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Strauss, Maazel and Sibelius: James Galway (flute), Philharmonia Orchestra / Lorin Maazel (conductor), St. David’s Hall, Cardiff, 4.4.2009 (GPu)

Richard Strauss, Till Eulenspiegel
Lorin Maazel, Music for Flute and Orchestra
Sibelius, Symphony No.2


This was one of a series of concerts marking the fiftieth anniversary of Lorin Maazel’s association with the Philharmonia Orchestra. The precocious Maazel began his career as a conductor, remarkably enough, at the age of 8, conducting a university orchestra. At the age of 12 he conducted the New York Philharmonic and by the time he was 15 he was conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra! Given the talent of which such a story speaks and of the enormous wealth of ensuing experience (Maazel was born in March of 1930), it is hardly surprising that Maazel brings to everything that he does (he is also an accomplished violinist) a very high degree of sheer musical knowledge and competence, a vivid sense of orchestral colour, a very well developed sense of instrumental characteristics and possibilities, as well as a profound sense of the nature of musical structures.

All of these many virtues were plentifully in evidence at this concert. Immediately, in the very opening of Till Eulenspiegel, one was aware of the sheer polish of the performance, of the particular sheen on the string sound and of the precision of Maazel’s control of questions of orchestral balance. This was an exemplary display of a particular kind of high orchestral competence and certain passages were far more even than that – notably the judgement and sentencing of Till, and the high register passage for clarinet which seems to evoke the tightening of the noose around Till’s neck. But elsewhere the sheer polish seemed to have been achieved at the expense of other dimensions of the music – this was not a Till very abundantly endowed with a sense of mischievous humour and we were a very long way, here, from any sense of a truly popular folk hero; this was a very sophisticated Till.

Maazel’s compositions have met with a mixed critical reception and this concert gave listeners in Wales chance to form an opinion of one the set of three compositions for solo instrument and orchestra which Maazel wrote in the mid-1990s, one for cello (written for Rostropovich), this for flute (composed with James Galway in mind) and one for violin. When all three were recorded later in the same decade with the Symphonie Orchester der Bayerischen (on RCA), Rostropovich and Galway played the solo parts in the first two works and Maazel himself was the solo violin in the third (with Arthur Post as conductor). The Music for Flute and Orchestra (which is listed as Maazel’s Opus 11) is in five sections, played without a break but clearly demarcated and is better though of as a suite than a concerto in anything like the classical sense. The opening section (‘Comodo’) has an attractively airy opening and is largely built around a dialogue between flute and tenor tuba, the first of many unexpected, and often very effective, juxtapositions of instruments which characterise the work and which pay testimony to Maazel’s highly developed ear in such matters. The second section (‘Playfull’) does what it says on the tin, in passages of mild revelry and impishness; the third, (‘Languid’) is structured around the interplay of flute, tenor tuba (again), bass clarinet and cello, and is a kind of chamber piece for that quartet, with orchestral accompaniment and commentary (a looser kind of concerto gross, I suppose). There’s a pleasantly dreamy quality to this section, with some lush effects cushioning the musical conversation of the ‘concertino’ group (with the flute always dominant). In ‘Song’ a wistful – and rather beautiful - melody is carried by the flute, before a virtuoso cadenza, in which the flute is accompanied by some exotic percussion sounds (including South American rain sticks or rain tubes) lead into the final section, simply headed ‘Finale’. Here a theme announced by the flute is subjected to variations by piano, tuba, xylophone and rototoms. From this description it will, I trust, be clear that the work is not lacking in colour. Indeed, as a study in shifting orchestral textures, as an exploration of how the sound of the flute might be affected, as it were, by changes in its instrumental background, the work has much to recommend it. There are many intriguing and pleasing effects; one is left less sure as to whether there are underlying emotional or intellectual ‘causes’ that require those particular effects. But it would be churlish to say other than that the work makes for some twenty minutes of pleasant, and sometimes quite striking, listening. James Galway played with characteristic panache and commitment, the conductor (naturally enough!) was able to paint the work’s colours with particular vividness. Though it was hardly music of great profundity, this was certainly a work that entertained and intrigued.

After the interval, a performance of the second Symphony of Sibelius perhaps brought out most clearly the strengths and limitations of Maazel’s conducting. There was a very impressive sense of the work’s architecture; the blending and balancing of orchestral sections was done with consummate certainty of touch; the last movement’s triumphant conclusion was played with great and radiant beauty. But there were also moments when one felt a certain lack of emotional depth; there were passages where one felt that a few more risks might have been taken, where sleekness predominated over grainier, more emotionally expressive textures. At the beginning of the second movement, for example, the remarkable moment when the bassoons offer their mournful thoughts above the pizzicato basses and cellos was too much like a brilliant study in orchestral texture and too little like the eerie, tense anxiety that the music seems to speak of. Certainly I have heard accounts of this passage far fuller of a kind of psychological intensity and trepidation. The argument against my implicit criticism might, I suppose, be that the relative impersonality of Maazel’s approach avoids the tendency to make the symphony too autobiographical in its ‘meanings’, a tendency which can also be decidedly limiting. It is, ultimately, a matter of taste. There are times when I can imagine preferring the Maazelian approach – but this wasn’t quite one of them, much as I admired the way he paced this movement. Certainly, too, the latter part of the movement had real dignity and gravitas – though, again, it perhaps achieved this at the cost of some of the inconsolable pain that some conductors have found in the music.

The vivacissimo of the third movement was played with marvellous scurrying energy; this was a finely tuned orchestral machine operating at high efficiency, the music breathless and headlong, save for the nicely phrased interjections by the woodwind. Equally well played was the oboe solo in the Trio. In the Finale one had a sense of a movement that was more like a piece of fine architecture than an organic growth. Sections were clearly delineated, and an irresistible sense of certainty was carefully built, rather than one feeling that one passage emerged from and into the next. The famous peroration to the movement had its full quota of the epic and the optimistic, the work of the Philharmonia glorious in its assurance. This was a distinctive reading of the symphony. I didn’t, finally, find it a completely satisfying reading, but I was glad to have heard it and glad, too, to be present at one of the ongoing tributes to maestro Maazel, who, it is pleasing to report, shows few signs of slowing down. His work is not to everyone’s taste, and I have my reservations about it; but of his consummate musicianship and the perfection with which he pursues his particular musical vision there can be no doubt.

Glyn Pursglove


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