SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL CONCERT REVIEW
 

Schumann, Chopin: Lang Lang (piano), Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra, Gurer Aykal (conductor), Halic Convention Center, Istanbul, 10.6.2010 (AM)

Schumann: Symphony No. 4 in D Minor, Op. 120
Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 1 in E Minor, Op. 11

Many friends had acquainted me, “You may have heard his recordings, you may have read reviews, or seen clips of him on YouTube and the like, but believe us, you have to see him live to appreciate him.” Lang Lang and I had never been in the same city at the same time so these words of recommendation were untested until this evening.

The setting was like this: A newly built convention centre right on the coast of Golden Horn housing an enormous conference / concert hall; outside, a promenade that overlooks a vast cemetery across the water and a buffet serving snacks and the obligatory mediocre wine; inside, 1500 guests collectively dressed as if it is fin-de-siècle. Lang Lang’s appearance was the high occasion of this season’s Istanbul International Music Festival and, therefore, it was as much a social event as a musical one. The pianist advertised in hundreds of billboards across the city as ‘the hottest artist in the classical music world’ was assigned to the second half of the concert (so people wouldn’t leave after hearing him, and also, in order to give him all the time he needed to do encores).

First up, the orchestra. Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic is considered to be the world’s only fully corporate sponsored professional orchestra. Wise well beyond its years (it is barely a decade old), BIPO holds an impressive resumé. Not only have they gained much following and acclaim in their native Turkey, but they have also toured extensively around Europe playing under celebrated conductors. I had the pleasure to listen to them (albeit only their strings section) a couple of evenings ago when they played an all-Pärt program with the composer in attendance. I was astonished by their poetic and lavish sound, but of course Schumann’s 4^th is a whole different game. It requires infinitely more color and range, not to mention a much denser texture from the orchestra compared to Pärt’s Te Deum.

Given that they take the majority of the load in the first movement, I was delighted to see the strings section of the orchestra in top form once again. Mr. Aykal deliberately refrained from a doom-and-gloom approach. He rushed to dissolve the high tension that inevitably transpires as the movement develops. That being said, the orchestra was bold during climactic passages, with the farther sections –particularly the woodwinds, acting as the catalysts in between the peaks.

The Romanze is not a particularly interesting movement. If anything, it acts as a trio between the Lebhaft and the Scherzo. Bear in mind here that Schumann thought of the symphony as one long Symphonic Fantasie, noting that the movements should be played without a break. That’s the only way the work can function as a unity. But of course, there are bound to be some opposing initiatives against this idea and they usually make themselves heard (as they did this evening) by simply clapping between the movements. Sadly, that breaks the continuity and renders the Romanze completely useless. The third movement is a miniature of archetypal Schumann modus operandi in action. The Scherzo is somewhere between a Beethovenian retort and a Brahmsian vindication. Mr. Aykal delivered a finely tuned sense of balance between the two forces, utilising the trios as opportunities to prepare his orchestra for reshuffling. It was not until the final movement that we finally got to hear the brass section take the front stage. Unfortunately their assigned chorales were not given their due: they were played hurriedly and without the thump that I was hoping for. The overall performance of the Finale and the symphony in general bordered somewhere between admirable and exceptional but something I could not agree with was the weight that the acoustics gave to the timpani. The fourth symphony has more than an ample role for the instrument but it is never meant to overtake this music as it did inside this hall.

When Lang Lang appeared on stage the applause was thunderous. Dressed in his designer black suit, he sat at the piano to give the orchestra their final minutes in the spotlight. As far as I’m concerned, when the e-minor chord from the piano is introduced, the orchestra is mostly extraneous. There is no dialogue involved; the orchestra may answer the piano’s rhetorical questions, but the piano is not listening. It has already gone on towards further introspection. As expressive as the music may sound, it is essentially an exercise in thought.

From that perspective, my foremost expectation from the orchestra is clarity. Mr. Aykal and the Borusan Philharmonic’s opening tutti set the pace for the rest of the movement. The orchestra played with much finesse without drowning the heavy layers. Lang Lang’s entrance was, to my dismay (in a good way), poetic right from the start. In the initial runs his fingers sashayed across the keyboard uniformly except the final high ‘E’ before which he paused for a second. He was more than happy to go with the tempo that the orchestra had set for the piece and never, during the lengthy Allegro, did he try to second guess Mr. Aykal’s choices in pace and pauses. That doesn’t of course mean that he took an inferior role. He played his solo parts with his distinctive ornamentations which acted only as embellishments -nothing more.

The second movement, regrettably, suffered from an overstatement by the horn. The horns are an integral part of the whole conception of course, but they are there to either evoke an echo or otherwise signal a change. But the horn was so transgressive that I almost had to clench my teeth every time it made its appearance. The whole thing sounded more like a problem with the rest of the orchestra’s reluctance in taking part. Mr. Aykal must have noticed this as well, for he motioned the strings section to come alive multiple times during the movement. With the rest of the orchestra basically absent, the horn was left in a position to appear alone against the piano. Mr. Lang did not seem to care however, and without falter, he delivered a most tender performance. He was, in fact, so softly spoken in his presentation that the modal change into minor went almost unnoticed. I would have preferred this sudden reversal of fortune to be more audible but it was completely in line with his overall approach and it worked quite well.

Mr. Lang must have had enough of subtlety by the time the Rondo arrived. He put on his fireworks costume for the movement and delivered a mixture of high virtuosity and poetic flair. He kept his pedal use to a minimum, giving only short sudden bursts of sustain and somehow riding on them for longer than humanly possible. The orchestra appropriately handed the lead over to him during the movement, but they managed to keep up with him all the way through the end.

His encores were two A-Flat pieces. First was the Op. 53 Heroic Polonaise in which we saw the uninhibited Lang Lang. Relieved from his orchestral duties, he played the piece with an extreme level of ‘personality’, exaggerating the chords, adding superfluities almost whimsically yet, not surprisingly, pulling the whole thing off brilliantly. Now that we had seen what he was capable of, he did the Aeolian Harp étude at the other extreme where refinement was the key. He produced all the inner voices with clarity while keeping the polyrhythmic tuplets in exact time.

And with that, I passed the test as well. Listening to Lang Lang live is an experience not soon to be forgotten. He transcends the hype and proves before your very eyes what a fine musician he is.

Alain Matalon