Prom 44: Dohnanyi, Bartok, Stravinsky Budapest Festival orchestra, Conductor: Ivan Fischer. Soloist (piano) Garrick Ohlsson. Royal Albert Hall, London, 16.08.20 06 (GD)

 

 

Although Ernst von Dohnanyi’s ‘Symphonic Minutes’ was once a Prom favourite (with Henry Wood in the 30’s), it is seldom played today. Bartok (who knew Dohnanyi) went on to compose far more challenging and compelling orchestral pieces based on Eastern European folk themes. But ‘Symphonic Minutes’ is very charming and appealing in its own right despite being composed in an older style. It is beautifully orchestrated with especially innovative woodwind parts, and its contrasts of ‘Capricio’, ‘Rapsodia’ and ‘rondo dance moto perpetuo’ are perfectly balanced…a delightful hors d’oeuvre for any orchestral programme. Fischer and his orchestra understand this idiom very well, relishing the Romanian/Hungarian folk rhythms which permeate the work. The more lyrical sections with typically ‘grainy’ woodwind were especially endearing.

Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra have made at least two splendid recordings of Bartok’s three piano concertos; one with Zoltan Kocsis, another with Andras Schiff (both Hungarians). It is pianists like Kocsis, in particular, who understand the full range of these concertos. Number three is the most lyrical and meditative of the three and it deploys a wider contrasting range of pianistic textures and styles than the previous two, almost sounding like Schumann in certain poetic passages. Bartok almost finished the orchestral part of the concerto before he died in 1945, and he wrote it especially for his wife Ditta, who must have been a most accomplished pianist. Sadly, with the shock of her husband’s death, Ditta was in no state to give the work’s premiere. Although the American pianist Garrick Ohlsson has played the work with Fischer and his orchestra on other occasions, on this occasion I felt a distinct lack of rapport between pianist and conductor/orchestra from the outset. Unusually for Fischer there were some tentative accents/entries and the orchestra was sometimes rhythmically slack and not always together.

Garrick Ohlsson played in a technically assured manner, but all too often his playing lacked the range of a Kocsis, Schiff, or for that matter an Anda, from an older generation. Ohlsson was quite effective in the more dynamic, percussive passages of the work, but failed to respond to the more lyrical, dance- like sections. This was most apparent in the reflective ‘Adagio religious’ where a hymn-like refrain in pp strings is contrasted with a quasi ‘night-music’ middle section. Fischer and the orchestra were inspired here as usual, but Garrick totally missed those points of contrast. Ohlsson was partly more successful in the finale ‘Allegro vivace’ - I say ‘partly’ because again the work’s exquisite contrasts of rhythmic, percussive élan and dance-like lyricism proved to be elusive to Ohlsson. The cross-rhythm brass cadences (added, totally in style, by Bartok’s pupil Tibor Serly) which conclude the work were delivered with predictable conviction by Fischer and the orchestra, with slightly burnished brass texture; totally idiomatic.

In normative terms it is probably true to say that Stravinsky’s ‘Le Sacre du printemps’ is possibly ‘the’ defining ‘modern’ work. Stravinsky (in his copious writings on ‘Le Sacre’) leaves us in no doubt that he was aware of the radical nature of his ballet score. He also became increasingly aware and critical of the work turning into a show-case for the virtuosic (often more egocentric) conductor and orchestra. He regularly, and ruthlessly, took apart the current newest ‘loudest’ recording of the work by the likes of Mehta, Karajan, Muti, Bernstein, and his own, which although he was critical of , found ‘more musical’ than a hi-tech recording by a ‘von Mehta’ (as Stravinsky nicknamed him and other conductors with large egos). We know from the composer’s intricate comments and score markings, exactly how he wanted this piece to be performed. In reality these ‘facts’ don’t seem to make much difference among conductors who overwhelmingly ignore, or violate the composer’s requests. Stravinsky never forgot that ‘Le Sacre’ is a profoundly Russian stage work. Stravinsky’s ‘Scenes, or ‘Pictures’, from Pagan Russia’ incorporate, all the way through, dance and folk themes from the Ukraine, Lithuania and other parts of Russia. The famous opening on bassoon in high register is based on a Lithuanian folk melody.

Now all this might seem made for Fischer and his very Eastern European sounding orchestra; and in certain respects the performance was most musical, eschewing all hints of the meretricious. But has Fischer really read Stravinsky’s incredibly meticulous score? He conducted without a score. A feat in itself. What a memory! And to impart, to orchestra and audience, the twelve-part massively complex ostinato section in the ‘Dance of the Earth’ which concludes part one of the ballet! Here Stravinsky makes it absolutely clear that a sustained ‘lento’ tempo is essential…I love Stravinsky’s ‘continuity of pulsation’. Now I just did not hear this ‘continuity of pulsation’ here. The orchestra played all the parts well but the massive, manic ostinato effect was not here, subtended by that ever-changing, but sustained ‘pulse of continuity’... At times it sounded merely loud, at others merely bland!

The ‘Introduction’ to part two began well, with icy sounding strings and trumpets at sustained pp. The woodwind (oboe in particular) sounded evocative enough but were far too loud, hardly ppp, as marked. The ‘Mystic Circles of the Young Girls’, ‘Andante con moto’ was too varied in tempo to be a sustained ‘tenuto’, and the ‘piu mosso’ at 93 did not really happen! Again the composer goes to considerable length to emphasise that the ‘Glorification of the Chosen One’ should be delivered at a sustained ‘tenuto’ pulse, with various complex tempo changes like ‘Molto allargando’ at the beginning of the da capo section which leads back to the main rhythmic thrust of the piece. Overall Fischer took this section too fast and did not sustain the tension as the composer consistently asks. Also, the drums (timpani and bass drum) played too loudly, obliterating the important accompanying dance configurations in viola, celli and woodwind.

As we came to ‘Evocation of the Ancestors’, ‘Ritual action of the Ancestors, and the final ‘Sacrificial Dance’ I had the feeling, as in the first part, of the music being merely played, quite well, but rarely involved in the complexity of Stravinsky’s ritual drama. At one point, 162 in the ‘Sacrificial Dance’ the fff marcatissimo, did not register, or was not together: Fischer,at this point, seemed incapable of separating his upbeat  from his downbeat! But he picked up considerably at the ‘sempre crescendo’ initiation of the final dance to ritual death.

I think Fischer is a skilled conductor, maybe he should bring the score, (particularly this one) to performance; Pierre Monteux, who conducted the famous, or infamous premiere of ‘Le Sacre’ in Paris in June 1911, gave one of his last performances of the work in London, in 1962, over fifty years after the premiere, and deployed a very large score, which he said was essential in such ‘complex music’. Stravinsky, not too long after the premiere of ‘Le Sacre,’ was already composing ‘mechanical conductor-proof’ like ‘Les Noces’ (1915). He wryly commented ‘can anyone wonder why I wrote conductor-resistant music’?

The predictably uncritical prom-audience were, of course, in need of an encore, although I could have done without one after any performance of 'Le Sacre'. But Fischer obliged with a characteristically well inflected performance of Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No 6 in D major, followed by a string ensemble arrangement of a traditional Transylvanian melody, quite charming in its folksy way.

 

 

Geoff Diggines