass section acquitted itself very well, as it would whenever called upon throughout the night. Unfortunately, this served above all to highlight the shortcomings of the wishy-washy strings.

The second half was better. Perhaps Strauss was more Rozhdestvensky's thing, or perhaps he simply knew the pieces better. I am not quite sure that the latter was true, at least in the case of the Oboe Concerto. For whilst the ensemble was much improved, he seemed content to adopt an 'accompanying' role that seasoned Straussians such as Kempe or Karajan would never have considered. The orchestral woodwind provided its own piquant detail from time to time, but this was really the soloist's show. Suffice it to say that Alexei Ogrintchouk proved a very fine oboist - and a very fine musician. Ever attentive to the twists and turns of Strauss's often treacherously lengthy lines, his varied singing tone, aided by crafty yet concealed tonguing, lifted the evening's music-making to another level. This neo-Mozartian product of Strauss's fabled 'Indian summer' sounded like the lyrical successor to Daphne that it is, rather than a soloist's showcase. A pupil of Maurice Bourgue and already Principal Oboist of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Ogrintchouk deserves to go far indeed.

A suite from Der Rosenkavalier ended the concert. Here, at last, the whole orchestra sounded more committed. If the strings hardly compared to those of Vienna, at least they sounded less grey. The leader, Clio Gould's solo was quite delectable; she had been poorly served by her colleagues for most of the concert. The brass once again and the percussion shone. The horns' coital whooping during the Overture truly sounded like the 'real thing'. Yet the selection was strangely made, and did not tally with the 1945 Suite Michael Kennedy delineated in the programme. It may have been that selection (possibly by Artur Rodzinski) minus the Presentation of the Rose and the excerpt from the Trio; at any rate, those moments of sweet repose were absent, lending the rather arbitrary progression of what remained an undue brashness. All in all, this was not an evening of triumph, save for that undoubtedly pertaining to Ogrintchouk.