Mozart
and Elgar:
Mitsuko Uchida, piano, Philharmonia
Orchestra, Sir Charles Mackerras (conductor),
Royal Festival Hall, 16 June, 2005 (AR)
The concert opened with an announcement by Sir Charles
Mackerras of the death
of Carlo Maria Giulini who died on the 14th of June.
He praised Guilini for his great work with the Philharmonia
Orchestra in the 1950’s and 60’s and said that the works in
the programme were uncannily apt for the occasion: “two dark
works by Mozart – the Adagio & Fugue and the E minor concerto
and the Elgar Second Symphony in which the second movement is
dedicated to the memory of a great man.”
Mozart’s
Adagio and Fugue
in C minor, K.546 was intense and grainy textured.
The Adagio had a nervously chilling quality about it,
with Mackerras securing brooding playing and jagged rhythms.
In the Fugue, the grunting cellos and double basses had
a wonderfully tough, gritty earthiness pointedly contrasted
with the appropriately strident violins. This dark and dramatic
account reminded me of Otto Klemperer’s Philharmonia
recording of the work.
Mozart’s
Piano Concerto No.20
in D minor, K.466 was given
such a refreshingly direct no frills performance that
I forgot about the performers themselves: this is the highest
compliment you can pay a musician - not thinking about them
or being aware that they are there. Uchida and Mackerras are
great Mozartians and they prepared this performance to utter
perfection yet still giving the illusion of on-the-spot spontaneity.
Uchida is in a class of her own in that her playing gives the
impression of being the composer’s own hands at work: she is
Mozart. Her playing of the Allegro amazed me for its extreme
range from the agile and the delicate to the angry and the dissonant
yet all had a subtle reserve; her graceful and buoyant sense
of melodic line was matched by Mackerras flexible and lithe
conducting and the Philharmonia’s alert and sprightly, stylish playing. A notable
feature here was the use of hard sticks and kettledrum which
added to the dark militaristic tone of the movement.
After removing her silk robe
after the heat she generated in the first movement Uchida played
the Romanza with a cool and tranquil radiance, floating her
phrases with effortless ease. A striking feature of the concluding
Rondo: Allegro assai was the agitated sound of the grinding
cellos carrying Uchida along with an adrenalin surging energy,
again having a perfect syncopation with the orchestra. The Philharmonia’s
sound world mirrored her own throughout.
Mackerras
not only excels in Mozart but is also one of our finest interpreters
of Edward Elgar. His performance of Elgar’s Symphony
No.2 in E flat Major, Op.63 was very close to the late Giuseppe Sinopoli’s radical conception, stripping
the score of the inflated grandiose pomposity so often heard
in Barbirolli’s grunting accounts. From beginning to end this
was a beautifully prepared and played performance with incredible
orchestral details shining through, even in climaxes.
The Allegro vivace
e nobilmente was very broad and measured with Mackerras
having absolute control over the metre of the music. His sense
of line and phrasing had grace, flexibility and buoyancy whilst
his sense of dynamics was wide ranging, contrasting between
the quietest of playing to the extremes of the percussion yet
without sounding bombastic.
The Larghetto
was by far the most moving I have heard – and I have heard many
performances. This was deeply felt but without ever sounding
smaltzy as it did with Barbirolli or Solti. Mackerras’ attention
to orchestral detail is extraordinary: the heartbeat throb of
the timpani and bass drum taps came through with a haunting
menace. The conductor toned down the strings, thus giving them
an added poignancy following the tried and tested rule that
less is more: the music seemed to bathe in a golden aura mesmerising
the audience into stunned silence.
The Rondo: Presto
can often sound like brass band music but under Mackerras’ sensitive
baton he made the orchestral textures sound chamber like and
translucent; the brass and percussion were incisive yet wonderfully
light and breezy. Again the contrasts in dynamic range were
wide, increasing the diversity of emotions and sound sensations.
The concluding Moderrato e maestoso can often come across
as a protracted, pompous march but here it sounded more akin
to the outer movements of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony -fragmenting,
imploding, exploding marches. The music sounded far more dark
and urgent than usual, with far greater contrasts being painted
between different passages. The closing bars melted movingly
into nothing: it did not feel like ‘the end’ but a new beginning.
This was an extraordinarily fresh, radical interpretation of
a work which is all too often wrongly seen as a backward-looking
work of the Edwardian era.
Alex
Russell
Further
listening:
Mozart: Adagio &
Fugue, K 546 in C minor; Symphoies 25, 29,
31, Overture; Cosi Fan Tutti; Philharmonia Orchestra,
Otto Klemperer (conductor): EMI Classics: 5 67331 2.
Mozart: Piano Concertos
20 & 21; Mitsuko Uchida (piano), English Chamber Orchestra,
Jeffrey Tate (conductor): Philips: 416381.
Elgar: Symphony No.
2 & No.1; In the South (Alassio) Overture, Pomp & Circumstance
Military Marches Nos. 1 & 4: Philharmonia Orchestra, Giuseppe
Sinopoli (conductor): Deutsche Grammophon 2 CD (DDD) 453 103
– 2.
