SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Brahms:   Vladimir Feltsman (piano) Seattle Symphony, Gerard Schwarz, (conductor)    Benaroya Hall, Seattle, 9 and 10.11.2007 (BJ)

Both of Brahms’s piano concertos, paired respectively within the space of two days with his second and fourth symphonies, was an enticing prospect indeed. If the outcome proved less than magical, it was largely due to the choice of soloist for this alluring assignment.

Vladimir Feltsman is a musician of substance and a highly accomplished pianist, solid of tone, fleet of fingers: and liberally endowed too with the kind of confidence that makes the security of a moment like the daunting stentorian octave entry launching the development in the Piano Concerto No. 1's first movement a foregone conclusion. On the evidence of these two evenings however, he is not a Brahmsian. The First Concerto came off the better of the two, because, as a product of a composer not yet mellowed, it is the more simply dramatic and rhetorical work. Yet even here, when we came to lyrical passages like the flowing subordinate theme in that first movement, Feltsman’s propensity to tinker with rhythm undermined the sublime simplicity of the music, leaving scarcely two notes of equal length as the pulse waxed and waned.

The Second Concerto was, in my view, just too aggressively and demonstratively played, without any of the modesty of mien that characterizes Brahms even at his grandest. As the first movement went its way, I thought to myself, “He’s playing it as if it were Tchaikovsky.” So I was amused when, after the movement’s end, my wife turned to me and remarked, “He’s playing it as if it were Rachmaninoff.” Hers was, I think, the more accurate observation. Still another unwanted parallel was to suggest itself in the finale. You might think it impossible to make Brahms sound like a combination of Rachmaninoff and Saint-Saëns. Yet that is what Feltsman succeeded in doing, opting for a tempo well in excess of the metronome marking - a rarity in Brahms, and therefore authoritative  - and throwing off one tinselly insubstantial phrase after another.

Details aside, what bothered me throughout both concertos was that, even when Feltsman’s playing was quiet, it lacked quietude. Strength was abundant, but not inner strength. So the opening of the Second Concerto’s Andante, with Joshua Roman’s calmly sumptuous and poised cello solo, came as a benison. Suddenly, we were face to face with the real Brahms. But that misconceived reading of the finale was just around the corner, so the enchantment didn’t last.

Gerard Schwarz and his players did indeed contribute some wonderful solo and ensemble playing in both the concertos and the symphonies. Scott Goff’s big flute solo in the finale of the Fourth Symphony was majestic, and the superb horn section led by John Cerminaro was on song throughout. In the first movement of the Fourth, for that matter, it was possible to feel that the conductor allowed them too much scope–I never thought to find myself saying the horns were too prominent in a Brahms texture, but this movement sounded almost like a duet for strings and horns, with the woodwinds relegated to the background.

Schwarz’s reading of this movement was compelling. In a number of passages that can profit from a little pressing forward, he kept the reins firmly in hand, which seemed at the time a shade disappointing. But the purpose became apparent in the closing pages of the movement, with a fresh onset of urgency and passion for which the conductor had clearly been saving up. The result was interestingly different from what we heard in the Second Symphony. The first movement here benefited from well-judged turns of speed at certain junctures. And incidentally, some rhythms that are often rather slackly defined in performance were on this occasion admirably clear.

It was only at the end of this symphony that I took issue with Schwarz’s interpretation: the sudden burst of pace with which he launched the coda seemed to me to trivialize the effect of a noble conclusion. In the ordinary way, being a devotee of what might be called “interventionist” conductors like Mengelberg and Furtwängler, I am the last person to complain at speed changes. But I couldn’t help thinking back to the way Jascha Horenstein used to handle this coda, with an unwavering steadiness of pulse that conjured up a much more genuine climactic excitement.

For the rest, both symphonies were eloquently shaped, the outstanding movements being perhaps that subtle and assured opening Allegro non troppo in No. 2, the gorgeous slow movement and delightfully airy scherzo in No. 4, and, in the latter work, a finale shaped with true tragic grandeur. There was, then, enough of the essence of Brahms to make the week’s offerings a pleasure, if an incomplete one where the concertos were concerned.

Bernard Jacobson

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