Rautavaara, Bach, H K Gruber, Schubert:  Pekka Kuusisto (violin), Britten Sinfonia, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, 01.02.2007 (AO)

 

 

How wonderful it is to watch a performer break into a joyous grin as he plays! Kuusisto is the antidote to all those grim faced, hothoused  young prodigies who look as though they hate their instrument, and hate performing. His enthusiasm is electric. He clearly loves making music and sharing his love for it with his fellow musicians and an audience. Many people in the Queen Elizabeth Hall tonight seemed to be new to classical music. Judging by their rapt, happy faces at the end of the evening, I think he’s converted many to the idea that classical music can be exciting. What’s more, he doesn’t compromise. He didn’t choose flashy technique to impress: instead, he communicated the spirit of musicianship – an intuitive grasp of what makes music engaging.

 

Einojuhani Rautavaara was inspired by the “reckless and impetuous” playing of traditional Ostrobothnian fiddlers, to create the suite, The Fiddlers. For Kuusisto, the individuality of the tradition comes instinctively, for in his “other jobs” in rock and jazz, he, too, improvises like folk musicians do.  He led the Sinfonia, like a pellimanni fiddler leads other players, and they responded closely, as in a natural, organic dialogue. Each of the five parts of the suite illustrated a different mood, but I was much taken by the fourth section, Pirun polska, where a “melancholy devil sits on his rock, listening to the dark and mysterious Finnish forest” as Rautavaara describes it.  The interplay between Kuusisto and the violas was particularly well written, the lowers strings interjecting, like a cold wind, a dissonant parody of the schottische until the piece slowly deflated in an unmistakably modern way. 

 

If Kuusisto reminds me of anyone, it’s not so much Nigel Kennedy as Mozart, in the image where he’s irreverent and humorous, making music sound irrepressibly lively.  Bach’s Violin Concerto no 2 in E   leapt to life in this sparkling performance.  There were some lovely flourishes, such as the interplay between violin and harpsichord, and a teasing figure between Kuusisto and Jacqueline Shave, the Sinfonietta’s first violin, which came over like a playful minuet.  In the long, plaintive solo line of the Adagio Kuusisto showed the technical expertise that so soundly underpins his vivacious personality.

 

If we’d heard Bach as Mozart or Vivaldi, H K Gruber’s Nebelstein, from 1988, offered a more conscious approach to re-defining styles.  Its first movement springs from a 1940’s jazz recording passed around secretly during the war and admired by Gottfried von Einem and Boris Blacher. Anyone familiar with Gruber will know what to expect, as far as it’s possible to predict what that quirky composer will do.   The other three movements are based, loosely, on von Einem’s music, with dashes of jazz and other popular styles.  There’s a parody of sentimental “mainstream” music that is suß to a toxic degree, cut short by the marching of dark pizzicato by the double basses, and then, in a stroke, sustained silence.   Perhaps the piece was also chosen for this programme because of the bizarre violin solo passages, which sound like folk fiddling, but distorted and re-interpreted beyond anything in tradition.

 

Death as a Fiddler is an image which runs throughout central European culture.  The theme of death stalking youth was potent in times before medical care and sanitation.  Schubert’s great string quartet, Death and the Maiden, refers to this type of fiddler, a seducer with evil intent. Mahler, with his own preoccupations on similar themes, wrote this transcription for string orchestra. Transcriptions have long been a part of the way in which composers learn from each other, and in this case I think Mahler was interested in the way larger groups of instruments could interact as a sort of über string quartet. He’s exploring what would become important in his own symphonies, so appreciating his transcriptions is relevant to understanding his compositional style.  This version also fits well with the other pieces on the programme because it shows how music can be developed and expanded.  Rautavaara, Bach and Gruber are doing similar things in their own ways.   The vehemence of the dominant themes was well defined, though the more lyrical passages were beautifully played.  Kuusisto, tensed up and bent over like a sprite, seemed to embody the idea of the Fiddler as an element of nature, leading and challenging the orchestra in this rakish dance.

 

 

Anne Ozorio