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Rachmaninov, Mozart and Richard Strauss: Leon Fleisher (piano), London Philharmonic Orchestra, Vladimir Jurowski, Royal Festival Hall, London, 20.2.2009 (GD)

Rachmaninov: Symphonic Poem: ‘Isle of the Dead’ Op. 29
Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 23 in A, K 488
Richard Strauss: Also Sprach Zarathustra


Jurowski continues to impress with each concert I attend. He is certainly amongst the most promising, if not the most promising, of the younger generation of conductors working today. Unlike many of today’s conductors, Jurowski understands baton technique: how to beat a certain measure; delineate rhythmic and harmonic structures; denote shifts and changes in tempi and dynamic contour; his gestures are precise, elegant and economic. This is something the older generation of conductors, such as Toscanini, Monteux, van Beinum, Reiner and Boult (to name just a few), understood so well. Of course, a great deal of the performance will depend on the rehearsal sessions, but an economy of gesture goes a long way in ensuring the contour and tone/sound of the actual performance. This economy of conductorial gesture and success in distinct and idiomatic performance was very much in evidence tonight.  
 
Jurowski took a more measured view of Rachmaninov’s ‘Isle of the Dead’ than is usual, but this in no way resulted in a diminution in intensity; indeed, one felt that the dramatic intensity was increased by Jurowski’s measured and symphonic approach. Anyone who listens to this work will be familiar with its painterly inspiration from the Swiss artist Arnold Böcklin and his sombre painting ‘The Isle of the Dead’ with its dark waters, cyprsses, boatman and spectral white figure standing over a coffin, and, of course, the opening 5/8 rhythm suggests the slow motion, with increasing grim forward drive, of the boat. But as with much ‘illustrative’ music another view can be taken by the listener which focuses solely on the music as music. Here I felt Jurowski, through his well structured, sustained, approach was inviting the listener to do just that, and in this sense the music was more powerfully trenchant. The contours of the ‘Dies irae’ theme – first on baleful chromatic brass and then in more fragmented form from the strings and woodwind – took on an ostensibly more spectral tone as emerging in thematic contrast (or semblance of contrast) to the surrounding dark minor key. In fact, if listened to carefully, the ‘Dies irae’ theme is alluded to in the opening 5/8 rhythm. The powerfully sustained climax, with its unrelenting tutti hammer–blows were paced in strict tempo to correspond with the  collapsing shades of B minor which bring the work back to its mournful deathscape opening. The LPO, with ten double basses projecting the 5/8 rhythm with stalking sonority, played magnificently tonight fully responding to Jurowski’s powerful interpretation.  
 
For the two big orchestral works Jurowski, as usual, employed the correct antiphonal arrangement of violins, with the ten double-basses in a double row at rear of the orchestra on the conductors left. But for the Mozart concerto he seated most of the strings on his left to join up in semi-circle fashion with woodwinds all together on the conductor’s right. This worked quite well with extra focus on the woodwinds; always beneficial in Mozart’s concertos. 

It was a great pleasure for me to see, and hear, Leon Fleisher after such a long time away from regular concert performance. This has been due to neurological problem which incapacitated two fingers of his right hand. For 40 years Fleisher engaged in teaching activities and played the extensive, but limited, repertoire for the left hand. But thanks to modern medicine, not available until quite recently, Fleisher can now resume playing with both hands. For the most part Fleisher played with great sensitivity, concentration and shear musicality; I was reminded several times. in the nuanced articulation of counterpoint. that Fleisher was a student of the great Arthur Schnabel. Fleisher’s playing was especially, and suitably, poignant in the F sharp minor ‘Adagio’; Fleisher reminding us that this key is the minor key related to the opening A major, thus projecting the adagio as a minor key continuation and tonal contrast to the ‘Allegro’. Here and there, especially in the ‘Allegro assai’ finale, a few note clusters were not totally together, but this in no way compromised the general excellence of the performance. Indeed, for a man just turned 80 and with recently restored fingers, this playing was astonishing and moving in a way only a very few pianists can achieve. Conductor and the orchestra were in total accord with Fleisher, with Jurowski characteristically bringing out numerous orchestral nuances especially in woodwind and string counterpoint.

Like with the opening Rachmaninov, the concert ended with a large orchestral piece inspired this time by a work of literature (or philosophy?) – Nietzsche’s “Also Sprach Zarathustra”. It could be argued that Nietzsche, the philosopher of ‘perspective’, including historical perspective, is open to different reading, or interpretations, at different times in history, although it should be noted that Nietzsche had a very specific notion of ‘interpretation’ linked to his discarded theme of ‘Will to Power’. Strauss read Nietzsche very much from the perspective of late German Wilhelmina, Prussian Imperialist aggressive expansionism which incorporated elements of social Darwinism to legitimate the ‘natural’ progression of racial superiority culminating in the idea of the ‘Ubermensch’, Superman or Overman, all later zealously used and distorted by the Nazi regime to contribute towards a justification for mass genocide. But the story doesn’t end there. Strauss’s later personal involvement with the Nazi elite only confirmed, for some, the ‘true’ meaning of works like ‘Zarathustra’ and conductors like Klemperer, Fritz Busch, and Toscanini refused to conduct the work. But, one could say, in the spirit of Nietzsche, this is all history now; Nietzsche’s Zarathustra has been ‘deconstructed’ as a self deconstructing text; Nietzsche has been exonerated as a kind of liberal anti, anti-semitic progressive, and Strauss’s work has been fully incorporated by the film culture industry – something the composer, no doubt, would have welcomed as a nice little earner!  

So how did the young Muscovite Jurowski approach this still controversial (for some) old war-horse, revived by the film industry? I am pleased to say that he treated the work as a musical, well-crafted, even symphonic composition, brushing away the detritus of the work’s contextual history. I add a note of caution here regarding the work’s symphonic merit as a ‘symphonic poem’ as many, including myself, see ‘Also Sprach’ as a decline from the economic brilliance of the composers earlier ‘Don Juan’ and ‘Till Eulenspiegel’ having about it an element of inflated surface effect, even meretricious sensationalism ripe for exploitation by the ‘culture industry’.  
 
Jurowski, like Herbert Blomstedt, came closest in my experience in convincing that the work does have some merit, if only in the excellently crafted, if predictable, orchestration. The LPO was on top form, Jurowski achieving excellent lucidity and orchestral/dynamic balance with particularly fine playing from the various string and brass and woodwind sections  The famous C major bass chord (redolent of the opening of Das Rheingold?) sounded more sustained than usual with even the organ part blending in rather than blaring out! The timpani strokes were superbly graded and arrestingly played, never sounding just loud. All the eight main sections were convincingly interlinked to make the whole. Of special note was the superb balance and clarity obtained in the fugal section cynical, in the Nietzschean sense, of Science; the climatic C major chord sounding powerful rather than bombastic and the ‘Dance-Song’, in the shape of a Viennese waltz, had just the right lilt and sense of parody. The climatic Dionysian dance, which introduces the ‘Song of the Night Wanderer’ with meticulously observed rhythmic/dynamic contrast and ominous bell strokes, never sounded like a grand orchestral show-piece as it often does. The putative note of resolution in the concluding B major epilogue with its final note of caution and doubt (of mankind ever finding a balance with nature) on C major double-basses and low trombones was, in Jurowski’s, hands a model of sustained orchestral balance and tonal/mood contrast.

Geoff Diggines


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