Critic’s Notebook: Perfection in Mozart Lies not in the Fingers, but the Heart. Alfred Brendel’s Final Concert in Munich

While preparing ionarts' appreciation of Alfred Brendel (and newly indexing the computer), I found a review of Alfred Brendel's last concert in Munich on my hard drive. He performed with the Munich Philharmonic und Christian Thielemann at the Gasteig's Philharmonic Hall, on November 6^th, 2008

W.A.Mozart Piano Concertos 20 & 24 C.Mackerras, Scottish CO Decca (2007) US | UK | DE

W.A.Mozart Piano Concertos 20 & 24 N.Marriner, ASMF Philips (199?) US | UK | DE

Mozart: Piano Concerto in c, K491, Beethoven: Coriolan Overture op.62, Symphony No.6 “Pastorale” op.68

Twelve more towns will hear the pianism of Alfred Brendel before the near-octogenarian retires after 60 years of concertizing around the world. Munich was thirteenth to last, and he stopped by with Mozart’s C minor Piano Concerto, supported by Christian Thielemann and the Munich Philharmonic. But before Brendel went on the stage to play his farewell, the orchestra nearly stole the show with a magnificent, indeed brilliant Beethoven Coriolan Overture.

With an opening more explosive than clean (but so much of the former that the privation of the latter did not distract), this was gripping stuff with intense, soft, hushed passages and merciless, jolting, violent bursts; nicely driven and propulsive in everything between. Thielemann, conducting from memory as he does with all his core repertoire, commanded a beautiful sound from his players – making Beethoven, as ever, an occasion worth looking forward to even for the most jaded or experienced concert-goer.

Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, the Pastorale, broad and flexible, had many of these qualities, but not as obviously so. Slightly understated and légère in the first movement, very flexible with its quickening and slowing tempos, and featuring a horrifying storm worthy of a “Flying Dutchman” performance, it was an attractive-enough proposition, but the true strengths of this conductor/orchestra combination did not emerge as obviously here as in the overture or other repertoire.

The principle of Thielemann conducting Mozart is, as of yet, better than the actual result – but I suspect he might find his unique, grand way with it before long. In any case, the orchestra was relegated to the background in the C minor Concerto, where Alfred Brendel was the focus of everybody’s attention. His opening notes were halting, as if acknowledging that these would be some of his last sounds emitted from the piano in Germany. But even if this was good-bye, ‘C minor’ was not sad with the level-headed, unsentimental Brendel – it was serious and collected.

The separation of notes in the cadenza made the ears perk, and his skilled simplicity, his serious ease and dry wit (well hidden) made the ears smile. Perfection in Mozart lies not in the fingers, but the heart; few pianists have more of the latter for Mozart than Brendel. Because of who he is, how he plays, and what we know him to be, his whole persona makes up the impression in concert, not just the naked notes. Perhaps that’s one reason why this listener finds – found – him a good deal more appealing live than on record. How good to have had one more opportunity to take him in at his best, then.


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Ionarts-at-Large: First-time @ Munich's Isarphilharmonie with the Munich Philharmonic

For Munich having been 'my beat' for so long, it felt shocking that I had not yet been at the new, provisional “Isarphilharmonie” concert hall (bound to be a permanent fixture) that was built on a dime (30-some million Euros, a wild bargain), opened two years ago, and that is being accepted, even loved, by audiences and musicians, and necessary, of course, because the Gasteig – the Munich Phil’s home and BRSO’s secondary venue (for the big-ticket composers) had been closed for renovation and revamping (bound never to take place).

This Wednesday, September 20th, the opportunity presented itself to see and hear the place, with the Munich Philharmonic giving the German premiere of a new piano concerto by Thierry Escaich [pronounced, more or less: “ɛz-kɛsh”] and Rachmaninov’s 2nd Symphony. Escaich’s Etudes symphoniques for piano and orchestra (co-commissioned by the MPhil and the Czech Phil) operates in the post-Messiaenesque, marginally-spectralist, color-as-composition realm that offers more beauty than structure (the fourth movement, notably titled “Toccata”, apart), and with the pill of contemporaneousness generously hidden at the center of an exotically flavored musical marshmallow. Dreamy, suggestive, rhythmic, colorful: All the boxes are checked. Impressionist here, pointillist there. Replete with classical cadenzas. The subscription audience that decidedly did not come for this piece – they were probably just happy to escape the Octoberfest going on outside – really could not complain.

Seon-Jin Cho (2015 Chopin Competition winner; reviews of Chopin and Mozart here and here), Dima Slobodeniouk, and the Munich Philharmonic navigated deftly though the deliciously inoffensive score. The music may not probe its own existential question of “why”, much less attempt to answer it: it just is. And it is enjoyable. There shouldn’t be a greater compliment… even if the work eventually forgets to be over and might be better if only it were a little tighter.

The same applies, let’s be honest, to the Rachmaninov. Had the scheduled conductor, Semyon Bychkov led the charge, it would probably have been loud. With the calmly leading Slobodeniouk conducting this high-caloric piece, it was sensitive but not saccharine in the first movement, and that movement’s finale not milked but laid out almost matter-of-factly. The Scherzo, which could have been written by Prokofiev on one of his ‘classical’ days, zipped by nicely, and for much of the Adagio, where Rachmaninov enters Tchaikovsky-mode (not for the last time), Slobodeniouk (you just know his nickname has got to be “Slobo” among his sauna-buddies back home) managed to transform sugar into energy and, yes, loudness. But you can’t underplay Rachmaninov all the time, lest it sound silly. The sweetly carnivalesque-pompous finale showed the orchestra in good form in every section and with every exposed instrument: clarinet, flute, first violin, etc. Even Slobodeniouk couldn’t make the work feel short – but his to-the-point conducting was surreptitiously impressive. No small feat, in a work that, especially uncut, meanders enough to make the Amazon green with envy.

The hall, meanwhile, disappeared in the best sense, offering a neutral, neither dry nor wet acoustic experience, with the sound mixing well in the first and second third of the stalls. No Yasuhisa Toyota hyper-transparency. The looks of the black wood panelling are simple but pleasing and the integration with the old industrial building that serves as the auditorium in front of it is very well done. Only filing out is tedious, with exits existing only to one side. But for now, I am more interesting in getting into the place than getting out again.


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Pictures courtesy Munich Philharmonic, © Tobias Haase

Forbes Review: Visiting Nazgûl - An Evening Of Late Schumann And Darker Schubert

...When I had to review a painstakingly lovely recording of the Well-Tempered Clavier some months ago, I searched for a foil. I found it in the darkly individualistic rendition of Dina Ugorskaja’s recent release – which ended up a Classical CD of the Week (Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier: Forget-Me-Nots And Intimations Of Mortality). So when I found out that Dina Ugorskaja played a recital in Munich’s Herkulessaal (substituting on short notice for Vardan Mamikonian; the pianist, not the saint), while I was in Bavaria’s capital – and with a tantalizing program of late Schumann and Scriabin at that – it was an easy and obvious decision to go and check out the recital the “Classics before 8PM” series.

After tantalizing late Schumann and sublime Scriabin, I thought of late Franz Schubert – namely the Piano Sonata in B-flat major, D 960 – as an extended encore… but not so! This turned out not only to be the longest piece on the program but also its emotional center. Dina Ugorskaja’s playing in general and in this first movement in particular, evokes and underscores a discomfiture among any listeners who think they know the work. No less here: Where there is a little oddity among the notes, it got explored with great curiosity. Where there’s a seldom noticed tension between lines, it got investigated. Amid such details, the pianist derailed Schubert’s sonata from conventions and re-established it as something fearsomely dark…

-> Review: Visiting Nazgûl - An Evening Of Late Schumann And Darker Schubert

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[From the Archives] A Wonderland of Possibilities: Unsuk Chin’s First Opera Premiered in Munich

Originally published on WETA 90.9's blog,Sunday, 8.5.07

“If there’s no meaning in it, that saves a world of trouble, you know, as we need not try to find any.”

This quote from the King in Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” might well describe the general listener’s absolution from the trouble of actively engaging with modern music.

Unsuk Chin, Alice in Wonderland K.Nagano / BStOp / Sally Matthews et al. Unitel DVD

Any music that is so dense, academic, or inaccessible that the listener cannot find to it without first reading a small book about the work becomes a remote and abstract art. Ultimately, that creates a sense of distance from the broader public and the art-form that leads to the ivory-tower syndrome: A certain music becomes the prerogative of musicologists and composers, a rarefied elitist pursuit, perhaps an intellectual feather in the cultural hat of a country, but not part of the substance that forms or defines its culture. Horrifying as it may seem to those who cherish and defend the “fine arts”, (even) the fine arts need to be popular to a significant degree if they are to remain meaningful in the cultural life of a society.

Korean born composer Unsuk Chin from Berlin, to where she moved 1988 after studies with György Ligeti in Hamburg, says that she does not want music that needs to be explained. At least not for her first opera “Alice in Wonderland” that received its world premiere in Munich under Kent Nagano on Saturday, June 30th after more than a year of preparations. For a composer who had started out as a Darmstadt-school serialist, thoroughly influenced by Stockhausen & Co., that’s a bold statement and comes in part due to Ligeti’s thorough re-poling of her compositional outlook.

These moments of recognizability and comfort (even plain C-major makes an appearance in this opera, well possibly a novelty in 21st-century opera) are kept together by Chin’s sound world that placed near-impossible demands on the Staatsoper’s pit. Large enough to hold any Meistersinger and Elektra orchestra, for Alice the seating plan had to be arranged anew and re-arranged again to squeeze in every player. And still, the percussion batteries overflowed into the director’s boxes to both sides of the stage. It is not the least of achievements that Chin’s music, despite the quantity of exotic instruments used, never calls attention to these instrumental ‘special effects’ like the rather more crass works of Ramírez, Sierra, Goljiov, and even Higdon or Schwantner. Harmonica and harpsichord, celesta and glockenspiel, Jew’s harp and little toy-pipes make their appearances, but to fine, never gratuitous effect; always appropriately in context to the extent that can be said at all about such an absurdist piece of work as “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”.And sure enough, there are moments in Ms. Chin’s music that need little explanation and are enjoyable to the broadest selection of ears. For one, Ms. Chin is fond of quoting, half mockingly, traditional opera in Alice, or, during the caterpillar‘s bass clarinet solo, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, or baroque elements during the tea ceremony.

Chin’s music, a tapestry of influences and ideas, is difficult to describe – not the least because it is difficult to remember much of it in precise ways. There were, however, a few moments where I thought: “This sure is better than Nicholas Maw’sSophie’s Choice“. It reminded of Sophie, which had its US premiere in Washington last season, while proving far less monotonous and same-ish, not pushing on ever so hard, and less tiring. Maybe the libretto lends itself to greater frivolousness or variety when you compose for words like “Twinkle, twinkle, little bat, how I wonder what you’re at…” than Holocaust, barbed wire, and “massive intakes of iron”.

The music of Alice remains a fairly difficult music, but it’s also imaginative, witty, well crafted, and – beyond the quotations – with moments of unsuspected beauty, never tiring, rarely taxing. And it certainly scores on every account against a recent Western-Asian Operatic premiere, namely The First Emperor, Tan Dun’s unbearable kitschy mix of second-rate Puccini with (in-and-of-itself interesting) Chinese percussion and string sounds.

But if the music was not as memorable as expected or desired, it was in some part the fault – or rather: achievement – of the staging. Brecht-student, painter, set-, costume designer, and stage director Achim Freyer, who staged the first performance of the Philip Glass trilogySatyagraha in Stuttgart (1981) and Salvatore Sciarrino’s Macbeth in New York, concocted a bizarre, fantastical set that dominated the performance to a degree that may have made Unsuk Chin feel uncomfortable. (Her support for the staging was – mildly put – shy of enthusiastic in several interviews given prior to the premiere.)

In front of steep stage, raked at 51 degrees (!) and nearly reaching the top of the visible part of the 90 feet high stage of the Staatsoper, stood lined up the eight singers (only their heads visible) who, in addition to Alice and the Queen, made up the cast’s different figures. All in the same makeup and wigs, operating detached white hands from behind a little barrier in front of them, they sang the parts that were then acted out by performance artists on the stage – floating (suspended from above), jumping, and gesticulating about in their oversized and colorful costumes. The croquet game (with rules resembling Calvinball), for example, was like a vast underwater ping-pong game with a likeness of Alice’s head serving as the ball. Frog and Dormouse (“You might just as well say that ‘I breathe when I sleep’ is the same thing as ‘I sleep when I breathe’!”), March Hare and White Rabbit, and of course the ever-present, ever metamorphizing Cheshire Cat pop up and do their wily things on stage.

Colorful strings divide the stage into sections that are at times filled out with color (depicting the house in which Alice grows to enormous size) or sheer light, as in the final dream sequence that, like the sequence that serves as the prelude to the opera, are not actually from Lewis Carrol’s book but represent reoccurring dreams of Unsuk Chin about fatalism and faith. When Alice grows after eating the cake and cries herself a lake of tears, the 20-some feet tall Alice’s tears (one performer lifted into the air with the upper part, another at the bottom for the feet) are blue strips of fabric that endlessly gush from her eyes and fill the lower stage along with superimposed splatter of rain.

Regular Alice runs around in an oversized mask that has her appear childlike and surreal at once – to take that mask off only at the very end when she has put an end to the hokus-pokus of Wonderland by calling the shenanigans of the Queen of Hearts by their name. The Mock Turtle (“It’s the thing Mock Turtle Soup is made from”) appears in a big Campell’s Soup can, except it’s “Caroll’s [false] Turtle Soup” and plays the harmonica hauntingly – in between weeping helplessly. When Dame Gwyneth Jones appears as the Queen of Hearts, she is piercingly perfect, shrill and deliciously wacky, wobble-free – and, of course, a much-beloved favorite of the Munich audience, many of which still remember her legendary Marschallin.

Alice in Wonderland had originally been planned for the LA opera (where Kent Nagano has turned down Plácido Domingo’s offer for the role as Music Directorship but did agree to become Principal Conductor), but financial concerns scuppered the plans. Financial concerns are not much of a problem for Munich (one of the most generously subsidized opera houses in the world) where Nagano succeeded Zubin Mehta as Music Director in 2006. Alice became a Munich project and more ambitious in scope still.

The audience, conservative but open-minded, seemed to be plenty excited about the world premiere of Alice. Well over 100 audience members of all ages stood in line to secure a seat for an introductory talk, an hour before the second performance. But if Alice, sung in English and shown with German subtitles, was more than just a curiously interesting example of high art – gladly suffered in the name of being an audience that appreciates high art – remains questionable. The German audience, for one, has little experience with the story of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. And to the extent the story is known, it’s through Walt Disney’s film, not the original book – a book that could easily be seen in a line with James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach, or Luis Buñuel films like La Voie lactée and Le fantôme de la liberté. The translation, shown as sub- and supertitles, tried its best, but was invariably cut and left to choose between a literal translation and finding its own plays on words that didn’t always relate to the scene. Even an innocent pun like the Doormouse’s “Long tale, indeed”, while proudly wiggling around its long tail, remained obscure to most. That (lack of) perception presumably allowed for the staging to overpower music and story in the way it did… though whether that was good or bad can’t quite be said with a staging so imaginative and wonder-full as Achim Freyer.

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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

An Imposing Orchestrated Winterreise from Günther Groissböck

‘Winterreising’ just with a piano accompaniment is out. Vocal travelers these days, perhaps aware of the need to stand out and offer something extra to draw audiences to a Lied recital, opt for alternatives. Günther Groissböck – on a most appropriately wintery, biting cold January night in Munich’s Prinzregententheater – certainly went all out for his Liederabend of this song-cycle of song-cycles: Franz Schubert/Wilhelm Müller’s Die Winterreise was presented in a version for chamber orchestra (not just piano trio, for example, as Daniel Behle has recently recorded; see Classical CD Of The Week: Winterreise Threesome) and, adding yet another

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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.

Ionarts-at-Large: Jansons | Mahler 5

A Mahler Symphony and the chief conductor (Mariss Jansons) at the helm, boldly announced from fancy-font-employing posters, is big ticket stuff even for the spoiled Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra crowd. It’s got all the hallmarks of an event, marked by the throngs of people parading outside the premises of the Gasteig cultural complex (where the 2400-seat Philharmonic Hall is located) with signs of “Tickets Sought”. This concert, on Friday March 11^th, was the second of two before the orchestra took this program—Mahler’s Fifth—and one consisting of Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony, on tour.

Part of me was surprised about the hoopla, because Mariss Jansons is not exactly a natural, great Mahler conductor nor, as far as I sense (despite the Amsterdam tenure), known as such. Certainly his recordings and several concerts I have witnessed (BRSO, 2010; RCO, 2010) left me cold. That said, he’s also turned in one of the two best Mahler performances I’ve ever heard—in the symphony I thought him least likely to succeed, no less. (BRSO, 2011) The general problem is that micro-controlling and Mahler don’t work well together. Jansons rarely just lets thing go. Then again, with that most recent glorious exceptions in mind, even I felt a hint of giddiness as Jansons raised his baton to launch the Trauermarsch.

G.Mahler, Symphony No.5, M.Stenz / Gürzenich Orch. Oehms

But before it got that far, there was this new thing the BRSO does: their “Surprise Work” which awaits the customers of every Mariss Jansons concert. Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture op.62, in this case, and not much of a surprise if one looked a few days ahead to see what the orchestra would play along to Mahler in Vienna’s Musikverein. (Where such surprise-nonsense is presumably not tolerated.) Whether this is a clever concept or just PR-department concocted nonsense I will get into in a post over on Forbes.com, next week. For now let’s report that the overture was well played and that Mariss Jansons got the work right when he announced it, afterwards. That’s a step up from the day before, where he pronounced having conducted one of the Leonore Overtures with Mahler’s Retuschen only to be told by his concert master that he may well have been conducting that*, but that the orchestra had been playing the Coriolan Overture all the same. Ouch. (* The concert master may have phrased it slightly more diplomatically.)

The Mahler itself was uncontroversial, very good and not special. The beginning—tight, precise, taut and loud—promised good, martial Mahler, organized and swift. The second movement was neatly shoved into the proximity of Wagner and the cellos (and eventually violas) playing over soft timpani rolls was a special, intense moment. But the movement ended with glare as colors gave way to sheer volume. The plucky pizzicato section both in the violins and cellos in the third movement paid great attention to detail, but now there was also a sense of stop-and-go… and the tempo choices didn’t feel (subjectively) quite compelling or obvious nor was the BRSO’s playing entirely up to its usual, exacting standards of perfection. This was different in the Adagietto, which was one big breath, which was chamber-like in its texture, which had a wonderful tempo (just shy of ten minutes but with a clear arc from beginning to end), liquid and somber but never lingering. But the fifth and last movement was small-small again, for some time, before the rousing finale (something that’s built into the music and can hardly—and didn’t—fail) came. It was, well, rousing, and loud but felt a little empty. The enjoyment might have been greater, had the symphony not felt quite as safe and tame.

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Ionarts-at-Large: Widmann's new Viola Concerto

The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra beckoned last week with an interesting fare of the new and the rare: Jörg Widmann’s Viola Concerto (the German premiere, after it received performances from the co-commissioning Orchestre de Paris conducted by Paavo Järvi in late 2015 at the Philharmonie de Paris) and Elgar’s Second Symphony.

The latter is a rarity in central Europe, where Elgar is treated with a certain amount of skepticism if not outright condescension. So much that I was surprised to find that the BRSO had actually performed Elgar’s Second quite recently… in 2008 under another Brit on missionary Elgar-tour: Sir Colin Davis (coupled with a Mozart Violin concerto; ionarts review here.) Then again, to think of eight years as “quite recent” shows something about the state of Elgar across the channel. I dare say that his status did not improve after this performance. Granted, the brisk first movement (I loved how the very opening of it was shaped)—bordering wild, for Elgar’s standards—had the orchestra right in lock-step with Harding. The second movement had a jolly let’s-have-fun-performance quality. “Don’t think too much about it”, he seemed to suggest and just dig in and be carried away. (Only that the carrying-away didn’t arrive very notably.) But there loomed buts.

E.Elgar, Symphony No.2, G.Sinopoli/Philharmonia DG J.Widmann, Violin Concerto, D.Harding/C.Tetzlaff Ondine

Too loud, thick in texture (arguably Elgar’s fault, in part, and also noted after Davis’ performance), and incoherently argued, the symphony still ended an episodic mash of sound with nice moments, hardly connected to—much less held together by—the rest of the music. And with little by way of noble English demeanor, a stereotype which Elgar’s music rather befits. It would be easy to blame the orchestra for not getting an inflection or style with which it is not familiar. But not so the BRSO, even with plenty substitute players as eager a group of quick learners (with technique to match) as three is on the orchestral scene.

And so I was reminded that Daniel Harding, that youngish conductor who seems to tick all the right boxes, has all the right connections, and a pedigree to match (Abbado- and Rattle-disciple) has been the only conductor that I have ever heard a bad concert with the otherwise unflappable BRSO*. Something always seems to not quite gel when I hear Harding. Anyway, dwelling on unlucky Elgar is needless when a highlight can still be reported, namely said Widmann Concerto. The work startles the uninitiated, beginning with the unusual setup: sparse strings, sitting in a semi-circle with plenty of room and several lonely music stands between them. Then the soloist enters from off stage as the concerto is already under way, (ab)using the instrument as a tam-tam. The soloist—Antoine Tamestit—half dances his way to the music stand nearest him and from there begins to make his way in concentric circles around the orchestra until he finds, for the finale, the conventional soloist’s position next to the conductor.

This he does by way of acting and interacting with musicians en route. For example an angry tuba that barks at him loud enough to make him jump. Tamestit answers with a vigorous pizzicato (I didn’t look which finger he used), the kind of which he had already delivered in the first five minutes with such vigor that I was afraid his hands might start bleeding. Perhaps Widmann had speculated with a guitar concerto for a while before settling on a viola concerto when the initial commission fell through. Amid sparse strings, pizzicato orgies, shivering glissandi, and further experiments in sound—some pointillist others with a metallic ring to it—a voice emerges that one might half expect in something influenced by Messiaen. It’s ten minutes into the concerto and Tamestit hasn’t had a bow in his hand yet. When he first does, it is still only the bow’s button which he taps on strings. It’s certainly a work that makes Widmann’s powerhouse Violin Concerto look ultra-conventional.

If this all sounds rather naff, well, it might easily have been. But for the poise and style and earnest beauty with which Antoine Tamestit performed the concerto, it came across as interesting, indeed captivating instead. I certainly was alert for every second of it—and easily so—which is more than I can say about most concertos. And not just I, by all appearances:

The audience, partly due to self-selection, partly because it is one of the keener, more interested symphonic audiences, listened to the stereophonic going-ons in silence which I am tempted to describe as “rapt”. Admirably few coughing salvos disrupted the shape-shifting, character-switching, landscape-altering concert. There, Omar Khayyam suddenly popped up, courtesy of the winds! Repetitive motions of buzzing sound create a surprisingly catchy rhythmic urgency of near-Bartók-String-Quartet proportions. A Scream… and the orchestra sounds like it is falling down a massive stairwell. One more massive glissando and Tamestit finally in ‘finale-position.’ Here he doesn’t take off and deliver a relentless, powerful final run to the finish, as I imagined, a final-stretch tour de force of violistic [sic] rampage. Instead there reigns quiet and a newborn tenderness, sweet and with shades of innocence.

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* It was Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge arranged for orchestra followed by a Bruckner Mass; I must have elected not to review it then. But I’ve also heard Harding in excellent Bartók later that same year with the same orchestra. Otherwise memory serves up more ho-hum experiences than ecstasy, though. Then again, one of the very few musicians I adore happens to think very highly of Harding and so I assume the fault is entirely mine and try to suspend judgement… even if I am more and more tending toward the conclusion that for all the qualities so obviously there, something is missing with Harding (as of yet). Perhaps another decade of daily grind with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra will fix everything, if anything needs fixing.