Festival d'Aix en Provence: Zaide, 5 July 2008

(Images - copyright: Elisabeth Carecchio)

Théâtre de l’Archevêché

Zaide – Ekaterina Lekhina
Gomatz – Sean Panikkar
Allazim – Alfred Walker
Sultan Soliman – Russell Thomas
Osmin – Morris Robinson

Peter Sellars (director)
Georges Tsypin (designs)
Gabriel Berry (costumes)
James F. Ingalls (lighting)

Ibn Zaydoun Chorus (director: Moneim Adwan)
Camerata Salzburg
Louis Langrée (conductor)

I had been looking forward to this: my first Zaide in the theatre, a controversial but undeniably talented director, and the open air of the courtyard to the archepiscopal palace in Aix. What unfolded was the stuff of nightmares: a production as crass as – if doubtless more well-meaning than – Jonathan Miller’s appalling travesty of Così fan tutte for the Royal Opera, albeit without the extraordinary musical redemption of Sir Colin Davis and his superlative cast.

That Zaide is a problem piece, no one would deny. The music is far too good to lie unperformed but it is frustratingly incomplete: something clearly must be done. It seems to me that there are three principal paths one could take. One could make a virtue of the incomplete nature of the ‘work’ as it stands, either by taking up and developing the theme of fragmentation. One might commission some new music and either provide it with a companion-piece (as the Salzburg Festival in 2006 did) or transform it into a new work. Or one could attempt to make it cohere as it stands, perhaps by adding further music by Mozart. The incidental music to Thamos, King of Egypt is a favoured candidate for this approach, and this is what happened here. Except that it did not. There was at root a glaring contradiction, perhaps resolvable or perhaps not, but certainly not resolved in this particular case, between a quasi-traditional path of Mozartian completion and Sellars’s understanding of the work.

There is nothing wrong in principle with providing a work with a new or modified message, although it needs to be done well – and rarely is. Sellars, however, actually seems to believe that Zaide itself is about what he decided to put on stage. I can say this with some confidence by virtue of his comments in the programme. Take the following extract from his ‘synopsis’, informing us what is going on in that most celebrated of the work’s arias, ‘Ruhe sanft’: ‘From her sewing machine above, Zaide (a Muslim) hears Gomatz struggle. She sings a lullaby to ease his pain and lowers his ID card to him, hoping her picture will bring him comfort and strength…’ Or this commentary on Osmin’s ‘Wer hungrig bei der Tafel sitzt’: ‘This escape is not a problem for Osmin. As a slave trader, his speciality is outsourcing and there is an endless supply of desperate people who will work under any conditions. From his point of view, Soliman is behaving like one big fool. Modern management techniques offer a huge profit from a disposable work force. The lesson is: if there is food, eat your fill.’ For Mozart, Sellars tells us, ‘belonged to a generation of artists, activists, intellectuals, and religious leaders who dedicated an important part of their œuvre to the abolition of slavery.’ This, apparently, is what the Enlightenment was about. Except it was not – and nor is Mozart’s unfinished Singspiel. Mozart was not the egalitarian Sellars explicitly calls him. A little while after composing the music to Zaide, Mozart dismissively reported to his father of Joseph II’s inclusion of the ‘Viennese rabble’ (Pöbel) at a Schönbrunn ball. Such rabble, he wrote, would always remain just that. This does not place Mozart at odds with the Enlightenment; it places him at its heart, along with Voltaire’s plea to his guests not to discuss the non-existence of God in front of the servants, lest the latter should forget their place. And as for the American plantations… The Enlightenment in general and Mozart in particular are far more complex than a modern, liberal American mind – or at least this one – appears able to comprehend. Hierarchy is sometimes undermined in Mozart’s operas but never to the extent of threatening the social order. Le nozze di Figaro is, after all, but a ‘folle journée’, from which most of Beaumarchais’s menacing rhetoric has been expunged.

It gets worse however, when Sellars comes to staging this misunderstanding. (Some misunderstandings can be fruitful, but not this.) Zaide takes place in a modern sweatshop, replete with the ‘ID cards’, ‘modern management techniques’, and so on, which I quoted above. Somehow the issue of Palestinian liberation becomes embroiled in this issue and that more broadly of modern slavery; it is all about ‘freedom’, I suppose. I hope that it should not need saying that I abhor all forms of slavery, ancient and modern, including the repression of Palestine, but that does not in itself make the issue relevant to an unfinished work which is about something quite different, nor to a production which, through its generally ‘right-on’ contradictions, could not make up its mind what it was really about. We therefore had a ‘chorus’ of six modern slaves traipse on to stage following the appropriated ‘overture’, for an oud – I think – to strike up by way of introduction to the harmless little song they presented. Mozart was then permitted to return, providing different music to what I believe were the same words. We never heard again from the Ibn Zaydoun chorus, associated with the admirable organisation Esclavage Tolérance Zéro, nor from the chorus’s director, Moneim Adwan. Their inclusion was offensively tokenistic and added nothing to the botched drama on stage; they sang well enough in an amateur fashion. The Aix audience was made to suffer ever so slightly by the turning on of glaring strobe lighting at the ends of musical numbers: irritating enough to be discourteous, and obscene if the suggestion were that we could in any sense thereby participate in the very real agonies of modern slavery, be it in a sweatshop or the Gaza Strip. East-West tension might fruitfully have been addressed in a work such as this, but here it was not.

Camerata Salzburg sounded as it generally does nowadays, post-Norrington. Sándor Végh would turn in his grave to hear the low-vibrato, short-bowed, small-in-number (7.6.5.4.2) string contribution, although there were moments when the section was allowed greater musical freedom. The opening bar confronted us with the perversely rasping sound of natural brass and with the ‘authentic’ bashing of hard sticks upon kettledrums. It was left to the superlative woodwind section to provide Mozartian consolation. Louis Langrée drove the score quite hard, sometimes with dramatic flair, often with a harshness that has no place in Mozart. He was able, however, to provide considerable dramatic continuity both within and between numbers. Perhaps surprisingly, the Thamos items often fared better.

There were some promising young voices on stage, although they had a tendency to present excessively broad-brushed, unshaded interpretations – and were sometimes just far too loud. Sean Panikkar possesses a winningly ardent tenor, which impressed more in the first than in the second act. Thankfully he had more to do in the first. Alfred Walker was dignified earlier on but subsequently unfocused. What were we to make of Ekaterina Lekhina in the title role? She delivered her second act arias rather well, but was all over the place in ‘Ruhe sanft’: tremulous and out-of-tune in an almost caricatured ‘operatic’ fashion. More worryingly, why was she, a Russian soprano, included in what was otherwise clearly a purposely-selected non-white cast? I cannot for one moment imagine that this was the intention, but I almost had the impression that here was a white woman, threatened and surrounded by coloured men. Whatever the actual intention was, I am afraid that it entirely eluded me. The impression of abject incoherence was nevertheless intensified still further. I think that I have now said enough.

Festival d'Aix en Provence: Pascal Dusapin - Passion, 4 July 2008

(Images - copyright: Elisabeth Carecchio)

Théâtre du Jeu de paume

Lei (Her) – Barbara Hannigan
Lui (Him) – Georg Nigl
Gli Altri (The Others) – Ensemble Musicatreize (direction: Roland Hayrabedian)

Giuseppe Frigeni (director, designs)
Amélie Haas (costumes)
Dominique Bruguière (lighting)

Thierry Coduys (electronics)
Ensemble Modern Frankfurt
Franck Ollu (conductor)

Passion is Pascal Dusapin’s sixth opera. Having received its premiere on 29 June, this was its fourth performance. Interviewed in Le Figaro, Dusapin speaks of the inspiration he has derived from Monteverdi and his age: ‘‘I have a very profound relationship with this period in musical history, which greatly resembles our own in its taste and its experimental research.’ The idea of music as research has a clear kinship with IRCAM and, before that, Darmstadt. Dusapin, following a brief spell of study with Messiaen, became Iannis Xenakis’s sole acknowledged pupil in composition. Yet Dusapin’s comparison, rooted as it may be in his own experience, is not without historical merit. The Florentine Camerata was a group of intellectuals whose theoretical discussions and experiments, attempting to restore a posited unity in Attic drama of speech and song, fully bore fruit in the operas and indeed many of the madrigals of Monteverdi. Use of Italian, in a libretto put together by Dusapin himself and Rita di Letteriis, inevitably brought one a little closer, as did the subject matter: another revisiting of the Orpheus myth, although here the ‘characters’ are not even named. An especially noteworthy aspect of Dusapin’s work is the greater interest shown in Eurydice.

That said, ‘influence’ upon Dusapin would seem, to be more a matter of working in a similar spirit – as the Camerata had renewed the spirit of Greece – than of any real stylistic revival, although there were a few instances if not of quotation than of affinity. An exception might appear to be the use of the harpsichord (Ueli Wiget), synthesiser (Hermann Kretzschmar), and harp (Saara Linnea Rautio), but their – extremely effective – employment was not really of a continuo variety; instead, the instruments were used both in solo and chamber contexts. It seemed to me that the instruments tended to be used separately from one another earlier on, with some sort of fulfilment or at least climax being denoted by their subsequent combination, a practice putting me in mind of – this may denote nothing other than coincidence – Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements. A memorable instance of solo employment is in the lengthy harpsichord music – sometimes punctuated by other instruments, but essentially a solo – that accompanies Orpheus’s mime as he dons the unicorn’s head. This seemed to me to hark back less to the Italian than to the French Baroque and there was indeed some music that approached the frankly tonal. The contributions from all members of the Ensemble Modern were excellent, with Franck Ollu keeping a tight but expressive grip upon proceedings. Extended instrumental techniques were sometimes used, though nowhere near so often as one might expect in, say, the work of Helmut Lachenmann, and there was no amplification. Insofar as I could tell from a first hearing, the role of Thierry Coduys in terms of electronic spatial direction appeared beyond reproach. In all of these respects, I cannot imagine that the score could readily have been served better.

Barbara Hanningan, whom I have recently heard give outstanding performances of music by Nono, Berg, and Webern, shone once again here. Occasionally I felt that she lacked the warmth of tone I had heard her project on previous occasions, but in a new work it is often difficult to know how much this might have been attributable to the demands of the music and interpretation. Certainly her range and precision were as impressive as ever, as was her acting. Georg Nigl was subjected to equally great demands in his part. He appeared to grow into the part, his tone sounding a little pinched earlier on but extraordinarily impressive subsequently in terms of ranging from the baritonal to the haut-contre. Once again, his acting skills were noteworthy. The varied contributions of the Marseilles-based Ensemble Musikatreize were throughout of the very highest order. Its members’ musical and dramatic versatility, both individually and corporately, would have been apparent to all. Their interventions on stage and throughout the theatre always looked and sounded well-judged.

The production also seemed to me a triumph. Giuseppe Frigeni eschewed an overly naturalistic presentation, in terms of a stylisation that worked. Every movement – unlike so many current productions one could name – appeared to have a justification, and therefore told most effectively. The production drew inspiration from, rather than pointlessly railing against, the text and music, although this should in no sense be taken to betoken an unimaginative literalism. Symbolism rather was the order of the day. Lighting and costumes contributed to an impeccable team effort. In the programme, Frigeni also drew our attention – although he hardly needed to – to the centrality of the sun, or ‘le sol(o)eil’, as he put it, punning on the French words for sun and eye. The senses of watching, of being watched, and also, crucially, of transformation of time, were simply but powerfully portrayed by the figure of the sun on stage and its movements. This helped deliver us to our destination, the unsettling conclusion, in which score, performance, and production worked so closely together, to ask us whether Orpheus and Eurydice had ever really been listening to each other – or, indeed, whether they had truly been looking at each other. Passion left us asking more questions than had been answered: not a bad sign at all.

Brahms: the Romantic - Philharmonia/Maazel, 28 June 2008 (2)

Royal Festival Hall

Brahms – Variations on a theme by Joseph Haydn, Op.56a
Brahms – Ein deutsches Requiem, Op.45

Heidi Grant Murphy (soprano)
Simon Keenlyside (baritone)
Philharmonia Chorus
Philharmonia Voices
Philharmonia Orchestra
Lorin Maazel (conductor)

With this concert, the Philharmonia and Lorin Maazel’s series, ‘Brahms: the Romantic’ reached its conclusion. It is perhaps a pity that none of the smaller vocal and choral works, or indeed the serenades and concertos, were included, but one cannot have everything. After a somewhat sluggish Third Symphony, I rather feared for the Haydn Variations. However, the statement of the St Anthony Chorale struck quite a different note. Deftly articulated and winningly phrased, it was followed by a series of well-characterised variations. The third, for instance, was rather swift – quite a relief! – and struck an aptly serenade-like note. Indeed, throughout the wind were pleasingly characterful. Christopher Cowie’s solo oboe shone in the fourth, as did the violas, once again commandingly led by the excellent Joel Hunter. There followed a lively, rhythmically taut fifth variation and a perky sixth with excellent horns. The seventh variation was graceful, without being skated over; Kenneth Smith was especially notable on the flute here, as once more were the oboe and violas. Hushed, confiding violins in the eighth led us into a noble finale, which exhibited both grace and a good sense of rhythmic and harmonic momentum. The whole orchestra, not least David Corkhill’s triangle, was permitted to shine in the final peroration. This was a fine reading of a work that often receives far less.

There could be no complaints of sluggishness in the German Requiem either; if anything, Maazel’s speeds may have erred on the other side. Certainly the opening sounded a little hasty, although one could appreciated a splendidly cultivated sound to the lower strings. Whilst the second movement, ‘Denn alles Fleisch es ist wie Gras,’ was also on the fast side, it possessed a convincing sense of onward tread, although I found its ending somewhat perfunctory. It was only really the conclusion to the third movement, ‘Herr, lehre doch mich,’ that proved something of a scramble: a pity really, given the convincing role the preceding pulsating of the tonic pedal had played in providing an apt sense of security to the musical events above. In general, the orchestra did an excellent job, ably directed by Maazel. For instance, one could well imagine the woodwind section in the first movement as purveyors of funereal Harmoniemusik, should the near-contradiction be permitted. There was a true sense of passage from darkness into light in the transition to the fugal section of the second movement: the brass section was resplendent and the organ (Malcolm Hicks) added a great deal too. The same could be said of their role in the sixth movement, ‘Denn wir haben hier keine bleibende Statt’, although the raising of the dead incorruptible was a little rushed; the section, ‘Tod, wo ist dein Stachel? …’ was much better in this respect. It is quite a tribute to successful orchestral balancing that one could clearly hear the Beethovenian piccolo (Keith Bragg) above all of this. Violins sounded especially sweet-toned in the consoling fourth movement, ‘Wie lieblich sind deine Wohunungen’, although, after a slightly galumphing fugal section, it was a relief to return to the preceding mood of a celestial Liebeslieder waltz. Schützian trombones were given a welcome opportunity to shine in the final movement, ‘Selig sind die Toten’, an invitation they accepted wholeheartedly. The harps added a welcome glimpse of something hereafter at the very end, whilst they had sounded strangely prominent in the first movement.

What of the singing? The combined forces of the Philharmonia Chorus and Philharmonia Voices sounded very good on the whole and proved attentive to the demands of the words as well as the music. There was, for example, a wonderful filling out of tone on the word ‘Freuden’ (‘joy’) in the first movement, although the sopranos here could occasionally sound a little shrill. The first return of the opening material in the second movement (and parallel passages) again provided a good, full sound from both chorus and orchestra, splendidly underlain by the kettledrums. I mentioned the somewhat effortful contribution from the chorus in the Handelian fugal section of the fourth movement, but this was very much the exception. The other shortcoming – although I am not sure whose fault this was – was a couple of cases of slight disjuncture between chorus and orchestra in the final movement. However, this movement on the whole evinced an apt sense of reprise, return, and yet progress too, in coming to terms with whatever loss may have afflicted us. Heidi Grant Murphy was adequate as a soprano soloist. I have heard worse but she was overly tremulous, if appropriately maternal. Many of her words, especially later on, were incomprehensible, which was a pity, since Maazel had enabled her movement, the fifth, ‘Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit’, to flow rather nicely. She was not much of an angel. Simon Keenlyside, on the other hand, brought an expected Lieder-singer’s attention to detail to his contributions; this may have been anticipated but was no less welcome for it. There was an occasional slight dryness to his tone, but this was only remarkable on account of the richness that characterised the rest of his part. In the third movement, there was a true sense of him narrating, with the chorus providing Bachian commentary; in the sixth, he proved ardent and eloquent. If this performance did not provide an unforgettable, implacable, Klemperer-like statement, then it boasted many excellent qualities, notably the contributions from the orchestra and from Keenlyside.

Brahms: the Romantic - Philharmonia/Maazel, 28 June 2008 (1)

Royal Festival Hall

Brahms – Symphony no.3 in F major, Op.90
Brahms – Symphony no.4 in E minor, Op.98

Philharmonia Orchestra
Lorin Maazel (conductor)

This was the second of three concerts entitled ‘Brahms: the Romantic,’ with Lorin Maazel now conducting the Philharmonia, having previously presented the series with both the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic. The size of the orchestra encouraged: none of this miniaturist nonsense concerning a supposed re-creation of Brahms in Meiningen, as if that were the only orchestra with which he worked. Even if it had been, that would have precious little to tell us today. Rather we had a ‘standard’ Romantic string section of proportions 16.14.12.10.8. Nor was there any hint of the frankly ludicrous non-vibrato approach trumpeted by Roger Norrington. In other words, music rather than dubious ‘historical’ claims – which, in fact, are characterised by a complete lack of historical understanding – came first. Division of the first and second violins – a practice the ‘authenticists’ have outrageously claimed as their own, as if Furtwängler and countless other conductors had never lived – was not followed, but Maazel showed that one can still register the interplay between them without a fully antiphonal physical separation. He also showed that there are passages which can benefit from having the lower strings seated further away: a salutary reminder to those of us who are too ready dogmatically to favour the alternative.

The fullness of the Third Symphony’s opening wind chords was most encouraging, as was the subsequent richness of the lower strings: one might have been in Dresden. There were fine contributions from the principal oboe (Christopher Cowie) and the pizzicato strings. However, the first movement as a whole was surprisingly sombre, not least on account of its slow tempo. There are of course all sorts of ways to understand Allegro con brio, but I felt that this performance often lacked both components of its job-description. Added to that, there were numerous instances of slowing down, with the result that the music almost ground to a halt. Somehow the structure remained admirably clear, as it would throughout both symphonic performances, but drama was often lacking. Maazel wrote in the programme that a conductor ‘conversant with the sonatas, trios, quartets et al., can learn to eschew rhetorical flourishes, saccharine pulping of phrases and maudlin dawdling’. There was not much of the first two qualities but I can only wish that he had followed his own advice with regard to the third. The opening of the second movement was better. Clarinets and bassoons sounded positively Mozartian in the opening, attentively answered first by a pair of horns and then by lower strings. The violins sounded silky-smooth when they finally entered. Although the general tempo was again rather slow, it was ruminative and yet forward-moving; it did not drag. This allowed some gorgeous – if at times a little Tchaikovskian – sounds to emanate from the orchestra, not least from the ’cellos. They also took the lead at the opening of third movement, with the first violins once again silky in their response. This was a case when the orchestral seating truly paid off. Horn (Nigel Black) and oboes solos were especially remarkable for their warmth. The movement retained its intermezzo-like character despite the slow speed, although it was a somewhat sombre example of its kind. The opening of the finale brought with it some much-needed tension, yet the movement soon became a little too stately. The celebrated quiet ending sounded exhausted rather than peaceful, in spite of a splendidly ominous kettledrum roll from Andrew Smith. Maazel’s interpretation on clearly resulted from a considered approach, if sometimes a little exaggerated in that respect; yet its sombre, even somnolent quality was not really successful, at least for me. Brahms sounded sapped of his vitality – and this in a work in which I at least think of him as standing close to the spirit of Haydn.

The Fourth sounded very different and was on the whole more successful. Those celebrated opening thirds, from which the whole of the symphony’s Schoenbergian developing variation results, sounded a little too sectionalised. I certainly have nothing against underlining the legacy for Schoenberg, Webern, and even Stockhausen, but the intervals form part of greater structures too. The analytical approach began to pay off more clearly, however, when one heard far more of the crucial inner parts, for instance the violas, than is often the case; this aided rhythmic impetus as well as motivic development. It is worth remarking here the outstanding contribution from the violas throughout, and that of their guest principal, Joel Hunter; one could see as well as hear the dynamic leadership he offered to his colleagues. The icy tragedy of the first movement’s conclusion was extremely well judged. However, the opening of the Andante moderato sounded a little too stentorian; the horn solo sounded far more beguiling the second time around. That said, the contribution of pizzicato strings was faultless; moreover, when the violins took up their bows against the plucked lower strings, they truly took flight. Full vibrato intensified the strings’ consoling role. At times, however, the movement dragged a little, as was highlighted by the vigorous opening of the scherzo. This movement sounded magnificent; every section shone, and one should not here forget the crucial contribution of the triangle. Tension was maintained throughout, which continued into the finale. There was an ominous tread from the very beginning, although this was occasionally imperilled thereafter by excessive sectionalisation. (At least the great passacaglia’s structure was crystal clear.) That said, there was a majesty to the slowest sections that impressed on its own terms; to the rest, there was a vehemence that ultimately struck the right sort of tragic note.

Alfred Brendel's final London recital, 27 June 2008

Royal Festival Hall

Haydn – Variations in F minor, Hob.XVII/6
Mozart – Sonata in F major, KV 533/494
Beethoven – Sonata no.13 in E-flat major, ‘Quasi una fantasia,’ Op. 27 no.1
Schubert – Sonata in B-flat major, D 960

Alfred Brendel (piano)

Alfred Brendel’s final recital in the city that has become his adopted home could never have failed to be a very special occasion. The warmth of his reception and of the almost innumerable standing ovations at the end attested to that. There is no need to worry oneself asking how this would have stood up to scrutiny had it been ‘just another recital’; it was not. Yet, circumstances notwithstanding, Brendel delivered piano-playing and musicianship of the highest order – that is, at a level quite different from the relatively disappointing performance of Mozart’s C minor piano concerto with the LSO and Bernard Haitink earlier in the month.

Then I had felt that Brendel only really came into his own in his encore; here, we were treated to a fine account of Haydn’s F minor variations, which captivated from the supremely well-judged rise and fall of the opening theme (and its repetitions) onwards. The use Brendel made of its dotted rhythms in itself provided a master-class in attention to detail: not merely articulated for their own sake, but also providing subtle rhythmic impetus and highlighting motivic connections. In this, he was aided by impeccable control of line, the sole upset being a nervous-sounding slip during the second half of the first theme. Rubato was more present than one might have expected, yet never drew attention to itself, serving instead a greater strategic plan. The maggiore theme – this is a masterly set of double variations, in F minor and F major – brought an exquisite grace, especially in Brendel’s handling of its characteristic septuplets, and also a sense, which penetrates to the very heart of the Classical style, that oscillation between tonic minor and major presents two sides of the same tonal coin. To that end, pathos was not overdone in the return to F minor for the syncopated first variation; it nevertheless shone through with dignity. The trills of the first major variation told melodically: there was no question of Haydn’s variation form being merely ornamental. When in the left hand, these trills formed a strong foundation for the right hand’s developmental flights of fancy. Likewise, the arpeggios at the close of the second minor variation were given their true melodic worth rather than being treated simply as figuration. Brendel’s wonderfully-judged fermata when the repeated minor theme broke off to introduce something quite new, in the guise of the variations’ finale, pointed to an unerring sense of dramatic timing. He similarly brought a heart-stopping moment of stasis immediately before the noble coda.

In the Mozart sonata, the opening Allegro had a fast tempo indeed: faster than I might have preferred, although I admit that it never sounded merely rushed. There was also a commendable flexibility when required. Brendel imparted a duly Bachian quality to Mozart’s decidedly ‘late’ counterpart, without sacrifice to what turned out to be the complementary rather than opposing demands of the Mozartian cantilena. It was clear, moreover, that Brendel was able and willing to relate the style of the piano sonatas to the rest of Mozart’s œuvre. There was a true sense of orchestral entry to the left-hand chords (beginning in bar 82) underlying the triplet runs. During the exposition repeat, I felt that we had entered into the world of opera, through Brendel’s sharp characterisation of the themes and their presentation. The left hand’s presentation of the first subject announced the arrival on stage of a buffo baritone somewhere between Figaro and the Count. And the world of the concerto returned with the opening of the development section, reminding us that Mozart’s style is always dramatic. That difficult final chord of the development was disappointingly anti-climatic, but the fresh impetus of the recapitulation – no mere repetition here – more or less straight away made one forget such a niggardly complaint. The counterpoint was integral to the dramatic flow, never sounding ‘additional’. A wonderful sense of exaltation in the closing triplet arpeggios brought the movement to a close. The Andante, quite rightly, brought not repose but emotional intensification in a movement of extreme chromaticism. (A watch alarm irritated but could not unduly disrupt.) Relative relaxation had to wait for the brief moment of the opening of the second subject. The exposition repeat had considerable ornamentation lavished upon it, including some entirely convincing syncopation. If one is going to do this, this is how it should be done. Duly vocal leaps at the conclusions of the exposition and recapitulation reminded us once again of the proximity to Mozartian opera, as did the sense of yearning in the return of the second subject. In between, however, Mozart – and Brendel – had taken us, during the development, very close to Tristan, with even greater harmonic instability, and yet expert hands leading us towards the climax. With the recapitulation, we could relax somewhat, although the sometimes heavy – yet never unduly so – ornamentation provided its own intensification. The rondo finale began in contrasting fashion with a telling suggestion of the music box. Semiquavers flowed, as Mozart demanded, ‘like oil’, yet with a winningly impish quality too. Heightened drama came with the turn towards the relative minor. Syncopation was truly made to tell through Brendel’s underlying rhythmic security. In the lead up to the cadenza, we were once again – unsurprisingly – reminded of Mozart’s piano concertos. The control and mastery of both composer and pianist was then displayed in its flowering of mock-fugal counterpoint. After this, the clarity and grace of the deceptively straightforward coda – extremely difficult to voice satisfactorily – rounded off a very fine performance.

The expertly handled rise and fall of the left-hand phrases in the opening theme of the Beethoven sonata pointed to the connection with Haydn. Even the ringing of a mobile telephone – let us hope that the culprit will have something very nasty in store during the after-life – could not detract from what was once again a supreme display of thoughtful musicianship. Climaxes were not merely exciting but, more importantly, rapt in their sublimity. Brendel proved himself alert to the subtitle, ‘Sonata quasi una fantasia’, for the C major outburst imparted a sense of (controlled) improvisatory fantasy and, indeed, of formal boundaries already beginning to break down: there is much that is ‘late’ in earlier Beethoven. A fierce passion, allied to unerring and rhythmic formal control, characterised the second movement, leading us surely into the sublimity of the Adagio con espressione. Once again, the rise and fall of phrases was expertly judged, as were their integration into the formal whole and harmonic momentum. The tension thereby produced became almost unbearable until the music sounded transmuted by trills, which in turn led us into the fourth movement. This brought a perfect sense of release, and also gave voice to Beethoven’s and Brendel’s twin senses of humour, not least in the voicing of the counterpoint. Sterner moments lacked nothing, however, in necessary weight. The arpeggios were here as exultant as they had been in Mozart, although they sounded, quite rightly, more complex in Beethoven’s fuller textures. The return of the sonata’s opening theme marked a return to that earlier rapt sublimity – and also a sense of true homecoming, the opening of the fourth movement now understood in retrospect as a false culmination. The Presto coda rounded things off perfectly. Almost everything had been said; now everything had.

With Schubert, we came to the second half – and to the final member of Brendel’s quartet of Classical gods. Schubert’s final sonata could not fail to impart something of a valedictory quality to proceedings, but Brendel was determined that this quality should not be exaggerated. The opening Molto moderato was certainly not fast; nor, however, was it an existentially devastated, overly-laden-with-pathos counterpart to Winterreise. Instead, it emerged as remarkably clear-sighted. There was stoical vehemence in the forte restatement of the first subject, as we were led into the second, but there was nothing hysterical to it. It was left to the second subject, in F-sharp minor, to impart a sense of the tragic, albeit without a hint of anything maudlin. The development section brought with its triplets an appropriate sense of strenuous working out. We had a sure guide, however, to its wondrous harmonic explorations, the pianist’s rhythmic command as crucial in this respect as his tonal understanding. The left hand trills were clear and yet brooding, their positioning truly made to tell. And the second subject emerged defiant in the recapitulation, before yielding to what Brendel, quoted in the programme note, has aptly described as a feeling of being ‘blissfully fatigued’. ‘Clear-sighted melancholy’ (Brendel again) characterised the second movement. There was, however, also a sense of something very close to the unfolding of tragedy, which emerged through that very quality Brendel cited. Brendel refused to linger, always heading forwards. The central section was songlike, yet it sang defiantly. That most miraculous of Schubert’s modulations, from C-sharp minor to C major, heralded, as it must, the opening up of a new world before our ears – and perhaps our eyes too – unbearably tantalising in the brevity of its epiphany. We were thereby, however, enabled to reach some sort of peace in the justly equivocal C-sharp major conclusion. In the programme notes, Nick Breckenfield characterised the Scherzo as reintroducing ‘the hustle and bustle of daily life’. This was certainly how it felt on this occasion. One could almost see, let alone hear, the operatic chorus of maids chattering and attending to their business, by way of contrast to the previous dramatic and metaphysical revelations. Brendel’s description – ‘soaring and playful’ – was equally true of his reading. Yet I am sure that I heard – perhaps even despite his efforts – darker undercurrents, which simply could not be banished. This is a weak B-flat major, not unlike that of Mozart’s final piano concerto. The Trio was ‘muffled and obstinate’ (Brendel), the pianist’s handling of its sforzandi reinforcing its strange obstinacy. The finale, unlike the other movements, followed without a break. That defiance on which I remarked earlier was once again present, yet so too was a rare beauty through grace: a word, which may here be appropriately understood in a theological as well as a secular sense. I shall quote in full Brendel’s summary: ‘“Fatigue and resignation”? No, rather: graceful resolution, playful vigour. Ironic twinkle; generous singing line; stubborn pugnacity. Surmounting of C minor fixation after the ninth assault: precious moment of self-abandonment. Assertive coda.’ This Schubert, then, would not go quietly into the night. Yet there was also, as there had to be, a profound ambivalence, a reluctance or indeed inability to sound a note of Beethovenian triumph. Schubert and Brendel here looked into the abyss and somehow also managed to console. And then, in the coda, they laughed too.

In normal circumstances, such would have been quite enough. Here, however, we were treated to no fewer than three encores. The slow movement from the Italian Concerto reminded us of Brendel’s all-too-infrequently credentials as a Bachian. In its unending melody and its unrelenting tragic nobility, it was as if Edwin Fischer were once again amongst us. Liszt’s Au lac de Wallenstadt was beautifully controlled, reminding us of the sterling efforts Brendel has made throughout his career to restore Liszt to the position that is rightly his. It was a hymn to the Romantic conception of Nature, whose final note faded as exquisitely as the previous voice-leading. To conclude, however, we simply had to hear Schubert’s G-flat Impromptu, and we did. The bass undercurrents reminded us of the trills in the first movement of the Schubert sonata. Romantic passion was present in the central section, yet it was not unbridled and was all the stronger for not being so. The return of the opening material was ineffably moving. There was no need to attempt to dissociate performance from occasion, for the two were as one. So too were composer and pianist.

Mutter/LSO/Previn, 22 June 2008

Barbican Hall

Mozart - Serenade in G major, KV 525, 'Eine kleine Nachtmusik'
Mozart - Symphony no.39 in E-flat major, KV 543
Brahms - Violin Concerto in D major, Op.77

Anne-Sophie Mutter (violin)
London Symphony Orchestra
André Previn (conductor)

This was a wonderful concert. The LSO sounded on better Mozartian form than I have heard it for a long time, certainly more so than under Bernard Haitink earlier this month and arguably even than under Sir Colin Davis at the beginning of this season. As if this were not enough to surprise me, I was also surprised by the fact that, reduced to chamber-size, with a smaller body of strings than under Haitink or Davis, it boasted a fuller and arguably more cultured sound. André Previn has long been a fine conductor of Mozart and Haydn, although rarely if ever has he been duly acknowledged as such. (Present-day mania for the 'authenticke' does not help.) Although I am perhaps more difficult to impress in Mozart's music than in that of any other composer, I was certainly impressed here. Mozart does not, one might say, require many things, only perfection; he certainly leaves nowhere to hide. Eine kleine Nachtmusik received no condescension, such as the musical nouveaux riches might accord it. Instead, it was given a straightforward, yet charmingly attentive account. No 'points' were being made; rather, a delightful example of Mozart's serenade style was played with grace, affection, and a beguiling sense of the Salzburg the composer had left behind. The warmth of the LSO's string section erased memories of that slight acid, which, somewhat surprisingly, had affected it under Haitink. Previn showed how the second movement could gracefully flow without being subjected to the perverse fast speeds of so many contemporary, modish performances. Likewise, the minuet can - and should - be taken three-to-a-bar, without any sense of dragging; this simply requires musicianship. The final movement was taken relatively slowly, yet it never seemed too slow and we were thereby permitted to savour the true Mozartian grace.

Similar virtues characterised the great E-flat major symphony, for which the strings were of course joined by woodwind, brass, and kettledrums. The surprise of the performance was that hard sticks were used for the latter. I should have preferred this not to have been the case; however, they were not used in the typical aggressive, exhibitionistic style of the 'authenticists' and this was my sole cavil. The relatively small number of strings had no trouble in sounding almost as warm in bloom as their Viennese counterparts, whilst the woodwind led us into a veritable garden of sonorous delights, especially during the third movement's trio. Tempi throughout were expertly judged; there was little in the way of rubato, but there did not need to be. Sterner moments, for instance the extraordinary minor-mode outbursts in the slow movement, were given their due, yet remained integrated into the whole; likewise, the strong, measured introduction to the first movement, whose unerring sense of direction governed the entire movement, indeed the entire symphony. Again, Previn did not seem out to make points, to present 'his' interpretation; yet, at the same time, this did not indicate a lack of imagination, merely a willingness to let this miraculous score speak (more or less) for itself.

Anne-Sophie Mutter was on exceptional form for the Brahms concerto. There could be no doubting the virtuosity and musicianship of her response to that violin concerto which I am tempted to describe as the greatest of all. Her tone was without fail expertly modulated to the requirements of the score, without this precluding great excitement. Moreover, she was -audibly and visibly - able and willing to engage in chamber music with the orchestra's principals when required. The same must be said for her dialogue with the conductor and orchestra as a whole. Mutter and Previn must have performed the concerto a good many times together and it showed; however, this appeared to inspire rather than to suggest any sense of routine. The lengthy phrases and paragraphs of the first movement were expertly handled, with an unerring sense of their place in the greater whole. Previn showed that there is absolutely no need to rush and, indeed, every reason not to do so, so long as one knows what one is doing. Needless to say, the cadenza was flawlessly despatched. In the second movement, there was an interesting impression of a Schumannesque intermezzo, suggesting delicacy, intimacy, and repose rather than the more typically weighty response to the score. Both approaches, it seems to me, can work, but I was fascinated to hear a somewhat lighter reading that worked rather than skimming over the musical surface. I had been about to claim that the gypsy fireworks of the finale were electric - although never in a shallow, merely virtuosic sense - when I realised that some metaphors were better left unmixed. The give and take between Mutter and the orchestral strings was often breathtaking, whilst all musicians' sense of the movement's harmonic progression ensured that Brahms's unerring sense of form won through. May we hear her - and Previn - in London again soon!

Ariadne auf Naxos, Royal Opera, 16 June 2008

Royal Opera House

Prima Donna/Ariadne – Deborah Voigt
Composer – Kristine Jepson
Music Master – Sir Thomas Allen
Dancing Master – Alan Oke
Wigmaker – Jacques Imbrailo
Lackey – Dean Robinson
Officer – Nikola Matišić
Tenor/Bacchus – Robert Dean Smith
Zerbinetta – Gillian Keith
Harlequin – Markus Werba
Scaramuccio – Ji-Min Park
Truffaldino – Jeremy White
Brighella – Haoyin Xue
Naiad – Anita Watson
Dryad – Sarah Castle
Echo – Anna Leese
Major Domo – Alexander Pereira

Christof Loy (director)
Andrew Sinclair (revival director)
Herbert Murauer (designs)
Jennifer Tipton (lighting)
Beate Vollack (choreographer)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Mark Elder (conductor)

Of the three occasions on which I have now seen this production of Ariadne auf Naxos, I enjoyed this the least. It still had its good points but there was in general less focus than upon either of the previous outings. Christof Loy’s production had been the first of Antonio Pappano’s new regime at Covent Garden. As such, it had made a considerable impression, with smart theatrical values lavished upon an extremely well-chosen work: in some senses, the ultimate ‘opera about opera’, which manages both to celebrate and gently to send up all of our ideas concerning what the art-form is and what it should be.

The opening scene, in which the house of the ‘richest man in Vienna’ is displayed, the ground floor gradually rising to reveal beneath stairs the multifarious preparations for the forthcoming entertainment, remains a considerable coup de théâtre. However, the recurrence of a problem from the very first night, in which the change of scenery had necessitated an interval longer even that that planned, seemed less excusable and more irritating on a second revival. The point of the production is surely that, by mirroring in the Prologue the surroundings of the Royal Opera House itself, the audience realises that the attitudes being expressed on stage relate to its own preferences and opinions. To quote Horace, as so many have since, ‘Mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur’ (‘Change but the name, and the tale is told of you’). If attention is unduly drawn to the stage machinery, especially the on-stage lift, in itself, then the work is vulgarised; one can step out to the foyer during the interval, should one really wish to watch a lift in action. It seemed to me, then, that the tightness of Loy’s original production was lost in Andrew Sinclair’s revival. The Personenregie seemed at times somewhat aimless, more so in the Opera than in the Prologue. This applied especially to Zerbinetta’s troupe. The original delight one had taken in the inappropriate juxtaposition of the antics of a motley commedia dell’arte crew with Ariadne’s opera seria was replaced, at least at times, with a sense of the arbitrary. For one thing, the choreography sometimes seemed straightforwardly embarrassing, rather than representing embarrassment. I was also puzzled by an inconsistency, which I assume must have been there all along, although I do not recall it. It was not clear why Zerbinetta’s men all changed into white tie and tails at the end of the Prologue, in order to appear on stage, only to emerge on stage during the Opera dressed quite differently. I then realised that the other characters also emerged alternatively attired. If the preparation we had witnessed had not indeed been preparation at all but something quite separate, dissociated from the following entertainment, then Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s finely-wrought interplay between Prologue and Opera was considerably slighted.

Musically too, this was a less impressive performance than had previously been the case. Pappano’s direction of the initial performances remains one of the best things I have heard him do, although it was eclipsed by the subsequent wisdom of Sir Colin Davis. Mark Elder received extremely warm applause on arriving in the pit, which was perhaps a response to the news that he too will soon be a musical knight. His view of the work, however, did not really seem to have settled; it certainly lacked coherence. There were moments, often the most Romantic ones, at which everything, or almost everything, came together and sounded glorious, not least the daringly slow speeds at which some of the Composer’s most beautiful music was taken. During the Opera, however, some stretches of the score merely sounded inappropriately slow, even dragging. The earlier stages of the Prologue, moreover, often sounded rushed and there was little sense of a greater symphonic whole. Insofar as one may consider the orchestra separately from its direction, it generally sounded good, though not outstanding. There were some magical Mozartian moments from the woodwind and the strings, when given their head, soared as if they were no longer of chamber-sized proportions. On the other hand, there were a few rough edges and minor slips.

The cast also proved more mixed than on previous occasions. Sir Thomas Allen approached perfection in reprising the role of the Music Master. Every word and every phrase were made to tell, although it was a pity that he was saddled with a silly wig. Jacques Imbrailo presented a vivid, wonderfully camp cameo as the Wigmaker; this Jette Parker Young Artist deserves to go far. I was less sure about the Scaramuccio and Brighella, who were adequate, no more. As for the rest of Zerbinetta’s troupe, Jeremy White acted well and sang reasonably, but Markus Werba was truly first-class. Possessed of a charismatic and most imaginatively dark stage presence, he proceeded to lavish a Lieder singer’s attention to verbal and musical detail upon his part. He may be renowned as a Papageno, a role he assumed splendidly for the Salzburg Festival under Riccardo Muti, but I should now dearly love to hear – and to see – him as Don Giovanni. He and Allen outshone the rest of the cast, which is not really as it should be. It was nevertheless fun to have Alexander Pereira, director of the Zurich Opera, add another wryly nonchalant - and on this occasion, unscheduled - appearance as the Major Domo to his roster; it was also good to see the health fascists confounded by having him smoke on stage. Gillian Keith seemed to grow into the character of Zerbinetta during the Opera, having sounded a little too anonymously light of voice in the Prologue. She delivered her coloratura fearlessly but wanted the depth of character that many artists have brought to this most delightful of roles. Kristine Jepson was no Irmgard Seefried. Her closing moments, in which the Composer appears finally to be voicing Strauss’s own beliefs, were movingly delivered, yet too many of her earlier lines were curiously lacking in shading. It is a cliché to describe Bacchus, or indeed any of Strauss’s tenor roles, as thankless, yet it is and they are. Robert Dean Smith sounded better than many, although there were uncharacteristic moments of strain after Bacchus’s arrival. He rose splendidly, however, to the demands of his final peroration. Deborah Voigt, however, delivered rather less than I had expected. She proved a convincing Prima Donna but an oddly wayward Ariadne. There were moments at which her soprano sounded truly glorious: both secure and lustrous. There were also far too many passages in which not only was her vibrato unflatteringly wide but she was also simply out of tune. I have heard her in a number of Strauss roles; this was by some degree her weakest.

Of course, one must try to make the best of what circumstances throw at one. Such is the message of the Prologue. Yet, despite those three truly estimable performances to which I have referred, the sheer enchantment of Ariadne deserved better than it generally received here; its intricate constructivism needs surer hands on the directorial and musical tillers.

Lott/LSO/Haitink, 15 June 2008

Barbican Hall

Mozart - Symphony no.25 in G minor, KV 183
Strauss - Das Rosenband
Strauss - Wiegenlied
Strauss - Ruhe, meine Seele!
Strauss - Freundliche Vision
Strauss - Die heiligen drei Könige
Strauss - Ein Heldenleben

Dame Felicity Lott (soprano)
London Symphony Orchestra
Bernard Haitink (conductor)

I was not entirely convinced by the programming here. This was the second of the LSO's Mozart and Strauss concerts under Bernard Haitink, part of a larger series vacuously entitled 'Pairs'. (Another 'pair' of composers had been Schubert and Bruckner.) The LSO's management seems a little too keen on these series-for-their-own-sake, since the concert also slotted into the 'Great Conductors' category. No one in his right mind would deny that Bernard Haitink was a great conductor; likewise, no one remotely interested in music would need to be told that he was. In any case, there was a sense of the 'Little' G minor symphony being tacked on to the beginning of a Strauss programme, which might have been better off with, say, Don Juan as a similarly substantial curtain-raiser. Alternatively, we might have heard in addition to the symphony a Mozart concert aria, thus highlighting the symphonic and vocal works of the chosen 'pair' of the composers. Mozart was, of course, a great influence on and inspiration to Strauss, but not especially in the works performed on this occasion.

At any rate, the symphony received a good performance. The orchestra, as in the preceding Mozart-Strauss concert, was perhaps a little more slimmed down than necessary, sounding more like the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields than the LSO. That said, there were no irritating 'period' mannerisms, for which we must nowadays be eternally grateful. Tempi were uncontroversial. We should again be most grateful for the fact that Haitink took the Minuet three-to-a-bar. The LSO's woodwind burbled beautifully during the Trio, putting one in mind of the Salzburg - and subsequent - serenades. And the finale was a true Allegro, with enough but never too much Sturm und Drang, to bring the work to a fine conclusion.

That said, there was a distinct transformation of aspiration and achievement in the Strauss items. Felicity Lott did everything one could have asked. She imparted grace, beauty, and line to individually-tailored, truly heartfelt readings of each of her songs. One could discern every single word, so that, although the Barbican had considerately printed texts and translations in the (free) programme, those of us knowing Strauss and/or German never needed them. Hers is not, of course, a Jessye Norman sort of voice, yet there is plenty of potential, fully realised here, to soar above the orchestra when required. The contribution from Haitink and the LSO was truly beyond compare. I have never heard an orchestral contribution so full of lustrous tone and meaning. Several times, perhaps especially during the Freundliche Vision, I was reminded of just how great a Wagnerian Haitink is and how much we miss him. The direction imparted to the songs and the un-self-conscious moulding of the various instrumental lines was an object lesson in something far too elevated to be relegated to the category of 'accompaniment'. The only thing missing was Morgen! To my delight, Lott and Haitink performed it as an encore, which, more or less immediately - not least thanks to guest leader Sebastian Breuninger's exquisite solo - brought tears to my eyes.

Haitink brought all of these qualities - and more - to the fine performance of Ein Heldenleben. Whatever slight acidity the LSO's strings had acquired in the previous concert's Alpine Symphony had now evaporated (or however one might characterise such disappearance). Indeed, all sections of the orchestra were on top form, as once again was the guest leader. I wondered whether his solos were on occasion just a little too wayward, but then thought again: Pauline was more than a little inclined in that direction. It almost goes without saying, but should not, that Haitink proved a sure, symphonic guide to a score that can easily sound sprawling in lesser hands. Here its proportions were almost Classical, albeit with a clear lineage in the colouristic and formal experiments of Liszt's symphonic poems, which Haitink recorded superbly many years ago with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. One is never going to rid Ein Heldenleben of bombast; nor should one even try, since it is integral to the very idea of the composition. (The number of those who somehow fail to appreciate Strauss's irony is legion.) Yet this was never empty display; it was tailored to the musico-dramatic line of one of the very finest of Strauss's symphonic poems, all the sharper for Haitink's predictable yet still laudable refusal to play to the gallery.

Brendel/LSO/Haitink: Mozart and Strauss, 10 June 2008

Barbican Hall

Mozart - Piano Concerto no.24 in C minor, KV 491
Strauss - Eine Alpensinfonie

Alfred Brendel (piano)
London Symphony Orchestra
Bernard Haitink (conductor)

This was always going to be a special occasion: one of Alfred Brendel's final London performances and in collaboration with none other than Bernard Haitink. Yet I felt the occasion was perhaps greater than the performance itself, when it came to the Mozart C minor piano concerto. There was certainly nothing wrong with the performance, aside from a slightly acidic quality to the LSO's violins. I wondered whether this was an unlikely sacrifice towards the false god of 'authenticism' but its continuation in some at least of the Strauss suggested not; the paucity of strings, from ten first violins down, was disappointing in this respect, however. The woodwind generally sounded beautiful, even if they lacked the last ounce of Viennese individuality. String articulation was on occasion slightly fussy, although one would generally hear far worse today. Perhaps it was the fault of where I was sitting, rather further forward in the stalls than might have been advisable, yet the orchestral blend left a little to be desired. There was no question that Brendel and Haitink both understood the piece inside out but there remained a want of passion, of drive even, especially during the first movement. Recall Beethoven's passion for this work and his claim that no one in his own age could have written it. Structurally everything was as sound as one would expect, save for a surprising slowing down, noticeably rectified by a somewhat abrupt resumption of tempo, in the final movement. Brendel's touch was its usual truthful self: not plain but simply revealing the music, apparently in itself. There were even hints of old masters such as Schnabel and Edwin Fischer, both of course great Mozartians. The opening of the slow movement was an especial highlight in this regard. Yet it seemed to me that he only reached his heights in the encore, the Schubert A-flat major impromptu, D.935/2. Here a lifetime's wisdom was distilled and Brendel's powerful imagination was given freer rein. Every note was made to tell, intellectually and emotionally. The final bars were moving as only Schubert can be - and only when performed like this. This in itself was more than worth the price of admission.

Haitink gave a very strong account of Strauss's Alpine Symphony. The work has had so many detractors that one might be tempted to wonder oneself. Even Karajan once claimed to conduct it for the epilogue alone and one can almost understand what he meant, whilst at the same time hearing that he did no such thing. By all means criticise Strauss for moral shortcomings but his compositional mastery here cannot be gainsaid. What An Alpine Symphony needs however is a truly symphonic account, which pays heed to or at least corresponds with its originally-intended subtitle, 'The Anti-Christ'. This it received here. Haitink refused to indulge the score - and goodness knows, there are enough temptations to do so here; the result was that its archlike structure emerged all the more clearly and meaningfully, with the pictorial elements very much taking a backseat. This is not to say that they were absent, for how could they be? The appearance of the waterfall was as beautiful as I have heard, yet the refusal to linger paid off handsomely. The extraordinarily tricky solo violin figurations were superbly handled, as the LSO's upper strings gradually acquired a greater bloom. Woodwind instruments were generally beguiling, with the oboe solo at the summit especially moving. And the brass, with but one brief movement of relative crudity, were resplendent throughout, not least in the case of the mass of hunting horns. However, when night fell, the structural strength of Haitink's reading reminded us that the day's journey had been primarily metaphysical - or, rather, in properly Nietzschean terms, anti-metaphysical.

LSO/Gergiev: Mahler, 5 June 2008

Barbican Hall

Mahler – Symphony no.10 in F sharp major: Adagio
Mahler – Symphony no.9

London Symphony Orchestra
Valery Gergiev (conductor)

‘Gergiev’s Mahler’ has raised more than a few critical hackles. I had only attended one concert previous to this, that of the Seventh, and, given the general reception awarded to earlier performances, had found it rather better than expected. I should in no sense have described it as a great performance, but it signified a considered, if still evolving, interpretation. Would that I could say the same of these performances.

I shall admit that I am yet to be convinced of the validity of nowadays presenting the Adagio from the Tenth Symphony by itself. One can present just about any movement by itself if one wishes, but it does not necessarily make for satisfying listening. Now that we know at the very least Mahler’s conception for the rest of the symphony, it seems odd that many conductors who appear, for instance, to have no difficulty in conducting Mozart’s Requiem, in whatever completion, still baulk at performing this far more ‘completed’ work. That terrible cataclysmic dissonance towards the end of the Adagio needs to be resolved, but will only achieve resolution in the symphony’s final movement. It can, I suppose, be left hanging prophetically, but one might say the same of many symphonic first movements. Or it might be underplayed, so as to permit some sort of scaled-down resolution within the Adagio. If I were to be excessively charitable, I might possibly entertain the proposition that this is what happened in Gergiev’s performance; I fear, however, that I should be clutching at some very thin straws indeed. The climax never came, which was emphatically not the fault of the trumpeter, who performed impeccably. He utterly lacked support and the performance utterly lacked terror. In a generally disappointing Adagio-only performance a few years ago at the Proms, Pierre Boulez had at least managed that. At any rate, the Barbican performance left nothing to be resolved, so the problem vanished into thin air. Nor had the rest of this reading been stronger. The opening, Parsifalian viola line was assiduously micro-managed; one could see and hear this. Here and upon any of its reprises – including that on the violins towards the very end – it was laboriously shaped rather than sinuously sung. The balance was often very odd, especially when brass entries overpowered the strings: quite an achievement in so string-saturated a movement. This was less of a problem when the Hauptstimme fell to the horns but, in general, it did not even sound perverse, merely careless. There were a couple of incidents of positive note. Guest leader, Anton Barakhovsky’s solos were taken exquisitely, here and elsewhere. There was a telling febrile intensity, almost Webern-like, to the violins, as they prepared the way for the would-be chords of terror. That, however, was about it. I was about to say that we should have been thankful for Gergiev’s fastish tempo, in that the performance finished sooner than would usually have been the case, but I suspect that this made little difference in practice.

The Andante comodo of the Ninth opened hesitantly: not, it seemed, a hesitancy born of interpretative choice, but merely out of unsteadiness. Matters did not improve when Gergiev once again resorted to fussy and arbitrary moulding of lines. Balances were once again odd: whether by design or omission was difficult to tell. The movement was often extremely rushed; the climaxes in particular were never given time to tell. There was little sense of the movement’s architecture. And the brass sounded as if they were playing Shostakovich rather than Mahler. This was a characterisation I had resisted during the earlier performance of the Seventh, suspecting that it would lazily have relied upon the cliché of an almost-Russian conductor understanding too much through the prism of the Soviet composer. Here, however, it was almost impossible to overlook. Military marches made their presence felt in quite the ‘wrong’ sort of sense: merely cheap rather than ironically so. For me at least, Mahler cannot now fail to be understood in terms of his legacy to the Second Viennese School and, indeed, to its successors. This is what continues to inspire in his music, not occasional correspondences with the dead end of ‘socialist realism’. As Boulez remarked in 2000, 'Well, Shostakovich plays with clichés most of the time, I find. It's like olive oil, when you have a second and even third pressing, and I think of Shostakovich as the second, or even third, pressing of Mahler.' On account of all of the above, what has often with good reason been accounted Mahler’s single greatest movement – I feel that I should attach ‘allegedly’ to the word comodo – felt tediously extended, again despite its sometimes frenetic pace.

The second movement started more promisingly, with the second violins really digging into their strings. Gergiev’s antiphonal division of the violins certainly paid off here. I initially thought there was a splendid sense of rhythm; this soon, however, became rigid in a fashion utterly inimical to Mahler and more akin to the worst of Toscanini’s Beethoven. There was something unpleasantly and indiscriminately aggressive to the entire movement, when a Ländler should surely be the most yielding of dances. Once again, I began to suspect a Shostakovich-inspired parody of Mahler.

The Rondo-Burleske came off better, perhaps because the general approach was more suited to this particular movement; what had seemed brazenly inappropriate was not necessarily so here. Even the shriekingly militaristic piccolo and percussion were not entirely out of place. Biting counterpoint was well projected, with a welcome note of sarcasm, and for perhaps the only time in the entire concert, there was a hint of new metaphysical vistas opening up during the middle section: a frustrating hint of what might have been. The harps sounded gorgeous and added suspense, as did shimmering violins. Even the helter-skelter rush at the end did not matter too much.

Then, however, we reverted to the bad old story. Indeed, the opening line exhibited precisely the same fussy micro-management as that of the Tenth had. The strings as a whole exhibited a good, full tone, securely underpinned by splendid double-basses, but then the principal horn entered, bringing with him the air of another planet, albeit that of DSCH rather than ASCH. The horn player in question was none other than David Pyatt, who has few if any rivals in the world today, whether technically or musically, so I can only assume that his brazen entry was a case of following orders. I have certainly never heard him play with such Russian-sounding vibrato – and yes, I tried to resist the cliché but this is genuinely what I heard. Some of the high violin lines might have been from Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk; there was not the slightest hint of standing only a stone’s throw, if that, from Berg. Gergiev’s direction was urgent in the wrong sense; in fact, it was simply hard-driven. He seemed to have forgotten that this was an Adagio; at times, it seemed barely to be an Andante. Had it not been – thankfully – for the strings’ vibrato, I might have wondered whether the spirit of Roger Norrington had taken possession of the conductor’s body. This was, I think, less a matter of tempo as such, although that played its part, as of a strange reluctance to yield. At any rate, I found myself saying under my breath: ‘Come back Leonard Bernstein. All, and I mean all, is forgiven!’ A couple of the climaxes were at last a little more yielding; yet by now, this merely sounded arbitrary, unmotivated by anything that had preceded them. The movement drifted on to its conclusion. Despite some beautifully hushed string playing, it was all too late; nothing could have salvaged this performance. Much of the audience appeared to differ, waiting for a considerable number of seconds in silence, albeit a silence punctuated by a generous number of coughs, as Gergiev’s hands remained frozen in mid-air. This seemed as arbitrary as the climaxes. As members of the audience stood to applaud, I resolved that it was high time to leave the hall, resorting to memories of Sir Simon Rattle’s great performance of this great work with the very same orchestra in 2000. I realised that, on the present occasion, not once, during a performance of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony and part of his Tenth, had I been moved. There had clearly been something very wrong either with the performance or with me.

Richard Goode and Jonathan Biss, piano recital, 31 May 2008

Queen Elizabeth Hall

Schubert – Allegro in A minor for piano duet, D.947, ‘Lebensstürme’
Schumann-Debussy – Six Etudes en forme de canon, Op.56, for two pianos
Beethoven – Grosse Fuge in B flat, Op. 134, arr. by the composer for piano duet (but performed on two pianos)
Stravinsky – Agon, arr. by the composer for two pianos
Debussy – En blanc et noir, for two pianos

Richard Goode (piano)
Jonathan Biss (piano)

What a delightful choice for Richard Goode to conclude his Southbank Centre residency! It is sometimes said that piano duets are more players’ than audiences’ music, but try telling that to anyone who cares for Schubert. (Is there anyone who does not?) In any case, music written for four hands on two pianos presents a different genre, although again hardly a fashionable one. However, the choice of his fellow pianist was more important still than the variety of concert. Quoted in the programme, Goode disarmingly confessed that the reason for the latter was simply that he wanted to play with Jonathan Biss: quite an accolade for the young American pianist, although amply warranted. The two pianists formed a considerable partnership, in which it was often difficult if not impossible to disentangle their respective contributions.

Schubert’s Allegro in A minor received an impassioned reading, especially for the opening theme and its reprises; its nickname, ‘Lebensstürme’, seemed highly appropriate. The form was clearly delineated: important in itself and for appreciation of the work’s emotional course. Themes passed flawlessly between the four hands. The typically Schubertian cross-rhythms (threes against fours) were rightly not adjusted so as to lose their edge. When it came to the coda, the minor-key desolation was almost Mozartian. This was a performance of great depth, considerably more involving than the previous week’s Fifth Symphony from Sir Colin Davis and the LSO.

Debussy’s arrangement of Schumann’s canons for pedal-piano was fascinating, inhabiting a shifting ground somewhere between Bach and Debussy: as it happens, not a bad way to characterise Schumann’s music. I was also put in mind of Mozart’s piano works in the ‘Baroque style’ and Schumann’s editions of Bach’s sonatas and partitas for solo violin (with piano ‘additional accompaniments’). Debussy’s division of the canonical lines between the two pianos was made decisively to tell, so that the counterpoint emerged with great, yet never un-Romantic clarity. Chopinesque nostalgia was to be heard to great effect in the second, marked Avec beaucoup d’expression; the two-piano texture heightened the import of its concluding chromaticism. The fourth, Expressivo–Un peu plus mouvementé, was perhaps the most Romantic in character and writing; it received a duly yet never excessively passionate reading. Bach seemed distant here and Schumann himself most readily present; inspiration from the former composer in this canon was the most assimilated and transformed. (It is perhaps no coincidence that Schumann’s canonical writing is less strict here than in some of the other pieces.) The rhythmic bounce given to the fifth canon, Pas trop vite, was infectious. There was a true sense of expansive culmination in the Adagio final canon, which – rather to my surprise – put me briefly in mind of Elgar. This was not merely the sixth piece, but the final movement in a six-movement work. The only drawback was the return with a vengeance of Goode’s curiously tuneless ‘singing’: one can cope, but it is undeniably distracting.

Beethoven’s own transcription of the Grosse Fuge ought to be more often performed. If the final ounce of the original’s strain – near-impossibility? – is absent, then this is really only a matter of degree. I am not sure why it was performed on two pianos; perhaps it was simply in order to avoid a second change-over, although this could readily have been accommodated, given that the performers left the stage after the Schumann canons. It is a very minor point, but I wonder whether some of that strain would have returned with a performance on one instrument. In any case, the playing was of such impressive unanimity that one might often have been forgiven for hearing but the one piano. Having heard the Op.111 sonata from Krystian Zimerman earlier in the week, I was reminded once again of how much more radical Beethoven’s writing is in this fugue even than that of the late piano sonatas. The opening Allegro was brusquely vehement, appearing to presage almost the whole gamut of twentieth-century composition. Then, the second section brought to mind the piano writing of the late Bagatelles and, in its characteristic sublimity, the Ninth Symphony and the Missa Solemnis. Its G-flat major tonality – one of the most enjoyable keys in which to play on the piano, in sharp contrast to nasty F-sharp major – was the perfect setting for Beethoven’s rapt lyricism. Goode’s grunting was more distracting here than it would be in the Allegro molto e con brio, where the sense of such strenuous effort was not entirely out of place. Indeed, this third section boasted an awe-inspiring dialectic between quixotic play and extreme intellectual strenuousness. On the technical side, co-ordination of the trills was impressive, but there was never any question of beauty for its own sake, as had sometimes been the case in the Zimerman Beethoven performance referred to above. Occasionally, I thought that Beethoven’s silences might profitably have been slightly extended, but this was my only cavil, and a minor one at that. The coda was rightly made both to perform its integrative function and also not quite to succeed in doing so, the music proving uncontainable within its form; the Romantics did not err completely in understanding Beethoven as having burst the constraints of Classical – or in this case, quasi-Baroque – form. Both pianists looked appropriately exhausted at the conclusion to this fine performance.

‘Stravinsky’s Agon I’m somewhat obsessed with,’ Goode confided in the programme interview: ‘it’s invigorating and wonderful. It’s one of the most New York things Stravinsky ever write: you can hear the traffic!’ We certainly could during this performance, above all during the Pas-de-Quatre and its reprise in the Coda. The metrical tightness with which Stravinsky’s rhythmic cells were projected was all one might have asked for; the several ostinati were especially well served in this regard. An entirely apt impression of total control evoked that quality, common to the composer’s entire œuvre, in the score. It was, moreover, commendably apparent throughout that these were dance numbers. I missed the orchestral colours – not least the mandolin – and our pianists could not entirely disguise the fact that Stravinsky had arranged the work for rehearsal purposes rather than as a creative re-imagining, yet the losses were not so great as one might have expected. The one occasion when orchestral colour remained was during the Bransle Gay: however, whilst it was fun to see Biss play the castanets rather than the piano this number, his slightly diffident performance suggests that he should keep the day job. A more implacable performance of its 3/8 metre would have allowed the irregular quintuple and septuple semiquaver piano variants to register more bitingly, although Goode projected the grace-note rhythm here with great style. The spirit of Webern truly enters the score during its second half (roughly) and it is sad to note that some quarters of the audience became a little restless. This could not, however, negate the extraordinary and so-very-typical achievement of Stravinsky in creating a Rameau-meets-Webern score that yet sounds only like Stravinsky.

As in Goode’s February solo recital, the Debussy here was painted with primary colours, with little hint of impressionist haze. The technical challenges of En blanc et noir are perhaps more audibly apparent than during the other works, but they were all despatched with aplomb, and musical aplomb at that. Biss may have exhibited a slightly brighter tone than Goode, but this may simply have reflected the distribution of parts; the way in which four hands played as one was far more remarkable than any occasional slightest differences of character. The slow second piece, prefaced in the score by François Villon’s Ballade contre les ennemis de la France, successfully evoked both the spirit of old France and the horrors of the battlefield: Ein’ feste Burg had an implacable onward tread. I do not care for Debussy’s nationalism here, but it would do no one any good to ignore it. The third movement was a true scherzando, all the more remarkable given the participation of two pianists and two instruments. There was ample virtuosity on display, not least in the treacherous repeated notes, yet it was always at the service of the music.

After this triumphant performance, Goode and Biss reverted to one piano, four hands, for an encore: Schumann’s Abendlied. It proved the perfect conclusion to a splendid recital: achingly beautiful and so unambiguously characteristic of the composer (far more so than the earlier canons). The harmonies tugged the heartstrings in a way unique to Schumann, and left this listener wishing for more.

Krystian Zimerman, piano recital, 27 May 2008

Royal Festival Hall

Bach – Partita no.4 in D major, BWV 828
Beethoven – Piano sonata no.32 in C minor, Op.111
Brahms – Four piano pieces, Op.119
Szymanowski – Variations on a Polish folk theme in B minor, Op.10

Krystian Zimerman (piano)

Let it first be said that Krystian Zimerman is a great pianist, with a touch as an exquisite as any. I have long treasured a number of his recordings, perhaps above all his Webern solo piano works and his Ravel with Pierre Boulez. The evidence of this recital, however, was somewhat more mixed. There could be no doubting his stellar qualities as a pianist, but they did not always seem to stand in ideal sympathy with the music. By the same token, I did not sense a particular idea behind the programme beyond Zimerman’s choice of some favoured works. That there happened to be a brief fugato towards the end of the Szymanowski Variations does not seem to me in itself, as the programme notes had it, to return us in any meaningful sense to Bach. I am far from saying that every concert programme need be explicitly didactic in its intent, but the unfailing artistry in putting together a programme shown, for instance, by Boulez, is a great example to all manner of musicians. There had been a pre-concert talk, which I was unable to attend, so maybe this would have made matters clearer.

The Bach partita received an excellent performance. My single reservation lay with the somewhat hurried tempo of the courante, but even this presented a welcome contrast with the preceding allemande, and its trumpeting of bright D major was an undeniable joy. The ‘ornaments’ too were truly melodic, a quality too often disregarded or unappreciated by the more fey Bach would-be interpreters. The opening Grave adagio of the sinfonia was conceived in a grand, Busoni-like fashion, followed by a spellbinding hush for the Andante section, which opened out perfectly into the principal Allegro. Rhythmic definition and momentum were impeccable throughout. The echt-Bachian dissolution of the distinction between harmony and counterpoint came to the fore in the allemande and rondeau. The allemande received a dreamily Romantic reading, shaded with great beauty, whilst the exquisite variation between shades of legato, non legato, and staccato in the rondeau evoked impressions of other Baroque keyboard composers, notably Rameau and Scarlatti. Zimerman’s ravishing touch presented the sarabande, quite rightly, as the still heart of the work. And when it came to the final capriccio, utterly pianistic in its conception, we were treated to an almost Chopinesque beauty of sonorous articulation.

Chopin, however, seemed a little too present in Beethoven’s final piano sonata. There were many admirable aspects to Zimerman’s performance, but also some which seemed rather less appropriate. It started off very well, with truly thunderous trills, although I wondered whether the Allegro con brio was taken a little too fast. My doubts concerning this were largely dispelled by the commendable flexibility of tempo Zimerman displayed – and by serene moments of Olympian calm. I did not mind hearing the Revolutionary Etude foreshadowed just before the end of the first movement; indeed, it was salutary to hear the connection, when so often one is told that Chopin, alone amongst Romantic composers, honoured Beethoven by failing to be influenced by him. Moreover, the Pollini-like beauty of the trills in the second movement, without the slightest hint of rigidity, was also something at which truly to wonder. Yet, on the whole, I found this movement in particular too ‘pianistically’ conceived, drawing attention to the instrument and to the pianist rather than to the music. Even the undoubtedly ravishing filigree of the high passages sounded just a touch narcissistic. And whilst there was a splendid expression of joy in the third variation, I had a nagging sense of it being taken unusually fast at least partly because the pianist could. This may be an unfair estimate of his intention, but it did come across just a little like that. And the opening statement of the great theme, almost Gluckian in its noble simplicity – at least in the score – was by turns both just that and excessively manicured. However beautiful the trees, we need always to have our eyes firmly set upon the wood. If only I had not heard Daniel Barenboim perform this work in February at the end of his Beethoven sonata cycle, I might have been less critical; but I had, and so I was.

The Brahms Op.119 Pieces were similarly mixed. I entertained no reservations whatsoever concerning the opening B minor intermezzo. The ‘grey pearl’ to which Clara Schumann so perceptively likened it did indeed ‘look as if … [it was] veiled,’ and was certainly ‘very precious’. Zimerman seemed perfectly attuned to mood, style, and the construction of the piece from that truly Brahmsian interval of the falling third. There was here the profoundest melancholy, but not as Nietzsche so maliciously alleged, the ‘melancholy of impotence’. Instead, there was a true sense of intervallic proliferation, looking back to Bach – here there was certainly a valid connection in the programming – and forward to Webern. The ineffable sadness of the final B minor chords was lain bare for all to hear. In the following intermezzo, its outer sections marked Andantino un poco agitato, Zimerman’s flexibility just about prevented one thinking his basic tempo too fast, but it was a close run thing and this is certainly not how I should understand an andantino, however agitato. There was once again a welcome hint of Chopin in the central waltz, which lilted unforgettably. However, I found the third intermezzo simply too close to Chopin and longed for something more weighty, Klemperer-like even, despite the undeniable structural soundness of Zimerman’s reading. Perhaps the weight had been held in reserve for the concluding rhapsody, I thought, although some passages sounded curiously withdrawn for such forthright music; these contrasts sounded excessive, even wilful. That said, there was a magnificently tumultuous conclusion, which put me in mind of the first piano concerto and swept all before it.

I cannot imagine Zimerman’s performance of the early Szymanowski Variations on a Polish folk theme ever being surpassed. He seemed perfectly attuned to the shifting moods of the variations, and was unabashed in exhibiting the often exacting technique they require. A splendidly exploratory tone was set in the introduction, Debussyan in its ambiguity. The theme again sounded almost French, albeit with an undeniably Polish longing and nostalgia, evoking the Chopin of the mazurkas in its harmonies. Rachmaninov seemed to loom large in a number of the variations, although this may have been as much correspondence as influence. Certainly the passage work of the first and the torrentially cascading octaves of the second sounded as much ‘music for the Steinway’ as that of the Russian composer. This was counterbalanced by a sense of disquiet in the third variation and a rapt stillness in the major-mode sixth variation. The funeral march of the eighth inevitably brought Chopin to mind, but the physical sense of a passing cortège also evoked Mussorgsky’s Bydlo. The fff passages – I imagine they would be thus marked, since I do not have access to a score – were truly thunderous, but never harsh, whilst the final disappearance was a moment of pianistic magic. Debussy reappeared – or at least seemed to, for those of us who know his music better than that of Szymanowski – during the ninth variation: somewhere between Ce qu’a vu le vent d’ouest and Feux d’artifice, albeit without the individuality of the Frenchman’s harmony. Zimerman’s virtuosity in the finale dispelled any lingering doubts one might have entertained concerning the slightly derivative nature of some of the music. This set of variations received a performance I should unhesitatingly describe as magnificent. Perhaps next time, though, we might have some music from Chopin himself?

LSO/Davis: Schubert and Bruckner, 23 May 2008

Barbican Hall

Schubert – Symphony no.5 in B-flat major, D.485
Bruckner – Symphony no.7 in E major (ed. Nowak)

London Symphony Orchestra
Sir Colin Davis (conductor)

A surprisingly small London Symphony Orchestra – ten first violins and so on – assembled on the stage for Schubert’s Fifth Symphony. Had Sir Colin Davis finally succumbed to the ‘authenticity’ bug? That is scarcely more likely than Daniel Barenboim or Riccardo Muti doing so, and the answer remained no, yet there was something a little – and I do not wish to exaggerate – perfunctory about this performance. The tempo of each movement was swifter than one might have expected, the outer movements fast by any standards and all the music more urgently driven than Davis’s Mozart. Schubert marked the second movement as a flowing Andante con moto and this was certainly what we heard. If not quite hard-driven, I thought that Davis might profitably have yielded a little more. The ‘minuet’ (Allegro molto) was taken one beat to a bar, although there was – thankfully – a considerable relaxation for the rustic, rather Haydnesque trio. This was recalled in a slight relaxation for the second subject of the finale, which worked well, but otherwise there was little variation of tempo. There were numerous instances of finely-etched instrumental detail, for instance carefully-projected bass lines, beautiful horn arpeggios at the close of the second movement, and a telling bassoon underlay in the third movement’s trio. It was all very stylish, not least in its unerring articulation, and was without exception most beautifully performed, but ultimately something was missing. Although I can appreciate the retort that Teutonic profundity would be out of place in this work and should agree that an attempt to transform it into late Bruckner would be misguided, I am far from convinced that an attempt to penetrate deeper beneath the surface would have been in vain. Karl Böhm in his Vienna recording of the work provides an object lesson in this respect, as indeed do many of Davis’s own Schubert recordings with the Staatskapelle Dresden.

The orchestra reverted to full-size for Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony. It opened most promisingly, with a beautifully – yet never self-consciously – moulded ’cello line, surrounded by shimmering upper strings. How glorious the full orchestra now sounded, the brass soon making us realise just how ‘full’ it was. There were in this first movement slight yet telling hints of rubato, which would not have gone amiss later on. For this was as about far from a Furtwänglerian reading as one might travel, not that anyone – even Barenboim – conducts Bruckner like Furtwängler any more. There was an implacability that perhaps recalled Klemperer, although the sheer beauty of orchestral sound had more in common, rather to my surprise, with Karajan. Davis’s care with articulation and phrasing were once again worthy of note.

Then, however, something truly extraordinary happened. Instead of the expected Adagio we heard the Scherzo. It appears that this has been Davis’s practice in the past; it is certainly the order to which he adheres in his Orfeo recording with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. But why? It is, I freely admit, refreshing to experience a performance that stands for itself rather than being prefaced by lengthy ‘justifications’, but in this case, I do think that at least some reference in the programme to this unusual – to put it mildly – practice would have been welcome. This is not a disputed case, such as the movement order of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony, but a unilateral reorganisation, all the more surprising given that it hails from a conductor with a far from radical reputation. As it happens, it worked better than I should have expected, at least until the finale, which, coming after the Adagio, sounded more lightweight than ever and simply seemed incapable of taking the emotional and musico-dramatic strain.

Much of what we heard, however, was once again extremely beautiful. There was a sense of the apocalyptic to the Scherzo, not in an overriding metaphysical (Furtwänglerian) manner, but it was nevertheless present. The care taken to spring the movement’s rhythms was much appreciated by this listener. Silences were observed, though never milked; both here and in the Adagio, Davis displayed a commendable ability to incorporate Bruckner’s silences into an overarching phrasal structure. The ending of the trio sounded oddly dissipated, but this was very much an exception. Depth of tone was wonderfully apparent in much of the Adagio, although there were lighter moments too, perhaps a few too many. The depth of the strings did not preclude a full appreciation of woodwind soli, especially that of Gareth Davies’s truly magical flute. Again, the conductor’s moulding of phrases was exquisite, without sounding appliqué. This being the Nowak edition, we heard the cymbal clash suggested to the composer by Arthur Nikisch. The finale’s opening sounded more than usually jaunty, which, as I suggested above, was exacerbated by the reordering of the inner movements. This opening phrase was, however, surrounded once again by ravishingly shimmering strings. The LSO’s brass section soon reached volume-levels very close to its fabled Chicago Symphony counterpart, albeit without the slightest hint of brashness. An unfortunate horn slip toward the end highlighted the otherwise extremely high level of orchestral execution, which produced a most impressive weight to the symphony’s conclusion. However, some flexibility in tempo would have made this movement seem less of a race and more viable as a solution to the ‘finale problem’ that had dogged symphonists since Beethoven. I suspect that this would not have been enough, given the reordering, but it would have helped. As for the latter aspect, I can only ask again: why?