Seen and International
Concert Review
Fauré, MacMillan, and Beethoven:
Martha Argerich, Philadelphia Orchestra, Charles Dutoit, 8 April
2005 (BJ)
The first of Charles Dutoit’s two weeks this spring with
the Philadelphia Orchestra brought, from my personal point of
view, two very pleasant surprises. One, following an agreeable
performance of Fauré’s Pelléas et Mélisande
suite, was the United States premiere of James MacMillan’s
Third Symphony, and the other was Martha Argerich’s playing
of the solo part in Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto.
Now 45, the Scottish MacMillan is highly regarded in many quarters,
but my only previous experience of his music was not a propitious
one. His big choral and orchestral piece Quickening,
which the Philadelphia Orchestra presented three years ago, seemed
to me too much apparatus and too little musical content: it sent
me home happily humming to myself bits of Britten’s Spring
Symphony, which I heard through it, but not at all happy
with anything I actually heard in it. So I am delighted to report
that MacMillan’s Symphony No. 3 is a very different and
indeed an extremely impressive piece. Subtitled “Silence,”
inspired by Shusaku Endo’s novel of that name, and inscribed
to the Japanese writer’s memory, this is a one-movement
structure a little over half an hour in length. It is scored for
a large orchestra including triple winds, four percussion parts
in addition to timpani, harp, and piano. But though there are
a few outbursts of massive sonority, it is the quieter, more subtle
end of the dynamic spectrum that prevails through much of the
work, which frequently exploits multiple subdivided string parts.
Its opening does not so much emerge from silence as it is wrung
out of silence, to which it eventually returns after a passage
that exactly reverses the initial lightly accompanied english
horn solo.
What especially impressed me about this intensely serious and
clearly intensely spiritual composition is its blend of strong
formal organization with the magic yielded by an ear of the highest
refinement and discrimination. It is, you might say, predominantly
curved rather than straight-line music. Though richly chromatic
and even microtonal in technique, its language is full of powerful
tonal undercurrents. Rather than hitting you on the head, the
work beguiles, persuades, and seduces. I enjoyed it enormously,
and was equally impressed with the evidently dedicated and superbly
polished performance that Dutoit drew from the orchestra.
Where Martha Argerich is concerned, I confess to having been very
much in a minority over the years. I have never understood the
gigantic reputation the Argentine-born pianist enjoys around the
world: she can play more notes to the minute than almost anyone
else, but where, I have always wondered, was the music? Well,
here too I found myself unexpectedly bowled over – and,
once again, delighted, because there are few things more delightful
to a critic, or at least this critic, than discovering that someone
he previously held in little regard is actually phenomenally gifted.
In her playing of the concerto, lithely and affectionately supported
by Dutoit and the orchestra, there was all the keyboard wizardry
associated with her playing, but this time keyboard wizardry was
not the subject of the performance – Beethoven was the subject.
This was an interpretation compounded equally of brilliance and
strength on the one hand and an often revelatory quietness, a
profoundly searching delicacy of phrase and touch, on the other.
I am greatly indebted to her for such illumination, and thrilled
to have found out at long last what everyone has been making so
much fuss about.
Bernard Jacobson
