Salonen conducts Philharmonia in Phibbs and Mahler RFH 28 June 2012

Joseph Phibbs: Rivers to the Sea

Mahler: Symphony no.2

Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus

Kate Royal soprano

Monica Groop mezzo

Esa-Pekka Salonen conductor 

There can be few challenges for a composer more daunting than writing a companion piece to a Mahler symphony. Fortunately Joseph Phibbs has the measure of the task, and his new work, Rivers to the Sea, neither competes with Mahler's Resurrection Symphony, nor is it overwhelmed by the scale or impact of that monumental work.

The piece was commissioned to celebrate the 18^th birthday of the Anvil concert hall in Basingstoke, where is received its premiere last week. It is no doubt easier to make an impression in that more intimate venue, but the work also has enough substance to make a mark in the Festival Hall too.

But the scale of the piece is deceptive. A large orchestra is kept busy for the best part of half an hour, yet the musical material it explores is slight. Phibbs takes a laudably disciplined approach to his task, devising a selection of colourful but straightforward ideas and allotting each a separate movement. The formal plan resembles a symphony – four movements arranged around a central interlude – but the actual music is anything but. There is little development here, and Phibbs instead presents each movement as what he calls a 'musical snapshot', drawing on specific sonorities and colours, and laying out each over the course of a four or five minute movement.

If this relationship between colour and form suggests Debussy, that's unlikely to be a coincidence. The mention of the sea in the work's title demonstrates how, like Debussy, Phibbs uses the idea of undulating waves as inspiration for his orchestral textures. The big difference is the (English?) reserve with which Phibbs applies the idea. Unlike Debussy, he always has his feet very securely on dry land and never gets carried away in the moment. And that small group of musical ideas, elaborated within clearly defined confines, creates a sense of discipline in the music that Debussy would be unlikely to recognise.

Other voices are also heard in the background. The work is dedicated to this evening's conductor, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and there are traces here of Salonen's own music, particularly the minimalist pulsations from the double basses and the maximalist presto runs in the upper woodwind. A much stronger presence is Salonen's compatriot and hero Sibelius. The horn writing throughout the work harks back to Sibelius' symphonies, and Phibbs' reserved approach to his otherwise Romantic aesthetic suggests the economical discourse of Sibelius' late symphonies. There is also some Latin percussion in the mix, although this seemed intended more for colouration than rhythmic propulsion.

The piece received as fine a performance as any young composer could ask from the Philharmonia. There was little here to tax the orchestra, apart perhaps from the more complex textures of the final movement. Some great opportunities for the orchestra to show off its principle players though, and honourable mentions go to the clarinet, harp, tuba and xylophone soloists.

After two years of Mahler celebrations there is a very real danger of audience fatigue. That's never a problem for Salonen though. He knows how to keep even the most familiar music fresh, and led a performance of the Second Symphony that was an interpretation in every sense. The conductor writes in the programme that he sees the symphony as a journey from darkness to light, which was exactly how he presented the work. The focal point was the first choral entry towards the end of the finale. Everything up to this point seemed to build up to it, with fast tempos, unrelenting pace and a real sense of structural cohesion in the preceding movements. But once the choir had made their entry, Salonen considered redemption to have been achieved, and pulled back the tempos for an expansive but still intense conclusion.

His is a convincing approach, but much is lost in the race to the conclusion. In order to create that sense of structure and unity in the first movement, Salonen maintained fast and rigid tempos throughout. This had the frustrating effect of obscuring many of the details. Also, he rarely lingers in the moments of quiet before each of the many storms, over-riding the contrasts that Mahler sets up to heighten the impact of his climaxes.

The second movement made up for the lack of rubato in the first. Some elegant playing here from the strings, a welcome respite from the continuous intensity, which soon returned in the third. Excellent singing from Monica Groop in Urlicht. She was a late substitution, but gave an impressive performance, although her tuning went a little awry in the last minute or two of this fourth movement. Kate Royal was more operatic in her reading of the soprano part, with lots of passion and lots of vibrato. It didn't quite fit, although it may have done if she had been partnered by a similarly florid mezzo. The Philharmonia Chorus seemed small, at least for this work, but just about managed to dominate the orchestra when required.

Good playing from the orchestra in the Mahler. Salonen goes for emphatic articulation, especially from the strings, and they were able to provide exactly the punch he was looking for. It wasn't all ideal though, there were occasional tuning problems in the woodwind, and the off-stage brass had a pretty bad night of it. But on the whole this an engaging and convincing Mahler performance, and yet another reminder, if any were needed, that when Salonen is on the podium nothing will ever sound routine.

This concert was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 and is availible to listen on demand until 5 July at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/b01jz43s

LSO, Pires, Haitink, Barbican 14 June 2012

Purcell, Mozart, Bruckner: London Symphony Orchestra, Maria Joao Pires (Piano), Bernard Haitink (conductor), Barbican Hall, London, 14.6.12

Purcell arr. Stucky: Funeral Music for Queen Mary

Mozart Piano Concerto No.23

Bruckner Symphony no.7

If it ain't broke don't fix it – that's the LSO's approach to Bernard Haitink's annual visits. Every year he comes to London and gives three concerts in a week. Maria Joao Pires gives a Mozart piano concerto in the first half of each, and they usually conclude with a Bruckner symphony. Loyal audience members can be forgiven for feeling a sense of deja vu.

And it ain't broke. Even in his advancing years, Haitink remains a safe pair of hands in the core repertoire. Watching the slow physical decline of many conductors of his generation, and younger, can make concerts by senior maestri an uncomfortable experience. But Haitink is still going strong. It helps that he has always favoured slower tempi and efficient physical directions – the trademark Haitink approach has never relied on athletics. Tonight's concert had its flaws, but it was clear from every bar that we were in the presence of a conductor who continues to earn the top billing that he has commanded for so many decades.

The concert opened with something of a surprise, Purcell's Funeral Music for Queen Mary, arranged for winds and percussion at Salonen's request by Steven Stucky in 1992. Given that most of us are familiar with the march mainly from modern instrument performances, the arranger's job would seem to be inconsequential. But Stucky adds in some surprises, some minimalist ostinato from the piano and harp and more percussion than the music can comfortably handle. The result feels a little sanitised, as if Purcell's austere chords have been arranged to fit into a Hollywood soundtrack, but their power remains. A great performance here from all the brass players, who relished the opportunities offered by an arrangement that really plays to their modern instruments' strengths.

Mozart's 23^rd Piano Concerto earns its place in the repertoire through its seductive slow movement, and that was the highlight of Pires' performance. She affords the music its elegant and dignified simplicity without ever adding too much in the way of rubato or dynamics. The outer movements, and the finale in particular, contain a lot of trivial passage work, and it's not the pianist's fault that these failed to hold the attention. Pires has a soft touch, her attack on each note is decisive, it's just not very hard. This meant she sometimes risked being swamped by the orchestra, who played sensitively but could have done with a few less desks of strings.

Haitink's Bruckner 7 is a known quantity to London audiences, and there were no real surprises in his interpretation this evening. That didn't matter, because he really has the measure of the piece, and his handling of every phrase speaks of decades of valuable experience. As with the Mozart, the Adagio was the real gem here. Haitink took it relatively fast, which in combination with the well-sustained string tone allowed the overall structure of the movement to retain the foreground. Conversely, the Scherzo was on the slow side, but this allowed Haitink to highlight the stylistic distinction between the intense, dramatic music and the more rustic interludes.

In the finale, Haitink's articulation of the phrases and his build ups to the climaxes was textbook stuff. It seems so natural when he does it, yet the many failures in this music by his younger colleagues attest to the fact that real skill is needed.

The LSO strings were on top form, and their playing was a particular treat in the Bruckner. Not so the winds though. The woodwind and especially the brass struggled to get into the groove in the first 10 minutes or so of the symphony, and even when they did it never quite clicked. An essential ingredient of Haitink's Bruckner is turning the brass up to 11 in the finales, and while they provided the dynamics he was after, the tone quality suffered. That's unusual for this band, but then we are talking about very loud dynamics indeed, which combined with Haitink's famously slow tempos doesn't make things easy for the back row of the orchestra.

That was a shame. It took the shine off what should have been a transcendental finale. But there was plenty to relish in the earlier part of the concert. Next year, Haitink and Pires are back for Mozart's 17^th and 21^st Concertos and Bruckner's 9^th. We know what we're getting and we know it will be good, just so long as the brass can keep it together in that scherzo.

Performer Biographies – What's the Point?

If you go to a classical concert, it's always a toss up whether to buy a programme. If you do, you can be sure of finding out all about the music. Orchestras take their programme notes seriously, find knowledgeable writers and give them plenty of space to discuss the works being played.

What you won't discover is anything of interest about the performers. Conductors and soloists usually get a single column, containing two or three paragraphs that tell you precisely nothing about them. You'll get a list of orchestras they've worked with and the names of some of the awards they've won. You might find out they play a Strad or a Guadagnini and, if you care, you'll be told the name of their agent.

If the concert you are attending is given by a leading London orchestra, few of the other ensembles the artists has worked with are likely to be as prestigious, making the long list of orchestra names wholly redundant. Worse still, the orchestra sitting on the stage is usually present on the list, taking that redundancy into the realm of farce.

In fairness, these bios do occasionally discuss the performer's formative years, when they picked the instrument up and who they studied with. But these details can seem curiously de-contextualised when we haven't been told the performer's age, nationality, musical interests, other interests...

Obviously, a programme biography should focus on a musician's professional activities. But here is an excellent opportunity to humanise the music, to show that the musicians are real people with diverse interests and lives away from the concert platform.

Take Semyon Bychkov. He's a fascinating conductor, but he visits the UK far too rarely for audiences to know much about him. So you pick up a programme, and it might, if you're very lucky, tell you that he studied under the great Ilya Musin, but then it might not. What it certainly won't tell you is that he lives in Paris, is married to Marielle Labèque and that his younger brother was the recently deceased Yakov Kreizberg. Interesting details I'd have thought, that help us position him in classical music's constellation of international stars.

Something about the performer's relationship with the music on the programme would also be welcome, even if it was ghost-written and only approved by their agent. Without that sort of connection between performer and programme, the bio just feels like a press release.

I'm sure that diplomacy and lengthy communication would be required between orchestras, soloists and agents if we were to be offered artist bios that actually told us something. But given the time, effort and money that orchestras are willing to put into the design of the programme books, and into the programme note texts, is it too much to ask for something of equal depth and interest on the musicians whose interpretations we have come to hear?

Berlin Symphony Orchestra, Mario Venzago, Kit Armstrong, Cadogan Hall, 25 May 2012

 

Weber: Der Freischutz Overture

Schumann: Piano Concerto

Beethoven: Symphony No.3

Berlin Symphony Orchestra (aka Konzerthausorchester Berlin), Kit Armstrong (piano), Mario Venzago (conductor)

Mario Venzago wants to have it both ways. He describes his interpretive approach as "post-H.I.P.", which means bringing a selection of insights from the period instrument movement to symphony orchestra performances. That's very fashionable these days, but it is at odds with his stage manner. Venzago wears tails, uses a very long baton, and conducts with an immaculate technique that died out in most parts a generation ago. That makes for a strange combination, but it works. He's a communicative conductor, but not one to take things to extremes. And for London audiences, accustomed as we are to young turks, trading almost exclusively on passion and excitement, his more measured, but no less musical, approach makes for a refreshing change.

That said, he's only a guest conductor with the Berlin Symphony, and some tensions were apparent from the start. The Freischutz Overture is a pretty high-octane opener, and it seemed the orchestra wanted to play it faster and louder than the conductor would permit. Fortunately, the result was a constructive tension, with everybody working on the same wavelength, and the orchestra giving the same energy and drama as they would in a more weighty performance, but without the extremes. There were a few rough patches, the transition from the introduction into the allegro was a bit scrappy, but on the whole this was a serviceable reading.

The young pianist Kit Armstrong was the soloist for the Schumann Concerto. His performance was promising in many ways, but his interpretation is not yet as accomplished or authoritative as this music needs. Armstrong has the notes under his fingers, although there were a few very obvious slips, and matched his dynamics and rubato skilfully to the phrase structure. But there was little spontaneity here, and some of his rubato devices bordered on affectation. He has a tendency to linger on the climax note of each phrase, just a little too long for it to feel natural. More significantly, it was clear throughout that Venzago was in charge of the tempos, especially in the transitions. Armstrong followed skilfully, but he should really have been leading. That said, the slow movement was wonderful, with Armstrong giving an unaffected and directly emotional account of the solo part. No doubt the rest will come together, and probably very soon indeed. He's still only 20 after all. And was that one of his own compositions he played for an encore? A nice touch.

But the best of the concert came after the interval, when the orchestra gave an excellent performance of the Eroica. Venzago's post-H.I.P. approach worked wonders here. The strings of the Berlin Symphony have impressive intonation and ensemble, so his insistence on minimal vibrato didn't phase them at all. His tempos felt fast, especially in the second and fourth movements, suggesting he was following, or at least acknowledging, Beethoven's controversial metronome marks. Again, this was a performance that eschewed extremes, especially of dynamics. But the orchestra made up for this with impressively characterful brass playing, and with a wide array of articulations from every section. So the punch chords at the opening were quieter than usual, but it didn't matter because the sheer attack on each of them was enough to launch the symphony.

Venzago did allow himself one extravagance. Each time Beethoven builds up to a thematic statement in the outer movements, Vanzago tried to create the effect of appearing out of nothing and building into a weighty tutti. There are quite a lot of these in the Eroica, so the surprise quickly wore off. But given the laudable discipline of the rest of the performance, these little outbursts didn't feel excessive.

The Berlin Symphony are only occasional visitors to these shores, but their music-making is considerably different to what we usually hear. In terms of technique, this orchestra is the equal of any in London. But their approach to the core German repertoire, at least under Venzago, is more restrained. There may be fewer fireworks here, but the results, especially in the Beethoven, can be just as compelling.

Classical Musicians - Just too damn professional?

Some pieces of music are really hard to perform, but audiences don't really care any more. Mendelssohn Symphonies are a killer for the woodwind, and don't even mention Schumann's Second to a violinist. These days, the standard of professional orchestras and choirs is high, almost uniformly so when it comes to technical matters. So the work that goes into reaching that level is taken as read. Conductors do their best to make us aware that their ensembles are fearless in the face of demanding music, but it always seems to fall on deaf ears.

Last Saturday, Mark Elder was on the radio taking about the two Ring Cycle instalments he has recently recorded with the Hallé. Almost everything he said was about the difficulty of the music, and about the collective psychology that the orchestra had adopted just to face these scores. But discussion of Wagner seems so alien when framed in these terms. Elder mentioned, as if it was a commonly-known fact, that Götterdämmerung is by far the hardest of the four operas to perform. That makes sense, but I'd never thought of it like that. You go along to a Wagner performance and you just assume that everybody involved is on top of the music. But take a look in the score – every single performer gets a real workout, and you can't say that about many operas.

At the other end of the classical world sits John Eliot Gardiner. (Although saying that, has anyone ever suggested Wagner to him?) He's currently on home turf with a new recording of the Bach Motets out this month. The cover image is of the high-wire artist, Philippe Petit. Gardiner is making the point that these works are extraordinarily difficult to sing. He writes in the liner that they make 'colossal demands on everyone who performs them.' But we'll have to take his word for it, because the (live) performance on the recording is immaculate. More to the point, the singers make it sound easy, which it evidently is not. However, comparison with some of the lesser recordings on the market soon brings those 'colossal demands' into sharp focus.

So what is the solution? It seems that conductors in particular will continue using every avenue available to emphasise the musical difficulties their ensembles face. The performers themselves, the singers and orchestral musicians, get too few opportunities to tell their side of the story. The curious result is that, even the musicians who make up the most venerable ensembles tend to find their individual contributions taken for granted. We need a bit more empathy all round, and we should take every chance we get to celebrate the fact that professional orchestras can play all the notes.

Amar Quartet plays Tchaikovsky, Kings Place 18 May 2012

Tchaikovsky: String Quartets Nos. 1 and 3

Amar Quartet

'[Tchaikovsky's] chamber music...is not held in high esteem...for various reasons: weakness of form, unbalanced texture, inconsistency, and a tendency to...grand dramatic gestures best designed for large musical forces.' Audience members reading this in the programme note prior to this evening's concert are unlikely to have had high expectations for what was to follow. I'd say the assessment is unfair; Tchaikovsky's chamber works may be uneven, but the genius that shines through in the ballets and symphonies is just as evident here. That said, the programme included works from both ends of the spectrum, the Third Quartet, a work as fine as any Tchaikovsky wrote, and the First, which, to put it mildly, is not.

The First Quartet can work, just listen to the Borodin Quartet's recording, but it really needs a helping hand. Tchaikovsky doesn't specify enough variety of tempo or dynamic in the outer movements, and unless these are supplied by the performers the result can sound like 'grand dramatic gestures best designed for large musical forces.' That, sadly, was the impression this performance gave, with continuous and oppressive tutti textures beating the audience into submission. This, combined with some seriously insecure passage work from the first violinist, only confirmed the programme note's ominous predictions.

Fortunately, the music making in the inner movements of this First Quartet, and throughout the Third, was of a consistently higher order. The reason why the First Quartet retains a toehold in the repertoire is its folksong-inspired second movement. This was played immaculately, and with a sensitivity that you wouldn't have thought the ensemble capable if you'd only heard the first movement. And the scherzo third movement had a real sense of energy and buoyancy, and again a unity of ensemble and purpose from the players that brought the music to life.

The Third Quartet was given a consistently inspired performance, and was far more enjoyable all round. But then, it is a much better piece, and the composer must share some of the responsibility for disappointing performances of the First. But the Third is both idiomatically written for string quartet and filled with invention and originality. The higher standard of performance may be due to greater familiarity on the part of the players, but if so, they were still able to keep it fresh. The one failing of this performance was a slight lack of muscle. Tchaikovsky's melodies here are angular and impassioned, and really need to feel the heel of the bow on the downbeats. The players here achieved the impassioned pathos, especially in the famous third movement, but the music lacked the sense of physical intensity that defines the work as Russian.

This was a rare visit to the UK by the Zurich-based Amar Quartet. They are apparently Hindemith specialists, which may explain why invitations from this most Hindemith-phobic of countries are so few. But they are a lively ensemble with a distinctively bright and attractive sound. Look out for them.

Janine Jansen performs Schoenberg and Schubert, Wigmore Hall 16 May 2012

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.