SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Wagner: Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Mihoko Fujimura (mezzo-soprano), Mariss Jansons (conductor) Royal Festival Hall London 8.3.2008 (JPr)


I am almost certain that when people make decisions at the end of the 2008 about ‘concerts of the year’ this will undoubtedly be one of them for some.  Unfortunately that is not so for me: perhaps I had looked forward too much to the first complete concert of Wagner ‘bits and pieces’ to be put on in one of London's concert halls for very many years.

Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream’ is about to be put back on show in Oslo after being painstakingly restored from being pulled out of its frame and stolen in 2004 and  after this concert I will need to go to Germany (as I shall) to have some Wagnerian restoration myself. We were supposedly in safe hands with the renowned Mariss Jansons in charge of Munich’s celebrated Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra so what went wrong? Firstly, the programme was an insult to anyone not devotees of Classic FM.  I have avoided the term ‘bleeding chunks’ until now, but this Wagner was more like Osiris being chopped up by Set and his followers in the ancient legend, with the bits being strewn throughout Egypt.

Why did the Tannhäuser Overture open the first half and the Bacchanale come immediately after the interval?  Götterdämmerung’s Siegfried’s Rhine Journey was split from the hero’s Funeral Music by the Lohengrin Act III Prelude. (And yes you've guessed it; the Act I Lohengrin prelude was played towards the end of the concert.) The only thing particularly special about the Rhine Journey was that programme note described it as a version prepared by Mariss Jansons. Most other versions include ‘Dawn’ as here but all that he has done in addition to that is to smooth out a cut that is often so brutal that it seems Siegfried wakes up and  leaps straight onto a motor boat to head off down the river. The concert had no Meistersinger, no Parsifal and no Tristan apart from the themes used in the Wesendonck Lieder. There was no sense whatever of Wagner’s development either, as most music came from around the fourteen middle years in his composing life.

The thing that this concert reminded me most of was Vienna’s New Year’s Day  Strauss gala. Like their Viennese counterparts, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra is perhaps over-familiar with this music. They have some obviously wonderful soloists and the orchestral blend is warm, mellow and refined, the brass refulgent and the woodwind exquisite, but the valiant violins were undone by the Royal Festival Hall's  newish acoustics. While the castanets and harp could be heard from the middle of the hall as though they were standing immediately front of you during the Bacchanale, the upper strings sound was dampened. The exposed sustained strings at the opening of the Lohengrin Act I Prelude sounded fine but only because they were playing alone.  This acoustic swamping should be addressed as soon a possible by the South Bank Board.

A leading critic on BBC Radio 3 has recently criticized the London Symphony Orchestra’s Mahler by saying that they do not have ‘Mahler in [their] blood’ and wondering why audiences are prepared to go to see Gergiev ‘discovering Mahler.’  Here, would much have preferred to be finding something new in the Wagner I was hearing for the umpteenth time,  than performances so smooth that I could have stayed at home and put on my choice of CDs or DVDs. As a Latvian,  Mariss Jansons is perhaps a more Europeanized Russian than his Ossetian colleague at the Barbican but Gergiev’s recent Tristan Prelude and Liebestod with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra brought me the true feeling for the music more than any item on this ‘Wagner Night’ programme. To see Jansons with hands at his side jogging on the podium during Lohengrin’s ‘Wedding March’ did nothing to dispel the feeling that the maestro was enjoying something like a well earned night off.

Mihoko Fujimura was the soloist for the Wesendonck Lieder – which are
strictly not so much Wagner as the work of Felix Mottl's orchestrations of earlier piano or chamber versions. Her mezzo voice is mostly a technically stunning instrument, her floating of ‘Luft’ and ‘Duft’ particularly in Im Treibhaus and the descent of ‘sinken’ nearer the end of Träume were moments of vocal perfection. Yet while she made some pretense of dramatizing every song,  there was a disappointing emotional detachment from each of them such that she did not appear to have their meaning in her soul. The best was Schmerzen,  where she shared some of the feelings of ‘life and death’ but still not from very deep within her. The worst was Träume where there were fleeting intonation problems and disappointingly choppy phrases in which she was indulged by her conductor. She had also earlier been challenged by the intense opening of Stehe still! - and however beautiful some of the sound she produced was - I struggled to hear many of the German words until about halfway through it.

The ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ from Die Walküre was the last ‘official’ item on the programme and was played with incandescent gusto yet perversely including some outstandingly delicate – and prominent - cymbal work - it’s those acoustics again! I had expected this to be the Radetsky March encore to The Blue Danube but unfortunately no encore - though there was music on the stands for one - was ever played. I wonder what it was?  After the Valkyries,  the members of the orchestra turned to each other European fashion  and shook hands, job done.

Jim Pritchard


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