Salzburg Festival (10) - BPO/Petrenko: Smetana, 26 August 2024

Grosses Festspielhaus

Má vlast

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Kirill Petrenko (conductor)

Images: SF/Marco Borrelli

This might have been less a case of taking coals to Newcastle than of bringing them back to double the journey, given I have spent most of the past year in Berlin. I was unable, though, to attend any of the subscription concerts earlier in the year when the Berlin Philharmonic and Kirill Petrenko played Smetana’s Má vlast, so this Salzburg Festival offered me a welcome second chance in this, the composer’s bicentenary year. If there were times when I could not help but wonder what, say, the Czech Philharmonic might have sounded like in this music, the BPO and Petrenko gave committed, accomplished performances. There might well have been an extra tang of ‘authenticity’, given that orchestra’s unusual success in resisting international homogenisation, but no more than Janáček or Elgar does Smetana deserve to be reduced to the status of a national dish. 

There was certainly nothing culinary to what we heard. Each of the six symphonic poems had its own narrative and contributed to a greater narrative. Petrenko proved a purposeful yet flexible guide. The bardic harps of ‘Vyšehrad’ offered a magical ‘once upon a time’ opening, following woodwind just as impressive. It really felt like the introduction to a series, and at times seemed even to anticipate the world of Das klagende Lied (which, after all, Mahler had begun before Smetana completed his work, let alone before its first performance). Yet that was only a hint; Smetana took a different, more Lisztian route, not least in the fugato, whose string playing was quite beyond reproach. ‘Vltava’ will doubtless always be the most celebrated of the six; it gains much from being heard in context. Here, it received an alert, colourful, directed performance, tinged with an unspoken sadness that was never permitted to overwhelm. There were occasions when I wondered whether it might have been a little less ‘beautiful’ or at least more vigorous, but I am nitpicking. 

Following a few rounds of audience coughing, ‘Šarka’ emerged in almost operatic fashion, as if the opening to a new act. It proved full of surprises, even when one ‘knew’, testament to the freshness of the performance, all the way to a fiery conclusion (a massacre according to the composer’s programme). The opening to ‘From Bohemia’s Fields and Forests’ seemed to steal from still farther into the future: Mahler again, and even Janáček. These were certainly, though, Bohemian rather than Moravian lands into which the music headed. Again, there was a proper sense both of a new chapter and also of connection. String counterpoint once more was brilliantly despatched—and with a ghostly flavour at the close. 

An eloquent reading of ‘Tábor’ again often put me in mind of Liszt, both in rhetoric and narrative. It had me think how welcome it would be to hear some of his symphonic poems from these same forces: maybe, dare one hope, even a complete series.’Blaník’ felt like the finale—and definitely a finale in context rather than something drafted to do service as such. Tonal and dramatic expectancy were properly heightened and fulfilled. Here was another Lisztian battle, but with jubilation that was very much Smetana’s (Czech) own. It may not be the ‘Ode to Joy’ or Die Meistersinger, but what is? An important nineteenth-century voice was given his due.

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’.