Janine Jansen
(violin), Boris Brovtsyn (violin), Amihai Grosz (viola), Maxim
Rysanov (viola), Torleif Thedéen (cello), Jens Peter Maintz (cello)
Schoenberg: Verklärte
Nacht
Schubert:
String Quintet in C Major
The
Janine Jansen All-Stars are not like other chamber ensembles. In
fact, they are hardly an ensemble at all. Everything they play is
perfectly coordinated of course, but you rarely get the feeling that
the group is working as a single entity. Instead, these revered
soloists perform, for the most part, as soloists. Every phrase in
every part is presented with emotion bordering on pathos, and nothing
is treated as filler. Everything matters.
The
benefits of this sort of approach are manifold, but there are plenty
of problems too. Fortunately, the works chosen for this tour,
Verklärte Nacht and
Schubert's C Major Quintet, have both the quality and the complexity
the group needs to show off its many strengths, both collective and
individual. The Schoenberg comes off best – the piece is meaty
enough to offer something substantial for all of these heavyweights
to get their teeth into – but Schubert also benefits from the sheer
quantity of musical talent on the stage.
The
unity of ensemble and of intent between the players was clearly
hard-won, and everything in this performance felt well rehearsed,
even over rehearsed. Despite the multiplicity of interpretive angles
from within the ensemble, a clear and singular musical vision was
apparent throughout, and this presumably came from Jansen. Tempos and
dynamics were often extreme, suggesting dictatorial decision making
at the rehearsal stage rather than committee thinking. And clarity of
texture was an over-riding concern throughout, a quality that
benefited the Schoenberg more than it did the Schubert.
Schoenberg's
Verklärte Nacht is
at least as well known in its orchestral arrangement, leading some
performers of the sextet version to expand the textures and go for a
large, all-embracing sound. Not so Jansen and her colleagues.
Everything here was about the detail. There was plenty of expression
too, but this was always balanced by a concern for exact intonation,
tonal purity and musical architecture. The solo qualities of each of
the players often worked to the benefit of Schoenberg's variegated
textures. He often has three or four completely different textures
going on at once, so having players on each part who can really keep
those ideas separate and individual gives the music the sense of
inner variety it regularly relies on.
For the
whole of the first half, the players leant forward in their seats,
the intensity of the music always reflected in their body language.
When they returned after the interval, I was expecting to see some
more relaxed postures, some sitting back and letting the music flow.
But no, the Schubert turned out to be just as intense, and was
presented with similarly furrowed brows. Tempos and dynamics were
just as extreme as in the Schoenberg, but this time the results
seemed more stilted and less in the spirit of the music itself. True
enough, the quiet moments of both pieces, the opening of the
Schoenberg for example, and the opening of Schubert's adagio, rely on
stillness tinged with foreboding. But Schubert doesn't do things on
the same scale. And while the tempos and dynamics were extreme, the
vibrato and rubato were strictly controlled. In many ways, the
Schubert was performed according to Classical-era performing
conventions, but at any point the music was louder, quieter, faster
or slower than almost any version on record.
Janine
Jansen was billed as the star of this concert, but there weren't many
occasions in the programme for her to show off her skills. The
opening of Schubert's adagio was one. Here, the ensemble played the
theme and accompaniment relatively straight, while Jansen performed
the obbligato with a satisfyingly wide range of attacks and colours.
Similarly with the main theme of the finale. Here Jansen was able to
keep the main theme sounding rustic, but the detail with which she
articulated the phrases, and even the individual notes, marked this
out as the playing of an exceptional violinist.
If the
Schoenberg succeeded better than the Schubert in this programme, it
was mainly because Schubert's music doesn't respond as well to
extremes. The coherency of the C Major Quintet was regularly tested
by overly long pauses, unrelated tempos between sections, and extreme
dynamic contrasts that prevented sections and phrases from relating
to the passages around them. However, Schoenberg seems to respond
well to this approach. The clarity that these players brought to
Verklärte Nacht may
have prevented it from sounding mysterious when it should have, let
alone nocturnal, but the sheer quantity of musical interest that it
revealed outweighed any reservations.
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