Critic’s Notebook: An Orgy of Musicality with Ollikainen, Larcher, Strauss, Widmann

Also published in Die Presse: Unbekanntes von Großen – und Großes von einem lebenden Komponisten

T.Larcher Kenotaph H.Lintu, Finnish RSO (Ondine, 2021) US | UK | DE

R.Strauss Violin Concerto / Aus Italien M.Poschner, R.Kowalski, O.d.Svizzera Italiana (CPO, 2017) US | UK | DE

New Wine in Old Wineskins

The Bruckner Orchestra shone, from filigreed to ferocious, under Eva Ollikainen in Larcher and Strauss

Welcome back! Almost ten years have passed since Thomas Larcher’s Second Symphony, Kenotaph, was premiered in the Golden Hall of the Musikverein to mark the Austrian National Bank’s 200th anniversary. (My Forbes.com review of the premiere.) On Sunday afternoon the Bruckner Orchestra Linz brought it back to the same spot. It’s a grand piece (and not only es regards length); an “extraordinary coup”, as Wilhelm Sinkovicz put it at the time, or (as I put it) "a brilliantly entertaining symphonic tour de force". Larcher pours new wine into old skins – and although it occasionally rattles and strains at the seams, nothing bursts. The classical symphonic shape, unabashedly modern yet consistently consonant and traceable in its musical narrative. And that refers not to the lament over drowned refugees embedded in Kenotaph, but to music written for the listeners rather than against them. Even when the ten-armed percussion squad bangs its way through the punchiest moments with all tentacles flailing, none of the numerous sonic effects feels overused or gratuitous. Kenotaph never turns into a percussion orgy, and no glissando-flood washes over the – at times quite rough, inventive, and varied – music.

A few walkouts after the first movement, and again in the third – somehow fitting, seeing how the movmeent is about refugees – there were anyway. Even in the slow movement, which could be called conciliatory lyrical… although there's also a threatening element to that lyricism, no doubt. The pizzicato-bubbles of the violins that foamed up in the spray of sound were not enough for some. Under Eva Ollikainen, the work sounded swifter, more propulsive, with more energy drawn from motion than from the sheer piling-up of sonorities – than under Bychkov, assuming memory serves. Back then the ensuing Heldenleben that was also on the program became a footnote. This time, thanks to Ollikainen – one of the most heartening podium presences of the year – and Carolin Widmann, neither the accompanying Strauss nor Bruckner became an afterthought – even though both pieces were early works, and are not counted among the finest either composer produced.

Bruckner’s rather Wagnerian "youthful" ouverture, written at 38, came across almost cheekily; it surprised with flashes of playful lightness and the occasional Weberian moment (Carl Maria von, not Anton). The whole thing was played with the kind of cleanliness, color, commitment, and precision one hopes for from an orchestra bearing the composer’s name.

Strauss’ Violin Concerto – likewise a rarity but a welcome guest on any program – is another of those pieces: not a masterpiece, but fascinating, and absolutely dependent on being played outstandingly well if it’s going to make any impression. No problem for these artists. Widmann’s rich, velvety, yet pointed, even sharp-edged tone brought exactly the intensity this post-pubescent work – Strauss was sixteen – needs. Anyone who had filed Widmann (despite a reference recording of the Schumann sonatas) into the “modern music” drawer was, at long last, corrected.




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