Mozart: Symphony no. 40 in G minor, K550; Piano Concerto
no. 24 in C minor, K491; Requiem in D minor, K626. Philharmonia Orchestra
and Chorus, Mitsuko Uchida, soloists,
cond. Sir Charles Mackerras. Royal Festival Hall, 12 June, 2005 (ME)
This
all-Mozart programme drew a capacity crowd for an elegant
evening of high class orchestral playing and superb choral
singing, although the evening’s solo stars were not at their
absolute best. The 40th is perhaps Mozart’s most anguished,
‘romantic’ symphony, but you would never have known it from
this performance, which was as much sweetness and contentment
as if Haydn had written it. Einstein would probably not have
characterized parts of the first and final movements as ‘plunges
into the abyss of the soul’ if he could have heard this open,
warm and shapely evocation of them – nothing wrong with that,
it was just that it came as a surprise when I’m sure that
the real astonishment was meant to be reserved for the new
completion of the Requiem. No fault could be found
with the playing or direction, the touching slow movement
being especially fine.
The
24th Piano Concerto is of course also regarded
as a very ‘romantic’ piece, and here the performance positively
indulged that; you either like Mitsuko Uchida’s facial quiverings
and grimaces, and her general air of waif-like contortionism,
or you don’t – I don’t, but of course she has few equals in
terms of the sensitivity of her phrasing, the poetic gentleness
of her touch and the no-holds barred commitment of her union
with the orchestra, who gave her the most wonderful support
imaginable. The evening’s best performance, both solo and
orchestral, came in the heavenly opening bars of the Adagio.
The
Requiem has always been contentious by its very nature
– one of the greatest things made by man in the whole of the
eighteenth century, but by which man was it made in its entirety?
Constanze Mozart’s desire to obtain
Count Walsegg’s fee drove her to
have the work completed in secret after the composer’s death,
and the version we hear most often in concert is that completed
by Süssmayr. This evening’s version,
and the very scholarly accompanying essay, was provided by
Robert Levin, who has done quite a lot more than what he modestly
describes as averting infelicities. The main problem with
this was that what he had obviously aimed to achieve was not
always helped by the way in which the work was directed: for
example, Levin’s ‘version’ tries, and admirably succeeds,
to lighten the orchestral texture at certain key moments,
but then the singers were placed well back from their usual
places at the front of the platform so that they still had
problems with what Levin calls functioning ‘as the expressive
focus of the work.’
It
was in the Lacrimosa and
the Benedictus that the new version seemed most
powerfully different: the former now leading into a non-modulating
fugue, and the latter, although it retained the vocal quartet,
quite different in emphasis to the ‘normal’ version. Levin
had also composed a new Hosanna fugue, derived from
the C minor mass, a daringly ambitious decision which was
justified by its quality. The light tinkerings
with the Agnus Dei I
could have dispensed with. The superb Philharmonia
Chorus rose to every challenge, their Dies Irae
as terrifying as it ought to be and their Confutatis
weighted with drama. Partly due to their positioning,
the soloists fared less well: Peter Rose did not quite have
the sonorous quality needed for Tuba mirum, and both Susan Gritton
and John Mark Ainsley experienced
uncomfortable moments, most notably in the Benedictus,
although both also gave us some very beautiful singing,
with Catherine Wyn-Rogers displaying her finely burnished tone to advantage
in the ensemble passages.
An
evening of highly charged musical drama, gratifyingly well
supported – of course demonstrating that you will get a full
house if you provide that perfect marriage of top flight orchestra,
conductor and soloists with genuinely great works. The Festival
Hall is soon to be ‘closed for refurbishment’ – I would prefer
them to knock it all down and begin again, but it was good
to be reminded that it can still give room to concerts of
real quality.
Melanie
Eskenazi
