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

Barbican Hall

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

Bruckner – Symphony no.7 in E major

Truls Mørk (cello)

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

Mariss Jansons (conductor)

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Graffin, Kovacevich, Mørk, et al. - Beethoven, Brahms, Schoenberg, and Debussy, 25 June 2011

Wigmore Hall

Beethoven – Cello Sonata in D major, op.102 no.2
Brahms – Piano Trio no.3 in C minor, op.101
Schoenberg – Phantasy, for violin and piano, op.47
Schoenberg (arr. Webern) – Chamber Symphony no.1, op.9
Debussy (arr. David Matthews) – Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune

Philippe Graffin (violin)
Truls Mørk (violoncello)
Juliette Hurel (flute)
Chen Halevi (clarinet)
Stephen Kovacevich (piano, crotales)
Claire Désert, Marisa Gupta (piano)


This was a delightful programme of music from the Consonances Festival at Saint-Nazaire, whose twentieth anniversary was also celebrated here in London. Though Philippe Graffin is founder and director, his collegiality was immediately demonstrated in the opening piece: Beethoven’s D major Cello Sonata, op.102 no.2, performed by Truls Mørk and Stephen Kovacevich. Kovacevich’s Beethovenian credentials need no introduction; he was on fine form, announcing his depth of tone from the opening bars. Both players presented a first movement full of vigour, without the slightest hint of ‘period’ restraint or preciousness: Beethoven for today, as he must be, not for an imaginary museum. There was beautifully hushed playing where necessary; the scope and gradation of the final crescendo had to be heard to be believed. Motivic working was very much to the fore, preparing the way for Brahms. The slow movement proved both soulful and weighty, for Kovacevich and Mørk – not to forget Beethoven – were speaking of serious things. It passed in a long breath, conceived and executed as a whole. The finale took us back to Bach, of course, though forward to Bach always seems a more apt way of thinking; equally notable, however, was the scherzo-like, or rather scherzo-plus character imparted. Strong, indeed overwhelming, rhythmic impetus was the order of the day, balanced or rather questioned by the ‘late’ almost-but-not-quite-fragmentary quality of the writing. Form, likewise, was externalised and attacked, as if in preparation for the truly late Missa solemnis. There were occasions here and in the following piece where Kovacevich did not always hit all of the right notes, but the spirit was present, just as in the best of Daniel Barenboim’s Beethoven.

Graffin joined the musicians for Brahms’s C minor Piano Trio, which received a turbulently Romantic, not necessarily ‘late’ performance, especially in its opening Allegro energico. The full-blooded sound was a wonder in itself, but there was nothing narcissistic about this urgent, probing account. Ghostly strangeness announced an immediate transformation of mood in the scherzo. Now we truly heard Brahms the Schoenbergian Progressive, the intensity of motivic working we had already experienced in Beethoven given a further turn or two of the screw. Most noteworthy of all was the passing and development of material between parts, not only a splendid indication of true chamber-playing, but clearly prophetic of Webern. One could say much the same about the sense of concision: it is there in the music, never a note wasted, of course, but the players really made it sound. The final two movements presented a dialectic between near-imploding difficulty and Beethovenian, plain-spoken gruffness. (What excellent sense the programming made!) Yet there was a guiding thread through the Brahmsian labyrinth, that of harmonic rhythm. Intensity always came from within and was all the greater for that.

If the first-half performances were excellent, the Schoenberg Phantasy, op.47, which opened the second half, received as fine a performance as I have ever heard, arguably better. Quite why violin-and-piano duos are not queuing around the corner to perform this masterly work, I genuinely do not understand, but then I have never understood the aversion to Schoenberg’s music in certain quarters. One needs excellent, preferably great, performances, and one needs to listen. Graffin and Claire Désert presented a panorama of Schoenberg within the piece’s relatively brief span. Haunted by Brahms, and by old Vienna – those waltz rhythms that will not die – this was equally a forthright, forward-looking, declamatory Schoenberg. Graffin offered superlatively centred playing, revealing the work’s kinship with the meaningful, indeed hyper-meaningful virtuosity of the scandalously neglected Violin Concerto. Both players proved unfailingly alert to rhythm and harmony. Most importantly, their performance sang, as Schoenberg’s music must (even when it is spoken!) The Phantasy emerged as an Erwartung-like monodrama with violin as soloist, now heard through the emotional prism of the slightly earlier String Trio, and a worthy successor to that unqualified masterpiece. This was a truly outstanding performance.

Webern’s arrangement of Schoenberg’s First Chamber Symphony welcomed Mørk back to the stage, with newcomers, flautist Juliette Hurel and clarinettist Chen Halevi also joining Graffin and Désert. I am in two minds about this reduction, which it really is, for one hears little or nothing of Webern’s compositional personality. Schoenberg would doubtless never have allowed such free rein. It is peculiar to hear the first note from violin, though flute, cello, and clarinet soon reminded us of the ‘correct’ timbres for much of their material. What we hear is really the chamber symphony edged back into chamber music, more Brahms than Strauss. One can only pity the poor pianist, having to negotiate both super-Brahmsian textures and an excess, even by Schoenberg’s standards, of melodic profusion. Désert accomplished that as well as could be reasonably expected, arguably better. The tempi adopted were often breakneck, though not in the relaxed tension – a typical Schoenbergian dialectic – of the slow movement, yet even when they recalled, perhaps even exceeded, the young Boulez with his Domaine musical players, the performance was so full of life that it never felt unduly driven. Indeed, one appreciated anew, despite the imperfect instrumentation, what a life-affirming piece of music this is, every bit as much as a symphony by Haydn. There are occasions where, I think, the arrangement does not really work, not least the strangely Ivesian textures at the end of the scherzo, yet there could be no faulting the performance, whose fullness of sound made one wonder what on earth a full performance of the chamber symphony as composed would sound like.

After that, David Matthews’s new arrangement of Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune allowed some paradoxical cooling in its languid warmth. Marisa Gupta joined the band as second pianist – Matthews writes for piano duet – and Kovacevich returned to play the peculiar part for crotales (antique cymbals). I am not sure that the latter added anything very much; they had something of a drowning effect when employed. Nor am I convinced that the arrangement itself is of particular interest, though it does its job well enough. Again, it seems more of a reduction than a reimagining. Benno Sachs’s transcription has obvious Second Viennese School lineage in such a context. The performance was good, though, Hurel’s flute whetting the appetite for a rendition of Debussy’s original.