I listened via I-Player to the performance by Haitink and the LSO of Bruckner 4, which I thought was really excellent – there’s also an LSO video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00JMlBYgc7k is the 4th movement. IMHO, Bruckner is a tricky mix of Schubert, Wagner and God: if you produce a sound that’s too lyrical and light, or too frenetic and pulled around, or too portentous and heavy, it doesn’t fully work. Haitink’s performance seemed to get those elements very well balanced. The first movement was an ideal example of the ‘right tempi’ being used – perhaps in part because Haitink at 90 is not – and anyway never was – a podium dictator, and so allows the music to flow naturally and build up into climaxes without exaggeration or undue emphasis – you just get a sense of someone who conveys pleasure in the music to his orchestra, and that is also conveyed by how the different sections of the orchestra respond to each other in , say, the slow movement. Quite a slow pulse in the first movement, and in the second a surprisingly swift one, but again, sounding absolutely ‘right’. In the first movement I noted a couple of orchestral fluffs, suggesting H’s beat might be getting a bit hard to read, but in general the orchestra sounded amazing, particularly the horns and brass. The fourth movement, again, I thought was absolutely right in tempo, to give both the impression of mystery and endless space and silence where needed, and also the necessity of onward momentum – the handling of the music around 2.hr 13 mins on I-Player was especially fine, and from 2.32 onwards. I went – I think I mentioned it a few emails ago – to a very fine Bruckner 4 at the Proms three years ago with the Berlin Staatskapelle and Barenboim. I wouldn’t have said the Haitink performance was better, but it was in the same, very considerable, league. I remember DB doing something extraordinary with soft string chords towards the end so that they sounded like the ticking of a clock – Bruckner was an OCD sufferer, and VERY keen on clocks – and it gave the whole ending an extra doom-laden feel up to the final triumphant blaze of sound.
Later in the week, I went to Haitink’s Mahler 4 at the Barbican. I had heard a very beautiful, but ultimately not very engaging, performance by Daniele Gatti and the Amsterdam Concertgebouw at the Proms a couple of years ago, and after the performance I was asking myself – why was this unengaging? And likewise, after the magnificent Haitink Mahler 4 last Thursday, I asked myself – why was this so much better as a performance, with two equally fist rate orchestras involved? What exactly was it that makes the difference? I think it has something to do with telling a story, being objective and not getting too bogged down in ‘sound for sounds sake’. The Haitink performance was definitely showing the interplay of lightness and darkness in our lives through the music, and somehow the instruments – the burbling clarinets, the jaunty flutes – were part of telling that story, as were the dynamics (very, very quiet at the beginning of the slow movement and even quieter at the end of the finale) rather than ‘creating something beautiful’. That was particularly the case in the first movement which starts off happily and simply, and gets darker as the movement proceeds, It was the vividness of characterisation that was particularly telling here, the LSO and Haitink gradually drawing the listener ever deeper into the symphony’s interior world. There’s something too about allowing a measure of freedom to your players so that the conductor is setting a framework rather than seeking to dictate the interpretation of every detail. The first half of the concert was a lively, sensitive account of Dvorak’s Violin Concerto, with Isabelle Faust (a frequent Haitink collaborator – there was a Prom a couple of years ago where she performed a Mozart VC with him) and very characterful woodwind playing in particular. I guess it might be the last time I ever see the old boy – I have been going to listen to him conducting since the late 60’s, so he has been part of my life for a long time. I still have an LP of his performances of Mahler 3 and Mahler 8 from the 60s. More recently I heard him with the VPO in Mahler 9 – about 10 years ago at the Proms – and a very memorable Mahler 3 a couple of years back also at the Proms. Mahler 4 was something I really grew up with, that defined my adolescence. Saying goodbye to Haitink meant saying goodbye to a bit of my felt experience over 50 years.
And a busy April too…..Nielsen 5, The Magic Flute, Parsifal Act 3, Tippett Piano Concerto…….
The Halle concert featuring Nielsen 5 was conducted by Johannes Debus – not heard of him before – and also had the excellent Pavel Kolesnikov playing a sensitive account of the Mozart Piano Concerto No 22. The account of Nielsen 5 was the first one I’d heard which really made sense – where sequences followed one to the other logically, and the work had a cumulative power – I grew up knowing and loving Nielsen 4 but never quite understood the 5th as well – so this was a memorable occasion for me
The Magic Flute was at ENO and was one I’d seen before – with the artists and engineers at the side drawing some of the stage design and doing sound effects visible to the audience as the work proceeds. I enjoyed it hugely – the undoubted star was Lucy Crowe, whose voice soared across the orchestra and filled the very large spaces of the Coliseum effortlessly. Thomas Oliemans was a well-projected Papageno , and there was luxury casting with Brindley Sherratt as Sarastro. The one disappointment was Julia Bauer, whose Queen of the Night seemed a bit effortful and small-voiced
I rushed up to Edinburgh to help my younger daughter pack her things before leaving for Cuba, but in the middle of that took a train to York, and over-nighted, to go to Evensong at York Minster and then attend a performance of the Prelude to Act 1 and the whole of Act 3 of Parsifal with Mark Elder and the Halle. What most impressed me about the performance was Nicky Spence’s Parsifal – I hadn’t realised his voice could be that strong and sensitive. Elder’s complete Parsifal at the Proms in 2013 was one of my great listening experiences of the last two decades. Here, the acoustics of the Cathedral got in the way rather badly – even though I was sitting near the front, it all sounded very muddy and the singers sounded as though they were in a different space altogether. Gábor Bretz was Gurnemanz – not that memorable and occasionally submerged by the orchestra. Michael Kraus was a good Amfortas. It must be said though that the ending, with the Hallé Choir, singers from the Royal Northern College of Music and the University of York, resonated beautifully in the Minster and the whole event seemed worth it for the last 10 minutes, which radiates a peace achieved artistically at the end of a turbulent, sometimes unbelievable, life.
After Easter, I really enjoyed hearing Tippett’s Piano Concerto – Steven Osborne, Andrew Davis, BBC Philharmonic – I’d never heard the work before but found it extremely approachable, in his Midsummer Marriage rather than later phase, and I immediately went and bought an MP3 recording.
John's musical journey 