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Red Violin Festival 2 : Strauss, Stravinsky, Prokofiev Baiba Skride (violin), BBC National Orchestra of Wales / Thierry Fischer (conductor), St. David’s Hall, Cardiff, 4.02.2007 (GPu)

Richard Strauss, Till Eulenspiegel

Igor Stravinsky, Violin Concerto

Sergey Prokofiev, Romeo and Juliet, suite,

This was a well-designed musical triptych, with two opulently orchestrated and expansive works flanking an altogether sparer composition; two lavishly pictorial and programmatic works framing a tightly argued piece of abstract music.

While it would be unfair to describe the performance of Till Eulenspiegel which opened the concert as ‘routine’, it would perhaps be reasonable to say that it was marked by high professional competence than by any sense of compelling personal vision. It was as good as one feels entitled to expect from an orchestra and a conductor of this quality, but it didn’t have about it the air of necessity. Changes of tempo and dynamics were purposefully and precisely articulated as we were switched to and fro between detailed close-ups and wide-screen effects, as it were. There have been more boisterous Tills than this and some of his predecessors have been more fully characterised.

In a very fine performance of Stravinky’s Violin concerto the soloist was the young Latvian Baiba Skride. Her recordings of works by Mozart, Schubert and Haydn (see review) and concertos by Shostakovich and Janacek (see review) have, quite properly, attracted a good deal of favourable attention – the Shostakovich-Janacek recording was chosen as a disc of the month in these pages. She is indeed a considerable violinist. She has, as one has come to expect these days, great technical command; but more than that she has imagination and subtle musicianship. She is not – on the evidence of this concert – a flashy or showy player; there were no self-foregrounding histrionics, no mere flamboyance. Rather, her work was characterised by the seriousness (in the best sense) of her approach and by her obvious, and communicated, pleasure in what she was doing. She showed an equal alertness to both the wit and the lyricism of Stravinsky’s writing in the concerto, handling both with agility and delicacy. In the opening Toccata she voiced Stravinsky’s music with energy and brightness of tone; the dialogue of soloist and orchestra had real wit and verve, a humour by turns dry and relatively broad. The echoes of, allusions to, the musical language of the Baroque were clear but not overemphasised. The music is diverse and episodic, but this was a performance which – thanks to both soloist and conductor – located unifying patterns and had the momentum to ensure that everything held together in the far from simple trajectory from the dissonant chord (which opens each movement) to the consonance which closed the Toccata in an air of only slightly ironised triumph. In the second movement (Aria I) the darker central passage was played with such real intensity that the change of mood in the closing moments of the movement had genuine force. The third movement (Aria II) is a miniature masterpiece, as near to ‘Romanticism’ as the so-called neoclassical Stravinsky ever comes. It got a quite ravishing account here, in which the beautiful tone of Skride’s instrument – the Stradivarius ‘Wilhelmj’ violin of 1725 – was heard at its clearest. The orchestral strings are heard more forcefully in this movement, and the work of the strings of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in this movement complemented the elegant, expressive work of the soloist as attractively as the winds had in the previous two movements. In the closing Capriccio the complex opening was handled with authoritative clarity by Skride, and Fischer’s conducting ‘placed’ the oblique orchestral comments to great effect. The insistent ostinati were produced without any danger of mere doggedness and the syncopated rhythms soon had the foot tapping. It was a joy to be reminded once again of just what a fine concerto this is. The performance was part of the Red Violin Festival, of which Madeline Mitchell is the artistic director. In the programme for the Festival, Mitchell writes that “in Welsh to play the violin is can’ur ffidil (to sing the violin)”. Baiba Skride certainly sang – and ‘danced’ – the violin, making it very obvious why George Balanchine should have made use of this music for his ballet Balustrade in 1941.

The balletic associations of Stravinky’s concerto made an apt introduction to the work occupying the second half of the programme – a suite from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet. For this performance, Thierry Fischer had selected material from all three of the orchestral suites. So we heard ‘Montagues and Capulets’, ‘The Child Juliet’ and ‘Scene’ (The Street Awakens), all from Suite Two, ‘Madrigal’ from Suite One, ‘Dance’ (Suite Two), ‘Romeo and Juliet’ (Suite One), ‘Romeo and Juliet Before Parting’ (Suite Two), the ‘Death of Tybalt’ (Suite One), ‘Romeo and Juliet’s Tomb’, from Suite Two, and the ‘Death of Juliet’, from Suite Three. Prokofiev’s music has plenty of theatrical flair and fire, and some rich sentiment. But it always strikes me as a work of rhetoric rather than poetry, of cleverly made effects (which suit their purpose admirably), rather than a work which gets beyond gesture and evocation and into the realms of musical necessity. It has sometimes been called an orchestral showpiece and the term seems about right – insofar as one doesn’t apply it to works which make one ‘forget’ the orchestra in the experience of the music. It was certainly very well played by Fischer and his orchestra. Fischer is a master of orchestral colour and the various sections of the orchestra took their opportunities to shine eagerly and effectively. Rhythmically lithe, Fischer’s reading drove much of the music quite hard, but there was delicacy too. ‘Scene’ (‘The Street Awakens’) was very nicely shaped, with an attractive sense of growing alertness. The lower strings were very good in an account of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ which had abundant ardour and a certain emotional radiance; the long lines of ‘Rome and Juliet Before Parting’ were played with grace and affectionate dignity. The violence of the ‘Death of Tybalt’ was palpable, the percussion section fierce, powerful and precise. ‘The Death of Juliet’ prompted playing of real weight and gravity. For all the accomplishment of both playing and conducting, however, I remained unconvinced that this is really concert music of sufficient merit and substance to sustain the entire second half of a programme. It remains theatrical music, designed to support dancers and narrative, rather than offering a fully integrated musical argument. Fischer’s selection of pieces was a good one, but it didn’t  - by the very nature of the materials with which he was working – amount to a truly satisfying musical whole.

So, for various reasons, neither opening nor closing work was on quite the same level as the Stravinsky concerto performed between them, though they each had some pleasures to offer. Baiba Skride’s (and Fischer’s) reading of that concerto demonstrated its subtlety of design, both in detail and larger shape. Its economy of means, its relatively laconic way of proceeding made a vivid contrast with the orchestral opulence on either side of it, and made a very persuasive case for the proposition that less can be more. An excellent pre-concert talk by Stephen Walsh, Professor of Music at Cardiff University and author of the highly recommended Stravinsky: A Creative Spring 1882-1934 (1999) and Stravinsky: The Second Exile (2006), as well as The New Grove Stravinsky (2002) added to one’s pleasure in what was very much the musical centrepiece of this particular triptych.

Glyn Pursglove

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