SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Ravel and Shostakovich: London Philharmonic Orchestra Vladimir Jurowski (conductor) Jean-Yves Thibaudet (piano) Royal Festival Hall London 5. 3. 2008 (GD)

Ravel: Piano Concerto for Left Hand

Shostakovich: Symphony No 7 in C (Leningrad)


After waiting for 15 minutes from the scheduled opening of the concert, with no kind of apology, Jurowski initiated the  dark (spooky!) opening of the Ravel concerto with a barely audible contra bassoon solo. I had to strain my ears here; the opaque Festival Hall acoustic being only partially responsible. The following orchestral C major climax initiating the piano solo, and the three beats in a bar habanera-like dance theme with its exotically off-beat piano interjections,  were delivered here in a rather marmoreal manner with no sense of  rhythmic contrast between piano and orchestra.  It is truly remarkable that the 1937 recording of the premiere with Paul Wittgenstein (for whom the concerto was written) and the Concertgebouw Orchestra under Bruno Walter,  actually reveals and projects far more ; in fact all the qualites lacking in tonight's performance.  In itself the playing of Jean-Yves Thibaudet was often magificent (particularly the solo cadenza) with  an almost Mozartian delicacy But I didn’t really hear any congruence  or dialogue between pianist and conductor/orchestra. Both  conductor and soloist ultimately failed to imbue the concerto with  Ravel’s quirky, mildly erotic, almost jazz-like ambience. The brass was often too loud, obscuring important woodwind and string figurations. And the dazzlingly abrubt and quasi-triumphant finale simply failed to strike the right note of concluding surprise here.

Orchestral playing and balance improved in the opening of Shostakovich’s ‘Leningrad’ symphony where Jurowski obtained an excellent balance between woodwind and strings. The optimistic ‘ceremonial’ diatonic C major opening (on strings with brass interjections)  was articulated in a crisp rhythmically precise manner; Jurowski emphasising the ‘symphonic’ and objective features of what can sound a very rhetorical symphonic statement. But by the time Jurowski reached the climax of the huge crescendo initiated by the distant side drum rhythm, which forms the main mid-section ‘Allegretto’, I was left wondering how objective this symphony should sound. After all,  Shostakovich made it very clear that this symphony is not only a homage to Leningrad (St Petersburg), his city of birth, but a dedication to the people of Leningrad, their endurance and heroic refusal to capitulate to the Hitler/Nazi invasion and brutal occupation/siege of the city in 1941-2. With that, Hitler had intended to annihilate the whole city and its people.

In the greatest performances of this work, those from Mravinsky, Kondrashin, and Toscanini (who led the first American performance in New York in 1942) one has a sense of panic , mass suffering and heroic determination combined. Tonight I had more a sense of hearing an exercise in good well balanced orchestral execution. While the LPO’s excellent woodwind playing managed to ‘balance through’ the huge crescendo,  I heard, or felt, none of the frisson and tension invoked in hugely different ways by the recorded performances mentioned and in quite a few concert performances.

After Jurowski’s ‘objective’ but rather light-weight rendition of the first movement,  the ‘Moderato (poco allegretto) flow of the second movement was held up by some over fussy phrasing and highlighting of certain detail (especially in the woodwind) at the expense of the contour of the whole. Jurowski also  made some unnecessary and unmarked ritardandos, particularly in the contrasted triple-time central section. The ‘attacca’ ‘Adagio’ was played in a more suitably straight-forward manner with notably excellent woodwind and string contributions in the chorale and in the recitativo opening and recurring sequence. But this initial excellence was marred by the first trumpet's failure to articulate his dazzling flourish at the end of the movements climax properly : this parodies (in pungent chromatic form)  the opening's chorale andrecitative passages. The hushed introduction to the finale with its beautifully mysterious songlike violin melody lacked all sense of expectancy and mystery tonight and was played in a somewhat prosaic manner. By the time C minor was eventually established, after the ominous (foreboding) punctuation of significant motivic fragments at the start of the allegro proper,  I heard little of that underlying mood of  expectant conflict. Instead, I  heard only cleanly articulated notes and the contrapuntal rhythmic energy of the main allegro sounded more like an exercise in orchestral virtuosity.

The final massive grim and triumphant peroration, where the main theme from the first movement arises phoenix-like from the former ashes (Leningrad saved and rebuilt?) had no sense of ultimate power in reserve, mostly  sounding merely loud with little anticipation of accumulated tension unleashed. Jurowski used extra brass (mainly horns, trombone and trumpets) at the back of the orchestra in the choir area; the players standing to play at cardinal moments as in this final. I am not sure of the point of this apart from a certain sensational, showy piece of theatrical projection. Having  seen/heard far more compelling performances from the likes of  Rozhdestvensky, and Masur at a prom from 2006 with the French National Orchestra, I recall that neither found it necessary to deploy such gimmicks

Rather than deploying this gimmicky extra brass, Jurowski might usefully have spent more time trying to find and convey the very poignant meaning which Shostakovich intended to transpire from the written notes,  to capture in musical form the beginning of one of the most momentous events in the troubled history of the 20^th century.

Geoff Diggines 


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