SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Elgar: Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85
Tchaikovsky: Manfred Symphony (After Byron), Op. 58

Although Isserlis played with his usual sensitivity and tonal finesse for the most part, I had the distinct impression tha tsoloist and conductor were simply not together at crucial moments, or, to put it more accurately, they seemed to have polarised interpretative views. Insufficient rehearsal time perhaps? What ever it was, it didn't show Ashkenazy as a particularly skilled concerto accompanist. This late work ,as one of the composer’s most economical major orchestral pieces, is full of the most meditative and intimate passages, but Ashkenazy demonstrated little awareness of these crucial aspects, often playing them in a too loud and/or insensitive manner. One example was in the first movement’s lyrical middle section, initiated by clarinets, and taken up by the soloist. Elgar indicates a 12/8 metre quite unambiguously here but Ashkenazy simply failed to register this, leaving Isserlis with no real foundation from which to develop his theme as it blossoms into the major mode.The orchestral tutti passages sounded strident and coarse too, rather than conveying Elgar's famous  'nobilmente' register with ludicrously loud brass and timpani: totally alien to the works almost Schumannesque sense of power from within the concertos restrained but trenchant repose. The lively second movement G major  Scherzo only just hung together, with Isserlis doing his best to secure a semblance of structural coherence. But the central and affecting B flat 'adagio' did give Isserlis a chance to imbue the performance with some eloquent phrasing, which made its full effect in the solo cello recitative in B flat minor at the beginning of the last movement. Here however, Ashkenazy seemed blind to the 'non troppo' in the main 'allegro' marking, racing through the movement and missing much crucial detail - ignoring the metrical transition to 3/4, just before the coda was just one example, Again Isserlis was left to make his own way ( just about) to the punctual and aptly abrubt  coda; unidiomatically bashed out by the orchestra with crudely loud timpani. 

As an encore Isserlis played a characteristically nuanced and aptly poised rendition  the Catalonian folk tune 'The Song of the Birds'. A favourite of the great Casals.

After Tchaikovsky eventually - and reluctantly - took up Balakirev's suggestion to compose a grand work based on Byron's poem Manfred, the result became the 'Manfred Symphony'...really  four tone poems with shared 'idée fixe' motives. The composer came to loathe the work, especially the kitsch hollow bombast of the last movement, complete with its inverted bathos in the coda's contrived religiosity and sanctimonious organ embellishments. Balakirev's selections from the poem reveal a rather sentimental romantic take on the work, stressing the anti-hero’s subjective metaphysical angst and gloom, repleat with Alpine witches, fairies and infernal bacchanalian orgies. This approach misses the black irony and humour of Byron's poem dealing, as it does, with sexual ambiguities, themes probably too close to  Tchaikovsky's own experience for comfort. Conductors who have championed the work, including Toscanini and Rozhdestvensky, have seen fit to make substantial cuts to it, especially the ponderously contrived fugal section in the middle of the inflated last movement bacchanal. Left uncut, this often sounds like an old fashioned academic has intruded into a  orgy and then seated himself on the mountain of human skulls to deliver a lecture in counterpoint!

Ashkenazy was obviously more 'at home'with this score than with the Elgar Concerto. Overall he managed to instil a semblance of structural coherence on the work. I say 'semblance' because in certain sections, the Astarte theme ( representing Manfred's lost love) in the second movement was rushed unnecessarily. But he did manage to bring out some distinctive and balletically elegant woodwind phrasing, in this movement and elsewhere, although I am not sure whether some of the speeding up in the gallop' theme in the last movement was a shortcoming or a blessing.

Even allowing for Ashkenazy's virtues, I was left with the overall sense that the performance lacked dramatic conviction. And dramatic conviction, of the kind Toscanini found in the work, is essential if the music is to make any impression at all. Here I am thinking of the opening quasi-canonic B minor  chorale-like woodwind with crunching string recitatives. It all sounded a tad bland, not helped by a lack of real tonal sonority and weight in the Philharmonia strings or the fact that the rather contrived '1812' like coda to  the first movement sounded rushed and scrambled.

The third movement, depicting folk life in the mountains, had a nice 'rustic' sounding lilt but not even the most perceptive conducting talent can make much of the over melodramatic intrusion of the Manfred 'fate' motive at the end of the movement. Ashkenazy probably managed as well as is possible.

As might be expected in our 'completist' culture, Ashkenazy included the contrived fugal section (already mentioned) in the last movement, but no matter how convincingly this is conducted (and Ashkenazy certainly did try to make it relate to the to the rest of the movement )  it still sounds ponderous, almost laughable... perhaps its only merit!  The over self-critical Tchaikovsky probably got it right here. He came to hate the movement so much that it made him feel sick just to be reminded of it. But no such critical sensitivities afflicted the audience at this concert: they offered rapturous applause to both work and performance.

Geoff Diggines