SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

SEEN AND HEARD UK CONCERT REVIEW

Brahms, Berlioz: Sergey Khachatrynan (violin) Philharmonia Orchestra/Esa-Pekka Salonen, Royal Festival Hall, London, 10.6.2010 (J-PJ)

 

Brahms: Violin Concerto in D
Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique

 

Listeners to Salonen’s and the Philharmonia’s recent recording of the Symphonie Fantastique might have approached this concert with some scepticism. The disc – recorded live at the Royal Festival Hall in September 2008 by Signum Classics is a huge let down. Erratic tempi, uninspired playing and drab acoustics mark it out as missed opportunity.

What a pity, then, that Signum didn’t wait to record and release this performance on disc. Bristling with energy and shot through with brilliant playing, it couldn’t have been more different from Salonen’s efforts in the same concert hall two years previously. It was clear that Salonen had gone back to basics and re-thought his Berlioz entirely. The symphony’s opening Allegro was yearning and ecstatic by turns, with speedier tempi, that rightly gave the movement an edgier, agitated feel. This sense of the unexpected was carried over into a very lovely reading of the central adagio (‘Scène aux Champs’). It was played more as an absorbing and reflective mood piece rather than a pastoral idyll, and the final rumbles of timpani thunder in response to the cor anglais’s plaintive call made for a genuine cliffhanger.

The final two movements, March to the Scaffold and the Witches’ Sabbath, were played for what they are – a rollicking allegro and diabolical rondo. If anything, the march was played a bit too brisk and comic, while the twisted idée fixe in the last movement sounded jolly rather than grotesque. The funeral knell were predictably done off-stage, but were nonetheless effective. Top marks too for the string players with their fantastically agile col legno playing.

Brahms’s Violin Concerto, which formed the first half of the concert, was equally well-received, although for different reasons. The young Armenian soloist Sergey Khachatrynan is just 25, yet possesses all the technical skills and musical intelligence of a much older soloist. Yet his youth probably counted against him in a concerto written by a man twenty years his senior and expressing the reflections and doubts and of a composer approaching the middle years of his life and career.

The lengthy opening allegro movement, for example, was carefully balanced but lacked warmth and emotion. It seemed that Khachatrynan played rather than possessed the music. The gypsy-style finale was also a fairly standard romp, and a touch over-fast. It will be interesting to see how Khachatrynan approches the concerto in another five or ten years time. Meanwhile, he deserved the enthusiastic applause at the end of the work, as did the Philharmonia and Salonen, who gave him the fulsome yet subtle support.

 

John-Pierre Joyce