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.

Lemieux/OPRF/Petrenko - Takemitsu, Chausson, and Zemlinsky, 4 May 2018

Grande Salle Pierre Boulez, Philharmonie, Paris

Takemitsu: Toward the Sea III

Chausson: Poème de l’amour et de la mer, op.19

Zemlinsky: Die Seejungfrau

Michel Rousseau (alto flute)

Nicolas Tulliez (harp)

Marie-Nicole Lemieux (contralto)

Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France

Vasily Petrenko (conductor)

Paris’s now not-quite-so-new Philharmonie remains a thing of wonder. The approach through the Parc de la Villette is a visual feast, especially on a sunny evening such as I was afforded. Lighting works magic after sunset too. If the public areas outside the hall still seem oddly provisional – presumably they are – the hall itself, now named the Grande Salle Pierre Boulez after the conscience of new music, remains also an acoustical wonder, a feast for the ears. I could not help but think, not least after a recent visit to the Barbican, how desperately London needs something similar – or, dare we hope, better. From May in Paris to May in Downing Street remains, alas, a distance of intergalactic proportions.

Although I had enjoyed my first visit, in October 2015, this concert proved the more consistently illuminating musical experience. For one thing, I am not sure that I had heard any of the three works in concert before. Takemitsu’s Toward the Sea III, for alto flute and harp, made for an excellent opening piece: the sort of programming touch, mixing solo, chamber, ensemble, and larger forces, of which Boulez would have approved. Flute and harp could hardly be a more Gallic combination, yet Takemitsu’s music is rarely quite what it initially seems. This, then, was a garden of delights, not least the opening movement, ‘The Night’, but not all gardens, not all Japanese gardens, are the same. Such music tends to reward concentrated, enlightened listening – what music worth its salt does not?! – such as was enabled both by these fine performances, from Michel Rousseau and Nicolas Tulliez, and the fine acoustic. There was a sense of inheritance from Debussy and Ravel, without in any sense being limited thereby. Shifting of roles between the two instruments came to the fore in the second movement, ‘Moby Dick’, played with twin flexibility and purpose: both necessary when finding one’s way around a labyrinth, however esmall. The closing ‘Cape Cod’ followed, so it seemed, consequentially, without one ever necessarily being able to explain quite how. Silences proved pregnant, as telling as the notes. There was no playing to the gallery here; neither music nor hall required it.

We remained with the sea throughout the evening, Chausson’s Poème de l’amour et de la mer our next port of call. Like each of the three pieces heard this evening, Chausson’s work is, surely not coincidentally, in three parts, a ravishing orchestral interlude between the two verse settings: ‘La Fleur des eaux’ and ‘La Mort de l’amour’. Many in the audience were, understandably, disappointed by the withdrawal of Anna Caterina Antonacci from the concert. There was, however, little to regret in the performance we heard from Marie-Nicole Lemieux. Indeed, her rich yet agile contralto offered its own distinctive rewards, which one would have been a fool to spurn. (How often, in any case, does one have the opportunity to hear a ‘true’ contralto?) Her way with the words was impressed just as much as the richly upholstered tone on the low notes.

Rousseau and Tulliez were now joined by their colleagues from the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and Vasily Petrenko. I was struck – perhaps as an Englishman I would be – by the opening phrase and its seeming affinity to Elgar. Tristan-esque harmonies made their mark, of course, so did the Klingsor-like, fin-de-siècle world of the ‘sauvage’ we both heard and embraced. Chamber music, as in Wagner, proved to be much of the story too, Petrenko acting as much as enabler as director, without shirking his responsibilities in the latter role where necessary. Greater urgency in the third section marked out a fresh start: related, yes, but also perhaps redolent of Nietzsche, in The Gay Science: ‘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’. Wagnerism knows no boundaries; nor should it.

Image: Arnold Schönberg Center - Wien

Zemlinsky would surely have nodded assent to that, whether as composer or conductor. Petrenko’s reading of Die Seejungfrau (‘The Little Mermaid’), after Hans Christian Andersen, at least equalled any recorded performance I have heard – with the inestimable advantage, of course, of ‘liveness’. When I hear it I cannot help but think of Schoenberg’s Pelleas und Melisande, not least since both works received their premieres in the same concert, the final, January 1905 outing for the short-lived Vereinigung schaffender Tonkünstler (‘Society of Creative Musicians’). Neither is an easy work to bring off, yet Petrenko seemed to me very much to have the measure of Zemlinsky’s ‘fantasy in three movements for large orchestra’, especially its very own motivic integrity: not entirely unlike Schoenberg’s, yet certainly not merely to be assimilated to it.

Through that joint inheritance from Brahms and Wagner, the three movements seemed quite naturally, even organically – however loaded those terms may be – to emerge. Would it have mattered if it had been called a symphony? Perhaps not. But it was better called, and performed as, something else. The narrative was very much its own, perhaps not entirely unlike another, more celebrated maritime symphonic poem, by a composer hovering at the edges of the programme: Debussy. The waves of La Mer certainly came involuntarily to my mind at the opening of the second of the work’s three movements. Thinking of the symphonic or tone poem as a genre, work and performance sounded not un-Straussian at some points, yet never – quite rightly, I think – displayed Strauss’s cynical and/or materialist delight in phantasmagoria for its own sake. Zemlinsky, for better or worse, was simply too nice a man and composer for that. He withdrew the work, for whatever reason, after that Musikverein performance. Schoenberg, as ever, bore the violent brunt of the reaction. ‘Reviews were unusually violent,’ he would recall: ‘one of the critics suggested to put me in an asylum and keep music paper out of my reach’. Zemlinsky, however, deserved far more than indifference – as Schoenberg and this evening’s excellent performers knew well.

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’?

Prom 68: Skride/Oslo PO/Petrenko - Tchaikovsky, Szymanowski, and Rachmaninov, 2 September 2013

 

Royal Albert Hall

Tchaikovsky – Symphony no.1 in G minor, op.13, ‘Winter Daydreams’ (revised version, 1874)

Szymanowski – Violin Concerto no.1, op.35
Rachmaninov – Symphonic Dances, op.45

Baiba Skride (violin)

Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra

Vasily Petrenko (conductor)

 

Some rather odd programming here. I am the last person to say that we should revert to the ‘bad old days’ of wall-to-wall overture-concerto-symphony concerts, but in this case, it might well have proved more coherent. Not that reworking of the programming would necessarily have rescued Tchaikovsky’s hapless ‘Winter Daydreams’ Symphony. I suppose it is worth giving such works occasional outings, if only to remind us why they are not more often performed, but when there is such a host of fine music that continued to languish in (concert, if not always recorded) obscurity, do we really need a Proms Tchaikovsky symphonic cycle?

 

Vasily Petrenko and the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra – despite, or because of the considerable number of female musicians in its ranks? – nevertheless did their best by the work. It opened with wonderfully alert, lively playing, perhaps especially from the woodwind section, whose colours veritably shimmered. Petrenko imparted a strong developmental sense to the music, if at times his reading sounded rather driven. (Tchaikovsky marks this first movement Allegro tranquillo, though what that might mean in practice is anyone’s guess.) It was enjoyable enough if ultimately quite lacking in structural coherence. The slow movement was songful, the Oslo woodwinds again offering especial delight: solo oboe (David Friedemann Strunck) first among equals, though the other lines gathering around his were in no sense inferior. Yet the movement soon began to outstay its welcome, not helped by the bizarre outburst from the horns (again, a criticism of the work, not its performance). The third movement came across with the proper character of a scherzo: often delicate, but with definite rhythmic drive; the trio evinced Romantic longing with considerable conviction. As for the finale, there was a splendidly lugubrious build up to what ultimately is little more than an incoherent succession of devices, contrapuntal writing in particular sounding quite unmotivated by the material. It was played with relish, but really...

 

What a relief then it was to turn after the interval to Szymanowski’s First Violin Concerto. Its single movement – a span concealing, or rather revealing, a multitude of sins – opened as if recollecting Dukas’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice, before Baiba Skride’s sinuous, erotically-charged violin line emerged as if from within. Tone was clean yet inviting, and could become richer when required, especially when playing sul G. (Again, I could not help but wonder how our unreconstructed conductor could maintain his concentration, yet somehow he managed.) The discontinuities that ultimately are continuities of Szymanowski’s radical form emerged just as strongly as Tchaikovsky’s forlorn attempts at coherence. Purpose was present throughout. Yes, the music is perfumed, yet that it is only a small aspect of the composer’s writing, revel though we do – and did – in the post-Debussyan, post-Straussian, and yes, post-Schoenbergian harmonies and colours. Petrenko shaped the great orchestral climaxes surely, but it was the silvery violin and delicate woodwind that lingered longest in the mind. Not, of course, that the violin does not have its more energetic, incisive moments, and they were splendidly despatched. Above all, there was a true sense of directed fantasy from all.

 

The last time I had heard Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances had been in a typically slapdash effort from Valery Gergiev. If the programming on this occasion were a little unsatisfactory, it nevertheless helped Rachmaninov more than Gergiev’s placing him after twelve-note Schoenberg had. It is difficult not to think a work such as this, written in 1940, a little retrograde – and not in the Bachian sense Schoenberg would have had in mind. Yet here at least Rachmaninov’s music was able to resound with integrity, ironically sounding far more a statement of exile than it had in Gergiev’s LSO series, allegedly organised around the idea of ‘exile’. One heard the composer grappling in so many senses with a New World: remaining himself and yet adapting, reluctantly or otherwise, to some aspects of modernistic common currency. Petrenko offerd a first movement as alert as anything we had heard so far, rhythm and colour once again equally to the fore. The saxophone solo offered not our last recollection of Ravel. If there were times when a little more orchestral weight might not have gone amiss, especially in the developmental music, Petrenko and his players offered in general a good balance between heart and wit. That balance was also well struck in the second movement, whose waltz music benefited from a gorgeous lilt. It was nicely elliptical too, no easy answers being offered. A life-long obsession with the Dies irae chant sounded genuinely revisited, refreshed, in the finale: a different variety of dance, yet a dance nonetheless. And, whatever one’s opinions about the backward-looking nature of Rachmaninov’s music, the ending, unlike that to Tchaikovsky’s symphony, convinced.

 

Trpčeski/LSO/Petrenko - Beethoven and Elgar, 18 October 2012

Barbican Hall

 

Beethoven – Piano Concerto no.5 in E-flat major, op.73, ‘Emperor’
Elgar – Symphony no.1 in A-flat major, op.55

Simon Trpčeski (piano)

London Symphony Orchestra

Vasily Petrenko (conductor)

Sir Colin Davis remains in recovery from a recent illness, so Vasily Petrenko stepped in to conduct this concert, the programme unchanged. Petrenko’s way with Beethoven and Elgar was certainly very different from what one would have expected – and doubtless heard – from Davis, but there was much to intrigue, especially in Elgar.

From the outset of Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto, there was no doubt that Petrenko intended to make full use of the capabilities of the LSO – no fashionable scaling down here – just as Simon Trpčeski would employ the full resources of his Steinway. The tempo was fast, faster than my general preference, but that is neither here nor there; it suited the performance, which was very much of the here and now rather than a probing of Wagnerian metaphysics. A muscular exposition tutti did not detract from characterful woodwind playing. Petrenko’s reading was rhythmically insistent, very different from the more flexible and harmonically-grounded Beethoven one hears from, say, Daniel Barenboim, or would have done from Furtwängler. It was highly martial, perhaps too much so at times, but I was intrigued to hear Beethoven’s score here more as a successor to Mozart at his most public (the 25^th Piano Concerto, rather than the 22^nd, despite the key), albeit with greater menace, or indeed to the military brass interventions in Haydn’s late masses, inevitably putting one in mind ultimately of precedents for the Missa solemnis. Trpčeski’s performance was finely shaded, always clear, notably in the cruel left-hand passagework, unfailingly even in tone. The moment of return was a high point, piano and orchestra together veritably blazing. A songful, intermezzo-like character was granted the slow movement, clearly informed by experience in Romantic (post-Beethoven) piano concertos: Schumann, even, more controversially, Chopin and Tchaikovsky. I was not entirely convinced, but it made me think, and it was a welcome luxury to hear such warmth from the deep-pile LSO string section. The finale was taken at a fast tempo too, but was carried off well. Trpčeski voiced those extremely difficult chords in the opening bars to perfection, though there were occasional examples later on when heavy-handedness intervened. There were a couple of odd instances of slowing down, pianist later echoed by conductor, so they would seem to have been the products of conscious decisions. That bassoon solo emerged unscathed from the preceding orchestral onslaught.

 

After the interval, Elgar’s First Symphony opened arrestingly with deliberate tread, almost as if the glorious celebration of a hero passed (a successor, perhaps, to Siegfried, or even to the hero of the Eroica?), sad yet defiant. The main Allegro, by contrast, opened in fast and furious fashion, quite un-Boult-like, though its fragility would soon be exposed. The score often sounded closer to Tchaikovsky than Brahms, especially at its most frenetic, the LSO brass ablaze. This was an unabashedly Romantic reading, which yet did not preclude uncertainty, above all at the close. The second movement – I suppose one ought not to call it a scherzo, since Elgar did not – also opened furiously, by turn thereafter balletic and martial. (I could almost imagine it danced.) It was quite different from any performance I could recall, yet clearly from conviction rather than a desire to ‘say something new’ for the sake of it. I found it exhilarating. The slow movement emerged with almost Mahlerian intensity from the strings, the warmth and generosity of their vibrato throughout a standing rebuke to the Norringtonian tendency. Echoes of Wagner – sighing phrases, choice harmonic shifts, baleful English horn (Christine Pendrill) – were sung freely. Instability was never far from the surface, despite the often ravishing beauty of the performance. Though the opening of the finale was well-nigh obliterated by a barrage of coughing, it emerged from bronchial envelopment with a nice sense of fantastical revisiting: a tribute to Strauss? The Allegro recaptured earlier fury, yet quite rightly seemed to struggle; ‘hard-won’ would be misleading, since it was never clear that victory had been attained. Astonishingly, even today, Elgar sometimes needs to be rescued from provincial devotees, who would confine him to the ranks of merely ‘English composers’. In this fine performance, he was triumphantly, which is in another sense also to say equivocally, rescued.    

Performances of the Year, 2010

2010 has been a depressing year politically (can anyone remember one that was not?), but there has been much to celebrate in the arts. I am probably tempting fate by naming performances of the year now, but should any more come along in the next week-and-a-half, all the better. I have limited myself, as last year, to twelve, so averaging once a month. A good few performances have found themselves almost arbitrarily rejected, sometimes on the grounds of offering a broader selection, but all the reviews remain of course. Enough of the caveats; here they are, the order solely chronological, with links to the full reviews:

Staatskapelle Berlin/Daniel Barenboim: Beethoven and Schoenberg, Royal Festival Hall

Daniel Barenboim's survey of the Beethoven piano concertos proved a little more hit and miss than his sonata cycle. However, when the performances came off, they really came off, as in this account of the Third. Nevertheless, it was for Schoenberg, an enduring passion, that Barenboim truly pulled out all the stops. Not only did he and the Staatskapelle Berlin - may they never be forgotten! - provide a superlative performance of the Variations for Orchestra, op.31, something of a Barenboim speciality; Barenboim prefaced it with a straightforwardly brilliant spoken introduction to the work. Did he not already have a multiplicity of careers, I should recommend him as a university lecturer, though the rest of us might soon be out of our jobs...

The Gambler: Royal Opera House

Prokofiev's first opera, bar juvenilia, finally arrived on stage at Covent Garden, and in style! Richard Jones's production looked good, indeed very good, and managed more or less to make sense of the drama's hectic comings and goings. A fine cast had no weak links, but Susan Bickley's Babulenka truly stole the show. As ever with opera, there are simply too many variables to have no cavils at all (why did it have to be sung in English?) but this was a wonderful evening, a true credit to a company which, when it puts its mind to it, can equal any in the world.

Matthias Goerne/Helmut Deutsch: Schubert Lieder, Wigmore Hall

These musicians seem so unerringly excellent that they could readily be taken for granted - that is until one hears a recital such as this, haunted by death yet also ravishingly beautiful. Dramatic power and subtlety were employed in equal measure.

Maurizio Pollini: Chopin, Debussy, and Boulez, Berlin Philharmonie

Pollini had impressed mightly in one of the Royal Festival Hall's two 'birthday' recitals for Chopin. (So had Krystian Zimerman in the other.) This Berlin recital was, if anything, still finer. The complete Chopin Preludes emerged in perfect balance both as a tonal cycle and as a sequence of characteristic pieces. A selection from Debussy's first book proved a sonorous and musical delight; would that Pollini's detractors could have heard such warmth. Finally, Boulez's Second Sonata, as part of the Berlin Staatsoper's celebrations for the composer's eighty-fifth birthday. The work can surely never have been better performed, even by Pollini.

Hommage à Pierre Boulez: Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Berlin

Members of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra performed under Barenboim and Boulez for this birthday tribute. Messagesquisse and Anthèmes 2 received excellent performances, Hassan Moatez El Molla an exceptionally fine cellist in the former, with Michael Barenboim bravely and convincingly essaying the violin part of the latter. Le Marteau sans maître from the hands of Boulez himself sounded more beautifully, almost Mozartian, than ever: quite mesmerising.

Jerusalem Quartet: Mozart and Janáček, Wigmore Hall

Mozart requires but one thing: perfection. This is what he received here, in as winning a performance of any of his quartets (this time the D minor, KV 521) as I can recall. Janáček's Intimate Letters quartet was equally fortunate, in a performance as intensely dramatic as any of the composer's operas. What an age this is for young (and other!) quartets...

Quatuor Ebène: Mozart and Bartók, Wigmore Hall

The Quatuor Ebène, in another of the Wigmore Hall's delightful Sunday morning coffee concerts, proved every inch the equal of the Jerusalem Quartet. More Mozart: this time the early Divertimento, KV 136/125a, by turns richly expansive and light as quicksilver, was followed by another intense performance of a twentieth-century masterpiece, Bartók’s Second Quartet. The frozen viol-like opening of the final Lento was but one highlight of many.

Trpčeski/RLPO/Petrenko: Schumann, Rachmaninov, and Tchaikovsky, BBC Proms, Royal Albert Hall

Two young musicians proved that they are worth all the fuss - and more. Simon Trpčeski single-handedly - well, double handedly, with the orchestra and conductor - reignited my enthusiasm for a work I fancied I had heard too many times: Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto. In an outstanding performance of Tchaikovsky's Manfred Symphony, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Vasily Petrenko proved themselves at least a match for any metropolitan orchestra-and-conductor pairing.

Lewis/CBSO/Nelsons: Wagner, Beethoven, and Dvořák, BBC Proms, Royal Albert Hall

My other Prom selection is strikingly similar in a number of respects: another outstanding combination of young pianist, young principal conductor, and rejuvenated 'regional' orchestra: Paul Lewis, Andris Nelsons, and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Moreover, this was another far-from-outmoded overture-concerto-symphony programme. Lewis and Nelsons provided a wonderful, musicianly account of Beethoven's second concerto, far superior to Lewis's recording in which he is unfortunately lumbered with a dull conductor. The New World Symphony received a performance both thoughtful and exciting, another 'warhorse' fashioned anew.

Elektra: Salzburg Festival, Grosses Festspielhaus

Opera, as I remarked above, is well-nigh impossible to get right in every respect. This performance of Elektra came very close indeed. No star shone more brightly than that of the world's greatest orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic; truly it had to be heard to be believed. Daniele Gatti revelled in the orchestral sound and Strauss's, holding in as fine a balance as I have heard the demands of modernity and sweetness, and never for one moment losing the long musico-dramatic line. Nikolaus Lehnhoff's production proved just as single-minded, devoid of gimmicks, strong on truth. And with a cast including Waltraud Meier, Janice Baird (excellent last-minute replacement for an ailing Iréne Theorin), Eva-Maria Westbroek, Robert Gambill, René Pape, the deal was sealed.

Dame Mitsuko Uchida: Beethoven, Schumann, and Chopin, Royal Festival Hall

Utterly different from Pollini's Chopin, Uchida's proved equally distinguished. The late-ish Beethoven E minor sonata received a vigorous and dramatic as well as typically thoughtful account, whilst Uchida captured ths shifting moods of Schumann's Davidsbündlertänze to perfection. Her recent recording clearly needs to be sought out.

Piotr Anderszewski: Bach and Schumann, Barbican Hall

Despite my earlier protestations of balance, here was another piano recital I simply could not omit. More Schumann in a fortunate anniversary year: Anderszewski's own arrangement of the Canonic Etudes for pedal piano and the late, disturbing Gesänge der Frühe. (We are, I hear, now blessed by a recording too.) Anderszewski's Bach - here the Fifth and Sixth English Suites - is truly second to none: fiercely Romantic and musically profound. Bach, as ever, emerged as the greatest Romantic and the greatest composer for piano of them all.

Prom 4: Trpčeski/RLPO/Petrenko - Schumann, Rachmaninov, and Tchaikovsky, 19 July 2010

Royal Albert Hall

Schumann (re-orch. Mahler) – Overture: Manfred, op.115
Rachmaninov – Piano Concerto no.2 in C minor, op.18
Tchaikovsky – Manfred: Symphony in four scenes after the dramatic poem by Byron, op.58

Simon Trpčeski (piano)
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
Vasily Petrenko (conductor)

Outstanding! I am tempted to leave it at that, but had better not. After my first two Proms (Mahler’s Eighth Symphony and Die Meistersinger), I was beginning to think that I must have been unduly harsh; perhaps I had not given due regard to the notorious vagaries of the Royal Albert Hall’s acoustic. This stunning performance from all concerned persuaded me that, if anything, I had been lenient, for there was a world of difference to be heard from the opening bar of Schumann’s Manfred Overture, as re-orchestrated by Mahler.

There is no need to become hung up on Mahler’s role here, though it is noteworthy that this orchestration was being performed for the first time at the Proms. Mahler sharpens up the definition a little, but this still sounds like Schumann. The overture opened dashingly; Vasily Petrenko’s more or less immediate downbeat announced silken string sound of an entirely different order from that served up on those earlier two Proms. I was put in mind of the Philharmonia under Christian Thielemann, though Petrenko’s reading pulsated with life whilst remaining highly flexible. (The Philharmonia/Thielemann recording of Schumann’s Third Symphony is first-rate, however.) Petrenko had no time for the latter-day nonsense of scaling down strings. That there were as many double basses (eight) as for the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s rendition of the Mahler was partly testament to their insufficiency; more importantly, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic sounded like a full orchestra. How the cellos sang – and how sepulchral the trombones sounded! This Manfred was febrile, heroic, but always in the orbit of Beethovenian humanism, never driven too hard. There was also a loving tenderness that looked forward to Strauss’s Don Juan; Petrenko really made those Neapolitan sixths tell.

Petrenko and Simon Trpčeski then went on to impress upon me that Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto is merely over-performed – and over-performed at an insufficient level. For in this reading it sounded minted afresh. Trpčeski’s magical opening chords and crescendo showed that, if ever a composer wrote for the Steinway, it was Rachmaninov, but he needs a pianist equal to the task, which he found here. Trpčeski (almost) made it sound easy, but never routine. Petrenko’s orchestral part was the equal of any I have heard: well, perhaps not the Philadelphia Orchestra of old, with the composer himself at the keyboard, but certainly, for instance, Haitink’s Concertgebouw for Ashkenazy. Moreover, the partnership between Trpčeski and Petrenko was as tight as any I have heard, revealingly as much about integration as opposition. With touches of echt-Russian vibrato in the brass, this was a reading that drew upon tradition but also presented something new: an almost Mendelssohnian, elfin performance at times, nevertheless lacking nothing in weight when it came to the great climaxes. As for the intervention of a mobile telephone, I can only hope that the offending object was put to its proper use as rectal thermometer for its owner. The tender slow movement permitted Trpčeski to impart an interestingly Brahmsian quality to the placing and voicing of the piano chords. Nicholas Cox’s melting clarinet solo would rival any I have heard. For the most part, this Adagio sostenuto was restrained, but there was no doubting the genuine quality of the emotion bubbling beneath the surface – and occasionally over it. Such subtlety would of course have been impossible without absolute security in terms of understanding and outlining the music’s harmonic progression. Taking the finale attacca prevented applause from once again being sounded, though bronchial dissent was not to be stifled. Trpčeski unleashed a veritably Lisztian devilry in his pianism, complemented by a combination of warmth and sardonicism – snarling brass in particular – from the RLPO. Brahms was not yet vanquished, however, in the voicing of the chords; indeed, a battle royal between him and Liszt was not least of the musical excitements on offer. The fugato was likewise clear and exciting. Though I fancied myself weary of this music, I should eagerly have heard it repeated immediately in a performance of this quality.

If the Rachmaninov is oft-performed, one cannot say the same of Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony. Petrenko and the RLPO have recorded the work, as indeed they have the concerto with Trpčeski; if either performance matches this concert, it should be highly commended indeed. Liszt once again came to mind with the opening, the hero’s theme surely a reminiscence of the questing Faust Symphony, likewise the unusual tonal instability. There was no mistaking, however, the utter Russianness of the RLPO strings’ interventions. Once again, their depth of tone put earlier performances to shame. Petrenko proved a sure guide – no easy thing in music that can readily meander – and imparted a taste of Swan Lake to the magnificent yet rounded climaxes. The scherzo, the realm of the Alpine fairy, brings hints of Mendelssohn, albeit with Liszt’s – and Berlioz’s – means. The lyricism, however, is all Tchaikovsky’s own; Petrenko revelled in both aspects. So did his crack players: the strings took us to St Petersburg, the trio of flutes proving equally beautiful of tone. And if the movement goes on a bit, there is only so much performers can do – but they did. Ravishing horn playing was one of many highlights in the Andante con moto. It flowed, but rightly took its time too, permitting the strings to sing. There were hints of the ‘Scène aux champs’ from the Symphonie fantastique, but rustic elements were given their due too, albeit without the hideous over-emphasis in which one can imagine some conductors indulging. Sterner moments looked forward towards the late symphonies. And the bells tolled atmospherically, inevitably reminding once again of Berlioz. The finale proved equally colourful, if more resplendently so, given its nature. I was again struck by how well-drilled the orchestra was, though never bureaucratically so. The fugato was despatched with flair, whilst a strong narrative sense emerged through the movement’s – indeed, the symphony’s – progress. There was, finally, a true sense of tragedy to the denouement. Graham Eccles’s organ contribution was properly grandiose: this may be hokum, but when done with such style, who can complain? It was, however, the orchestral subsiding, beautiful and noble, that lingered more stubbornly in the mind. On this showing, Petrenko and his orchestra are a pairing to match any resident in London.