Salzburg Mozartwoche (2) - Mozart and Schubert, 27 January 2024

Grosses Festspielhaus

Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro, KV 492, Overture
Mozart: Piano Concerto no.9 in E-flat major, KV 271
Schubert: Symphony no.9 in C major, ‘Great’, D 944

Igor Levit (piano)

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Joana Mallwitz (conductor)

Images: Wolfang Lienbacher

Joana Mallwitz’s account of the Overture to The Marriage of Figaro revealed the Vienna Philharmonic as of old. (Conductors foolish enough to try to change its sound will quickly be rebuffed. If you do not like it, work with another orchestra.) Warm sound, fine turning of phrases, and a swift tempo that yet permitted time for the music to breathe offered a proper curtain-raiser. Indeed – a good sign, this – when the Overture had come to an end, I expected and wanted the opera to continue. 

Alas not on this occasion, but instead we were treated to a performance of ‘one of the greatest wonders of the world’ (Alfred Brendel): the E-flat Piano Concerto, KV 271, with Igor Levit as soloist. This was the only work on the programme for which Mallwitz used a score, though her head was certainly not in it. It was interesting to note the change in her – and the VPO’s – approach: although using the same body of strings, there was even in the opening tutti more of a sense of chamber music writ large than in the Overture, whilst retaining warmth and variegation. That impression was confirmed upon Levit’s entry, when he took the existing musical line and ran with it, until handing it back or sharing, in what was very much a shared endeavour. Replete with imaginative touches that never went against the grain, this was a first movement full of life. With Levit’s pearly tone and the heavenly sound of Vienna strings and woodwind, it is difficult to imagine anyone feeling shortchanged, though just occasionally I wondered whether something deeper was missing. 

The answer came in the slow movement: not that something had been missing, but rather that something had been kept in reserve. Its dark C minor opening, direct from the world of opera seria, prepared the way for a profound experience in which a finely spun Mozart line, wherever it might lie, was revealed to be possessed of infinite sentiment. It was not precious, but rather seemed to speak of something, to borrow from Mendelssohn, too precise for words: a grief-stricken lament from the deepest of all composers, or so it seemed here. Its radical interiority could be heard particularly in Levit’s solo passages, even in the voicing of a trill. After that, a finale both lighter and faster than one usually hears again had Mendelssohn’s presence hover before us. The orchestra responded to Levit’s opening challenge in helter-skelter fashion as if a nightmare had ended, and we were back to the day, albeit a day that could not quite banish memory of what had preceded it. The subdominant minuet emerged pristine in surprising simplicity: again at a fastish tempo, but in proportion to the music surrounding it. A surprising – and surprisingly apt – solo encore came in the quizzical guise of Shostakovich’s ‘Waltz-Scherzo’ from the Ballet Suite no.1. 

The second half was given over to Schubert’s ‘Great’ C major Symphony. Here there was much to admire – how could there not be with the Vienna Philharmonic onstage? – even if the whole felt lacking in the import and inevitability of the finest performances. Mallwitz presents the work, especially its first two movements, more as companion pieces to the early symphonies than harbingers of Romanticism. There is no Schubert performing tradition here, of course, so one is at liberty to do what one wants so long as it works; but does it? The first movement proceeded fluently without much in the way of tempo modifications (save for actual transition of tempo). Voicing of inner parts was a particular strength. The coda, however, felt less like a culmination and more a signoff. 

If the second movement were also on the fast side, it was proportionally so. Such tempo relationships are crucial; Mallwitz has clearly given them due thought. Detail was present and correct. Alternation of string and wind choirs made its point, without veering too strongly towards Bruckner. There was drama too in climax, silence, and aftershock, difficult not to think of in quasi-military terms, given the unfailing march-like quality to the VPO’s build-up. The scherzo I found engrossing; it offered weight and movement without galumphing, charm as well as style. Its trio proceeded a little too much bar-to-bar, its regularity too obvious. When it came to the finale, it certainly sounded like one—and a finale to what had gone before too. It was very well put together, with clear understanding and communication of harmonic rhythm, indeed rhythm more generally. I could not help but ask, though: what, if anything, might it all mean? Not that such 'meaning' could or should be put into words, but even so.

Salzburg Festival (1) - Goerne/Trifonov: Berg, Schumann, Wolf, Shostakovich, and Brahms, 11 August 2017

Haus für Mozart

Berg – Four Songs, op.2

Schumann – Dichterliebe, op.48

Wolf – Three Michelangelo Songs

Shostakovich – Suite on Verses of Michelangelo Buonarroti, op.145: ‘Dante’; ‘Death’; ‘Night’

Brahms – Four Serious Songs, op.121

Matthias Goerne (baritone)

Daniil Trifonov (piano)

This proved an outstanding recital, at least as much for Daniil Trifonov’s searching, protean pianism as for Matthias Goerne’s singing. Such a partnership, something beyond what one might ‘ordinarily’ expect during the concert season, is just what a festival such as Salzburg should be about. Likewise the programming: excellent in itself, yet also offering connections to broader themes on offer in the festival.

Goerne is singing Wozzeck here – on which, more later in the week – so Berg’s op.2 songs could, if one wished, be understood as anticipatory. More importantly, they made for a fine opening to this programme, the Hebbel setting ‘Schlafen, Schlafen, nichts als Schlafen’ drowsy, somnolent in the best way, emerging and yet never quite emerging from that state of half-awakedness. The languor one heard and felt had something of Debussy and early Schoenberg to it, yet could never quite be reduced to them or indeed to any other influence; this was Berg. Above all, it was founded in the piano part, above which words could then do their work. In its Parsfalian leisure-cum-torpor, one almost felt it to be ‘lit from behind’. ‘Schlafend trägt man mich’ continued in a recognisable line, yet initially lighter, soon more involved and questioning. Trifonov showed himself keenly aware of the importance of specific pitches and their repetition; later Berg beckoned already. ‘Nun ich der Riesen Stärksten überwand’ and ‘Warm die Lüfte’ continued the developmental idea, (re)uniting, intensifying earlier tendencies – and again the importance of specific pitch, here in the bells tolling and nightingale singing in the piano part.

Dichterliebe benefited from the alchemy of no clear break: Schumann’s song-cycle emerged from Berg’s songs and retrospectively announced that that was where they had always been heading. From the very outset, the opening ‘Im wunderschönen Monat Mai’, the limpidity of Trifonov’s piano playing was to die for, the delicacy of Goerne’s song also spot on. Magically slow, this was something to savour, without a hint of narcissism. ‘Aus meinen Tränen sprießen’ developed not only, it seemed from its predecessor, but from Berg’s songs too, not least in its nightingale song. Nothing here was formulaic, nothing taken as read: the voice took on the quality of something approaching an instrumental chamber music partner to the piano in ‘ich will meine Seele tauchen’, save of course for the words that both heightened and questioned that sense. The young Wotan seemed to appear on stage for ‘Im Rhein, im heiligen Strome’, his piano partner striking in dark, stark simplicity (however artful). The piano’s taunting cruelty in ‘Das ist ein Flöten und Geigen’ could match anything in Schubert: implacable, heartless, almost ‘objective’. It was, moreover, an unquestionably post-Schubertian agony here – distended, just a little, unerringly judged – that characterised the ensuing ‘Hör’ ich das Liedchen klingen’. ‘Am leuchten Sommermorgen’ brought that summer morning to refracted life courtesy of Trifonov, the piano part’s passing notes returning us to Berg, perhaps even going beyond him, whilst the piano chords in ‘Ich hab’ im Traum gewidmet’ spoke in almost Lisztian fashion, not unlike his Il penseroso. The strange tricks and consolations of dreams that followed (‘Allnächtlich im Traume’) seemed almost to prepare the way, following the weakened ebullience of ‘Aus alten Märchen’, for those two extraordinarily final postludes. They spoke at least as keenly as any words, even those of Heine.

Liszt, unsurprisingly, came more strongly and unquestionably to the fore in Wolf’s Drei Gedichte von Michelangelo. His harmonic language and its bitter self-destruction haunted ‘Wohl denk’ ich oft’. Quite rightly, words took the lead in ‘Alles endet, was entstehet’ and ‘Fühlt meine Seele’, seemingly inciting Wagnerian harmonies through what, in context, sounded most Schopenhauerian language. The two songs’ different character registered as strongly as what they held in common.

Trifonov’s quasi-verbal directness of utterance, especially in the bass register, struck me especially powerfully in the three Shostakovich Michelangelo songs that followed. It was as if the ability to ‘speak’ were being returned with interest. In ‘Dante’ in particular, Goerne brought to our attention Shostakovich the seer and the critic. That importance ascribed to particular pitches in Berg seemed to haunt the world of Shostakovich too, as if to remind us of what might have been. Once again, however incorrect this priority in the world of mere empiricism, the words of the following songs seemed to grow out of the piano’s wordless speech. ‘Night’ (Noč’) evinced an unfamiliar familiarity, musical and verbal. ‘Hush, my friend, why awaken me?’ Why indeed?

That illusory ‘timeliness’ – what could be more ‘timely’ – of Brahms in ‘archaic’ mode proved especially striking in the Vier ernste Gesänge. Trifonov’s understanding and communication of the piano parts was properly generative, even occasionally verging on a quasi-objective autonomy, an ontological frame within which the Biblical words might be intoned and considered. ‘Ich wandte mich und sahe an alle’ nevertheless spoke of subjectivity, of a late verbal Intermezzo that more than hinted at Webern. An earlier German Romanticism hung in the air, and yet clearly had passed: sad, perhaps, but Goerne’s Ecclesiastes Preacher would surely have understood. An almost Bachian embrace of death, albeit with a more Romantic sense of tragedy underlying it, characterised Goerne’s delivery in ‘O Tod, wie bitter bist du,’ flickering half-lights again very much from the world of the late piano pieces. ‘Wenn ich mit Menschen- und mit Engelszungen redete’ afforded a climax that was truly Pauline in its depth, complexity, and sheer difficulty. The best theologians will sometimes, as Brahms shows us, be agnostic, even atheist, albeit in a strenuous sense: more Nietzsche than, God help us, Richard Dawkins and his ilk. This was Brahms’s reckoning with how things were, just as much as that of the epistle writer. And so it was with the recital as a whole: a reckoning necessarily both final and not.

Munich Opera Festival (3) - Munich Piano Trio: Beethoven, Shostakovich, and Brahms, 7 July 2017

Cuvilliés-Theater

Beethoven: Piano Trio in D major, op.70 no.1, ‘Ghost’

Shostakovich: Piano Trio in E minor, op.67

Brahms: Piano Trio in B major, op.8 (revised version, 1889)

Michael Arlt (violin)

Gerhard Zank (cello)

Donald Sulzen (piano) 

Each year, the Munich Opera Festival offers a number of chamber concerts, as well as symphonic concerts and song recitals, in addition to its staple fare of at least one opera, sometimes more than that, per evening. Since I was in town, I thought I should go to hear the Munich Piano Trio, not least since it would be my first opportunity to attend a concert in the extraordinary, ultra-Rococo Cuvilliés-Theater. I once happened on a string quartet rehearsal there many years and resolved to return. One day, I hope, Idomeneo, which received its first performance there, will return when I am somewhere in the vicinity. (It did in 2008, so there is hope.) In the meantime, it was a pleasure to hear three contrasted piano trio works, performed with a welcome lack of affectation.

Beethoven’s Ghost Trio – like all the performances, I think – received a performance somewhat on the Apollonian side. This was not a Beethoven to storm the heavens, but perhaps not every performance need be. In the first movement, taken at a tempo that seemed spot on for Allegro vivace e con brio – perhaps faster than my inclination, but who cares? – scalic passages proved properly generative. Derivations therefrom and breaking up into small motifs was the business of the development: no need for Romantic metaphor, which might have seemed somewhat out of place. And yet, this was not ‘easy’ listening; one simply needed to listen to hear the difficulty, at times not so far from late Beethoven, in the music. The lyricism of the second group, especially during the recapitulation, was especially welcome. Not that the movement was over then; the coda offered surprises aplenty, again, so long as the listener kept to his or her side of the bargain – and listened. Concision was, rightly, striking. There was an air of mystery, its roots in Mozart, to the slow movement, which unfolded simply, inevitably. Again, the twin features of simplicity of basic material and developmental inspiration shone through. There was radiance, to be sure, but it was hard won and never permanent. The finale proved playful in its disjunctures, disjoint even in its play: often, at least. String intonation was occasionally somewhat awry, but not so as to trouble unduly. In a sense, such fallibility reminded one that this was a performance, with all that entails.

In a very different way, simplicity and extremity characterised the Shostakovich E minor Trio. The poor cellist at the opening! There was, again, a different sort of inevitability to the first movement, but it was undeniably present in the main, Moderato section. Its simple harmonies might have been made to feel connected to Beethoven’s tonic-dominant oscillations, but did not; context was all. The enigmatic quality to the transformations of the second movement was well handled; there were no answers, but questions were certainly asked. If the Largo is possessed of a bleakness that for me comes perilously close to mere emptiness, the players had the measure of its contours in a well shaped reading, preparing the way for an equally accomplished performance of the insistently straightforward finale. If you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you would have liked.

Brahms is much more my sort of thing. The second half therefore brought the pleasure of a return to home territory, albeit with a twist: the revised version of the B major Trio. Recently, the original seems to have been more popular. There are arguments for both, but I think I should opt for this, if I had to choose. The Trio has played both and thus made the decision in full knowledge and understanding. It was a splendid work for cellist, Gerhard Zank to have to start saying his farewells to the Bavarian State Orchestra, with which he has played for thirty-nine years. An interesting programme interview offered reminiscences of work with conductors such as Wolfgang Sawallisch, Carlos Kleiber, and yes, Kirill Petrenko. Motivic integrity and development came to the fore from the outset. The players drew upon a varied palette that yet never quite partook of expressive extremities. Such matters are largely a matter of taste; this was, again, relatively Apollonian Brahms. Occasionally, I found Donald Sulzen’s piano a little recessed in tone, but perhaps that was the acoustic. There was certainly no doubting his collegiality; he was not a pianist, as many are, to overwhelm his string colleagues. Rhythms were nicely sprung in the scherzo, Brahms’s Beethovenian inheritance clear. The trio spoke more of Schubert. Such, after all, one might say, is Brahms’s tendency more generally. The stark simplicity of Michael Arlt’s violin and Zank’s cello at the opening of the slow movement seemed to recall late Beethoven, although the lyricism that ensued proved quite different, and rightly so, in quality. The movement never lost its apparent roots in (imagined) song, whilst never pretending simply to ‘be’ its roots. I have heard bigger boned performances of the finale, in particular, but the refusal to exaggerate, to play to the gallery, however dazzling in this theatre, offered its own rewards. So too did the Piazzolla encore.

Prom 26 - EUYO/Petrenko: Berio and Shostakovich, 5 August 2014

Royal Albert Hall

Berio – Sinfonia  

Shostakovich – Symphony no.4 in C minor, op.43

London Voices (chorus master: Ben Parry)

European Union Youth Orchestra

Vasily Petrenko (conductor)

Although far from perfect, the performance of Berio’s Sinfonia in the first half of this concert was certainly its high-point; indeed, I rather wish that I had left at the interval, given the tedium induced by Shostakovich’s interminable Fourth Symphony. Still, such was the programme Semyon Bychkov had been intended to conduct. Alas, illness had forced him to withdraw, to be replaced at short notice by Vasily Petrenko. Petrenko did a reasonable job in Berio; however, I could not help but wonder how often he had conducted the work before. It was certainly a swift, driven reading, but that seemed to reflect a head more than usually stuck in the score (understandable, given the circumstances).

 

The opening of the first movement was promising indeed: aethereal, its harmonies unmistakeably announcing an ‘Italian’ flavour – both Dallapiccola and Nono springing to mind – whatever the undoubted internationalism of Berio’s outlook. It is a great piece for the European Youth Orchestra, not only in terms of that ‘internationalism’ but also because, like Mahler (if only we could have had his music in the second half!) a large orchestra is employed, but sparingly, smaller ensembles drawn therefrom to wonderful, magical effect. It was a pity Petrenko drove so hard, but the movement recognisably remained itself. The second movement came across almost as a ‘traditional’ slow movement, albeit again with sparing, almost soloistic use of the orchestra. An appropriately geological and river-like sense characterised the third movement. Mahler’s Second Symphony was the bedrock, of course, but I was also fascinated by the thoughts of memory and its tricks that the Rosenkavalier references provoked. If anything, Strauss and Hofmannsthal proved the more resonant on this occasion, though whether that was simply a matter of my frame of mind, or was in some sense owed to the performance, I am not sure. At any rate, the combination – and conflict – between the EUYO and London Voices made it seem, especially in the context of Petrenko’s once-again driven tempo, almost as though one were trapped within a human mind, and a witty one at that. Mathieu van Bellen offered an excellent violin solo. The typically varied vocal references included one to ‘Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony’, concluding with a ‘Thank you, Mr Petrenko’. Amplification perhaps seemed a bit heavy in the fourth movement, though perhaps it was more a matter of the acoustic; nevertheless Berio’s imagination continued to shine through. I wondered whether the final movement might have smiled a little more – no such problem with the voices – but all was present and correct, and often rather more than that.

 

As for Shostakovich: well, his apologists hail this symphony as a masterpiece, but an opportunity to hear it had the rest of us wish it had remain ‘withdrawn’, not on account of any dangerous ‘modernism’ – Stalinist ‘socialist realism’ truly was insane! – but because it is such a dull, frankly un-symphonic work. For the most part, Petrenko and the EUYO did all they did to convince, although string playing sometimes went awry.  The first movement opened with Lady Macbeth-style Grand Guignol, perhaps more interesting than anything that followed. Precision and attack were impressive: there was a chilling mechanistic quality to the performance, but alas, the work ensured that returns diminished, Shostakovich’s threadbare invention rendered all too apparent after a while. The second movement is at least shorter, but from the outset, one felt, as so often with this composer, that one had heard it all before, and it still seemed too long. Oft-drawn comparisons with Mahler seemed as incomprehensible as ever. They made a little more sense in the final movement – so long as one bore in mind Boulez’s observation that Shostakovich offers at best a ‘second pressing’ in olive oil terms – but surely nothing justified the lack of variegation and indeed the sheer tedium of this piece. Petrenko and the orchestra rendered the movement’s Largo opening nicely creepy. Various woodwind took the opportunity to shine within the confines of generally unrelieved lugubriousness. There could, however, be no papering over the formal cracks. How I longed for a little invention: Haydn, Webern, Mahler, Berio,  just about anyone! Is it not about time that we abandoned puerile Cold War attitudes and considered whether this music is actually any good, rather than merely sympathising with the autobiography of an alleged ‘dissident’?

Goerne/Andsnes - Mahler and Shostakovich, 7 January 2013

Wigmore Hall

Mahler – Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft

Shostakovich – Morning
Mahler – Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen
Shostakovich – Separation
Mahler – Es sungen drei Engel einen süßen Gesang; Das irdische Leben; Nun seh’ ich wohl, warum so dunkle Flammen; Wenn dein Mütterlein; Urlicht
Shostakovich – Night
Mahler – Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen
Shostakovich – Immortality; Dante
Mahler – Revelge
Shostakovich – Death
Mahler – Der Tambourg’sell

Matthias Goerne (baritone)

Leif Ove Andsnes (piano)

 

This was in almost all respects a distinguished recital, at least as much for Leif Ove Andsnes’s playing as for Matthias Goerne’s singing; indeed, had I to choose, I should say that Andsnes was on even better form, quite rightly seeming to have lavished just as much consideration on the recital as he would, had it been a solo performance. My sole cavil lay with the Shostakovich songs themselves. Perhaps an all-Mahler recital might have been a little too much, perhaps not; however, there would surely have been songs of a similar stature to have programmed with Mahler. It was an interesting idea, and in that respect, should be commended, to intersperse six songs from Shostakovich’s Suite on Verses of Michelangelo Buonarotti, op.145, but the level of musical invention, as so often with this composer, was not high, leaving the songs, however well performed, to offer a degree of filling, even relief, rather than fully to complement Mahler.

 

The concert opened with a rare moment of relative optimism: the Rückert Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft. Andsnes’s introduction offered magical touch and an almost Boulezian clarity: it is, as with many of these songs, difficult not to think of the orchestra, but it is a tribute to Andsnes how fully he matched both pianistic and orchestral expectations. Bot artists imparted, even in this first song, a strong impression of wonder; there was no sense of warming up. Dissonance really bit upon the ‘Hand’ of ‘von lieber Hand’. Telling, true rubato – in the sense of robbed time rather than tempo modification – heightened the shaping of phrases. Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen benefited from a piano part so detailed, so evocative in performance that again, the orchestra was not missed at all; it almost seemed to be present, yet with an intimacy of scale that was the duo’s – and the Wigmore Hall’s – own. Goerne offered a variety of ‘voices’, whilst maintaining continuity. And a true spareness of writing emerged. In between those two Mahler songs came Shostakovich’s Morning: spare or merely empty? It sounded rather like Russian Britten (the note-spinning of a work such as Death in Venice). Goerne brought an apt parlando style of delivery to the recitative-like writing. The performance of Separation did its very best to rescue the song from generalised gloom.

 

It was striking to hear the Wunderhorn song, Es sungen drei Engel einen süßen Gesang as a song rather than as a movement of the Third Symphony – though it is well-nigh impossible to rid oneself of the memory not only of the orchestra but also of the boys’ choir. There was, though, a fine sense of dramatic narrative to the performance. Das irdische Leben was febrile, with an understated yet undeniably present fury, a terror emerging of which Shostakovich could at best only dream. Liszt and Wagner seemed very much influences upon the following two Rückert songs, Andsnes clearly relishing that Romantic harmonic background. He proved equally distinguished at laying bare Mahler’s musical processes, having Wenn die Mütterlein chill one’s bones all the more. It is no easy task to impart unity to the piano version of Urlicht, but Andsnes and Goerne experienced no problems whatsoever.

 

Andsnes evidently took as much care with the musical line of Shostakovich’s Night as he would have done with a solo work. He brought out the all-too-obvious ‘quirkiness’ of Immortality, and there could be no faulting strength or starkness in the performance from either artists of Death. It was always a relief, though, to return to Mahler. The musical line of Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen sounded as perfectly formed as that of a Beethoven slow movement, whilst rhythm and harmonic rhythm proved properly generative in Revelge. Goerne’s dark, furious vocal delivery stayed just (about) the right side of hectoring here. This seemed a far better response, albeit avant la lettre, to Michael Gove’s militaristic idiocy, than any I have yet heard. Der Tambourg’sell sounded especially arresting with piano, the drumrolls having more than a hint of Bartók (perhaps not coincidentally, an Andsnes speciality) to them. The bleakness of onward trudge and sepulchral close hung over the aspiring Hoffnung of the Beethovenian encore. As in the recital as a whole, there were no easy answers, perhaps no answers at all.

Ax/LSO/Haitink - Mozart and Shostakovich, 15 October 2013

Barbican Hall 

Mozart – Piano Concerto no.27 in B-flat major, KV 595

Shostakovich – Symphony no.15 in A major, op.141

Emanuel  Ax (piano)

London Symphony Orchestra

Bernard Haitink (conductor)

No prizes for guessing which conductor I immediately associate with the LSO and Mozart.  Sir Colin Davis’s shoes are impossible to fill in so many ways, but I was delighted, almost astonished, to hear the orchestra on as excellent Mozartian form as I can recall. Not, of course, that I doubt Bernard Haitink’s credentials in this repertoire, but even he would cede to Sir Colin in my affections in this case – or at least he would have done before this concert. The orchestra may have been small (ten first violins down to four double basses), but there was nothing underpowered about its performance. The opening of the first movement was crisp, with woodwind more prominent, even adamant, than one might have expected; clearly Haitink was determined that Mozart should not go excessively gentle into that good night. It might be exaggerated to consider his reading revisionist, for if it were, it was with the greatest subtlety, but it was in the best sense refreshing. Moreover, this movement was definitely heard as an Allegro. Mozartian perfection, then? Alas, not quite. This is the most unforgiving of all music; every slight imperfection tells and is magnified, and so it was with Emanuel Ax’s performance. There was much to admire. From the outset, his tone was clean, and his touch impressively variegated. Even early on, though, there was some puzzling, ungainly phrasing – repeated in the recapitulation, so it was no accident. During the development section, it was the orchestra that providing most of the energy, and also most of the sensuous pleasure, the woodwind, and particularly Emmanuel Laville’s oboe, simply ravishing. Returning, as it were, to the recapitulation, Ax badly smudged one run, but there was ample compensation to be had from the loving, yet never indulged second subject from the orchestra, somewhat blithely tossed away, alas, by the pianist. Mozart’s cadenza also had a degree of glibness to it, if only by comparison with what we heard from the LSO. I longed for a pianist such as Daniel Barenboim to probe beneath the surface – as, of course orchestra and conductor did throughout.

 

Ax was much improved in the second movement, though his ornamentation sometimes veered dangerously close to the intrusive – and was actually eminently predictable. The truest musical rewards were once again to be heard from Haitink and the LSO; heartfelt, beautifully sonorous, above all unaffected. The finale was equally well shaped, rhythms delighting rather than hardening, as they might in lesser hands, into rigidity. If the music sounded more ebullient than half-lit, it was none the worse for that. Occasional heavy-handedness from the pianist was again more than compensated for by the subtle, sovereign command of Haitink and the quickening response of the LSO. This was some of the best Mozart playing I have heard – and that includes from the Vienna Philharmonic.

 

Shostakovich’s final symphony opened in at least as sprightly, at least as precise, fashion. Flute and percussion, then strings and bassoon, combined to suggest an almost Prokofiev-like magic (think of the Seventh Symphony); but then, ambivalence, of a different sort from Prokofiev’s, set in, both through the offices of orchestral exactitude, in the best sense, and, of course, enigmatic quotation. What does it mean? Haitink seemed to have just the right, Shostakovich-like attitude of: ‘Don’t ask me! I’m just the humble musician.’ What a relief it was to hear Shostakovich’s music, to my mind at its best here, utterly distanced from Cold War nonsense – however Soviet-tinged the vibrato of the LSO brass might sound, both in this movement and in those strange trombone-and-tuba chords of the next. Strings were rapier-sharp. Tim Hugh’s cello solo in the slow movement was every bit as finely wrought as leader Roman Simovic’s briefer yet equally important solo contributions; indeed, though I suppose I may have missed one, I cannot recall a single solo from any member of the orchestra that was not of the very highest order. Haitink paced the movement as well as one might expect from so distinguished a Brucknerian. The strangeness of sonority and harmony registered with no need for grotesque underlining. Structure was powerfully conveyed in what, despite a well-nigh inevitable bronchial onslaught from members of the audience, was at least as masterly an account as the conductor’s celebrated Decca recording. What too often in the composer’s earlier work sounds as empty devices here and now acquired true ‘meaning’, partly and paradoxically on account of the apparent rejection by score and performance alike of ‘meaning’ as conventionally understood.

 

The scherzo was sardonic, brutally so, ensuring that the material’s dangerous propensity toward banality was never truly realised. Rhythms and balances were equally tight. The LSO’s percussion section, here as elsewhere, was outstanding, preparing the way for the dénouement. Hearing Wagner, if only in quotation at the opening of the final movement, made one long to hear the composer’s music from Haitink once again. Such was the rightness, even in so different a context, that I almost felt as if he were about to launch into Siegfried’s Funeral March, but no... Tone lightened, yet remained unsettled, disconcerting. Haitink’s near-absolute control, musicianly not tyrannical, and the keenness of the LSO’s response conspired together to render inevitable the emergence and course of the passacaglia, frustrated as it was to a certain extent by what at times seemed like a cough or sneeze per bar. The climax, anyway, was powerful indeed. This may be ‘good’ rather than ‘great’ music, but it was far and away the best Shostakovich performance I have heard. And the coda, when it came, proved as chilling as ever – perhaps more so.

Salzburg Festival (4) - Capuçons and friends: Fauré, Shostakovich, Birtwistle, and Brahms, 22 August 2013

Grosser Saal, Mozarteum

Fauré – Piano Quartet no.2 in G minor, op.45

Shostakovich – Piano Trio no.2 in E minor, op.67
Birtwistle – Bourdon, for violin and viola
Brahms – Piano Quartet no.1 in G minor, op.25

Renaud Capuçon (violin)

Gérard Caussé (viola)

Gautier Capuçon (cello)

Nicholas Angelich (piano)

 

 

Your reviewer’s spirits were not lifted by checking the Festival website just before leaving for this concert. Birtwistle’s Trio, the principal attraction of the programme, still present in the morning, had been replaced by Shostakovich’s second piano trio. A programme insert informed us that the change had been necessitated by one of the musicians – it did not say which – having fallen ill during the rehearsal period. Such things happen, but given that the programming of works by Birtwistle throughout the festival had been intended to complement Gawain, it was still a great disappointment, heightened by the identity of the interloper. What had already looked an odd collection of pieces looked still odder.

 

With respect to Fauré, I continue to try – from time to time. His second piano quartet is pleasant enough, but I still cannot hear what some others apparently do in this music. The players opened the first movement with turbulence and instrumental richness not so very far removed from Brahms, as if attempting – creditably – already to forge a link with the final piece on the programme. There was some spellbinding pianissimo playing The scherzo proved mercurial, yet did not lack backbone. Gérard Caussé’s noble viola solo launched the slow movement, the obliqueness of whose harmonies proved not without interest, though it remained somewhat placid in character. (Doubtless devotees will point to troubled waters beneath the surface; I wish I could hear them.) The finale benefited from ardent and cultivated playing, with at least a slight sense of a legacy to composers such as Debussy and Ravel, though not without a sense either of high Romanticism. If the conclusion appeared to come out of nowhere, then that is a matter of the piece rather than the performance.

 

Fauré’s quartet, if hardly a masterpiece, is, however, a far superior work to Shostakovich’s typically obvious second piano trio, which nevertheless received an excellent performance. Gautier Capuçon navigated the first movement’s opening harmonics with precision and evident identification. The all too predictable imitative passages that followed were equally finely despatched, likewise the transition to Moderato and the balance between players. Doubtless this was just the right note of hysteria; but once one has heard two or three pieces by Shostakovich, one knows his tricks all too well. The second movement was fast and furious, the excess of fury more than the threadbare material really deserves, yet making an insistent dramatic point out of its repetitions. Again, there could be no faulting the intensity of response in the slow movement, nor the shaping of it progress. There was excellent advocacy for the typical, all-too-typical dance of ghostly dolls in the opening to the finale, though it was difficult not to find the score itself several vulgarisations of Mahler too far. The all-purpose hysteria pervading so much of the rest of the movement has one wishing it over before it had begun, but the players clearly gave it their all. Is there, though, with the possible exception of Verdi, any more grotesquely overrated composer?

 

Having lost Birtwistle’s piano trio, the Bourdon for violin and viola seemed a little lost at the beginning of the second half. It was good, nevertheless, to hear it, a miniature exploration of the instruments’ characters, paying especial attention to their open strings, albeit with scordatura tuning: both violin and viola tune their lowest string down a semitone and the second lowest up a semitone. The music begins, almost as if tuning up, the prevalence of open strings perhaps inevitably putting one in mind of Berg’s Violin Concerto. There is already, though, a typical sense of temporal refraction, with (relative) violence soon interposed. More than once I heard an affinity not only with the composer’s recent Violin Concerto, but also with the new Classicism characteristic to a certain extent of that work. Soon, one felt quite hypnotised by the almost lullaby-like rocking; all too soon, it was over.

 

It was interesting to note immediately in the first movement of Brahms’s G minor quartet how, in an age of homogeneity, how recognisably ‘Gallic’, in a quite traditional sense, the string tone sounded. It is often difficult, if not impossible, to say what one means by that; yet, one knows it when one hears it. Brahms’s expansiveness was relished, even if the structure were not always quite so clearly determining as it might have been. Metrical complexities, however, were vividly communicated. The second movement offered quiet insistence, the complexities of its central section sung rather than grimacing. But were the outer sections just a little well-mannered? Sometimes the music sounded more like Fauré than Fauré had. Prior tonal richness came to the rescue in the third movement, which received a splendidly songful yet passionate account, which had to be restarted when Renaud Capuçon broke a string. The finale was taken at quite a lick, without sounding harried. ‘Hungarian’ excitement, however, tended to be conveyed at the price of stopping and starting a little too much. Brahms is deeper than this, though such a performance is preferable to straining for a profundity that would only sound appliqué. Nicholas Angelich occasionally glossed – indeed, pedalled – over some piano detail.

Jerusalem Quartet - Wolf, Mozart, and Smetana, 16 February 2013

Wigmore Hall

 

Wolf – Italian Serenade
Mozart – String Quartet no.22 in B-flat major, KV 589
Smetana – String Quartet no.1 in E minor, ‘From my life’        

Alexander Pavlovsky, Sergei Bressler (violins)

Ori Kam (viola)

Kyril Zlotnikov (cello)

 

 

The Jerusalem Quartet’s latest visit to the Wigmore Hall opened with a sunny performance of Wolf’s Italian Serenade. Full of life, there was, as ever with this quartet, never the slightest hint of routine. Mediterranean sun was to be felt – especially welcome in February – but quite rightly, this was sunlight as remembered from northern Europe. Solo playing, first from Kyril Zlotnikov’s cello, then picked up by his colleagues, was as fine as the ensemble work.

 

One of Mozart’s Prussian quartets, that in B-flat major, KV 589, followed. Cultivated yet vital, warm yet clear, this was an excellent account, both of the first movement and the quartet as a whole. Cello solos – the king of Prussia favoured in Mozart’s scoring – were beautifully despatched without standing out unduly: far more a foundation for contrapuntal exploration. An excellent Mozartian balance was struck between ‘late’ simplicity and ‘late’ (Bachian) complexity, both contrapuntal and harmonic. Lyrical elegance was the hallmark of the relatively relaxed slow movement, though how much art conceals art here, both in terms of work and performance. The cello was necessarily first amongst equals, but ensemble was the real thing. A gracious yet far from sedate tempo – just right for ‘Moderato’ – permitted the minuet’s detail to emerge meaningfully, and what detail there is here! With a proto-Beethovenian sense of purpose, this amounted to a well-nigh ideal performance. The finale has one of those very tricky Mozartian openings, in which the players must begin in medias res; almost needless to say, it was effortlessly navigated, drawing us into a wonderfully ‘late’ marriage of ebullience and vulnerability, contrapuntal severity and sinuous melody. Every note and every connection between notes was played with evident belief. Schoenberg would have understood – and approved.

 

Smetana’s first quartet offered quite a change of mood for the second half. Immediately one heard a more Romantic tone, Ori Kam’s opening viola solo richly expressive, likewise the other parts’ responses thereto. Performed on an almost symphonic scale, the development section in particular, the first movement exhibited a proper, indeed thrilling, sense of what was at stake. The ‘Allegro moderato alla polka’ captured perfectly the balance between rusticity and art. Depth of tone in the various solos sometimes had to be heard to be believed. Emotional intensity characterised the slow movement from the outset, that intensity crucially allied to an unerring instinct for harmonic rhythm. Together, those qualities meant that however high the temperature – and sometimes it was high indeed – the music never became over-heated. The finale opened with polished brilliance. If it lacked the weight of previous movements, that is a reflection upon the score rather than the performance: Smetana’s apparent attempt to adopt a Haydnesque strategy, whatever the autobiographical explanation, works less than perfectly, as is confirmed by the more overtly Romantic ending.

 

As an encore, we heard Shostakovich’s quartet transcription of the Polka from his ballet, The Age of Gold. Coming as it does from the composer’s more experimental youth, it proved far more interesting than most of his subsequent essays for these forces. Certainly the Jerusalem Quartet proved more than equal to its abrupt changes of mood, without imbuing them with inappropriate weight and ‘meaning’.

Mullova/LSO/Nelsons - Wagner, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich, 30 September 2010

Barbican Hall

Wagner – Overture: Tannhäuser
Prokofiev – Violin Concerto no.2 in G minor, op.63
Shostakovich – Symphony no.5 in D minor, op.47

Viktoria Mullova (violin)
London Symphony Orchestra
Andris Nelsons (conductor)


My hopes were doubtless too high following Andris Nelsons’s stunning CBSO Prom this summer. Neither Nelsons nor the LSO disappointed, but that goes to show that there is more to a concert than the performance of conductor and orchestra.

Following an exceptionally fine Rienzi Overture at the Proms, Nelsons conducted that to Tannhäuser: alas, Dresden, rather than Paris. (The good news, slightly deferred, is that the Royal Opera will at long last be performing Tannhäuser in December, and in the Paris version too.) Nevertheless, the performance greatly impressed. I do not think I have heard the opening pilgrims’ chords sound quite so redolent of Classical Harmoniemusik: apt and convincing. The string choir response proved equally magical. Nelsons, through a strong rhythmic command of the score, imparted a true sense of the processional. Sharply etched rhythms and colours came to the fore in the (foreshortened) Venusberg Music, but there was teasing rubato too. It was all too clear, in the typology of Wagner’s soon to be written Opera and Drama, that here was a woman begging to yield. A delectably feminine duet between the two front desk first violinists, Sarah Nemtanu and Carmine Lauri, was equally evocative, if more perfumed. The final peroration had something of Liszt to it; the bombast – this was a concert performance, after all – recalled his organ transcription, as if re-transcribed for orchestra.

A little bombast or at least commitment would have been dearly welcome in Viktoria Mullova’s rendition of Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto. Unfortunately, she played it as if she did not believe in a single note of it. The nervous intensity to her opening phrases was intriguing, if largely undone by less than perfect intonation. It was immediately clear that the first movement was to take its cue from the Allegro of Prokofiev’s Allegro moderato marking, though there was considerable, arguably excessive, slowing for the second subject. Before long, however, there were too many instances of soloist and orchestra not being quite together – and sometimes rather more that. Throughout, I missed the more lavish tone that many violinists have brought to the work. One does not have to be Heifetz to play it, but it certainly does no harm. I had the sense that Mullova was shying away from Prokofiev’s Romanticism, but she was less cool than casual, the movement’s ending merely throwaway. Soloist and conductor seemed of very different minds regarding the slow movement. One seemed to wish to get it over with as quickly as possible, whilst the other pulled back and did his best to love Prokofiev’s woodwind detail. The abiding impression was that Mullova would have been happier performing with her recent regular collaborator, Sir John Eliot Gardiner. Her approach was perhaps a little more suited, or less unsuited, to the finale, which at least observed the marcato of the Allegro marcato marking. Nelsons clearly relished Prokofiev’s grotesqueries where he could, though the advent of castanets made me wish all the more that they had been employed in the later version of Wagner’s overture. Tempo changes, however, sounded arbitrary, and once again Mullova experienced tuning problems: possibly a by-product of her recent work on period instruments? A lacklustre performance from the soloist, then, who made this potentially magical work seem merely trivial.

The second half was devoted to Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony. I tried, but, as with almost every work of Shostakovich’s, the more I hear it, the less there seems to be to it. (Symphonic exceptions for me would be his first and last symphonies, both of which intrigue in a manner not wholly dissimilar from Prokofiev.) Performances, however, could hardly be faulted. On surer ground, having despatched an unsympathetic soloist, Nelsons could unleash the full power of the LSO; we immediately heard attack, depth, and a truly frozen landscape with which to open the first movement. There was here and throughout a cinematic quality to the performance, the poster-paint approach bringing Shostakovich closer to Prokofiev than to Mahler, which is just as well, since the former comparison is a little less of a hostage to fortune. The piano was unusually prominent upon its entry, almost concertante in quality: a bit odd, but no harm done. Shostakovich’s raucous march music evoked a goose step newsreel; orchestral unisons proved fearsome in their sonic intensity. The scherzo played up Mahler’s influence, though this brought home just how much cruder Shostakovich is. Stalin was too, apologists will doubtless claim, but that seems to miss the artistic point. Yes, there are marionettes, as in Mahler, and Nelsons characterised them with aplomb, but they are marionettes on steroids – and steroids which seem to have done them irreparable harm. Again, quite reasonably, there was a vivid sense of cinema imparted to proceedings. The slow movement sounded beautiful in a vacant sort of way, which seems to be its point. It overstayed its welcome, one might say, but then again that length seems to be the point too. A Soviet-tinted Vaughan Williams seems to be the desired effect, if hardly the explicit intention, and this is what one heard. As for the finale, it was as brutal as anyone might reasonably have hoped for. Nelsons sensibly did not overburden it with ‘interpretation’, though the climax was not unreasonably of the browbeaten school. Shostakovich, whatever his failings, did not deserve Solomon Volkov, but reference nowadays seems unavoidable. The brass section was simply tremendous; indeed, the whole orchestra was. But was it all worth it?

Boulez on Mahler

On Universal Music's new Mahler blog (in preparation for the Mahler celebrations in 2010 and 2011), there is an interview with Pierre Boulez concerning Gustav Mahler. Click here... Much of this we have heard before in various guises, but there is some interesting new material. I especially like the diplomatic handling of Leonard Bernstein:

No, we did not have very close contact with Bernstein. I saw him, of course, from time to time, but I mean we did not discuss music, because our tastes were so far from each other that the discussion would not have gone anywhere. And I think there was a kind of agreement for not touching this type of subject.

Adorno is cited as a reason why Boulez decided to explore Mahler's music, first, at least in part, as a source for the music of the Second Viennese School. And then there came, of course, an inspiration from before Mahler, for Boulez's admiration for Wagner seems, if anything to have grown further still. Wagner's orchestration is 'perfect ... you can look at the score as close as you want, you’ll find that’s perfectly balanced and perfectly well-organised.'

Boulez bucks fashionable trends in remaining irreconcilable to Shostakovich... And how could one not sympathise when he says that Mahler needs protecting from Alma?

This follows a similar interview with Daniel Barenboim, amongst much other material on the site.