Elgar: Truls Mork (cello) Philharmonia Orchestra, Sir Andrew Davis (conductor) 19.4.2007 QEH (AVE)

 

Sir Andrew Davis and the Philharmonia Orchestra’s all Elgar programme at a packed Queen Elizabeth Hall marked the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the composer's birth.

Their concert opened with Elgar’s sparkling and unashamedly exuberant Overture, In the South (Alassio), Op. 50 (1904). This tone poem is a masterpiece of orchestration and uncannily similar in spirit to Richard Strauss’s Don Juan though superior in my mind, just as Elgar’s Falsatff is far better composed than Strauss’s congested and over inflated Ein Heldenleben..

Davis carefully contrasted the quieter, more intimate interludes with the more anarchic and climatic outbursts by the brass which never sounded strident in such a claustrophobic close-space, and the hallmark of this concert was Davis’ ability to contain and control the loud climaxes in the QEH’s in-your-face acoustic. Davis dealt with the music’s complex cross-rhythms with great aplomb, whilst the viola solo played by Rachel Robert in the two delicate interludes was exquisitely performed.

The most moving moment of the work is in the closing passages, when the soft strings gradually give way to the climactic brass outbursts: here Davis made the silky strings play very quietly and slower than often heard which gave the music a moving sensation of an intense melancholy: this even out- shone Mahler’s music in its tearful yearnings! The music ended with punctuated brass and timpani making the music burst apart in shining splendour: here Elgar turned the light of Alassio into rays of sound.

Truls Mork’s subtle, sedate and reserved reading of Elgar’s Cello Concerto (1919) was the absolute antithesis of Jacqueline Du Pré’s ‘heart-on-sleeve’ performances. Mork knows that ‘less is more’ – much more - in laying on the emotions when the playing itself is actually understated and laid-back. The opening movement’s Adagio solo flourish was never wrenched and torn to shreds but played with dignified poise and sedate pace, the poise making it sound far more poignant and powerful. Throughout the moderato, Mork’s tone was refined and mellow suiting the music’s melancholic mood with Davis and the Philharmonia offering sensitive and dramatic support.

In the Allegretto Mork blended in beautifully with the Philharmonia, playing with such subtle and rather shy reserve, giving the music an even greater intensity and poignancy: this reserved and coy shyness of playing gave the sounds a painful and fragile vulnerability.

Mork’s subtle and serene playing of the Adagio was mercifully free from schmaltz and again reserve and understatement to gave the music much more intensity and a sense of introspection as if the music was mourning for a soldier’s soul in a locked distant room where lost love suffers in silence. Even the concluding Allegro was played with incredible intimacy, with Mork blending in with the orchestra with a sort of coy self-effacement yet paradoxically again this gave his serene searching sounds much more poignancy and potency.

Sir Andrew Davis had a masterly control of Edward Elgar’s colossal and majestic First Symphony in A Flat, Op. 55 (1908) integrating the four movements into an organic unfolding whole with a sense of seamlessness from beginning to end. What was also remarkable was Davis’ ability to master the music’s dynamics in the QEH’s close acoustics which are not designed for such large scale symphonies.

The emanations and sensations of hope, loss and love and loving run throughout this ideology-free and programme-free symphony, and Davis and the Philharmonia brought out these moods and emotions with moving beauty and intense feeling – such sensations absolutely alien to those old fashioned critics who slavishly reduce scores to skeletal structures and political pronouncements, viewing such a symphony as: ‘conservative’ and ‘reactionary’ and ‘backward looking’ -  forgetting that this great First Symphony is not a reactionary product of Edwardian England but rather the premonitions and even apparitions of a composer who saw tragic things ahead in The Great War to come: this makes Elgar’s music much more modern and radical than the bitter archaic Adornian critics ever give it, dismissing it crassly as ‘conservative’ and ‘reactionary’ (whatever that means).

Davis conducted the Andante nobilmente e semplice with a wonderful sense of unflolding grace and ease, gradually building up to the thrusting and urgent strife - ridden allegro. Davis articulated multifaceted moods and contrasting colours as well as a wider dynamic range than is often heard in the movement, which can often sound over-inflated and ponderous.

The Adagio was played and conducted with incredible sensitivity, making it sound surely one of the greatest slow movements written since Beethoven and as moving as any written by Mahler or Bruckner. The strings especially shone through and played with great refinement and eloquent expression; yet Davis never let the music drag, giving it a sense of striving ahead and then resting awhile as if time stood still for a few moments: this was an extraordinarily moving experience, transporting one’s self beyond being there in the hall.

Davis made the opening of the last movement sound dark and eerie, making the strings play with a shuddering shimmering effect I have never heard before. As the movement progressed the darkness slowly bled away to seeping light and jubilation. Again Davis wonderfully contrasted the reflective and lyrical passages with the more dramatic and climactic ones, making the music sound much more multi-faceted and multi-layered and coloured than usual.

Davis and the Philharmonia rightly deserved and won ovation after ovation, and thankfully the concert was recorded for prosperity. Davis has proved himself to be one our great Elgarians, and like Giuseppe Sinopoli makes Elgar’s music sound thoroughly modern as the music of our  time and not just of the Edwardian era.

Alex Verney-Elliott

Further listening:

Elgar: In The South, Enigma Variations, Introduction & Allegro for Strings: Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, John Eliot Gardiner (conductor): DG 4632652: 1 CD.

Elgar: Cello Concerto: Lynn Harrell (cello), Cleveland Orchestra, Lorin Maazel (conductor): Eloquence 450 021-2:  1 CD.

Elgar:  Symphony No. 1 & No. 2: London Symphony Orchestra, Jeffrey Tate (conductor): EMI Classics 85512:  2 CDs.