SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Wagner, Elgar, Nielsen: Franz Bartolomey (Violincello), Wiener Philharmoniker, Sir Simon Rattle, Großer Musikvereinssaal, Vienna, 16.12.2007 (MBr)


In many ways this concert could have been a musical disaster; neither Elgar nor Nielsen are staples of the Vienna Philharmonic’s repertoire but with a magnetic and inspired Simon Rattle at the helm it was utterly convincing and magical. Whilst the Tristan Prelude and Transfiguration flow through the Viennese orchestra’s blood like a vintage wine growing ever finer with each tasting, Elgar’s Cello Concerto and Nielsen’s “Inextinguishable” represent polar antitheses. War – the First World War – inflect both of those works with a sense of foreboding and despondency and the Viennese players rose to the challenge superbly delivering both pieces with complete freshness in performances which were not what most people would be accustomed to, or even accept as orthodox.

The Tristan seemingly finds its way onto Rattle programmes in ever increasingly imaginative ways: In Philadelphia he coupled it with Henze – and here, too, it seemed the revolutionary work it is, even if the interpretation left much to be desired. Like many conductors one gets the feeling that Rattle inclines towards asserting the piece’s overt eroticism in defining a tempo which doesn’t hold to Wagner’s written bar lines. The bar pauses at the very opening were fluid rather than spontaneously pulsing (even convulsing), or quite literally what they should be; at the central climax Rattle, like so many conductors - including Carlos Kleiber, de Sabata and Furtwangler – merely rushes what should be a moment of ecstasy. Where were the timpani preluding this climax? But as divinely played as it was here, it worked its spell - in its usual way. Wagner, especially, defies the intervention of the conductor. As perhaps the two composers closing this concert might not.

The remainder, indeed, was stunning, a tribute to both conductor and orchestra. The first thing to say about this titanic performance of Elgar’s Cello Concerto was that it was as far from ‘English’ as I have ever heard. There is an assumption that Elgar does not travel – especially to Vienna – but hearing the Vienna Philharmonic play this work under Rattle’s glowing direction made one recall Wagner’s famous remark when asked by Queen Victoria (on a visit to raise funds for Bayreuth) what he thought of English composers: “I have yet to find one”, he said. Elgar, played as it was here, sounded nearer to Richard Strauss than ever – almost as if Elgar’s Alassio  (that composer’s homage to Strauss) were always underlying runes in his music just waiting to be revealed. And they played Elgar as if they were playing Strauss.

The sheer depth of the orchestral palate as Rattle and the orchestra uncovered it was astonishing to hear. If one did not already know it Rattle showed himself a conductor much nearer to the mantle of Furtwangler and Asahina than one might otherwise have thought. The sound from the orchestra came from the bottom upwards (as it always did with those two great conductors), with basses and cellos providing a bed of sonority from which everything else evolved, to be laid out in utter freshness (much as his new EMI recording of Mahler’s Ninth brings out that works underlying depth of sonority). The playing itself was remarkably tight and assured – perhaps because the soloist was the Vienna Philharmonic’s own principal cellist, Franz Bartolomey (orchestras often play uncommonly well for their own). With tempi much more attenuated than is the norm - the outer movements being several minutes longer than usual - the effect of the work’s death and mortality became much more exposed than is often the case. The opening recitative was highly dramatic, almost Brucknerian, the sheer resoluteness of the playing already looking towards the final movement’s menacing undertones. In the lower registers Bartolomey’s tone was as solid as I have heard in this concerto; only in the upper registers did he, at times, seem a little unsure of himself, perhaps reticent. This was a performance which seemed to spite what we know about the Elgar concerto (at least heard through English ears): nostalgia was underplayed, lyricism left with certainty off the heart-sleeve and the work’s sweetness seemingly in another country altogether. Tension never waned; this was simply a revelation.

As in many ways was the closing performance of Nielsen’s “Inextinguishable”, a symphony which the critic and musicologist Robert Simpson considered a minefield of misinterpretation for a conductor; he writes in his book Carl Nielsen: Symphonist that this symphony has “ features which can lead the exhibitionist conductor astray”, by which he meant in matters of tempo. Simon Rattle, however, has been conducting this symphony for many years – I recall the then young conductor giving a superlative performance in London with the Philharmonia Orchestra – and all that experience shone through in this magnificently paced reading which came very close to Nielsen’s own description of this symphony as one in which life is a force in itself (uudslkklelige). Often one felt this performance had an inexorable energy, palpably given a momentum which was written in the music rather than interpreted from it.

Contrast was a mainstay throughout – the first movement’s fierce tutti placing D minor against its flat seventh and heralding the closing movement’s battle between warring sections of the orchestra. Rattle got this balance perfect – unifying the symphony’s structure of seeming to be in a single movement (it is played without a pause although in four distinct movements). The poco allegretto was unusually light – almost Haydnesque – with textures beautifully luminous as captured by the Viennese players (woodwind were diaphanous here). The cantilena of the third movement had the Viennese violins playing in unison as if they were one and then the fire of the final allegro, so astonishing in its volatility. The dueling timpani, placed on either side of the orchestra, recalling the Mahlerian battle of the closing of his Third symphony, with pitch changes so skillfully wrought, brought the E major close to a majestic climax. Rattle, seen in some quarters as a conductor who can easily play the podium, galvanized the Vienna Philharmonic to playing of the highest caliber; at the same time, he refuted Simpson’s dictum that conductors can be led astray in this symphony.

Death, of a personal kind,  had brought me 5000 miles to Vienna from the snowy tundra of Vancouver Island; this concert, featuring a symphony written in 1916 at the height of the blood-thirstiness of the First World War and a concerto written in 1919 after that war’s blood soaked conclusion, proved to be a catharsis. If not rewriting the music that had prompted such inspirational composition (as war often can do), Sir Simon Rattle reinterpreted and brought a new perspective to it. Musically, and personally, it is the kind of concert a critic so rarely gets to hear.


Marc Bridle