SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Webern - Passacaglia for orchestra, op.1

Berio - Stanze for baritone, three male choirs and orchestra (2003) German premiere.
Interval
Prokofiev - Andante from piano sonata No. 4, op. 29a arranged for orchestra (1935)

Prokofiev - Symphony No. 3, op. 44 (1928)

This concert by the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) under Vladimir Jurowski at the Philharmonie formed part of the musikfest berlin 10 which is Berlin’s major festival for orchestral music. Concentrating mainly on symphonic repertoire, the two-week festival provides opportunities for rarely heard, forgotten or unusual works. Emphasis is also given to programming interesting contemporary works and a particular focus this season is placed on the works of Pierre Boulez and Luciano Berio.

For the LPO’s visit the 2,450 seater Philharmonie auditorium was reasonably well attended. Rather than being attracted by the actual programme I would guess that the enthusiastic and musically urbane Berlin audience was anxious to attend a concert by exciting Russian born conductor Vladimir Jurowski. No stranger to the Philharmonie, Jurowski has a home in Berlin and has guested here before with the Berlin Philharmonic.

The concert was an all 20th century programme outside the standard repertoire but which - I should think - presented only minor challenges for the majority of the audience. For the most part this was certainly a fascinating concert of works that deserve to be heard more often. I adore hearing the world’s finest orchestras playing the symphonies of Beethoven; Bruckner and Mahler; especially at the Philharmonie, but to hear something different of high quality makes a most refreshing change.

The Passacaglia for orchestra, op.1 (1908) was the first mature score with which Anton Webern felt happy enough to allocate an opus number, although at this early stage in his career Webern was not entirely under the influence of atonal music. With great assurance Jurowski and the LPO created an intense atmosphere of cool tonal beauty with a disturbing and unsettling undercurrent. The stormy development section was most impressively played bringing to mind with fondness Karajan’s wonderful 1974 recording of the Passacaglia with the Berlin Philharmonic recorded in this very hall.

Luciano Berio’s Stanze for baritone, three male choirs and orchestra was composed in 2000 and is a sequence of five independent movements. Written in the manner of a Mahlerian orchestral song cycle it was Berio’s final work. It was premièred in 2004 in Paris under Christoph Eschenbach with baritone Dietrich Henschel and this performance by Jurowski was the German première of the score.

In Stanze, which in Italian means ‘Rooms’, there are three languages used with the first and last movements comprising texts by holocaust survivors. The opening movement Tenebrae is a German text from Paul Celan. In the Italian movement two Congedo del viaggiatore cerimonioso is a Giorgio Caproni text and movement three uses Italian words by Edoardo Sanguinetti. Titled Tritsch-Tratsch, movement four is an English translation of a fanciful text by pianist Alfred Brendel; who is also a published writer. The final movement is a setting translated into German from Hebrew words by Israeli poet Dan Pagis.

In general the music is hauntingly poignant and sometimes enchanting and often bleak. The austere baritone part is underpinned by the combined male chorus who never put a foot wrong in this performance. Dietrich Henschel, who was also the soloist at the score’s world première, performed with a quiet authority; clearly at one with the sentiments of the score. I was particularly impressed with Jurowski’s coherent grip of the proceedings with assured use of the marked dynamics. Modern music at its best, I loved Stanze. I have doubts of course about when I may have the opportunity to attend a performance of it again.

Prokofiev’s short orchestral arrangement of the Andante from his Piano Sonata No. 4 is a rather moderate and disappointing score. I did wonder about the efficacy of programming this Andante and certainly I can think of several suitable scores from Myaskovsky or Shchedrin that would have fitted the bill. Even so this was a reasonably interesting performance of a musical pot-boiler that served to limber up the players after the interval.

The final work of the evening Prokofiev’s dramatic Symphony No. 3 was first heard under Pierre Monteux in 1929 at a Paris performance. For the score Prokofiev extensively reuses material from his opera The Fiery Angel. The symphony overflows with fertile ideas often at the expense of symphonic continuity and like many of Prokofiev’s scores, it is probably better known more by reputation than by actual performances.

In the opening movement Jurowski created a frenetic drama and by contrast provided an uneasy tranquillity in the beautiful Andante. Bursting with vitality the Scherzo vents a raging storm and with the vicious peril of the final movement Jurowski unleashed a shattering conclusion to the score. Breathtaking stuff and how the audience loved it too.

This was the first time I had attended a concert conducted by Jurowski and I was certainly impressed with his assured direction of the consistently splendid London Philharmonic. What immediately comes across from him is his passionate temperament and a certain flamboyance of style on the podium although while always giving especially clear instructions to entries and dynamics. Whilst maintaining an impressive control of structure, I loved the way he can create sheer beauty of sound combined with the ability to crank-up the proceedings with a remarkable energy.

Michael Cookson