SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

SEEN AND HEARD UK CONCERT REVIEW  


Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms: Maria João Pires (piano), Philharmonia Orchestra, Christoph von Dohnányi, Royal Festival Hall, London, 30.6.2009 (GDn)

Beethoven: Egmont Overture Op.84

Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 27 in B flat Major K.595

Brahms:Symphony No. 2 in D Major Op.73


Is it possible to ever get sick of Beethoven? The Philharmonia Orchestra are currently in the process of finding out. Their last ten concert programmes have included five Beethoven works and, on the evidence of this evening’s Egmont Overture, Beethoven-fatigue has well and truly set in. Ensemble and intonation were adequate (but not even close to the standards that Salonen has recently achieved with the same forces), and the performance was stylistically coherent. But the orchestra’s palpable lack of enthusiasm made the whole work a laborious listen. It wasn’t a bad performance, so much as a frustratingly indifferent one, and a general feeling of apathy towards Beethoven’s dramatic and structural aims outweighed the occasional elegant details that could otherwise have redeemed it.

Interpretive constraint was also in evidence in the performance of Mozart’s 27^th Piano Concerto with Maria João Pires, but here it served the music magnificently. The concerto (which was the composer’s last) is an insubstantial affair, the lack of bravura virtuosity in the solo part has led modern scholars to speculate that it was written for one of Mozart’s pupils. An interpretive challenge then: how to communicate the composer’s ever-present elegance and depth in a work so bereft of surface level pointers. Many pianists would (and do) take this music to extremes, exaggerating the contrasts of dynamics and articulation and emphasising the contours of the melodic line at the expense of all other musical concerns. Pires, to her credit, takes a more modest approach. Her touch is quite firm, and most passages are performed with a light legato that allows detachment between the notes without compromising the melodic continuity. But she is not pedantic about this transparency and is occasionally willing to subsume the individual notes of a run or ornament into rounder sustained textures, from which a counter subject or melodic transition can emerge with renewed clarity. The orchestra followed suit, accompanying the piano’s cleanly articulated textures with similarly chaste classical figurations, but occasionally relaxing the formality to allow the more lyrical passages to sing and the modest climaxes to structure the movements.

Brahms has been another regular in the Phiharmonia’s summer season, but against the odds, and in marked contrast to the Beethoven, the orchestra are managing to keep it fresh. The same provisos about ensemble and intonation apply, but they detract far less in a performance that is otherwise characterised by passion and commitment. Christoph von Dohnányi treats the 2^nd Symphony as an organic entity, finding inner life in the musical progression of each passage and connecting succeeding musical ideas as if one had grown seamlessly from the last. His tempi are often on the fast side, especially in the middle movements, but retain a subtle flexibility that allows the music this sense of inner life. The detailed notation of the score is no hindrance to the sense of spontaneity in this music making, and Brahms’ carefully prescribed phrases and articulations texture and shape the performance without ever compromising the music’s direct emotional appeal. Perhaps this is how Mahler conducted Brahms, observing every detail of the score but without succumbing to pedantry, respecting tempo indications while always allowing phrases the rubato they need to breathe, and most importantly of all, basing the interpretation on the musical logic of the score without imposing any preconceived aesthetic or artistic principles. Dohnányi’s Brahms comes straight from the heart, and I like it, I like it a lot.

Gavin Dixon