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Seen and Heard Concert Review

 


 

Mozart, Tchaikovsky, MacMillan: London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Colin Davis (conductor), Mitsuko Uchida, (piano) 6.03 2007. Barbican Hall, London (GD)

 

 

Tonight’s concert marked the 25th Birthday of the Barbican project, and included Royal attendance. After a conductorless rendition of the national anthem it was announced that a new work ‘Stomp’, especially composed for the occasion by James MacMillan, would constitute the first work on the programme. I was slightly disappointed as I had expected the advertised MacMillan work; ‘The Confession of Isobel Gowdie’ to have been the first work…a magnificent orchestral work indeed. However, ‘Stomp’ (with Fate and Elvira), a much shorter work, was anything but disappointing. It lasts for about ten minutes and is initiated by brass fanfares and various percussive ‘jazzy’ sounding rhythms which give way to two fascinating interpolations from the other works being performed tonight, the Mozart K467 (the andante ‘Elvira’ theme, and the ‘fate’ theme on brass and percussion, from the Tchaikovsky Fourth symphony). Davis and the orchestra gave what sounded like an excellent performance of this occasional and brilliant piece of orchestral parody.

I recently reviewed another Mozart Piano concerto with Davis and Uchida (K 415, also in C major) and as with that performance I was again struck by the tremendous contrast between Uchida’s stylistic brilliance and Davis’s rather conventional, grandiose accompaniment. Davis deployed quite a large string section and placed his first and second violins on his left side. His pacing and tempo for the brilliant march-like first movement ‘allegro’ reminded me of an older kind of performing tradition favoured by some of the Kapell-meister generation of German conductors; totally professional but overall a little for-square and dull. Those martial sounding interjections from trumpets and timpani did not cut through the orchestral texture as they should. And there was some flat sounding woodwind intonation in the magnificent development section. Overall I missed that sense of buoyancy and delicacy one hears when a Mackerras is conducting. Uchida provided an astonishing cadenza with the most apt, and daring, levels of pianistic improvisation. Notable also was Uchida’s wonderful legato in the famous ‘andante’. In the final ‘allegro vivace assai’ again all the music’s staggering wit and diversity were with Uchida, surely, along with Clara Haskil, one of the truly outstanding Mozart pianists; I hope she re-records  all the piano concertos with Mackerras, or a conductor with a similar understanding of Mozart’s uniqueness.

Colin Davis is not immediately associated with the music of Tchaikovsky; as far as I know the Fourth symphony is the only symphony by that composer that Davis has conducted, and this, by all accounts, is a fairly late addition to his repertory. After an imposing and direct opening fanfare on horns (with nicely balanced bassoons) Davis hardly established an ‘andante sostenuto’, wavering between disparate tempo registers. The emerging ‘in movimento di Valse’ (only Tchaikovsky could incorporate a waltz with such mastery into a symphonic form) was not sufficiently contoured or phrased…just listen to how it can sound with a conductor like Mravinsky! And the transition into the wonderfully lilting second subject initiated by the clarinet with balletic embellishments (what Eric Blom once likened to ‘the recovery of a secret and lost romance’) sounded bland here. The long lead up to the development section, with ominous interjections of the opening ‘fate’ theme, lacked the tremendous rhythmic thrust required. The trombones, at the end of the movement, re-stating the ‘fate’ theme, sounded merely strident, with none of that lugubrious power Mravinsky and the then ‘Leningrad’ orchestra used to bring to the drama.

The ‘andantino in modo di canzone’ started with some beautifully phrased oboe playing from Kieron Moore. The quasi-trio, second theme in F major, abounding in the modulated harmonic development Tchaikovsky was famous for, lacked a certain dance-like inflection (it is based on a Russian folk theme!). And the movements gentle coda with those opulent arabesques on woodwind, dragged a little, partially saved, however, by some beautifully co-ordinated wood-wind phrasing.

 

The Third movement ‘pizzicato ostinato’ was very disappointing, with no real lift to those rhythmic/dynamic contrasts; sounding really more like a run through. And despite some impressive contributions from wood-wind (especially piccolo) Tchaikovsky’s ‘tipsy Russian peasant’ in the trio, sounded far too tame…a bit too drunk perhaps to fully engage in the movements folk-like, slightly vulgar rhythmic inflections.

In many ways the ‘Allegro fuoco’ finale was overall quite impressive, with a genuinely exciting coda. But I did miss a certain bite in the lower brass, especially when they intone from the peasant refrain ‘in the fields there stood a birch’ (from Russian folklore). Also again, as in the dramatic development of the first movement, I would have welcomed a more pervasive rhythmic/dynamic thrust and tonal contrast (wood-winds and strings). So, to conclude; more an occasionally enjoyable but quite standard concert performance, rather than a performance that stays in the memory long-term.

 

 

 

Geoff Diggines

 

 

 

 



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