Eliahu Inbal's Mahler cycle on Denon
has long been consigned to the dustbin of deletions (without my having
heard any of it) so I was looking forward to this first Prom appearance
by a figure who appears to enjoy a far higher profile in the rest of
Europe than he does here. Having heard a rumour around the hall that
the conductor had failed to make the afternoon rehearsal I was anticipating
a degree of spontaneity, but what that appeared to entail was the players
hanging on for grim death, to keep together between themselves and to
follow Inbal's beat. What can you do when a conductor throws out a wild
cue for the clarinets to the left of the stage... and the clarinets
come in, on the right. I swear at one stage he did the same with one
of the timpanists, only for the player to stare at him in complete disbelief
and ignore him. I don't mind the odd mudged chord, but after a while
they become accumulative and I found it very difficult to stop all the
mistakes (like halfway through the vast first movement, the 1st horn
and solo fiddle half a bar out with each other; not their fault but
Inbal's on that occasion) distracting me.
If you're wondering where 'the interpretation'
was in all of this nit-picking, well, so was I. The exigencies of appearing
as a late replacement on limited rehearsal time appeared to deprive
Inbal of any chance to inflect the performance in a distinctive or cohesive
way. The many sections of the first movement were stitched roughly together
by a fairly fast basic tempo that, at climaxes, had the orchestra scrabbling
for notes until Inbal held up proceedings with massive ritenuti (to
give the players time to arrive at the double bar together?). Lorin
Maazel's generous, rallentando-laden account with the LSO a few months
ago was a model of taste by comparison (apart from being far better
played and controlled).
I took the observance or not of
the infamous hinaufziehen marking in the fourth movement to be indicative
of the lack of preparation that the orchestra had enjoyed as a whole.
The cor played the first one straight with no glissando, then small
glisses on nos 2 and 3. Then for the fourth, fifth and sixth instances
of the phrase he played the third below as a definite note, a kind of
acciaccatura to the top note, and mostly stuck with that to the end
of the movement. I don't believe Inbal had fully told him what he wanted,
is the upshot. Michelle de Young appeared unfazed by such inconsistencies
to sing Nietzsche's soul-searching text with ideally veiled tone. She
even managed to ignore the crassly twanging harp next to her that threatened
to ruin the movement's atmosphere. Its volume was evident proof that
Inbal simply had not spent sufficient time on the hall or with the orchestra
to judge and balance qualities as basic as dynamic levels.
The pity was that the performance
finally settled into some sort of groove in the choral fifth movement
and stayed there for a heartfelt final adagio, which by that time was
difficult to enjoy. Even so his allargando at the coda was overdone;
getting two timpanists to hammer those final notes is fairly prone to
mishap, and so it proved when they failed to land together and created
a huge bu-boom effect. (Surely one should do the strikes and the other
the rolls?). The Concertgebouw players were on only slightly better
form the previous night so having been excited by the possibilities
of Inbal and Sinaisky, I rather wish Chailly had provided a familiar
grounding force.
Peter Quantrill
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