Dip Your Ears: No. 269 (Gergiev’s London Tchaikovsky)

Pyotr Tchaikovsky Symphonies 1, 2, 3 London Symphony Orchestra Valery Gergiev (LSO Live SACD 0710)

The Crude and the Dainty

In anticipation of the upcoming #TchaikovskySymphonyCycleSurvey™, here comes a review that had been lying in the drawer for a while. Back when I initially drafted it, Gergiev was as reflexively venerated as he is reflexively reviled now. I never quite felt comfortable with either (simplistic) position. While the latter is a matter of politics, conviction, and righteousness, the former was (and still ought to be) one of aesthetics, however subjective. On those counts, Gergiev was always perplexing, veering between the routine and hackneyed and the furiously inspired. This release catches him, as Tchaikovsky generally did, on the good side, if not quite his peak.

When this LSO Live release of Tchaikovsky’s first three Symphonies came out, Gergiev had released the last three symphonies with the Vienna Philharmonic on Philips but not yet with his St. Petersburg orchestra on the (then) LSO Live's sister-label of the Mariinsky Orchestra. (Effectively forming a 21st century Gergiev Tchaikovsky-cycle.) To my ears, they nicely dovetailed with Daniele Gatti’s exhilarating recording of Symphonies Four to Six with the Royal Philharmonic (Harmonia Mundi, and incidentally another conductor who has felt the brunt of moral outrage, since). That made for one of the most satisfying 21st century Tchaikovsky Symphony cycles to be an all-London affair. Not surprising, actually: Good Tchaikovsky just seems to ooze out of that town: Markevtich (LSO) provided the best cycle in the 20th century, and Jurowski (LPO) has since provided its successor. (Alas, both are currently out of print.)

But back to the recording at hand: Despite the catchy nicknames “Winter Daydreams”, “Little Russian”, and “Polish”, these inventive, vigorous symphonies haven’t caught on like their three imposingly-saccharine successors. This set won’t challenge the Pathetique-dominance, but it should make new converts out of those who have hitherto skipped these gems of sheer beauty. Happily, instead of wading through sentimentalism, Gergiev puts on his riding boots—mud-crusted in the Third—which balances the energetically crude with the extant daintiness. The live recordings, two from the Barbican, one from Zurich’s Tonhalle, could be crisper but they still pack a real sonic punch if listened to at high volume.

8/8


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Dip Your Ears, No. 234 (Gergiev's Early Bruckner Maturing)

A.Bruckner, Symphony No.1 Valery Gergiev, Munich Philharmonic MPhil 0008

Gergiev on ionarts Munich Phil on ionarts A.Bruckner on ionarts

When Valery Gergiev came to Munich as the new music director of the Philharmonic, he mentioned that he intended to conduct a lot of Bruckner. He might even have been explicit about it; if not it was the subtext: namely that he was going to use this opportunity to learn from the Munich Philharmonic and its nearly century-old Bruckner expertise. Good for Gergiev, a conductor with a steep learning curve, ready to adopt just about any idiom to within reasonable proficiency in just a few years. Not so good for Munich audiences, which were going to have to go through the growing pains of this process, and which now had three conductors without a real feel for (or interest in) Bruckner: Mariss Jansons, who for all the usual hype, is decidedly ill at ease with Bruckner. Kirill Petrenko, who hasn’t turned his attention to Bruckner yet – although if he does before he will be replaced by Vladimir Jurowski (also not a Brucknerian) one might reasonably expect magic. And Gergiev. Consider that, after decades of the likes of Jochum, Kubelik, Sawallisch, Celibidache and Thielemann in town.

The good news is that – like his Wagner and Mahler, which started leaving much to be desired and ended getting ever better – Gergiev’s Bruckner is also getting ever better. By the time he started his tenure with the Philharmonic with a Bruckner 7th, it was already well executed Bruckner, neither celebratory but certainly not butchered. Judging from subsequent performances and recordings, his initial tendency for garish colors, superficial structure, and loudness (not just in Bruckner) seems more under control and the ‘Brucknerish’ clerical ammunition isn’t all spent after by the end of the first movement. And now Gergiev is performing and recording a whole cycle of the Bruckner symphonies with the Munich Philharmonic at ‘Bruckner’s’ church in St. Florian which, shockingly, will be the orchestra’s first such complete cycle.

This 2017 recording of the First Symphony’s Linz version is part of that St. Florian cycle and much of the improvement shows: intermediate climaxes don’t tread on the larger structure anymore and the sections of the orchestra enter with greater precision… which isn’t that easy in the tubby atmosphere of the St. Florian Abbey Church. Acoustically the place is, frankly, a terrible place to listen to Bruckner (lest you sit up front), even if the total experience – soaking in the atmosphere and the local beer – is always special. And if the microphones are placed just right, one can catch the performances very decently. The result is slightly diffuse and brawny, with Bruckner’s First sounding more like Weber than Schubert, but there’s something to be said for giving this symphony heft and not making it sound undernourished. The tempi here make slight allowances to the acoustic in the outer movements but Gergiev doesn’t make that an excuse to slow down the Adagio any further – and ends up with a nicely flowing account thereof.

This may not be decidedly great Bruckner (Skrowaczewski, Jochum and Sawallisch are closer to that, in the First), but it’s good Bruckner by a great Bruckner orchestra and a good deal better than the uninvolving and brash Fourth from the same forces released a few years earlier.

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City of Munich and Munich Philharmonic Renew Valery Gergiev Amidst Many Critical Overtones

Valery Gergiev Stays In Munich, Extends Contract To 2025

So, Gergiev's contract as chief conductor of the MPhil gets extended until 2025. Big deal, huh?

Outsiders may think that the renewal of his contract should have been a slam-dunk; in fact, many onlookers had been surprised that Gergiev had chosen to make Munich his main orchestral base in the West. When he signed the contract, I suggested that those who wondered why the world famous wunder-maestro Gergiev had signed on with the widely considered provincial, second-tier Munich Philharmonic, look at a map: Munich is nice and central and has a great airport with excellent connections: It's a perfect base for international operations. Gergiev had been wanting a position with a central European orchestra; it’s where most of the classical music action is and the gig is one of the best-remunerated positions in the business. (See also ionarts: Valery Gergiev Signs Contract With Munich Philharmonic)

Apart from the issue as to why Gergiev signed in Munich, there is also the question of why Munich signed with Gergiev. The reason is the Munich Philharmonic's strange mixture of an inflated sense of self ("one of the greatest orchestras in the world") and a complete lack of self-esteem that expresses itself in the near-desperate way in which it needs to get the biggest possible name -- all other qualities being secondary at best -- out there to reinforce the self-image.

G.Mahler, Sy.2 V.Gergiev / MPhil MPhil

Where the Berlin Philharmonic are perfectly happy going with an internationally rather unknown quantity like Kirill Petrenko (granted an easy choice, when you know that he's as close to a Carlos Kleiber of our days as it gets), where the New York Philharmonic is happy to name someone with relatively little international stature like Jaap van Zweden as their next chief conductor, simply (presumably) because they are convinced of his ability, the Munich Philharmonic has a tendency (as do many orchestras!) to desperately match their perceived fame with the perceived fame of a conductor. It's usually a recipe for disaster or, at best, civilized boredom.

In that sense getting Gergiev was a coup for the orchestra. International attention. Recording projects. Reviews. The whole chalupa! So what if he is notorious unpunctual. He's got a drive to himself, he gets things done, he has connections. True, he is a bit much reliant on soloists in his circle (Matsuev again?!) but that circle also includes sheer blazing talent (Behzod Abduraimov and Denis Kozhukhin anyone? Or Trifonov?). Unfortunately for the Munich authorities, both musical and political, Gergiev attracts unwanted attention for his association with the Russian regime of Putin - a very good acquaintance of his from their St. Petersburg days and someone without whose support, tacit or explicit, Gergiev could never have achieved as much with the rebuilding of the Mariinsky Theater (institution, orchestra, everything). Guilty by association, Gergiev gets blamed for everything we (rightly, usually) don't like about the Russian government.

Och, verlegen sind die sicher. Sie können ja schlecht sagen: "Macht Euch nicht ins Hemd; das Ganze ist ein Kompromiss den wir halt des Ruhmes wegen gern eingehen." (Wenn Gergiev Resultate wie K.Petrenko erzielen würde, wärt Ihr nicht auch 'on board'?)

— Jens F. Laurson (@ClassicalCritic) February 21, 2018

G.Mahler, Sy.4 V.Gergiev / MPhil MPhil

It is expected that he kowtow to journalists that drill him on his alleged or tacit support for the less savory aspects of Russian policy, but of course he won't. He knows that back at home, there's no separation of politics and arts... and while he doesn't get involved in Russian politics in the West, he cannot separate them abroad by distancing himself publically from them, either. It's not impossible that he supports these policies. It's much more likely that he doesn't particularly care; music, his own little art-empire and the people that work for are likely more important. Probably he just thinks that the Western journalists are so ignorant of the situation on the ground in Russia, that it's not worth bothering with them in the first place; they wouldn't understand. Perhaps he doesn't care that much altogether. It doesn't matter: He's made a scapegoat by the righteous set who are offended that Gergiev considers -- to radically reduce the issue to its essence -- Putin afar more important than them a-near.

Other, more sensitive and sensible journalists don't hone in as much on the political aspect - even if they are bothered by Gergiev's refusal to outright condemn Russian laws like the one that banned 'propagation of non-traditional forms of lifestyle', which hits close to home to many classical music journalists in Munich and beyond. (Not that it is in the least his job to comment on Russian policy, even if he's perceived a friend of some of Russia's powerful political leaders.) They are worried that Gergiev simply isn't all that great for the orchestra or the orchestra not that great with him; that his mastery of the Germanic core repertoire is not nearly at the level of the music he excels in. That the concerts are boring, thick-textured, under-rehearsed. That his leadership style, while it can be inspiring in the short run, is exhausting in the medium- and long-term. That's a good point; it's a point I tend to agree with. If Gergiev produced musical results akin to those of K.Petrenko, I don't think we would be having this discussion, even if he were Putin's backrub-buddy or if they played bridge with Bashar al-Assad and Recep Erdoğan. Still, for the Munich Philharmonic it is -- even for all the cynical and psychologically unhealthy aspects that are part of it -- probably a net benefit to have Gergiev at the head of the orchestra. And that's the point, apart from sharing the news, I am making in this piece for Forbes on which I hope you might click and better yet: enjoy.

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Forbes: Valery Gergiev Stays In Munich, Extends Contract To 2025

Latest on Forbes: Go Hear My Orchestra Tonight! (+ Gergiev in Munich)

Forbes: The Bavarian RSO hits N.America today, starting @kencen & finishing @carnegiehall: https://t.co/gdV630EOEK pic.twitter.com/Afv1ZvSF32

— Jens F. Laurson (@ClassicalCritic) April 12, 2016

In Search Of A Home, Abroad: The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra In North America

...The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra is said to be the bee's knees among orchestras, the cream of the crop. Mariss Jansons brings the band to North America for people between Chapel Hill and Montreal to hear for themselves...

The full article on Forbes.com.

Latest on @ForbesOpinion: @ValeryGergiev Starts Into Second Season In Munichhttps://t.co/h8Yq2HUs7d pic.twitter.com/Fd8AdeBnIc

— Jens F. Laurson (@ClassicalCritic) April 9, 2016

Gergiev Starts Into Second Season In Munich

...For those who listened carefully, right off the bat (and again at the very end), two remarks were made that might be hints of a sea-change in the orchestra’s attitude; hinting perhaps at a point-zero of the Munich Philharmonic moving on from a considerably good but ultimately provincial orchestra of second rank to something more than that...

The full article on Forbes.com.

#morninglistening: Musorgksy / Bare Mountain Pictures & Gergiev

#morninglistening #mussorgsky @mariinskyen @ValeryGergiev... http://t.co/e9URrPHDBp pic.twitter.com/iBKUjArwyy

— Jens F. Laurson (@ClassicalCritic) January 21, 2015

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On Forbes: Gergiev Starts Munich Tenure With Mahler

Gergiev Starts Munich Tenure With Mahler

On September 19^th, Valery Gergiev began his tenure as Music Director with the Munich Philharmonic – more than two and a half years after he signed his contract. If the occasion – a performance of Mahler’s grand Second Symphony – didn’t quite feel like the event it was, it was perhaps because his extensive presence (to the extent that the elusive, fast-paced Gergiev can be said to be truly present anywhere) with the city of Munich’s orchestra in the previous years: He had a number of guest appearances in town, conducting a complete Shostakovich cycle, for example, but also helping the orchestra out when their last music director, Lorin Maazel, died before the end of his scheduled tenure...

Full review on Forbes.com.

Mariinsky Orchestra at the Ballet

Stravinsky, The Firebird, Kirov Orchestra, V. Gergiev

We are all probably long over the anniversary of The Rite of Spring, an event that was seemingly observed over a year and a half. Not so for Valery Gergiev and his Mariinsky Orchestra, who offered up a Stravinsky extravaganza on Monday night -- with three complete ballet scores and two intermissions making up a three-hour concert on a Federal holiday. It concluded, brashly, with the obligatory centennial performance of the work that the Russian composer thought should be translated as The Consecration of Spring, but it was the first work, The Firebird, that received the most glowing performance. Washington Performing Arts Society, which presented the performance in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, chose to label this concert as the "Opening Celebration" of its 2013-2014 season, given the rather pretentious title "The City Is Our Stage."

In fact, The Firebird should probably be considered the more ground-shaking work, the first score that the 28-year-old Stravinsky composed for the Ballets Russes, the opening salvo in the Battle of Modernism. Heard here in its entirety, just as it was performed in 1910 (well, not quite sure -- the 1910 score calls for a third harp in the Firebird's music, and I cannot recall if there were two or three harps on stage), this revolutionary music simply dazzled the ears. Stravinsky wrote for a vast orchestra, one that in his later neoclassical austerity he found to be "wastefully large," and he did startling things with it. The combination of sounds that make up the flitting Firebird's music, the lunatic dance of crazy percussion for Katschei's retinue enchanted by the Firebird, the shimmering violins for the thirteen princesses, the rosy colors for the arrival of daybreak, the clanging metal and offstage brass for the Magic Carillon, the menacing swells of sound for the Monster Guardians, the plaintive viola solo for the supplications of the captured Firebird, the moody bassoon of the Lullaby -- it is all so vivid. Gergiev and his musicians drove through this magnificent score with authority and deliberate, even fastidious attention to detail. The only thing missing was a reconstruction of the original choreography, without which the piece comes only partially to life (to get an idea, watch this reconstruction on YouTube).

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Gergiev, Mariinsky bring urbane virtuosity to all-Stravinsky evening (Washington Post, October 16) Philip Kennicott, Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra (PhilipKennicott.com, October 16) Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, Another ‘Spring,’ and Another Storm to Weather (New York Times, October 11)

The other two complete ballet scores on this program -- Petrushka from 1911 and Rite from 1913, both heard in their original versions -- are more dissonant and more brutal affairs. Gergiev, who never met a fast tempo or biting accent he didn't like, was like a kid in a candy shop. Every incisive rhythmic shift, every explosive attack was calculated, not just to knock you off your rocker but to cause maximum blood-letting. Both performances were ruthlessly, clinically efficient, with scalpeled precision, and by the end of the evening, it left my head rattling. The clamor of the streets in Petrushka was punctuated by dreamlike episodes, lost in a timeless aura, and both the flutist and the pianist played distinguished solos. Gergiev gets at the Russian folk manner, all weight and detached attack, of this music like few other conductors. His take on Rite was, as expected, savage and atavistic -- not a near-chaotic bacchanal like Dudamel, but something that was cold and almost sociopathic, quite fittingly. Tempos shifted on a dime and were often exaggerated but never without staying in cruel control, for an exhausting, thrilling overall effect.

The next WPAS concert is a recital by pianist Yuja Wang at Strathmore (October 25, 8 pm).

Addendum:
We do not cover politics here at Ionarts, but I was a little surprised that there were no protests against Gergiev's ties to Vladimir Putin and Russia's anti-homosexual law, either inside or outside the hall.

Dip Your Ears, No. 156 (Gergiev's Early Tchaikovsky Symphonies)

P.Tchaikovsky, Symphonies 1, 2, 3, V.Gergiev / LSO LSO Live 0710

Satisfying, Unsentimental

The LSO’s release of Tchaikovsky’s first three Symphonies—adding to Daniele Gatti’s Symphonies Four to Six with the Royal Philharmonic—means that the most satisfying 21^st century Tchaikovsky Symphony cycle might now be an all-London affair. Despite the catchy nicknames “Winter Daydreams”, “Little Russian”, and “Polish”, these inventive, vigorous symphonies haven’t caught on like their three saccharine successors. This set won’t challenge the Pathetique dominance, but it should make new converts. Instead of wading through sentimentalism, Gergiev puts on his riding boots—mud-crusted in the Third—which balances the energetically crude with the extant daintiness. The live recordings, two from the Barbican, one from Zurich’s Tonhalle, could be crisper (the new PentaTone recordings with Pletnev offer more on that count) but pack a real sonic punch if listened to very loud.

Made possible by Listen Music Magazine.

Ionarts-at-Large: Bavaro-Russian Peace Orchestra with Gergiev

“Mahler 5” on one rehearsal—a dress rehearsal—with an orchestra that’s never played together like that: it’s a welcome taster of what’s to come for the Munich Philharmonic under incoming music director Valery Gergiev… even if they won’t likely share their desks with colleagues from the Mariinsky Orchestra again, as they did as part of this well intentioned gimmick to celebrate the German-Russian Year 2013 on June 30^th.

The result of such a concert, flown by the seats of the musician’s pants, is at best unpredictable. A few times the audacity of the spur-of-the-moment nature can carry an able and willing orchestra to exciting results. More likely it’ll just be an uninspiring mess, and that’s more or less what it was here.

Mahler, Symphony 5, R.Barshai / Junge Dt. Phil. Brilliant UK | DE | FR

It wasn’t meant to be great, either… de facto sabotaged as the event was by a high-pitch creaking somewhere on stage… like a massive hearing-aid gone awry, but more likely a microphone on stage producing feedback—always and in every piano and pianissimo section. It was admirable that Gergiev managed not to make a face. Apart from that, there was a broad carpet of strings, on which Mahler was rolled out: hazy and imprecise if not altogether disturbing. The ensemble work elsewhere was just about good enough (which is another way of saying: not good enough), and the only outstanding elements were the flawless, inspired solo trumpet and the marvelous solo horn (both from the Philharmonic).

In a superficial way, it’s easy to get away with mediocrity in Mahler and still impress the listeners. The ten-minute Adagietto sounded rather longer than it was, but it will always remain beautiful. And if you bang away loudly enough at the rambunctious outer movements, you get a thunderous introduction and a rousing wake-up call that people can appreciate. Had Haydn been played that way, though, people would have left mid-symphony, bored to sad and under-rehearsed tears.

If this somehow helped contribute to the peaceful coexistence of the Bavarian and Russian people, it was worth it. But to Mahler, it contributed nothing.

Whitsun Salzburg: Stravinsky for Dummies

Instigated by little more than mood and circumstance, I’d taken a little sabbatical from concert-going—abstaining for the first time in about ten years from live musical stimuli for any extended amount of time. What better way to end the self-imposed drought than to hop down to Salzburg for a day, to catch a performance at the Whitsun Festival.

The topic this year was “OPFER/SACRIFICE”, with thematic and linguistic links which had to include the two most famous ‘sacrifices’ in music: Bach’s Musical Offering and of course Le sacre du printemps. It was the latter I went to see—a Stravinsky triple bill of Les noces (“The Wedding”), Sacre, and L'oiseau de feu (“The Firebird”), with Gergiev at the helm of the Mariinsky troupe… both orchestra and ballet.

The kicker for these performances, not unique but rare and attractive enough to make it special, was the as-faithful-as-possible reconstruction of the original Ballets Russes choreographies by Bronislava Nijinska (Noces; sets Natalia Gontcharova), Vaslav Nijinsky (Sacre; sets Nicholas Roerich) and Michel Fokin (L’oiseau; sets and costumes Fokin, Golovin, and Bakst).

What you get in Les noces is a piece that celebrates abstraction, a depiction of the mechanistic age; a set of tableaux, arranged and full of deliberate artifice, symbolism. It’s visibly modern dance, but an early version of it… and the aesthetic will strike as familiar anyone who has seen Soviet propaganda films on the healthy peasant life in the Chernozem belt and early Fritz Lang films. It’s no coincidence that Les noces is only four years younger than Metropolis: they speak the same language. It’s a strange thing to behold, ahead of its time yet very much of its time… and now behind it; a live reel of an old film… an aesthetic that played self-referentially with ironic distance even at the time.

Now it’s twice more removed, viewing with the distance that 2013 provides for something that already played with distancing 90 years ago. The choreography elicited a few boos; perhaps because it was deemed boring or somewhat unattractive… I wouldn’t argue, but the boos strike me as rather odd all the same: A bit like going to a museum and booing the Guercino on exhibition, because it wasn’t what one expected after seeing it on TV with Sister Wendy. What the boos really amounted to was: ‘We didn’t read the program notes’.

Listening to the music, meanwhile, with its choral outbursts and faux-naïve rhythmic structures, you can’t help but wonder during Les noces if DSCH stole from Carl Orff or vice versa. If you know that Les noces was premiered about half a decade before Orff came out with Carmina Burana, you reckon that the latter would get the blame, were you to assume that any impropriety was involved.

Stravinsky, Debussy, Dukas: Les Ballets Russes v.1 S.Cambreling / SWRSO Baden-Baden & Freiburg Hänssler

Intermission. Rain outside the Festspielhaus, with people crowding into that four-foot strip of dryness under the awning, smoking and chatting. Almost like Salzburg in the summer, but with more affordable tickets. Now Le sacre, in a recreation of its original guise: The mocking quality in the multiple layers of historicism, the faux-nativist, the naïve, the height of sophistication masquerading as primitive, in part to rile, in part to mock, in part to delight perhaps, and certainly to perplex. The spectacle, which I’ve once heard described as burlap-clad troglodytes, one leg shorter than the other, dragging themselves around in joyless circles, wasn’t so well received at its premiere. (A fact impossible not to mention, unless you do it in some terribly clever, self-referential way). That was a blip, apparently, because a fortnight later it was already a huge critical, popular, and social success. Was this ballet, too, ahead of its time? “Yes. Evidently two weeks ahead of its time” as a friend remarked with quick wit.

The costumes are garish, but at least they’re busy now, simplistic yet elaborate, and with ghastly mustard-colored beards straight out of a Wodehousean farce. Clown make-up and funny hats, ugly in a beautiful way (or maybe the other way ‘round) and only four eagle feathers and two tomahawks away from being incredibly offensive to the more politically correct among us. The main achievement of the evening really wasn’t the choreography or the primitivist dancing of Daria Pavlenko (Chosen One) and colleagues, but what the choreography did to the music.

The wildness on stage untamed the music, made Gergiev’s reading appear raw and wild. It made Le sacre sound more cacophonic than ever and placed it further away from the high octane, well oiled, perfected and groomed machine of an orchestral showpiece it has become in concert halls around the world. That impression didn’t even rely on the actual musical performance being more than simply very creditable.

The Festspielhaus suffered a good deal of audience attrition after the second intermission. Those AWOL missed out on the Firebird, danced with all the grace of a road-runner cartoon. (Alexandra Iosifidi as the boid, Ivan Sitnikov as the silly prince.) This was uncomfortable watching, because unlike the other two ballets, modern at the time and still visibly so, to our eyes and imaginations, the Firebird choreography looks rather like it might mean it. In which case it’s not an ironic wink-wink about ballet tradition, but just a campy, dusty bit of costume-hopping and the very cliché the other two pieces set about to destroy once and for all. Capes and costumes, phosphorous paint on crude skeletons… a sort of A Midsummer Night's Dream scene for the daft. It made me think of the theory that with rising intelligence, something quite clever in 1910/12, made by and for people with, say, an IQ of 110 (the equivalent of college graduates and above), would now be by and for people with an adjusted IQ of 80—elementary school dropouts and below…

Well, at least the Salzburg audience—minus a minority of quickly out-bravoed booers—liked it.

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Ionarts-at-Large: Gergiev's First Time

Gergiev’s first concert after officially being announced and presented as the incoming Principal Conductor of the Munich Philharmonic (see Valery Gergiev Signs Contract With Munich Philharmonic) couldn’t have been more symbolic.

Anton Bruckner—the orchestra’s musical house-god—coupled with contemporary Russian fare: Sofia Gubaidulina’s substantial, entrancingly wheezing bayan concerto. This combination of Russian music of the last 100 years and German romanticism, Gergiev’s foremost strength and his most easily argued weakness contains at once the promise and skepticism of his appointment in the orchestra-loving Bavarian capital.

There are plenty of other reasons why this ‘safe appointment’ may not be as clever or promising for the orchestra than it looks at first glance, but Gergiev’s performance of the Seventh Symphony wasn’t one of them: This was well executed Bruckner, neither celebrated—true—and certainly not butchered.

The word among colleagues who went to hear the same program the night before was purportedly one of disgruntled displeasure. Garish, superficial, loud… which sounded believable enough, given my experiences with Gergiev and Mahler in a 2011 concert (LSO, Leipzig, “a waste of time and energy”, review here), though I have also heard splendid Mahler (coupled with Strauss and Shchedrin) with stubbled maestro.

Sight-unseen, sound-unheard, a critic a little further north suggested helpfully that in this music—Bruckner—the orchestra could fly on autopilot well enough anyway. That’s good to know, in case the concert turned out well, after all and against all gleeful predictions. (Karl Popper might have called that “falsification-proofing” one’s arguments, though, and wagged a finger in admonishment.)

Certainly Bruckner is a composer Gergiev will yet grow further into, and have to, if he’s to make dear friends with Munich Bruckner-lovers. Given the benefit of the doubt, and considering his ability to master steep learning curves (as proven in Wagner), there is plenty of reason to be confident that well before 2020, the end of his initial contract, he’ll deliver a Bruckner Seventh where the intermediate climaxes don’t tread on the larger structure, where the clerical ammunition hasn’t been all spent after the first movement, where the sections of the orchestra enter with greater precision. But already present were touches of fine color and some very lovely pianissimo playing—and if “superficial” and “loud” might still have accurately described aspects of this performance, at least “garishness” was nowhere to be heard.

S.Gubaidulina, Fachwerk, Silenzio, G.Draugsvoll / Ø.Gimse / Trondheim SO Naxos A.Bruckner, Symphony No.7, B.Haitink / CSO CSO Resound

More interesting than the Brucknerian nod to subscription audiences, was in any case Gubaidulina’s concert Fachwerk, performed by its dedicatee, Norwegian accordion player Geir Draugsvoll. (Last reviewed here when he gave a recital—including Gubaidulina—at the National Gallery of Art.)

Gergiev, who had given the UK premiere of the concerto with the LSO and performed it with his Mariinsky Orchestra at the White Nights Festival, must have worked hard on the piece, given how confidently the Munich Philharmonic strings and percussion—slightly out of their comfort zone in such repertoire—performed it. If using the bayan in her works constitutes an element of nostalgia for Mme. Gubaidulina, it’s not detectable explicitly in Fachwerk. Instead, what we hear are two breathing organisms—one the soloist and one the orchestra around him or her—who groan and rasp in atmospheric, shuddering ways, always just below the the average, contemporary-music-suspicious, audience member’s threshold of dissonance pain. To that effect Gubaidulina also throws a good deal of gently lyrical phrases in, to soften Fachwerk’s seductive blow.

It’s not an easy concerto to absorb or comprehend on first listening (that’s where Draugsvoll’s Naxos release of the work very helpfully and enjoyably comes in!), but it kept the audience successfully quiet, very quiet, for at least 20 minutes: No small feat on a wet, cold February day. After being on some of its best behavior I have heard from that crowd, a hint of coughing-punctuated restlessness stole back in, as Gubaidulina teases the listener with long cadenzas, deceptive recapitulations and re-starts… structuring the work like a series of increasingly smaller blocks the end of which cannot be predicted until just before it comes. A progression of thematic chords, a faint air of melted Bach and Berg’s Violin Concerto bring it to its well deserved close and brought all its performers and its composer (present) their well deserved applause.

Usefully, for countries where the accordion or bayan isn’t integral part of the culture but more the opening of a music-joke, Draugsvoll added a short encore that underscored the inherent possibilities and beauty of the instrument… Even if performing Piazzolla (Chiquilin de Bachin, uncommonly neat and nuanced) also means sailing close to accordion clichés.