London Philharmonic, Michail Jurowski: Ligeti, Lutosławski, Schnittke. RFH 30 October 2013

Ligeti: Lontano

Lutosławski: Cello Concerto

Schnittke: Symphony No.1

London Philharmonic Orchestra, Johannes Moser (vc), Michail Jurowski (cond.), Royal Festival Hall, London, 30.10.13

Ligeti, Lutosławski, Schnittke – that’s not exactly a crowd-pleasing programme, and yet the gargantuan Festival Hall was almost full. How to explain the intense interest? Discount student tickets seem to have played a part, and then there’s the fabled “Rest is Noise Effect”, conferring mass appeal status on anything it touches. But whatever tricks were pulled to draw the audience, they liked what they got. This wasn’t an easy programme by any means, and seemed to get more intense as it went on, but the audience sat in rapt attention throughout, and conversations during the interval seemed to be about little other than the music of the first half.

The theme of the concert was “behind the Iron Curtain”, but thankfully the most clichéd programming choices were sidestepped. The concert began with Ligeti, but rather than Atmosphères, the usual choice from his 60s scores, we got the got instead Lontano, and from the sonorist school we got the Lutosławski Cello Concerto, were lazier programmers would automatically have turned to Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima. And in the second half, Schnittke’s First Symphony, a work of some notoriety, and certainly of great historical significance, but a difficult listen by any standards.

This evening’s conductor, Michail Jurowski is the father of Vladimir, and a respected figure in his own right. He is physically frail, though, and his technique is based on economic gestures. He doesn’t project the sense of visceral energy that characterises his son’s performances, but his more measured  approach has its benefits too, his patience, combined with the high standard of orchestral playing, bringing clarity and poise to this often knotty music.

Ligeti’s Lontano was written in West Germany in 1967, ten years after the composer had defected from communist Hungary: very much music from in front of the Iron Curtain then. Still, it uses techniques and harmonies developed in Warsaw in the 50s (Schnittke uses them too in his First Symphony; he called them his “Polish Techniques”) so qualifies on a technicality. The music here is all chromatic clusters, intense and shimmering, even at the quietest dynamics. The performance really benefited from the quality of the LPO’s string tone, all dark, glowing colours that added an extra dimension to Ligeti’s inscrutable sounds. It was all a bit dry though, formulaic and even stilted at times. This isn’t the sort of music that benefits from rubato, but a bit more passion from the players for music’s admittedly introverted energy wouldn’t go amiss.

The Lutoslawkski Cello Concerto was a similar case. Cellist Johannes Moser has an approach to the work that works better in its individual moments than in its overall conception. He emphasises the distinctions between the basic material, the repeated notes and the continuous held textures, all of which he plays without drama and often without colour, and the wildly gesticulating outbursts, which he exaggerates, sometimes to the point of parody. His physical gestures don’t help either, gurning at the orchestra when their interjections cut him off, and big surprise faces to the audience when the music suddenly changes direction. Technically, the performance wasn’t bad, but the music’s gravity and pathos were brushed over in favour of gesture and effect.

As if to compensate, Jurowski took the exact opposite approach with Schnittke’s First Symphony. Although the basic harmonic language of the work is based on clusters and dense atonal harmonies (the “Polish Techniques”) the work is filled with quotations and allusions, usually to lighter music. In other hands, these can offer levity from the intellectual rigour. But Jurowski sees it differently. For him, context is all, and each of these allusions is given a sinister dimension through its placement in the narrative. The excellent orchestral playing helped him to make his point, the calculated precision of the woodwind ensembles, the dark colouring to each of the horn and trumpet solos. Even the improvised violin and piano duet in the second movement, usually presented as a lighthearted jazz break, was substituted with a passage from Schnittke’s worthy but equally serious First Violin Sonata.

The context in which the Symphony was presented helped to highlight many historically significant aspects of the work. The Ligeti and Lutosławski in the first half demonstrated the Modernist culture, even behind the Iron Curtain, that Schnittke was seeking to diversify with his postmodern tricks. Last Friday’s performance here of the Berio Sinfonia offered another instructive parallel. Schnittke did not know Berio’s work when he wrote his First Symphony, and the differences outweigh the similarities. Berio’s stylistic mashup is all about lightness and grace, to which the intrinsic humour is crucial. Jurowski tonight demonstrated that Schnittke had a different message to convey, not deeper necessarily, but certainly darker: the modern world as chaos with any notions of redemption, or even of order, fleeting and illusory. But there is room in this piece for levity too, and Jurowski could have presented a more comprehensive picture, not to mention a more audience-friendly one, for the sake of a few more laughs.

This concert was broadcast live by BBC Radio 3 and it available to listen on demand until 6 November at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03f8c83 

RCM Symphony Orchestra plays Lutosławski, QEH 6 Feb 13

Lutosławski, Debussy, Roussel: RCM Symphony Orchestra, Franck Ollu (cond), QEH, London, 6.2.13

Lutosławski: Jeux venetiens

Debussy: Nocturnes

Lutosławski: Symphony No. 3

Roussel: Bacchus and Ariane Suite No. 2

Sophisticated, urbane and founded on infinite subtleties of expression: everything about Lutosławski’s music suggests that it requires mature, experienced and world-wise performers to achieve its effect. This evening it got something different, a performance from the Royal College of Music Symphony Orchestra, some members of which were not even born when the composer died (doesn’t that make you feel old?). The ensemble handled the music’s technical demands well, and the more direct approach that the young players took to the music’s expressive side demonstrated that Lutosławski’s aesthetic is not as involved or esoteric as it may sometimes seem.

Jeux venetiens opened the concert, but it wasn’t the best way to start. The piece makes extensive use of Lutosławkski’s distinctive technique of “limited aleatorism”. Those passages proved something of a hurdle for the players. All the notes were there, but they had difficulty maintaining the evenness of the texture, and the balance between the instruments was often problematic. All of the solos were excellent, but for the time being, Lutosławski’s distinctive ensemble formations eluded them.

The orchestra gradually found its feet in the following work, Debussy’s Nocturnes. The links between Debussy’s orchestration and that of Lutosławski were everywhere apparent, with the big difference that the orchestra had little difficulty in achieving what Debussy desired. The strings were on great form, and throughout the second half as well, with near ideal intonation and a unity of ensemble that many professional orchestras struggle to achieve. The Debussy really came to life in the final movement “Sirènes”, for which a female choir from RCM was squeezed onto the stage between the strings and woodwinds. Some shaky intonation and ensemble from the winds in the earlier movements was ironed out for this last movement, and the sound quality from every section brought the piece to life.

But the best was yet to come. Lutosławski’s Third Symphony opened the second half, and was undoubtedly the high point of the concert. The performance was meticulously prepared, and every player was obviously on top of the notes. Unlike in Jeux venetiens, much of the music here is loud and often declamatory, and the orchestra was able to not only give those bold, direct statements, but also find the ideal contrast between those and the more introverted and finely textured passages. The score is something of a concerto for orchestra, regularly shining a spotlight on unexpected corners of the ensemble, and whoever the composer’s attention fell on, they always came up with the goods.

That said, the strings continued to have the upper hand over the winds. The brass in the opening fanfares was just a bit too raucous, and the woodwinds occasionally struggled to keep their intonation in place, although Lutosławski makes things very difficult for them by often writing very loud passages in unison. But the highlight of the evening was the central toccata of the symphony, a complex but highly ordered polyphonic episode for the strings. Again, the strings’ ensemble and intonation was ideal here, but they also achieved a unity of timbre too, not overly dark or heavy, but focussed and crystal clear through all those polyphonic lines.

This evening’s conductor, Franck Ollu, is a new music specialist, which is just as well given the programme. His conducting of Lutosławski’s a Battuta sections (which ironically he led senza Battuta) was very detailed, as if to guide the players through every potential problem in the music. This left him looking frustrated in the ad lib passages, as he had to essentially stand there and let them get on with it. This was particularly apparent in the symphony, in which the bar lines often stop right at the music’s climax, exactly where the conductor would want to intervene the most. Fortunately he was able to have full confidence in his players to continue exactly where he left off, and to take the music in the direction it needed to go.

The concert concluded with the second suite from Roussel’s Bacchus et Ariane. There are Lutosławski connections here too, which just about justified the work’s presence on the programme. It posed few problems for the players, who gave a committed performance, although perhaps lacking a little in sensuality. But it wasn’t the right piece to end the concert, not after the excellent performance of the Third Symphony. The Roussel sounded pretty pedestrian in comparison, and I can’t have been the only person in the audience wishing the evening would end with some further utterance from the Polish master.