SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Tishchenko, Mahler: Tim Hugh (cello), London Symphony Orchestra, Valery Gergiev (conductor): Barbican Hall 22.11.07 (JPr)


I just want to complement John Leeman’s recent Gateshead review of Gergiev's Mahler 6 by commenting on the performance the next night at the Barbican in London. While in Gateshead the audience had the benefit of concentrating on the Mahler alone, in London – possibly because the revamped Barbican refreshment outlets needed patronage - we had a 20 minute cello concerto before an interval. Since, as you will read, the performance of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony was a fairly quick one the evening was not too long as a result. Much the same happened recently for the Philharmonia’s concert at the Royal Festival Hall (8 November) when for presumably the same reason, a totally superfluous Mozart Violin Concerto was performed before the Sixth. This was much longer at 30 minutes and the symphony did not begin for about an hour after the start of the concert, making it a much more drawn out evening due to a more languid performance.

Tishchenko's Cello Concerto No.1 is a work of the composer’s early twenties and dates from the time of his postgraduate studies with Shostakovich, and winning a first prize at the Prague Spring of 1966. Shostakovich later composed his own orchestration (1989) because he admired the work so much and later wrote: ‘I don't think he was terribly pleased, but the work gave me nothing but benefit and pleasure’. There is much that seems inspired by the teacher in this work; the cellist plays on his own for over a third of it  before the other instruments enter almost one at a time (there are strings and wind but no brass), and then there are insistent repeated figures or moments of brooding anxiety that punctuate the work's  single movement. Tim Hugh’s cello was quite aware of the music’s changing moods but he is LSO’s principal cellist and played more as one of the ranks rather than the work’s central focus, apart from his solo at the beginning. Also, in the Barbican Hall’s unforgiving acoustic his instrument seemed to have a rather thin, dry tone.

So to Gergiev’s Mahler:  immediately there is the problem;  we have to accept that we are indeed listening to the conductor’s interpretation of these very often performed works and that they are indeed open to re-interpretation every time they are played.  That is the point of going to concerts, of course: otherwise we might just stay at home with our CDs. Jack Diether in his notes for Bernstein's  first recording of this with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in 1967, wrote:  ‘To those who better understand Mahler, our world, and perhaps themselves, the work as a whole is exhilarating, not depressing. It is pre-eminently cathartic, just as the greatest tragedies of ancient Greece are cathartic.’ This performance was certainly all  that!

Mahler wrote to Bruno Walter about the Sixth saying, ‘What one composes is after all, the whole man (i.e. man feeling, thinking, breathing, suffering.) There would be no objection to a 'programme'  -  even though it is not precisely the topmost rung of the ladder – but then it must be a musician expressing himself in it … Anyone who is not a genius had better leave it alone, and anyone who is, need not worry about tackling anything he likes.’ The issue of a ‘programme’ arises in the Sixth because of the foreboding in the final movement that drains the psyche:  ‘It is the hero, on whom fall three blows of fate, the last of which fells him as a tree is felled’.

Calling Valery Gergiev a genius might be stretching things a little far but on the basis of the first two concerts in this cycle,  his Mahler cycle should not be short of interest and most likely will be extremely compelling. He is an intense and driven personality and is often reported as finishing discussions about future projects with the phrase ‘if I am alive’. He shares the stamina and compulsion to perform with that other great personality who also had his roots at the Kirov, the late Rudolf Nureyev. Gergiev's  Mahler is equally energetic, hard driven and relentless.

I enjoyed Gergiev's account of Mahler’s Third Symphony - which was widely condemned - because, unlike some, I am willing to accept the Russian influences on his readings, from Tchaikovsky through Stravinsky to Shostakovich. I have often written that as a man of the opera house, I am sure that Mahler would applaud a ‘can belto’ approach to his symphonies and therefore approve of the way Gergiev attacks them. It is his Mahler and it is my Mahler  - and I accept it may not be to everyone’s liking.

At the Festival Hall under Jukka-Pekka Saraste there was one approach, inner movements Scherzo-Andante, three hammer blow and the very slightly different ending. On that night, there was a greater sense of emotional extremes being explored leading to the inevitability of the ending. With Gergiev, we had  a reign of terror from beginning to end and going  with it meant accepting being beaten into submission and being content to expire:  because like Barrie’s Peter Pan says, ‘To die would be an awfully big adventure’.

Right from the tramping figures in the bass to the ‘tragic’ final chord the conductor urged on his responsive musicians - even occasionally dramatically with both feet in the air and losing contact with the podium. The London Symphony Orchestra often seemed to be playing at the very limit of their technique in all sections but without any cracks appearing in the ensemble. There was little repose anywhere and such as there was came from placing the Andante second;  but even there the brief excursions to the first movement’s alpine pastures came and went quickly as though we had flown over them in a jet fighter. With the Scherzo we were rushed off again,  more than complying to Mahler’s direction Wuchtig (Powerful) and via two (only) dull wooden thuds as the composer apparently wanted, arrived  at  the A minor chord and the tailing off of the music at the end.

Complaints?  Well, I couldn't  hear the cowbells in the first movement, though  I assume that there were some.  And revelations? One was Gergiev conducting with a stick -  I write ‘stick’ as I am not sure it was a baton. Back in 1998 for a performance of  this piece with the New York Philharmonic,  he conducted with a chopstick apparently, in honour of a friend in the audience. I don’t think I had seen him use anything but his hands before,  so perhaps using a chopstick has become a superstition with him? I was not close enough to see  clearly  what he used.

Jim Pritchard

 
This concert will be broadcast by  BBC Radio 3 on January 31st 2008. (Ed)