Anton Webern, Passacaglia, Op. 1; Six Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 6 (revised version, 1928); Claude Debussy, Ariettes oubliées arr. Brett Dean; Johannes Brahms, Symphony No. 2 in D major: Siobhan Stagg, soprano; Australian World Orchestra, Zubin Mehta, conductor
This was a very enjoyable concert. I only went to it because I had an evening to spare in London before setting off for Bayreuth the following day, but I am really glad to have gone.
The ‘Australian World Orchestra’ is a new one on me and a slightly daft name – but it has apparently been a going concern for at least 10 years. It is a collection of Australian musicians from all over the world coming together for ad hoc tours in the summer, and a pretty impressive bunch they are – many of the main German orchestras (Leipzig, Munich, Koln etc), the LA Phil, the Chicago Symphony, San Franciscom LSO/LPO/Philharmonia/BBC Symphony and leading Australian orchestras are represented among the players. They’re a big orchestra and this was their first UK tour – they sounded very fine, with a warm string tone, some beautiful woodwind and horn playing, and together a real ’heft ‘and weight of orchestral sound that sounded particularly fine in the Brahms.
I guess I must have seen Mehta conduct in concerts over the years, perhaps with the Israel Philharmonic, but the last memorable live event that I went to which I know he conducted was the famous production of La Fanciulla del West at ROHCG in 1979, with Domingo. I would not have been particularly excited in advance by the prospect of his conducting Brahms, but this concert proved me wrong!! He now looks very frail –he is after all in his mid-80’s – and has a Haitink-like black walking stick and a seat at the podium, which he moves very slowly towards from the wings. But once seated he is fully in control and with few gestures gives the orchestra all the signals and impetus they need
The two Webern pieces sounded very well done. I have never forgotten Simon Rattle’s grouping about 10 years ago in a BPO Prom of the Webern 6 pieces alongside comparable works by Schoenberg and Berg with the request that we listen to these works ‘as though to a Mahler symphony’. And that is of course exactly the world they inhabit, albeit with an increasing abstraction that is sometimes seemingly far removed from Mahler’s intensely personal writing, and at other times seem simply an expressionist extension of it. I must listen to these beautiful works more often and get to know them as well as I might say a Mahler symphony.
The middle of the evening sagged a bit. Brett Dean’s arrangements of some early Debussy songs with words by Verlaine (and Brett Dean was one of the viola players in the orchestra [ex-BPO]) were slightly nondescript and uninteresting. They were well sung but one wondered what the point was.
But the Brahms was tremendous. This was an old man’s Brahms, much like the one I heard Haitink conduct in the Barbican in 2017 or what I remember of Boult’s performances of this work- serene, autumnal, full of a gentle melancholy. By this I mean that tempi were steady – even sometimes a bit slow – but allowing both a spacious unfolding of the main themes and a reflective approach to the many passages of transition from key to key, major to minor, so that you really felt you were falling into an unfolding of the piece rather than being driven through it. The first movement was beautifully textured, with many individual voices you don’t always here, and the finale was one of the most exciting I’ve heard, with a fine gradation of dynamics so that the blare of trumpets and trombones at the end sounded really quite cathartic. The steady tempi made for precise rhythmic thrust and articulation which added to the excitement. Throughout Mehta with small gestures showed just which orchestra sections he wanted to hear highlighted and his accentuated beat at moments of high drama unleashed forceful propulsive motion in the orchestra, which sounded thoroughly Central European and idiomatic
The encore was the first Dvorak Slavonic Dance and – as he is also a showman among other things – Mehta conducted standing up, clearly enjoying himself. I am sure the orchestra would have been happy enough to do a second encore but it did seem a bit rough on Mr Mehta……….
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