SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Berlioz, Wagner, Debussy: Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Valery Gergiev. Barbican Hall, London 22.2.2008 (JPr)

One of my late Viennese mother’s favourite phrases – somewhat ironically meant – was ‘Britain is a lovely country’. This was often a retort to news items where things that were allowed overseas that were not allowed here or vice versa. Her targets were often the PC-brigade or EU-regulations. Why do I so soon drift of the point of this review with these thoughts? Well, it is amazing how an orchestra is lavished with praise in the UK and throughout the world, yet earlier this year the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra's spokesperson, Michael Bladerer, is reported as saying that playing for the orchestra is ‘a demanding job and not practical for female musicians who want a family’. Unbelievable! Where would any number of world-class orchestras be without their high proportion of women?

I am not advocating  that anything silly is done about this, like banning the VPO from appearing here, but surely what is vilified in one area of life should be damned elsewhere. All I am asking for is consistency. Astonishingly Robert Van Leer, the head of music at the Barbican, apparently refuses to condemn this situation and is quoted as saying ‘We have to define: what is the ideal we are looking for? Just because an orchestra has lots of women and young people doesn't mean a healthy scenario.’ So it would be okay then for the Durban City Orchestra to come along with one or two musicians from non-white background?  How many women did the VPO bring to the Barbican platform for this concert?  It was a measly five as far as I could see. Discrimination is discrimination whether it is race  gender or even age.

Setting that aside … what about the concert? Berlioz had long wanted to create a choral symphony based on the story of Romeo and Juliet. In December 1838 violin virtuoso Niccolò Paganini gave the composer the sum of 20,000 francs, enclosing a message 'Beethoven is dead, and Berlioz alone can revive him.' Berlioz first paid off his debts, before turning back to music. 'I would give up everything else and write a really important work ... something splendid on a grand and original plan, full of passion and imagination, worthy to be dedicated to the glorious artist to whom I owed so much’. The result was Roméo et Juliette which Berlioz wrote in 1839. In 1827 Berlioz had been at a production of Hamlet with a beautiful Irish actress Harriet Smithson playing Ophelia. He had been overwhelmed not only by the genius of Shakespeare but also with the young actress:  both became something of an obsession for him in the years afterwards and he eventually married Smithson.

‘Scenes from Roméo et Juliette’ opens with a representation of the combats and tumults of the Capulets and Montagues, and the intervention of the Prince. The second scene is ‘Romeo alone’ already in love with Juliet: it employs a tender melody that represents Romeo’s sadness and is set against the brilliant dance music that in the distance accompanies the revels at the Capulet Ball. The third scene is a passionate and sensuous love-poem. The fourth scene is a setting of Mercutio's reflections on Mab as ‘queen of dreams’. This is an intense Scherzo with an almost gossamer-like rhythmic delicacy. For the final scene of this ‘dramatic symphony’ we have Romeo's invocation, Juliet's awakening, the despair, agony and death of the lovers. The music ends with Juliet’s dying breath but shorn of the climax Berlioz gives it in the full vocal version, in a performance of these orchestral narratives such as this,  it all just stopped and it was a most unsatisfactory ending.

Berlioz’s score does paint the play's passions and events on a vast canvas. The fighting, the Festivities at the Capulets, Romeo's and Juliet's professions of love and Juliet's awakening,   had all the drama and emotional resonance under Gergiev you would expect from a conductor with such a background in opera. The VPO are a very smooth outfit with never an ugly sound but intensity does not appear to be their forte (though it is for Gergiev). The loud, faster sections gave some undeniable visceral thrills, and the instrumentation is full of such subtle effects, most notably in romantic passages for the brass and elsewhere in much introspective music where the VPO revealed the exquisite warm string tone that is their trademark. However for most of the music there was not much depth beyond this pleasing veneer.

What followed is the cruellest cut in the history of music – saving, as Victor Borge would have put it, ‘four hours in the theatre’ – the Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde.  For once the printed programme appeared to try and make a connection through all the music performed. Wagner met Berlioz on many occasions but unlike Bernstein I did not hear much connection between ‘Romeo alone’ and the start of the Prelude despite Wagner sending him ‘the first copy of my Tristan’  -  inscribed ‘to the dear and great author of Romeo and Juliet, from the grateful author of Tristan and Isolde’. For me Roméo et Juliette is very much the sound-world of Das Liebesverbot and Der fliegende Holländer which Wagner had left behind long before Tristan. Here Gergiev controlled the forces in front of him with a toothpick rather than the fluttering fingers for the rest of the programme, it brought out the most passionate, yearning and transfiguring account of this ‘bleeding chunk’ I have heard for many years.

Debussy’s La mer was composed between 1903 and 1905, and if impressionism in music can exist then this is the epitome in purely orchestral terms. It is subtitled ‘Trois esquisses symphoniques’ (‘Three symphonic sketches’). The three movements have their own titles; ‘De l'aube à midi sur la mer’ (‘From dawn to noon on the sea’), ‘Jeux de vagues’ (‘Play of the waves’) and ‘Dialogue du vent et de la mer’ (‘Dialogue of the wind and the sea’). Again for Bernstein it seems that this masterpiece follows directly on from ‘Romeo alone’ and the Tristan Prelude. The first is hauntingly mysterious and drew from Debussy's friend Erik Satie the wisecrack that he liked ‘the part at a quarter past eleven’ (the Barbican’s programme notes had incorrectly ‘quarter to twelve’). The second is lively and splashier, and the third conjures up the stormier interplay of powerful forces. And yet the entire work’s reason-to-be is just to conjure up the sensations, moods and feelings evoked by the sea and as Debussy himself put it ‘There is no theory. You merely have to listen. Pleasure is the law.’ So the first movement’s vibrant, imposing climax can either be a stiff breeze, dispersing clouds, the sun shining through the water, or a great ship on the sea and it defies a specific ‘programme’.

Gergiev seemed to have a good ear for the La mer’s sonorities and there was some delicate colouring against a rigorous overall structure. Once again Gergiev was attempting to impose an intense drama that the VPO seemed to remain one step removed from despite the detail in their playing, including that of their concert master, Rainer Küchl.

The most enjoyable music of the evening came in the two Viennese delicacies as encores. Here Gergiev’s dark countenance broke into a smile and he even jogged on the podium letting the orchestra get on with it. If he was auditioning for the New Year’s Day concert it will not be in 2009 because that is being led by Daniel Barenboim. The best was Josef Strauss’s Ohne Sorgen! (‘Carefree’) polka and there were deep-throated cries of ‘Ha Ha Ha Ha’ from the VPO who played these familiar tunes with more enthusiasm than anything else during the evening.

Jim Pritchard


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