PROM 60: Henze, Shostakovich Orchestre National de France, Kurt Masur (conductor), Royal Albert Hall, 29.8.06 (CC)

 

Back in 2000, I reported on Masur’s ‘Leningrad’ Symphony with the New Yorkers at the Barbican (review). It was an impressive event, with the orchestra on that occasion on top form. Perhaps not in the same orchestral league, the Orchestre National de France nevertheless gave of its best. Comparison with another live ‘Leningrad’ is inevitable, though – Gergiev’s LSO account, again at the Barbican, last October. Where Gergiev was visceral, grabbing the listener by the throat, Masur at the Proms was altogether more amiable. With the French forces, there was little hint of the ‘Leningrad’s amazing history (history both in terms of circumstances of composition and in terms of early performance history).

 

Kurt Masur is not known for his emotional excess, so perhaps it should not have come as a surprise that the climaxes lacked the necessary edge. The score pulls no punches, and the furthest reaches of the dynamic range should be laid bare, so that in the first movement when the final orchestral ascent that comes after the famous obsessive central repetitions it should be as if there is nowhere else to go. Unfortunately, here there was little sense of the climactic, which in turn meant that the final pages of the first movement lost some emotional point. Continuing the general trend, the ‘Moderato (poco allegretto)’ was largely uninvolving, a performance given at arm’s length. While throughout the symphony there were many positive points – the Mahlerish woodwind of the finale, an elegiac viola melody in the third – the whole just refused to coalesce into anything like a notable interpretation.

 

The first half of the concert, however, was much more involving. A Henze London Premiere is always worth turning out for. Henze, of course, is eighty this year. His Five Messages for the Queen of Sheba (2004-5) contains music from his fairy-tale opera, L’Upupa oder der Triumph der Sohnesliebe (‘The Hoopoe, or the Triumph of Filial Love’). The opera was premiered in Salzburg in 2003.  The Messages was actually written for the Orchestre National de France, hence its inclusion here. Much is typical Henze. After a raucous opening, the lyricism that underpins much of Henze’s output appears. Saxophones colour the scoring - parts of the second movement seem imply that Berg’s opera Lulu was a point of reference here, yet the overall diversity is pure Henze. In fact Henze’s scoring is nothing short of masterly and compelling, nowhere more so than in the gossamer strings of the Andante con moto third movement.

 

If there are Stravinskian elements to the final Adagio (Henze seems to have the score of The Nightingale at the back of his mind), it is that lyricism that is so close to Henze’s own heart that shines through. Now an elder statesman of music, with an amazing life-history behind him, there could be no firmer confirmation of his stature.

 

Colin Clarke