SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Rome is getting over the wettest and coldest winter in living memory –an uncomfortable experience, not yet quite finished. From Sunday last, Spring has officially begun, the first buds are daring to appear on trees and the sun is doing its best to get through the thick cloud of these late March days. It was appropriate programming of Abbado’s Orchestra Mozart to add some cheer to this hope with Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony. The climate of this piece is unreservedly optimistic. And with exceptionally talented young players the symphony acquires even more conviction. All neatly put together with the unmistakable Abbado touch.

If you watch Claudio Abbado rehearsing these young players, it’s hard to see how he obtains his magnificent results. There are conductors who arrive at a rehearsal to lecture the players for half an hour before they are allowed to play a note. Not Abbado. There is hardly a word spoken, sometimes a nod or a smile or a frown. Of course the players are on the edge of their seats for the smallest possible indication. And that is possibly because the indications are so small; imperceptible almost. There is too, the most profound respect at work in a spectaculour way, and in both directions, between conductor and players. A committed workplace with the ideal personnel. This is a conductor who so thoroughly appreciates the immense talent sitting before him that he has found a way of speaking directly to their souls. By gesture, by smiles, by unspoken jokes. That results in an outpouring of music which surprises the players themselves. We didn’t know we had it in us is a frequently heard and profoundly astonished response. Giuliano Carmignola puts it this way: Sometimes when Claudio looks at you while you’re playing –it’s as if something were happening that you just cannot put into words, you feel intense emotion. Just like finding a friend again. 30 years later.

Abbado is no stranger to drawing out the best in talented young players. It was in 1978 that he began as founding conductor of the European Community Youth Orchestra (nowadays called the European Union Youth Orchestra). Out of that, in 1981, came the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, with which he still records. His Berlin friends drew his attention to exceptional musical talent which was not getting the attention it deserved, east of the Brussels definition of Europe. That led in 1986 to the founding of the Gustav Mahler Jungendorchester, which in turn gave birth to the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.

The Orchestra Mozart was the brainchild of the visionary, former Sovrintendente of La Scala, Carlo Maria Badini, who was a native of Bologna, where he managed to raise funds to launch the project. Dr Badini lived only to see the project take off in November 2004, but its artistic excellence and administrative solidity seem to be guaranteeing its future. The formula is different from the other mentioned orchestras. Here, the principal desks are occupied by Europe’s leading instrumentalists, who also, in turn, act as tutors to their sections, the young players sometimes deputising for their teachers, along the lines of the vonKarajan Academy in Berlin. The moment Abbado had accepted Badini’s proposal to be Artistic Director and Conductor, he rushed off a fax to his friend, Giuliano Carmignola –Italy’s most respected violinist- inviting him to be the Orchestra’s soloist, leader and tutor.

The most influential of Carmignola’s own teachers (his assessment) was Franco Gulli. A Gulli pupil is instantly recognisable with his discreet and restricted use of vibrato, which they all believe to be the real sound of the Corelli school, which was prevalent in Mozart’s day; in a word –the Mozart sound. It took time, skill and patience before Carmignola had all the young players of the orchestra producing this sound. This great violinist turns out too to be a master teacher. And not just vibrato. There was some outstandingly polished spiccato bowing in the Mendelssohn symphony, the likes of which have never been previously heard in Italy. This requires the bow to bounce, rather than be drawn across the string and so calls for a highly developed relaxed control of the wrist of the bowing arm. There is almost always someone in an orchestra who does not have this accomplishment. Not so here.

Claudio Abbado would tell you that this is just as much Giuliano Carmignola’s orchestra as his. He’s right. Some of Carmignola’s critics have said that he doesn’t sufficiently take into account the operatic Mozart in his profoundly respectful performances of the concertos. They would have eaten their words if they had heard the G major K216 at Friday’s concert –a much more lyrical and somehow more fulsome account than the DGG recording of November 2007 (same orchestra and conductor) . Like all the finest performers, Carmignola is learning too: don’t expect the next concert to be a replica of the last. This was played with more regard for the melodic line, romantic even, but without so much of a hint of the sentimental. And always with the highest respect for his young pupils: The Orchestra Mozart is made up of highly gifted, very young musicians, and consequently there’s a great deal of energy and a sheen to the playing. Nothing is routine, everyone plays for the joy of it, without being concerned about the pay or the hours of work.

Abbado’s choice of tempos have always struck me as perfection, sometimes to the point of making other choices seem wrong. So I am shocked to have found a disagreement with him now. This came in the last movement of the Jupiter Symphony. The question the conductor has to decide is whether this finale (molto allegro) is a drama or a joke, or maybe like Don Giovanni a drama giocoso. Abbado plumbs strongly for the drama, so the allegro is anything but molto allegro. To my ear, it dragged. Of course, this slow-motion gives the ear more time to take in the detail (of which there is much, as Abbado shows) but at the same time you loose the all-over thrust of the movement. And that to me is a key element. I add my apologies for having the effrontery to speak against the greatest of living conductors.

Orchestra Mozart is made up of some forty players: here there was double woodwind, two horns, two trumpets, timpani and strings at 10:10:6:6:4. A mere further two horns joined the band for a thunderous, convincing encore of the Egmont Overture. The training is such, that when the occasion requires, they can sound like double their actual size.

Appropriately, Friday’s concert was a state occasion, the Italian President, Giorgio Napolitano warmly shaking a congratulatory hand of Raphael Christ (leader) and Claudio Abbado.

Jack Buckley