Critic’s Notebook: Too much beauty from the Dresden Staatskapelle and András Schiff?

Also reviewed for Die Presse: Retro-Schönklang im Konzerthaus: So hat man Bach und Mozart lange nicht gehört

An excess of gorgeousness, if that is possible

I’ve never been to a concert where an orchestra played so well and annoyed me as much. The travel-contingent of the Dresden Staatskapelle was in Vienna with Sir András Schiff conducting and playing with them, and it was a bath of beauty, mostly. But was something amiss?

Throwback-Bach

Certainly with Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No.5 (taking on the part of the overture in this most classical of overture-concerto-symphony sandwich concerts). Not necessarily the very old-fashioned sound and style from the interpreters, concert master Matthias Wollong and solo flute Sabine Kittel, who played next to Schiff who was operating on his gorgeous, shiny, red-and-black Mahagony Bösendorfer, although that’s a matter of taste, too, hearing Bach performed as if by Karajan. Perhaps it might even have been neat enough to hear that kind of throwback-sonority (but at reasonably brisk tempi), but the balance was completely off, usually with Schiff drowning out his colleagues or the soloists together the little orchestra.

Retro-Mozart

A similar kind of retro-prettiness hung over Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.23 in A major, played with a flawlessness and beauty that is rare and impressive, but it also felt spelled-out, rather than impetuous or spontaneous, and had its share of sentimental moments that bordered mawkishness. If anyone found it too slow, Schiff made up for it with a racing encore of the first movement of Bach’s Italian Concerto.

Confectioner’s Mendelssohn

Mendelssohn’s “Italian” Symphony raced out the gates like a horse possessed. Or, as I wrote in my German review, “chattering like a stork on cocaine”. That I had better kept to myself, as it prompted a slew of sternly worded letters to the editor, not all of which stayed clear of invective. The well-oiled machine that was the Dresden Staatskapelle played with gorgeously. András Schiff seemed to enjoy it as much as the audience, happily waving his arms before them. With the speed determined at the outset, the symphony seemed to uncoil impeccably. Every group was clean, the sections together, and the strings shone with a noble, dark timbre. Beauty goes a long way, not the least in Mendelssohn, but at least to these ears, there was something curiously unsatisfactory about the relentless loveliness. It rang a little hollow, giving the Symphony a Midsummer Night's Dream-esque, fairy-like character. The orchestral encore – Mozart’s Figaro overture, didn’t undo that impression. Suggesting that, after so much sugar and beauty, a beer and a cigarette were needed, to return to the real world, also did not go over well with the reader who thought the suggestion “disgusting, classless, repulsive, and objectionable”. I wonder if it had been better, had I suggested instead that after a concert such as this, the only thing to do was to wake up – and bow before such skill.

Photo © Manuel Chemineau

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