SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Andrew Litton, the conductor and music director of the Bergen Philharmonic, is on record as saying that with a pool of players representing 20 different nationalities, the Bergen Philharmonic is among the most international of Scandinavian orchestras. ‘We have a wonderful mixture of personalities that come together here. The energy and intensity of the sound they create immediately attracted me. And the string playing is truly special. It has a warmth and burnished quality of a kind associated with all top-class orchestras, which grabbed hold of me in the first few minutes of our first rehearsal together.’

 

Indeed, it is a fine orchestra with a warm and mellow string sound but this was completely the wrong venue for their ambitious programme of Grieg, Mozart and Mahler. Litton was worried the Mahler would blow the roof off the Cadogan Hall: thankfully that never happened, and all that did was that at forte moments in any of the music played - due to the large forces involved - there was just an indecipherable sonic morass. The players were shoe-horned onto an extended platform and were so close together that I feared for any neighbours who might suffer from the enthusiastic bowing of a fellow violinist or the flailing elbow of the cellist sitting next to them.

 

The orchestra dates back to 1765 when it was called Det Musicalske Selskab (The Musical Society). It later changed its name to Musikselskabet Harmonien and is now often referred to simply as ‘Harmonien’ (the Harmony) by Bergen's citizens. In 1919, Bergen’s orchestra was reorganized to employ 40 professional full-time musicians but currently has 97 of them. Edvard Grieg, who was born in Bergen, had close ties with the orchestra, and was its artistic director from 1880 to 1882 and his will established a fund to provide the group with financial support. In 1953 the Bergen Festival (Festspillene i Bergen) was inaugurated and Leopold Stokowski conducted the orchestra and which participates in the Festival on an annual basis. Other Festival conductors have included Eugene Ormandy and Sir Thomas Beecham. The American conductor Andrew Litton became principal conductor in 2003 and music director in 2005. In 2002 the orchestra - the first Norwegian orchestra ever to do so – began recording Grieg’s complete orchestral works. Many members of the orchestra teach at the Grieg Academy of Music, music conservatory within the University of Bergen.

 

Despite describing Ibsen’s play as ‘unsuitable for musical treatment’ it is Grieg’s incidental music to Peer Gynt which has become his most acclaimed composition. Suite No.1 contains four of the 22 pieces originally written for the play and includes the most (and over?) familiar items - the evocative musical illustration of dawn in ‘Morning’ and the vividly dramatic ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’. Bearing in mind all of the acoustical and logistical problems mentioned above, the Bergen Philharmonic played these pieces with glowing and, appropriately, growling intensity in the strings, with more than loving care eliciting - I am sure - suitably nationalistic pride from any native Norwegians in their ranks. The climax to ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’ was viscerally exciting with its crashing cymbals, which sadly came over as little more than noise in the cramped Cadogan Hall.

 

The orchestra then thinned out somewhat for two arias from Mozart’s 1775 Il re pastore. As this opera is not known to me – and probably not to most of the very sparse audience – it was unfortunate that only a few words about these arias were in the programme. ‘L’amero, saro costante’ is a heartfelt piece sung by the shepherd Aminta, to persuade the emperor Allesandro to allow him to marry his beloved Elisa. ‘Barbaro! Oh Dio mi vedi divisa dal mio ben’ is full of anger and is sung by Elisa to another character whom she accuses of preventing her seeing Aminta. The emotion and characterisations required by these diverse arias were well within the compass of the experienced soprano Heidi Grant Murphy even though she struggled a little with the phrasing and seemed uncomfortable. Full marks however go to the virtuosic solo violin of Melina Mandozzi for her eloquent accompaniment of Aminta’s aria.

 

For Mahler’s Fourth Symphony the platform seemed, not surprisingly, at its most crowded. The performance was best when the symphony is at its lightest and most intimate, but otherwise the hall was simply overwhelmed by the sound. The horrendous climax within the first movement reminded me of a musical depiction of Edvard Munch’s painting ‘The Scream’ and the sombre trumpet that emerges from this was completely lost in the mix. Mahler’s music needs space and time, but here with all the players piled ontop of each other, it got neither. There was more incisive playing from the concertmaster, Melina Mandozzi, with her tuned-up violin in the ‘Freund Hein’ second movement. The orchestra was at its best in the elegiac and otherworldly third movement whose expressive nature would rival the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth if it were not to end in a powerful – here horrendous – climax.

 

Then came what should be most sublime transcendental ending to this wonderful work, with the soprano singing ‘The Heavenly Life’ - the envisioning of heaven through the eyes of a hungry child. Again the audience was unable to follow the words as they had not been printed in the programme. Ms Grant Murphy seemed to be emoting far too much and was not capable of the angelic purity of sound that this song demands. She seemed to be channeling Hansel’s hunger and greed from the opera Hansel and Gretel, which was not what Mahler wanted.

 

The Bergen Philharmonic’s last tour to this country in 2007 was to the Birmingham Symphony Hall and the Proms. This time, in a short three concert visit to the UK the orchestra played in Gateshead, Derby and here at the Cadogan Hall. Andrew Litton, who conducted throughout with ready, fluent, command and musicality, has stated that tours ‘are part of a long-range plan to bring the Bergen Philharmonic to the widest possible audience’. I wondered if any of the organisers had actually been to the Cadogan Hall. It is not Birmingham’s Symphony Hall … and would be completely swallowed up by the Royal Albert Hall. So this performance by a Norwegian national orchestra came and went; sadly without making any real mark on the 2010 London concert scene.

Jim Pritchard