Philharmonia/Salonen - Beethoven and Dallapiccola, Il prigioniero, 26 January 2012

Royal Festival Hall

Beethoven – Symphony no.5 in C minor, op.67
Dallapiccola – Il prigioniero

The Prisoner – Lauri Vasar
The Mother – Paoletta Marrocu
Gaoler/Grand Inquisitor – Peter Hoare
First Priest – Brian Galliford
Second Priest, Fra Redemptor – Francisco Javier Borda

David Edwards (stage director)
David Holmes (lighting)

Philharmonia Voices (chorus master: Aidan Oliver)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor)

Luigi Dallapiccola

There are Beethoven cycles and there are Beethoven cycles. Arguably eclipsed in recent years by Mahler, le grand sourd (Ravel) has never gone away, but he has been at least as unlucky in the quality as well as the quantity of the attention devoted to him. Many conductors – less so, it would seem, pianists and quartets – simply do not know what to do with Beethoven’s music. Daniel Barenboim does, and will bring the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra to the Proms this summer: it almost makes it worth enduring London’s Olympic Hell to hear that. A few years ago, Bernard Haitink conducted a memorable cycle – at least those concerts I heard were memorable – with the London Symphony Orchestra, though the results on disc perhaps shine less brightly. (Sometimes one has to be there.) Others I shall pass over in silence, except to suggest avoiding like the plague one recent, heavily-promoted CD set. Esa-Pekka Salonen, however, is offering something quite different, potentially more interesting: Beethoven’s symphonies in intelligent, provocative couplings. I do not know whether anyone before has presented the Fifth Symphony with Dallapiccola’s one-act masterpiece, Il prigioniero; someone certainly should have done and will, I hope, do so again. The archetypal Romantic journey of hope from darkness to light receives its tragic twentieth-century response.

And yet, despite a truly shattering performance of Dallapiccola’s opera, there was a problem. Salonen, at least on the basis of this performance, would seem to have no feeling for Beethoven. Even the change of orchestral clothes from evening tails to open-necked black shirts, doubtless intended for dramatic reasons, served only to underline the apparent, tragic remoteness of Beethoven to our concerns. We were not treated to the indignities of the perverse, alla Rattle or Norrington. Nevertheless, the Fifth Symphony was rendered dull; stripped of meaning, it emerged not in intriguing modernistic abstraction, but rather as if it were ballet. Beethoven as Delibes? It just about approaches the status of a point of view, I suppose, but it is not one I wish to hear voiced again. Perhaps surprisingly, the first movement exposition did not come off too badly, rhythmically and motivically insistent. Salonen’s reading showed musicianship at least, and Beethoven’s concision came through clearly. (There was some splendid kettledrum playing too, from Andrew Smith.) But of course, that was not enough. We had to wait until the coda for anything approaching vehemence, first from the cellos and then from the other strings, though even here, the final bars were on the light side. The slow movement emerged as an accomplished set of variations, which certainly did not dawdle and yet which nevertheless suffered at times from rhythmic slackness. There was no sense of striving: at best, this was an intermezzo. The scherzo was impressive enough in its own way, but one cannot start here; alas, the trio simply sounded too fast. Perhaps worst of all, the transition to the finale, one of the greatest passages in all music, entirely lacked mystery, even sounding dull. It pains me to say that the finale less evoked the opening of the portals of Heaven than the opening of a swish private health club. Enough: to hear the Philharmonia in this symphony, turn to Thielemann, to Boulez, or best of all, to Klemperer.

If our world, with a few heroic exceptions, simply does not know what to do with symphonic Beethoven, it desperately needs to hear from Dallapiccola, just as much as his own world of fascism and apparent liberation did. Were there any justice, Il prigioniero would long have been a staple of every opera house. There is no such justice, of course, whether in the operatic or the wider world; instead, we discover that L’enfer, c’est les autres opéras, more often than not the latest rerun of La traviata. However, a performance such as this can still offer us that hope so utterly denied in the story enacted (though not, perhaps, in the musical form?)

The bite and conviction absent from Salonen’s Beethoven could scarcely have registered more powerfully; the Philharmonia sounded reinvigorated, the prologue’s opening chords screaming less as twelve-note Puccini than in startlingly Stravinskian fashion. They were matched, moreover, even surpassed, by the anguished Mother of Paoletta Marrocu. Her delivery was unabashedly emotional, and all the better for it, those terrible final cries of ‘Figlio’ (son) haunting us, angering us, inciting us. Lauri Vasar’s Prisoner was equally fine. The occasional sob in his voice early on could readily be forgiven, for this proved not only a scrupulous but a searing portrayal, all-engrossing with a truly hallucinatory power when it came to the poor soul’s own hallucinations. For that, of course, Salonen and the Philharmonia must also be credited. A wealth of orchestral detail was revealed, not with cold, clinical clarity, but with dramatic direction founded upon evident understanding and communication of Dallapiccola’s motivic and serial working. This was most certainly a post-Bergian labyrinth – at times, I even fancied that I heard foreshadowing of Boulez in the woodwind – but for a purpose. We, like the Prisoner, were tempted by the possibility of escape, only to have it all the more cruelly denied by the sweetness of orchestral phantasmagoria. (Zsolt-Tihámer’s first violin solos were especially noteworthy in that respect.)

The Gaoler and Inquisitor of Peter Hoare and the First Priest of Brian Galliford were more ‘character’ portrayals than anything else, but in context that mattered not at all. Any verdict upon the former’s use of head voice would be largely a matter of taste: there was certainly an apt sense of wheedling casuistry. The invitation ‘Fratello …. andiamo…’ sickened as it must. Francisco Javier Borda’s Second Priest impressed vocally as well as dramatically. No one, though, not even the orchestra, could overshadow the stunning contribution of the Philharmonia Voices. Absolute vocal security combined with surprising weight for a choir of under fifty, to assault both conscience and consciousness. Quasi-liturgical repetition of responsorial words our modern predicament would deny straightforwardly terrified, the precedent for a work such as Nono’s Intolleranza 1960 starkly apparent. In such a context, the Prisoner’s standing seemed ambiguously to evoke celebrant and crucifixion; however, Fate – such as we ought to have heard in the Fifth Symphony – was to be the sole victor. Hope was indeed the final torture: ‘La speranza … l’ultima tortura’. We all knew the answer to that final, faltering, ironic question: ‘La libertà?’ In a world of prisons such as Guantánamo and Gaza, we know it all too well.

Diener/Philharmonia/Kluttig and Dohnányi: Schöllhorn, Strauss, and Mozart, 24 November 2011

Royal Festival Hall

Johannes Schöllhorn – Anamorphoses: Contrapunctus IV, VI, IX, XI, and Canon per augmentationem in contrario motu

Strauss – Don Juan, op.20
Strauss – Four Last Songs
Mozart – Symphony no.25 in G minor, KV 183
Strauss – Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, op.28

Melanie Diener (soprano)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Roland Kluttig and Christoph von Dohnányi (conductors)

‘Schöllhorn, Strauss, and Mozart’: not, alas, a firm of German lawyers, nor even the composers featured in a Philharmonia concert, but rather those appearing in two. The first in a new series of ‘Music of Today’ featured members of the Philharmonia, conducted by Roland Kluttig in five movements from Johannes Schöllhorn’s Bach-reworking, Anamorphoses; the second welcomed back sometime Principal Conductor, Christoph von Dohnányi, for Strauss and a little Mozart.

Schöllhorn’s music was selected by Music of Today’s new Artistic Director, Unsuk Chin, to open her series. (Ivan Fedele and Gérard Grisey are amongst the others who will be featured.) Anamorphoses refers to Schöllhorn’s inspiration in the mannerist technique of having the viewer see different aspects of a painting according to where he is standing: Holbein’s The Ambassadors would be an obvious example. Schöllhorn presents the Art of Fugue in a fashion that for him – and, I thought, for the listener – presents Bach’s music not only as coming from the cathedral, but also from the bazaar. The accordion is a nice touch in that respect, though its employment is far from limited to presentation of ‘street colour’; indeed, its music later forms a significant component of the still, or rather gradually beating, heart to the movements we heard. There is Stravinskian spikiness later on, but just as arresting is the Berio-like technique – I think more of Berio’s orchestration of a Purcell hornpipe and his variations on ‘Ein mädchen oder Weibchen’ than his Art of Fugue transcription – in which wisps of music become apparent, whilst having been ever-present, sometimes submerged. Sinfonia’s treatment of Mahler also sprang to mind, especially in Contrapunctus XI. Performances seemed keenly observed and committed. I should love to hear more – though preferably without the distracting company of the roving telephone-photographer, eventually, albeit far too late, asked to desist from his travels around the hall and even into the choir.



Don Juan opened the second concert and was the only disappointment: not that it was bad, but more a matter of seeming to have caught Dohnányi before he had really found his stride. The Philharmonia sounded tremendous from the opening upwards sweep, but its direction early on was somewhat brusque, four-square even, though the more tender moments were permitted to sing. Zsolt-Tihámer Visontay’s solos as leader were predictably fine. As partial compensation for the lack of narrative swagger, Dohnányi offered a great deal of revealing attention to detail, thematically as much as pictorially, not least in the generative emphasis accorded to the cello line. Ultimately, however, though I was often (relatively) impressed, I remained unmoved.

The Four Last Songs were another matter – as surely they must. (Imagine a performance that did not move; or rather, try to banish such thoughts or recollections.) Melanie Diener showed that she could float a line just as long as Strauss – or Dohnányi – required, without turning the vocal line into just another gorgeous strand of orchestration: the words meant something. When Hermann Hesse’s verse told of the soul unwatched in free flight (‘Und die Seele unbewacht/will in freien Flügen schweben’) that was just what we heard – and felt. Dohnányi’s leadership was resolutely unsentimental, but not without sentiment. ‘Frühling’ evoked springtime, thereby permitting transformation to take place. Through the subtle array of colours in the final stanza of ‘September’, autumnal phantasmagoria turned to weariness – not too much, just enough – in ‘Beim Schlafengehen’, Strauss’s music possessed of unassuming dignity. It moved as Don Juan never had, which is not only a matter of the works’ individual qualities. Likewise, the introduction to ‘Im Abendrot’ was perfectly judged, in a similar vein; I was especially grateful for the rich – not too much, just enough – viola line, and its heart-rending articulation. ‘Ist dies etwa der Tod?’ Maybe, or maybe not: life seemed as much affirmed as denied.

Mozart’s ‘Little’ G minor Symphony was a somewhat odd bedfellow, Strauss’s devotion to Mozart notwithstanding. Either more Mozart or more Mozartian Strauss, perhaps both, might have worked better; as it was, there was a slight sense of the palette-cleanser. That was a pity, since Dohnányi led an impressive performance, hamstrung only by a strangely prosaic slow movement, in which phrase merely followed phrase. The first movement, however, was mightily impressive: vehement, without exaggeration, stylishly accomplished throughout. Structure was clearly delineated, making me keen to hear the conductor in Haydn, especially Sturm und Drang Haydn. Interplay between antiphonally placed first and second violins enthralled; there was a true sense of divine drama through ‘purely’ musical means. The minuet was finely detailed, and taken at a sensible tempo, with no fashionable one-in-a-bar nonsense. (In that connection, how refreshing it also was to welcome a decently-sized orchestra, with ten first violins down to four double basses, though Mozart himself would have welcomed larger forces, a fact the ‘authenticke’ lobby simply ignores.) The trio emerged as wondrous Harmoniemusik, breathing the air of a Salzburg summer’s evening, whilst the finale, fast but not breathless, resumed the non-exhibitionistic vehemence of the opening.

Till Eulenspiegel benefited from the reinvigoration imparted, at least seemingly so, by Mozart; this was a much livelier, more flexible reading than that accorded Don Juan. In Dohnányi’s hands, Strauss’s score sounded full of incident, superbly articulated, the performance blessed with excellent grasp of structure, permitting narrative and character to emerge with proper coherence. It was elegant, witty, and dashing. The trickiness of Strauss’s post-Meistersinger counterpoint was navigated as if it were the easiest thing in the world, which it certainly is not. The Philharmonia’s brass sounded positively Wagnerian, albeit with an apt materialist edge. In this quite outstanding account, I was above all reminded with what surpassing virtuosity Strauss, the reviser of Berlioz’s treatise, composed for orchestra.

Bronfman/Philharmonia/Salonen: Bartók, 27 October 2011

Royal Festival Hall, London

Contrasts
Suite: The Wooden Prince
Dance Suite
Piano Concerto no.2

Yefim Bronfman (piano)
Zsolt-Tihamér Visontay (violin)
Mark van de Wiel (clarinet).

The penultimate concert in the Philharmonia’s series, ‘Infernal Dance: Inside the World of Béla Bartók’ maintained, indeed built upon, the high standards heard earlier this year: Esa-Pekka Salonen really seems to be in his element in Bartók’s music, as does the Philharmonia. First off was Contrasts, for which soloist Yefim Bronfman joined the orchestra’s leader, Zsolt-Tihamér Visontay and principal clarinettist, Mark van de Wiel in a true chamber-music performance. Balance between the players was as finely judged as that between slinkiness – as Malcom Gillies put it in his programme note, ‘creative reinterpretation of [commissioner Benny] Goodman’s musicianship, deliciously filtered through Bartók’s remarkable ethnomusicological ear’ – and echt-modernist Bartókian rhythm. From the first movement onwards, musical kinship with composers such as Prokofiev and Ravel (I thought especially of the latter’s violin sonata) was in evidence, likewise a real sense of the three musicians as dramatic protagonists. The clarinet cadenza was superbly despatched. Mystery was struck from the outset of the second movement, ‘Pihenő’ (‘Relaxation’), its bitter-sweetness properly touching, violin harmonics and subdued piano rumbling – casting a glance backward to the First Piano Concerto – exemplary, the music’s growing intricacies finely charted. Visontay’s violin set the pace for the others in the third movement’s diabolical drama – I was put in mind of Stravinsky’s Soldier’s Tale – though van de Wiel’s clarinet riffs sounded every bit as impressive, likewise the softer, creepier passages, which emerged both menacing of full of delight in the composer’s fabulous musical invention.

The 1932 suite from The Wooden Prince followed, perhaps for me the highlight of the concert. Bartók’s Prelude evoked Nature’s Rheingold-style awakening more evocatively than one had any right to imagine. The music grew with great cumulative power, magnificent orchestral weight, and Ravelian colouristic fantasy in more or less perfect equipoise. Salonen did not lose sight of the ballet; one could certainly picture the music being danced to, though alas it would be unlikely to sound anything like as good as this in a danced performance. The dances were all characterised by sharp rhythmic profile, with some especially splendid brass playing, but the fantastic realm vied equally for attention, a Szymanowski-like magic carpet brought before our ears. Both luxuriant warmth and the more forward-looking elements of the score were equally apparent; even the celesta hinted at the Music for Strings. If only we could have heard the entire ballet from these musicians: maybe another time…

The Dance Suite opened almost as if pure rhythm, gradually melodised, as it were, by Amy Harman’s superb bassoon solo, Bartók’s far-from-easy piano part – I remember playing it in a student performance a few years ago – in the highly capable hands of guest principal, Elizabeth Burley. More wistful moments, in the first movement and elsewhere, displayed Salonen’s astute distinction between sentiment and sentimentality. The third dance, ‘Allegro vivace’, was taken at a considerable pace, yet seemed just right – as Bartók must. (That one need not slavishly follow his metronome markings is illustrated by his own performances, yet the tempo has to sound as though it is the only one possible.) Rhythmic precision and depth of string tone distinguished a fine performance throughout.

Bronfman returned to the stage for the Second Piano Concerto, the first movement’s solo part immediately pounding and implacable, yet equally notable in dialogue with wind – the Philharmonia brass especially – and percussion. Bronfman imparted clarity as well as power, permitting Bartók’s Bachian heritage to shine through. Silent during the first movement, strings at the outset of the second sounded anything but lush, Bartók’s glassy alienation arguably going further than ever Stravinsky dared; the piano could therefore not only respond coolly, but had ample opportunity to grow in intensity. Lively, even helter-skelter episodes were not purchased at the cost of bite, though I occasionally wondered whether it was all a little too unremitting. (One might with justice respond that so the music should be.) The finale united the virtues of both earlier movements, never losing sight of Bartók’s profusion of lyricism. Bronfman’s Romantic manner was arguably not always quite to be identified with Salonen’s more modernistic impulse, but the slight tension proved productive rather than glaring.

Coote/Vinke/Philharmonia/Maazel - Mahler, 29 September 2011

Royal Festival Hall

Mahler - Symphony no.10: I. ‘Adagio’
Mahler - Das Lied von der Erde

Alice Coote (mezzo-soprano)
Stefan Vinke (tenor)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Lorin Maazel (conductor)


My response to much of this and last year’s Mahler anniversary bonanza has been to stay away: certainly not out of antipathy, nor out of boredom, nor on account of any other negative reaction to the music of a composer whom I admire as greatly as ever, but simply because there are too many unnecessary performances of that music on offer. Whilst always interested in hearing great or potentially interesting Mahlerians, I simply have no need to hear Maestro x conduct orchestra y in a run-of-the-mill Mahler Symphony no.z. Hearing the symphonies (alas, bar the Tenth) and song-cycles (bar some of the Wunderhorn songs) from the Staatskapelle Berlin, Daniel Barenboim, and Pierre Boulez, in Berlin, in April 2007, was one of the most extraordinary experiences of my musical life. When the Philharmonia announced its 2011 Mahler cycle under Lorin Maazel, my enthusiasm was tempered. Nevertheless, I have heard good things, from a variety of sources, many of which I respect greatly, as the cycle has progressed. It therefore seemed time to experience Maazel’s Mahler for myself. On this showing, I am afraid, it emerges as barely preferable to that of Valery Gergiev, the miscast conductor of another (!) recent London cycle.

The opening work, or rather part of a work, the Adagio from the Tenth Symphony was as unbearable as Gergiev’s, albeit in rather different ways. At least Gergiev rushed through his equally micromanaged account; I wonder whether anyone has taken this movement so slowly, whether individually or as part of a complete symphonic performance. Maazel’s reading actually opened promisingly, the viola line tremulous in a good way, suggestive, if we dare follow so Romantically autobiographical a route, of the failing heartbeat more often associated, dubiously or otherwise, with the Ninth Symphony. Thereafter, torpor set in. I have nothing against a daringly slow tempo, but Maazel proved quite incapable of sustaining it, at least meaningfully. Whatever the truth of the minutes on the clock, the music sounded as if it were taken at half-speed, and worse still, a phrase at a time, often with meaningless pauses inserted between those phrases. Worse still again, almost every subdivision of every beat was visibly and, more to the point, audibly, conducted, sapping Mahler’s music of any life. The music collapsed, less under its own (undeniable) weight than under the conductor’s shallowness: there was not even the slightest suggestion that it meant anything, whether or no that ‘anything’ might be put into words. It was, I am sad to say, inert and insufferable. Much of Mahler’s music might well be understood as haunted by death, but that means nothing without the impulse to life, here utterly lacking. Oh for the late Kurt Sanderling, Conductor Emeritus of the Philharmonia…

Das Lied von der Erde was better, though mostly on account of the soloists’ contribution. The first movement, ‘Das Trinklied von Jammer der Erde’, did not initially show Stefan Vinke at his best. Intonational problems compounded the cruel, almost insupportable, challenge Mahler throws at the tenor in this song. However, Vinke improved considerably in the second and third stanzas, the latter evincing the heroism of a Siegfried – or rather the forlorn Mahlerian effort to return to a Siegfried, to which effort's failure the only answer is to fill the wine glass and to drink oneself into oblivion. If only the conducting had not been so regimented; for Maazel, alas, exchanged torpor for brash brutality, the unifying feature being lifelessness born at least in part of that direction of every last subdivision of a beat. Even Sir Simon Rattle at his most tediously ‘interventionist’ rarely conducts quite so fussily. Once again, I longed for Sanderling, still more so for Bruno Walter, cited by Julian Johnson in his excellent pre-performance talk.

The frozen quality, both temporal and sonorous, of ‘Der Einsame im Herbst’ suited Maazel better, if only by default. Alice Coote surmounted a viral infection  in a fine Lieder-singer’s account, equally attentive to words and line. The words ‘Mein Herz ist müde’ were imploring, touching almost beyond words. There was a true sense of this as a song, in which Maazel, mercifully, acted more as ‘accompanist’ than ‘conductor’. (I was again struck by the parallel with Rattle, who often emerges preferably when paying heed to a soloist.) ‘Von der Jugend’ emerged mechanically, but at least there was a Coppelia-sort of life to it, absent entirely during the first part of the concert. Vinke was on good form, by turns playful and nostalgic, doubtless benefiting from the reality that this song is much less of a vocal struggle. If both ‘Von der Jugend’ and ‘Von der Schönheit’ ultimately veered towards the neo-classical, failing to yield as Mahler should, then one could at least appreciate the pointing of the chinoiserie. Meaning in the latter, it must be said, seemed to hail entirely from Coote, not from the podium. Vinke once again showed some strain at the outset of ‘Der Trunkene im Frühling’, but settled reasonably into Siegfried-vein: his was not the subtlest reading, but it was for the most part well enough delivered. Leader Zsolt-Tihamér Visontay provided a delectable solo, but Maazel never proved more than efficient.

It was, then, something of a surprise to hear the baleful opening chords of ‘Der Abschied’ so resounding in menace, movingly responded to by Christopher Cowie’s excellent oboe solo. The problem was that this seemed to have come from nowhere. Mahler’s extraordinary finale needs to be approached, not implanted. One could draw solace that the music, at least to start with, moved fluently, but it rarely moved. Coote suffered a few moments where strain told, not least in a somewhat sour rendition of the words ‘die müden Menschen gehn heimwärts, um im Schlaf vergessnes Glück’, but more important were her palpable sincerity and textual understanding. The final blue light in the distance truly sounded as if it were such in eternity. With the best will in the world, however, it could not be said that her sensibility, even when ailing, was matched by Maazel, despite some fine woodwind playing (and an unfortunate, albeit brief, duet between flute and telephone). The laboured quality of the purely orchestral passages told their own story. Why, I could not help but wonder, did the Philharmonia not offer its Mahler cycle to a musician or musicians better suited?

Perényi/Philharmonia/Schiff - Haydn, 25 June 2009

Royal Festival Hall

Symphony no.80 in D minor
Piano concerto in D major, Hob.XVIII:11
Cello concerto in C major, Hob.VIIb:1
Symphony no.103 in E-flat major, ‘Drum Roll’

Miklós Perényi (violoncello)
Philharmonia Orchestra
András Schiff (piano/conductor)

All-Haydn programmes remain regrettably rare. Although the bicentenary of the composer’s death has given something of a fillip to his fortunes, it is by no means certain how they will fare in 2010. András Schiff is a great Haydn enthusiast; he recently masterminded the Wigmore Hall’s weekend celebrations for the weekend of the anniversary itself, his solo recital providing a fitting conclusion. On this occasion, as part of his ongoing collaboration with the Philharmonia Orchestra, we heard two symphonies and two concertos: a generous programme, which, with interval, stretched over two-and-a-half hours. Rarely if ever do I feel sated with Haydn, but a rush to the doors at the end of the Drum Roll Symphony suggested that some in the audience might have felt otherwise. Schiff’s fondness for repeats played its part here.

Even when Haydn does crop up upon concert programmes, an absurdly small number of works tends to be drawn upon, so it was a delight to hear the splendid D minor symphony, no.80, written in 1784. I was surprised – most pleasantly – by the size of the orchestra for: larger than those to which our balefully ‘period’-influenced times have accustomed us. The string section ran from fourteen first violins to six double basses, and never sounded like anything other than an impeccable section of modern instrumentalists. It was all the more surprising then to see, and all the more unwelcome to hear, natural horns, whose rasping sound was evident throughout the concert. I suppose we should be grateful that mobile telephones were restricted to the first movement of this symphony. The twin demands of drive and grace were successfully contrasted, opposed, and then, in the finale, reconciled, in a generally winning performance. The D minor of the first movement recalled Gluck’s Don Juan ballet music, whilst also looking forward at least on occasion to Mozart’s essays in this key. Schiff gave the mysterious pauses their due. Moreover, this was an occasion upon which use of antiphonal violins, on the conductor’s left and right, did not reflect mere fashionable tokenism, but paid off handsomely in clarification of imitative and responsive passages. The rich, perhaps surprisingly operatic, nature of the slow movement was amply conveyed in an expansive yet dramatic reading. The structure was admirably clear: phrases, answers, paragraphs, all in their allotted places, without descending into the realms of the bureaucratic. I especially liked a contribution from wonderfully bubbling bassoons at the end. The minuet proved equally successful, its minor-mode Sturm und Drang retaining a fine sense of swing. I wondered, however, whether the welcome relaxation for the trio’s chamber music was overdone. It did, however, mean that one felt true urgency upon the full orchestral reprise of the minuet. The finale was certainly taken Presto, with great fizz, but never hard-driven. The jerky syncopations were made forcefully to count, as it were. Strings sounded splendidly rich but there were some nasty sounds from the horns.

For the D major piano concerto, Schiff cut down the orchestra to a more typical ‘chamber’ size group. The fourteen firsts were now eight and the basses were but two in number. One certainly heard the fewer strings in the lighter tone that characterised both this and the following cello concerto. Again, the splitting of strings brought antiphonal benefits. Schiff lavished his typically beautiful, pearly tone upon the solo part, which was well articulated without a hint of mannerism. The cadenza to the first movement brought a quotation from the Surprise Symphony, which amused many, but to me it sounded a little too obvious. When it came to the slow movement, its orchestral introduction sounded a bit laboured: not so much a matter of tempo as of Schiff’s excessive moulding of the part. Matters improved once he had the piano part to attend to; much of this sounded beautiful indeed. Both piano and strings proved duly attentive to Haydn’s dissonances and their harmonic implications. I felt the lack of (relative) string weight more keenly in the final Rondo all’Ungarese, but this remained a sparkling account. The ‘local colour’ was for my taste excessively underlined, although the audience clearly lapped it up. Fun though it was, less might have been more in this context.

Miklós Perényi has been a long-time collaborator of Schiff’s; one could certainly sense the musical understanding between them, likewise the respect of the orchestral musicians for the soloist. Perényi brought a cultured, ever-musical tone and line to everything he played, if the outer movements in particular lacked the last ounce of ‘personality’ in the manner of a Rostropovich or a Du Pré. (Some readers, I appreciate, will doubtless respond, ‘Thank goodness for that.’) Not only the aria-like slow movement but also its predecessor received a properly ‘sung’ account. The cadenza to the Adagio was magical in its dreamlike quality. A fine sense of style from all musicians was continued into the finale: lively, yet not rushed. There were times when I thought the orchestra was pushed too much – by Schiff rather than Perényi – into an ‘accompanying’ role, whereas earlier, the soloist had emerged as first among equals, even playing the bass line in the first movement’s opening tutti (and not just there).

The Drum Roll Symphony welcomed back to the platform a larger orchestra, indeed the largest of the night, trumpets (keyed, as I suppose they would be...) and all. The ‘drum roll’ itself was taken with a sudden fortissimo and diminuendo, followed by a properly dark introduction from bass instruments, which reminded us of the likeness of Haydn’s theme to the Dies irae chant. Some of the exposition and recapitulation sounded a little too genial, but there was compensation in the contrapuntal interplay of the development, leaving us in no doubt of the composer’s astonishing invention. The horns brayed in the coda. After a slightly sour opening, what I might call the ‘directed chamber music’ of the slow movement blossomed and gained character. Again, Haydn’s glorious inventiveness shone through. The extended solo of leader, Zsolt-Tihámer Visontay was superbly performed, exquisitely sweet in tone. When we finally heard the full orchestra, it sounded full indeed, followed by the balm of the Philharmonia’s woodwind. Schiff alternated between one and three beat(s) to a bar in the minuet. This often sounded a little too driven and unsmiling, though the audience found humour (unintended?) in the sound of the horns. As in the earlier symphony, relaxation for the trio was unduly exaggerated. The orchestra made a truly beautiful sound here but the music sometimes lacked a sense of the vital. A little more kinship between minuet and trio would have been welcome. Sadly, the unreliability of natural horns was there for all to hear in the finale’s opening call. (Some would doubtless consider this ‘characterful’; I simply found the intonational difficulties painful.) Otherwise, there was a resplendent full orchestral sound, almost Karajan-like. The movement’s performance was in many respects very good; certainly the orchestra was on top form. However, in the final analysis, Schiff’s reading was a touch on the sectional side, without quite the developmental necessity I heard from Zubin Mehta and the Vienna Philharmonic in this week a few years ago at the Proms. That, however, was the finest account of a Haydn symphony I have ever heard ‘live’ and there was much to admire here.

Znaider/LSO/Davis - Elgar, Stravinsky, and Brahms, 24 May 2009

Barbican Hall

Elgar – Introduction and Allegro for strings, op.47
Stravinsky – Orpheus
Brahms – Violin concerto in D major, op.77

Nikolaj Znaider (violin)
London Symphony Orchestra
Sir Colin Davis (conductor)

Elgar and his music have had a long history with the London Symphony Orchestra, indeed one that extends back to the orchestra’s first season, in which the composer conducted a concert of his own music, including the premiere of the Introduction and Allegro for strings, op. 47. Sir Colin Davis, now the orchestra’s president, has considerable form in Elgar’s music and here conducted a fine account of the Introduction and Allegro. A large string section played with a great deal of vibrato, consonant – for what, if anything, this is worth – with Elgar’s own practice, whatever the occasional weird fanatic might claim. The music undulated like the Malvern Hills, gentle but not uneventful. I thought the fugal writing very well handled, with welcome echoes of Die Meistersinger in its ‘busyness’. If the end result was just a little overblown, that seems to me a reflection of the music rather than the performance. I wish I could be more enthusiastic about this work but it has never really ‘spoken’ to me; nor did it on this occasion. There was a very odd claim in the programme notes: ‘Since Elgar’s time, the sound of a string orchestra seems to possess a peculiarly “British” flavour.’ Of course, there are British – or, probably better, English – examples of string orchestral writing after Elgar, but one’s perspective would have to be parochial in the extreme to listen to works by Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bartók, Berg, Strauss, Webern, Honegger, Boulez, Lutosławski, Xenakis, et al., and discern ‘a peculiarly “British” flavour’.

I cannot summon up a great deal of enthusiasm for Stravinsky’s Orpheus either. Stravinsky is far too great a composer for there not to be passages of interest but I find that this particular ballet does go on a bit, not least on account of its almost unremitting ‘whiteness’. Moreover, this latter quality seems no longer to possess a polemical edge, as in some of the composer’s neo-classical scores; it is sometimes simply dull. That said, the opening sound of the LSO was most inviting: seemingly issuing an invitation to take a journey though several centuries of retelling of the Orpheus myth, rather as Birtwistle has done more recently. In the Air de danse, guest leader Zsolt-Tihámer Visontay’s solo was well attuned to Stravinsky’s peculiar use of the violin, reminding me a little of The Soldier’s Tale; the violin is after all supposed to represent here the Angel of Death. A pair of flutes also weaved some cold, diatonic magic. Davis conjured up an eeriness to the Interlude, in which Orpheus makes his way to Hades, skilful harp playing evoking Monteverdi. Later, a pair of oboes echoed Bach’s cantatas but also foreshadowed The Rake’s Progress, as would a subsequent brass fanfare. And the final apotheosis was gravely beautiful, if still very white. We are all accustomed to Stravinsky’s time-travelling but I am not quite convinced that on this occasion it ultimately adds up to something greater than the sum of some interesting parts. Perhaps a performance with greater bite might have convinced, yet I am far from sure.

However, it would be eccentric, to say the least, to entertain doubts concerning the stature of Brahms’s violin concerto. I have no intention of trying; this is a masterpiece, pure and simple, its stature amply confirmed by the present performance. I sensed a note of defiance in Davis’s ‘old-school’ opening to the first movement; it certainly set the scene for a truly titanic struggle. There would be no easy answers in this performance, for a great deal was at stake from the outset. Davis ensured that the minor mode was very much in the ascendant prior to Nikolaj Znaider’s first entry. Znaider’s flawless, silky tone impressed every bit as much as it had in his performance earlier in the month of Schoenberg’s violin concerto. His solo line throughout the performance was extraordinarily nuanced, which is not to say that in any sense it lacked vehemence, especially in the perfect accomplishment of his double-stopping. One could see and hear him engaging with the orchestral musicians; however, whilst his chamber technique proved invaluable, there could be no doubt that this remained a concerto performance. Znaider and Davis imparted a great dramatic thrust and breadth throughout the vast first movement, showing that one need not preclude the other; indeed, one heightened the other. Unwanted applause marked the pause before a sublime account of the slow movement. Davis’s Mozartian experience shone through in the opening Harmoniemusik, the splendid oboe solo first amongst wind equals rather than a competitor to the violin. Both soloist and conductor, the latter revealing a wealth of orchestral detail, ensured that the Adagio sounded as a continuation of the complex narrative initiated in the first movement, rather than a mere ‘contrast’. Znaider’s line exuded longing whilst never sounding maudlin or saccharine; here was the same rigour we had heard in Schoenberg, indeed the same rigour that so influenced Schoenberg. With the immediate attack of the finale there was finally a sense of release. After his initial solo, Znaider permitted himself a well-deserved smile but there was still much to do. The movement was urgent but never rushed, a cornucopia of endless melody, every line in every part being made to count. Urgency was imparted by implacable rhythm, which in no sense should be taken to imply inflexibility, a lesson many musicians should take to heart. This was a hard-won victory but unquestionably a victory.

Philharmonia/Salonen - Schoenberg and Zemlinsky, 12 March 2009

Royal Festival Hall

Schoenberg – Verklärte Nacht
Zemlinsky – Lyrische Symphonie, op.18

Solveig Kringelborn (soprano)
Juha Uusitalo (bass-baritone)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor)

London buses spring to mind – an unusual reaction, I suspect, to so Viennese a programme: Schoenberg and Zemlinsky. But whilst Verklärte Nacht seems ubiquitous in terms of recordings, it had been a while since I have heard it in concert, or at least it had been until Tuesday’s Britten Sinfonia lunchtime concert. That, however, presented the original sextet version, whereas here we heard the second of Schoenberg’s orchestral versions, from 1943. I have always ultimately preferred the Brahmsian sound of the original, but there is certainly compensation in the sheer luxury of the sound from a full orchestral string section – such as Karajan’s Berlin Philharmonic, still to my mind the greatest orchestral recording, or, in a performance I heard a few years ago, the Vienna Philharmonic under Boulez. I have less frequently been convinced by the chamber orchestra approach: neither one thing nor the other, although I should make an exception for Heinz Holliger’s wonderful recording with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, which manages to combine many of the best aspects of both. This, anyway, is a preamble to saying that Esa-Pekka Salonen wisely opted for a full complement of Philharmonia strings.

Did this choice pay off? On the whole, yes. I have little to quibble about in terms of the orchestral performance. These are not, of course, the strings of Vienna. Nevertheless, any hint of thinness was but fleeting; indeed, there was often a truly Brahmsian richness, not least in the tremolo passages from double basses and ’cellos. On occasion one even heard a sweetness suggestive of the ‘City of Dreams’, which gives its name to this concert series. There were more than a few hints of Mahlerian neuroticism, for instance in the increased intensity of vibrato upon certain notes. The solo work of leader Zsolt-Tihamér Visontay was as aristocratic as we have come to expect but no less noteworthy for that.

What reservations I had, and I should not wish to exaggerate them, relate to Salonen’s interpretation rather than the Philharmonia’s execution. The work was played very much as an orchestral piece, which is fair enough, and sounded very much conducted, which of course it was. I liked very much the Nordic cool imparted to the opening bars but the race was a little frantic towards the hothouse and I am not sure that the latter should really have been our destination. We are concerned, after all, with a moonlit forest, both literally and symbolically. Sometimes, the reading sounded a little too consciously moulded; art is often better employed to conceal art. The often extreme shifts of tempo worked better on some occasions than others, though it is only fair to note the considerable excitement of the faster, almost operatic passages. Where I felt short-changed was in the relative lack of transfiguration. The final section lacked that sense of elevation, programmatic and tonal, which the finest performances will variously impart. Salonen’s superlative Gurrelieder was always going to be a hard act to follow.

Nevertheless, the conductor managed to do just this in Zemlinsky’s Lyric Symphony. This work, I think, is close to a masterpiece; there is true greatness to be heard here – and heard it was. Schoenberg, no less, opined in 1949: ‘I always firmly believed that he was a great composer and I still believe this. It is possible that his time will come sooner than we think.’ Salonen could well be the man to make sceptics reconsider, for there could be no doubt from this performance that, unlike the increasingly bizarre claims heard from a vocal gang of Korngold devotees, Schoenberg’s words are worth considering, even if ultimately they might transpire to be a little generous. The Royal Opera would certainly be better off considering a Zemlinsky sequel to Die tote Stadt rather than reviving the ludicrous Das Wunder der Heliane, a work heard in all its dubious glory a little over a year ago from the London Philharmonic under Vladimir Jurowski. Where Korngold, even at his best, conjures up effect, Zemlinsky clearly means what he says in the Lyric Symphony.

From the fatalistic opening, with its crucial motif intoned by three trumpets and three trombones, underpinned by crashing rolls on the kettledrum, to the very end, the commitment and accomplishment of Salonen and the Philharmonia could not be faulted. The orchestra in this work is, after all, a truly Wagnerian Greek Chorus. Febrile strings imparted menace to the introduction but could just as easily be transformed into purveyors of a late-Romantic outpouring of love. Solo passages, from wherever they came in the orchestra, were uniformly excellent. Paul Edmund-Davies’s flute arabesques, which accompanied the textual evocation of his instrument – ‘O fernstes End, o ungestümtes Rufen deiner Flöte!’ – would have taken the listener anywhere this Pied Piper might have led him. In the second movement, Visontay’s opening violin solo was just as it should be: skittish and sweet. A little later, we heard the girl’s chain crushed under the wheels of the Prince’s chariot: a vivid piece of tone-painting from the lower strings. The thrilling vocal and orchestral climax that followed not only impressed in itself but also led us with flawless symphonic ease into the third song. Motivic development was always surely attended to, here and elsewhere. Elspeth Dutch’s horn solo in ‘Du bist die Abendwolke’ was truly melting, whilst in the following, fourth movement, Visontay and David Cohen presented an almost Bergian duet, which warned us all too clearly of the perils and indeed madness of Romantic love. The nauseating orchestral fantasy that followed was Klimt-like in its colours, celesta (Shelagh Sutherland) and harp (Hugh Webb) especially worthy of mention. This was, of course, a wicked, pleasurable nausea, and all the more discomfiting for that. Salonen captured masterfully the furious scherzo-like onslaught of the fifth movement, its outburst of violence over in a flash, before Mahlerian violas and two trombones offered illusory consolation in the introduction to the sixth. The sense here of still desolation was eerily captured by the ever-present pedal on the double-basses, played here to ominous perfection, granting an apt sense of claustrophobia to this horrifying movement. And when the orchestra was once again truly given its head in the postlude to the final movement, it sounded unambiguously magnificent, as if this were a work that featured as a staple of its repertory.

This is, of course, a lyric symphony, so what of the voices? Juha Uusitalo took a while to settle, his intonation somewhat wavering in the first movement. However, by the time of the third, in which he reappears – soloists sing in alternate movements, never together – his voice sounded cleaner and winningly ‘honest’, the latter quality intriguingly suggestive of Wagner’s Fasolt. Uusitalo’s diction was perfect throughout; if his German were slightly accented, as often seems to be the case from even the most celebrated of low Finnish voices, one could nevertheless hear every word without the slightest strain. I was also impressed by the Lieder-singer’s attention he devoted to words and their meaning. Intonation was not always spot on in the final movement but nor was it unduly troubling. Solveig Kringelborn was rapt in her lyricism, equally attentive to the dictates of musical line and verbal meaning. It is more difficult, of course, for a soprano to render every word audible, but she did not fare badly on that score. There was again a welcome sense of the Lieder-singer to her reading. Indeed, so involved was she with the text that she could not resist a little operatic throwing of her ruby chain as the Prince passed by her door. Conscious or no, it was a special moment. And this was a special performance.