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Bartok, Mendelssohn and Brahms:  Daniel Hope (violin) London Symphony Orchestra, Daniel Harding (conductor) Barbican Hall London, 18.12. 2008 (GD)

Bartok:  Divertimento
Mendelssohn:  Violin Concerto No 2, in E minor, Op 64
Brahms: Symphony No 1, in C minor, Op 68


Harding opened tonight’s concert with very full-bodied rendition of Bartok’s Divertimento deploying  an almost full compliment of strings. Although Bartok wrote this piece in 1938 in the style of a classical concerto grosso for Paul Sacher’s chamber orchestra, a larger string deployment can work well, as demonstrated by conductors like Boulez, Dorati and Solti. But tonight there was an unrelenting hard-driven aspect to the whole performannce which for me,  totally missed Bartok’s rhythmic/tonal/lyrical diversity. The concertante interpolations sounded very strained under Harding’s tight rhythmic rein and there was also a certain hard, abrasive quality to the LSO strings which totally negated the flexibilty Bartok asks for in the string part writing.This was particularly evident in various contrapuntal sections in the first movement and the fugal section in the last movement, which sounded thick textured rather than lucid and clear as projected in the score. The wonderful funeral tones of the second movement lacked the depth of dislocation ( for Bartok symbolic of the dislocation and annihilation of Europe at the the time under fascism) which I still find so hauntingly realised in an old 1947 radio broadcast with Reiner and the reduced strings of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; a totally idiomatic performance which also displays Bartok.s Hungarian/Romanian folk dance inflections to the full, … a  quality also lacking  in tonight’s effort.

Daniel Hope has already recorded a performance of Mendelssohn’s original version of the E minor Violin Concerto in which he transposed the vioin line up an octave and composed a  more introspective, less flamboyant cadenza. Although the programme made no mention of it, this was also the version played tonight. As with the opening work there was a sense from both soloist and conductor of the concerto just being played through with precious little attention to the deft grace of the work with its many harmonic/rhythmic/lyricaL contrasts and nuances. I know that comparisons are ‘odious’ but whenever I hear a performance of this verdant work,  I go back to a one I heard a couple of years ago from the young Russian vioinist Alina Ibragimova with superb accompaniment from Sir Charles Mackerras. As I said in my review of that performance,  Ibragimova even surpassed masters of this work such as Milstein in her understanding of its fascinating array of  mercurial nuances and contrasts; all also sadly lacking  tonight.  Hope played the solo part quite competently but it all seemed to be delivered at one tonal/dynamic level and the phrasing in the ‘Andante’ for the most part sounded bland and  the finale was too rushed with much orchestral and solo detail smudged. Indeed,  throughout the whole work Harding too often drove the orchestra,  making them sound loud and strident and in the process sacrificing much of the work’s moments of  lyrical contrast especially in the ‘appassionato’ of the first movement. This will certainly count as one of the more ‘forgettable’ performances in my 2008 review legacy.

After a rather mannered and ponderous ‘un pocco sostenuto’,  Harding failed to make a smooth transition into the main ‘allegro’ of Brahm’s First Symphony. And although he opted for a thrusting rhythmic projection,  he didn’t maintain or sustain this throughout the stormy C minor exposition and development. Those abrubt cross-rhythm lower string figures   at the end of the exposition (which Toscanini understood so well) and which develop towards the movement’s Beethovenian climax simply failed to register.

Much of the ‘Andane Sostenuto’ was also bland both in dynamic articulation and phrasing; and the pp transition passage leading to the coda sounded more like mf…the LSO’s strings seemingly becoming incapable of sustaining a genuine pianissmo.  The intermezzo third movement was delivered in a rather four-square manner which didn’t begin to approach anything like  ‘ Grazioso’.

Although the the last movement’s exhilarating coda was played in a direct rhythmically taught way,  it didn’t emerge in a structural/organic way from the preceding “allegro non troppo’, sounding more grafted on, and out of kilter with the uncovincing deployment of rubato that  Harding adopted in the main ‘Allegro’. Also by the end of the symphony, as already noted in the Mendelsshon,  a certain hard, loud, strident tone (especially in the brass, strings and timpani) dominated the proceedings, leaving an unpleasant ringing tone in the ears and alien to the powerful,triumphant and noble tone Brahms intended.

Geoff Diggines


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