Intermezzo

the magic baton of Mr Jansons

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam /Jansons - Barbican, 12 and 13 December 2009

Last weekend's flying Concertgebouw visit packed in two concerts in less than 24 hours. The better of the pair was Sunday afternoon's Mahler 2.

Mariss Jansons had me gripped right from the hovering, shimmering strings of the first bar. There's something magical, almost mystical about the way he balances architecture against details, form against texture, head against heart. I never felt any aspect of the music was being sacrificed in pursuit of insights elsewhere. His path was secure, unerring, and in a work that tempts theatrics from even the best, ultimately truthful. His music is the sort that doesn't need to shout to be heard. Quite overwhelming.

Saturday night's concert was more fragmented and ultimately less satisfying. The glowing strings, warm brass and sonorous woodwinds of the Concertgebouw are pretty much a given, so no complaints on that score. But where Jansons's restraint in the Mahler was revelatory, in Saturday's Brahms 4 it seemed more like a brake. There was an abundance of elegant craft, but I found myself longing for the do-or-die passion of Rattle, Barenboim (on a good day) or even Daniel Harding.

Smetana's Bartered Bride overture was energetic but inherently throwaway, and Martinu's Double Concerto for Two String Orchestras, Piano and Timpani I simply don't care for, never have, sorry. In some ways, the encores, a Dvorak Slavonic Dance and Brahms Hungarian Dance were the most effective elements of the evening.

Perhaps my diminished enthusiasm has something to do with the seating though. I was, unusually, sitting in the balcony, where the view is perfect and the sound exquisitely blended. But the famously dry acoustic of the Barbican is a thousand times more apparent here than downstairs. The seats are fairly priced (a positive bargain in fact) to take account of tthe problem, but it's an economy I shan't make again in a hurry.

*****   more photos on next page   *****

Jaap van Zweden explains the difference between Mahler and Bruckner

"It is true that people respond more easily to Mahler. It is about emotions and people like that. When they go to the movies they like action. If it is a movie about beauty they will just go away. For me beauty is more important than emotion and action, and in my opinion that is what Bruckner is talking about and that is what Bach is talking about. If you listen to Bruckner and Bach it makes you clean inside. If you listen to Mahler you will be full of emotion and all kinds of thoughts. With Bruckner there is a line to God. With Mahler there is also a line to God but it has lots of sideways I would say."

Jaap van Zweden interviewed in La Scena Musicale.

Prom 5: Haitink's Mahler 9

Prom 5: LSO / Haitink - Royal Albert Hall, 20 July 2009

Bernard Haitink balances his baton on his head while keeping his comedy dagger close to hand. No wonder the cellist looks anxious.

This year's Proms line-up doesn't exactly thrill me to the core of my being, the first month especially.

But I couldn't pass up the opportunity to hear Mahler's 9th conducted by one of his greatest interpreters, Bernard Haitink, and performed by the mighty LSO. Even though it cost a massive £19 for an unspectacular seat behind the orchestra. Around this time of year newspapers often spout about how cheap and brilliant arena promming is (from the comfort of their freebie best seats in the house). Perhaps they don't realise that for popular concerts like this, especially with an early start time, you're simply not going to get in unless you spend most of the afternoon queuing. (And even then you're going to be standing up for an hour and a half while the odours of sock, sandal and anorak waft beneath your nostrils, but I digress). A costly seat is unfortunately the only option.

The last time I heard this symphony was in Berlin, where Daniel Barenboim, on a rare off-day, flayed it to a bleeding pulp. The ever-refined Haitink, leaning on a stool after his recent back operation and conducting with a considered physical economy, could not have been more different.

A spirit of discovery pervaded the first movement right from the primordial emergence of the first sparing notes. Questions were asked objectively and answered unsentimentally, the LSO (strings especially) demonstrating taut control and unity of purpose. Even the second movement's rustic ländler, marked sehr derb (very coarse) maintained a languid distance. The temperature warmed in the third movement's febrile rondo, its exposed groupings demonstrating the strength in depth of each section of the orchestra. Everything came together in a finale of monumental fragility, a matchstick cathedral of sound that ended not with despair or even resignation, but a feeling of renewal that paralleled the work's opening.

No visceral thrills and no tugged heartstrings - Haitink elevated this already magisterial work to the realm of the spiritual.

Have we heard the Prom of the Season already?

 

 

 

 

Nagano dissects Mahler in Paris

Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal - Salle Pleyel, Paris, 28 April 2009

The Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal haven't visited France for a while, which might account for a less than packed-out Salle Pleyel. Indeed the Salle Pleyel were marketing this concert largely on the back of soloist Klaus Florian Vogt's knockout performance in last year's Lohengrin.  But music director Kent Nagano's mission to raise the orchestra's international profile has resulted in a short European tour (the UK is off the list), of which this was the last but one date.

The result was taut and accomplished playing all round, ensemble sharpened by repeated performance. Details positively sparkled in the first two of Debussy's Nocturnes, Nuages and Fêtes.

Tan Dun's Orchestral Theatre 1:O followed. This 1990 composition is far more interesting than the tired oriental cliches he's been peddling recently. The O is for Origin, and the piece recreates a shamanic ritual symphonically with minimalist textures and odd sonorities evocative of traditional Chinese instruments. Col legno strings provide a rattling percussive backbone, and the orchestra sigh, shout and grunt en masse, an effect which provoked a few unsuppressable titters around me. Still, it was hypnotically fascinating, and very well-received.

The Chinese theme was picked up again in the second half with Das Lied von der Erde. The soloists were Christian Gerhaher and Klaus Florian Vogt, two singers I admire hugely, but very different from each other. Gerhaher is one of today's great lieder singers, with a rich colour palette and a fanatically detailed approach to text. Vogt on the other hand is pure sonority, a voice with the abstract qualities of a musical instrument. It was never clear quite what Nagano hoped to achieve from this odd marriage, apart from a clearly-delineated break between songs.

The Tan Dun piece proved a canny entrée, as Nagano's reflective reading underlined the novelty of Mahler's scoring. Carefully nuanced detail was laid out coolly and clearly - no red-blooded romanticism here. But Nagano wasn't afraid of unleashing the full power of the orchestra either, a little to the detriment of the first song, Das Trinklied, where a slightly tired-sounding Klaus Florian Vogt struggled to be heard. Neither this nor Der Trunkene im Frühling were ideally matched to his elevated qualities of luminous clarity and effortlessly exquisite tone. But his Von der Jugend was as near perfect as it gets.

A scarily intense Christian Gerhaher demonstrated the real reason this cycle is usually attemped by an alto rather than a baritone - it's simply too hard and too high. Gerhaher nailed every note perfectly, but it was touch and go, with the effort at the top particularly apparent. But this was another fine performance from him - always attentive to words, his immaculately-crafted phrasing was particularly telling in the lied-like Der Abschied.

It was overall an idiosyncratic reading that split the audience two ways - a minority of ostentatious coughers and fidgeters who dashed for the doors the minute Nagano's baton dropped, and a far greater number of enthusiasts whose applause brought conductor and soloists back to the stage at least six times - I lost count.

 Christian Gerhaher mit Mahler tribute haircut:
 

Klaus Florian Vogt:
 

 

Lang Lang, Daniel Harding and a bunch of LSOERS

London Symphony Orchestra / Tan Dun / Daniel Harding / Lang Lang - Barbican, 21 April 2009 

The most famous symphony in the world right now, Tan Dun's five minute Internet Symphony 'Eroica' was more impressive live in the Barbican than on the inevitably tinny YouTube video. But, frantic yet curiously numbing, it still sounds more like a theme tune for a Saturday night footie programme than a groundbreaking work of art.  The LSO, faces like small children confronted with steaming brussels sprouts, despatched it efficiently, though with manifestly less enthusiasm than the conductor/composer himself. The whole YouTube orchestra project of which this is the centrepiece has done a brilliant job of promoting classical music on YouTube. In that respect, it's a massive success. But please can we leave it out of the concert hall now?

The capacity audience seemed to like it. But not half as much as the entrance of the man who for many was the evening's main attraction - Lang Lang - here to give the UK premiere of the piano concerto Tan Dun composed specially for him. It's a more serious work than the Internet Symphony, both in length - thirty minutes - and intent, but again there's much in it that's superficial and derivative.

The piano is very much centre stage throughout, but surprisingly (considering Lang Lang's virtuosity), there's little flashiness in the writing. The key recurring motif is a single note, repeated at rattlesnake speed using alternating fingers. Sounds easy, is hard. Incredibly so when articulated with Lang Lang's clarity and evenness. Stealth flash. But not exactly 'pianistic'. Some attractive moments of Ravelian introspection aside, that's what I felt about a lot of the piano writing in this piece. Tan Dun wasn't so much exploring the instrument's sonorities as wishing it were something else. A drum perhaps, or sometimes a harp. Lang Lang's heart didn't seem to be quite in it, and I couldn't blame him.

Percussion, both tuned and whacked, features as strongly as the piano. It lends a little Chinese flavour but the overall effect is more pot noodle than chow mein. What really killed the work for me though was its rambling, episodic structure (or lack of) - it's a side dish to an invisible movie in the  Crouching Tiger mould. Background music.

Daniel Harding - looking in action ever more like a pocket-sized Rob Brydon - was drafted in to restore normality for the second half with Mahler's First Symphony. A fair few of the audience had scooted off in the interval, their musical appetites sated. They missed a great performance. Harding had the measure of the detail, without resorting to empty, over-emphatic gesture. The opening shiver of strings, immaculately controlled, was just the first indication of his detailed preparation. The first movement's offstage brass were perfectly balanced and wind solos assertive but not overbearing.

The odd positioning of the basses - behind and beneath the first violins - seemed to me his only misjudgement (though for all I know he was following Mahler's instruction). Sitting centre stalls, I simply couldn't hear them very well. It was certainly Mahler's idea (at one point) for the usual solo bass introduction to the third movement to be augmented by the whole section - another change that didn't work for me, losing the sinister directness of the solo alternative. The tragic and grotesque edges of this movement weren't quite sharply focussed, but that may be preferable to Gergiev's idiosyncratic extremes.

An explosive finale pushed the volume limits, but never quite teetered out of control. The recollection of the opening string shimmer and horn call lent a neat symmetry. Once again, Harding followed a composer instruction, this time for the horns to stand up - though I'm not sure this added anything but novelty value on this particular occasion. But overall , a measured and satisfying account.

LSO play Symphony No. 1 "Eroica" - for YouTube, conducted by Tan Dun:

Goerne's Mahler; Mahler's Beethoven

LPO / Jarvi / Matthias Goerne - Royal Festival Hall, 4 February 2009

The Thames from the Royal Festival Hall, 4.2.09

Why did Mahler's arrangement of Beethoven's Ninth arouse hostility in its early Vienna performances? Hard to tell from Neeme Jarvi's LPO presentation - the differences from Beethoven's original score weren't glaring. As Jeremy Barham's very helpful pre-concert talk set out, most of Mahler's changes involved doubling up wind and brass lines, with a few dynamic variations here and there. He added a tuba (unknown in Beethoven's day); he transposed some string lines up an octave. Hardly fundamental stuff. It's easy to suspect any controversy arose more from Mahler's idiosyncratic conducting style than from his subtle tinkerings.

In contrast Neeme Jarvi seemed reluctant to impose himself on the music at all. The Scherzo was lively enough, but the surrounding movements were flabbily anodyne, and the final movement more panicky than joyful. 

A few lapses of ensemble hardly helped, and flute intonation was excruciatingly inexact. At least the choir and soloists did a reasonable job.

The first half's Kindertotenlieder were more successful. The barn-sized Royal Festival Hall seemed to shrink around Matthias Goerne as he confided the painful intimacies.

His voice wasn't quite 100 percent - the traces of a cold perhaps - but he still managed a beautifully nuanced and moving performance, despite some graceless support from the LPO.