Richard Strauss: Don Juan, Burleske, Also sprach Zarathustra: Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Andris Nelsons conductor, Rudolf, Buchbinder, piano
All the paeans of praise about this great orchestra from last night are equally applicable again tonight. A few points I perhaps missed out:
- The clarity and precision of the orchestral sound, even in very dense passages. In these complex scores, with many different things happening on different instruments at once, it was extraordinary how much you could hear of the individual lines, particularly in Also Sprach Zarathustra
- At the same time, unlike, say, Rattle occasionally, the clarity and beauty of line did not get in the way of drama and pushing the music forward when it needed to be – the blend seemed to me just right, and we didn’t move in to ‘beauty at all costs’ territory
There was so much to enjoy in this second concert – in Don Juan, the rush of the strings at the start, the glorious sound of the horns in their big tune in that piece, and the sheer strength and passion of the strings when they repeat the horn theme at the climax of the work, plus the beauty of the oboe in the second love scene, for instance.
Burleske is not a work I know – apparently, it’s an early piece originally written when Strauss was 21 and after various revisions eventually published in 1894. It became eventually one of his favourite works, and he programmed it in his last concert in London with the Philharmonia Orchestra in September 1947, along with Don Juan, the Symphonia Domestica and the waltzes from Der Rosenkavalier. I can’t say I would particularly welcome a second hearing but it’s a pleasant enough piece and Rudolf Buchbonder dashed it off with brilliance although with also what sounded to me like quite a small tone. His encore was a piece elaborating music from Die Fledermaus, I am not quite sure by who. I wonder what Yuja Wang, originally down to play the Burleske, would have made of the piece?
Also Sprach Zarathustra received the most engaging performance I’ve heard live. It’s always seemed to me a rather poor cousin of Ein Heldenleben, Don Quixote, the Alpine Symphony and even the Symphonia Domestica – without the melodic invention of these works and much ‘bittier’ in some ways. But the brilliance of the orchestra engaged me more than I ever have been before as I listened to the piece unfolding, and the sequences, and how they fit together, made more sense.
All in all these two concerts have been terrific. As the Times reviewer said this morning “In the way that the starving man dreams of roast dinners with all the trimmings, so in the endless Covid winter a visit from an orchestra like the Leipzig Gewandhaus with huge romantic works was the sort of thing that classical music lovers fantasised about.”. And now it’s come true! My only slight grouse is that those promoting the tours of these big European orchestras seem to have a short memory of what they have played in the same venue previously. In the case of the Leipzigers, it didn’t bother me because I wasn’t there for it, but Chailly and the Leipzig Orchestra played Don Juan, Also Sprach Zarathustra and Ein Heldenleben in 2015; it seems strange to be doing the same pieces 7 years and only 1 visit later. Similarly I note that the Berlin Philharmonic is performing Mahler 7 at the Proms with Kirill Petrenko, yet it is only ?6 years since Rattle and the BPO performed this work. Strange….
John's musical journey 