SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Schumann: Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia - Conductor: Antonio Pappano, Soloist: Elissò Virsaladze, piano. Parco della Musica, Rome, 21.11.2010 (JB)

Manfred Overture

Piano Concerto

Symphony no. 4


Here we are in the midst of the Schumann bicentenary. Imagine that you have a magnificent orchestra and a top world-class conductor. Which music should be on the bill? That is a trick question. The orchestra of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia is real enough and its conductor, Antonio Pappano, is one of the greatest on today’s scene. But poor Schumann. Orchestral writing was not his scene, neither structurally nor from the orchestration angle. Any decent B. Mus. student could have written better.

Schumann was a miniaturist: one of the greatest. Just think of the songs in Dichterliebe, the daring, perfectly poised brevity of the pieces that make up Carnaval or the Piano Quintet. That said, I wouldn’t want to be without either the cello or the piano concerto and the Accademia have duly included the latter in their programming. The evening began with the Manfred overture and ended with the Symphony no. 4, which was no. 2 if you consider them in chronological order and is probably the best of a bad bunch.

The first movement of the symphony opens with a slow introduction (ziemlich langsam), the kind of thing on which any composition teacher worth half his salt would have written: rewrite and try to give it a sense of direction. Is it possible that Schumann had never heard the Rossini overtures? Almost all of them have a slow introduction, leading up to a lively allegro. As a teenager, Rossini had acquired the technique of having these introductions point forward, keeping the audience on the edge of their seats and awaiting the burst of the allegro. Not so Schumann. This introduction is deathly if not deadly. When we finally arrived at the lebhaft (vivace or lively in English), Pappano so dramatically increased the speed that he took our breath away. It worked. It’s useful to have a conductor who knows how to paper over the cracks when there is a weak score.

The second movement is called Romanze and is marked ziemlich langsam (somewhat slowly). Pappano had the good sense to expand on the somewhat at the expense of the slowly. The lively scherzo was played with charm, though the death knell sounded again for the dreary trio. The joyous finale too, is preceded by a wearying slow introduction.

Perhaps you should ignore everything I have written about this symphony and join in the ecstatic applause of the Santa Cecilia audience. Moreover, the orchestra and its conductor deserved this reward.

You might have thought that Byron and Schumann would have been perfect partners. After all, they were both leading romantics. But Byron was a libertine and it pleased him to be a noisy extrovert, while Schumann was quiet to the point of shyness, reflective in temperament and while he may have had desires along Byronic lines (he would eventually die of tertiary syphilis), these were wild flings of fancy and exceptional. When Byron turns to such a reflective personage as Manfred, surely he is more than meeting Schumann half way? No such luck. Whereas in Byron’s poem there is a gently studied floating, in Schumann’s overture (mercifully only twelve minutes) things get bogged down; swamped, in fact. The all-is-lost is elsewhere another Byronic theme, but not in Manfred.

I would not be writing about this concert at all if the Accademia had gone ahead with its announcement of Maurizio Pollini as soloist in the concerto; all notes and little music is how that gentleman sounds to me; however, he was indisposed and some fast rescheduling of the lady whom Richter called the greatest living Schumann pianist meant that Elissò Virsiladze could make her debut with this concerto at the Accademia. And what a roster of pianists she joins: Paderewski (in 1897) Rosenthal (1916 and 1922), Schnabel (1927), Rubinstein (1935), Michelangeli (1947), Annie Fischer (1964), Ogdon (1972), Perahia (1976) and Argerich (2001), among others.

Schumann’s inadequacy as an orchestrator applies equally to his piano concerto. However, when it comes to an exploration of pianistic colour, no one has anything to teach him. Needless to say, this calls for understanding profoundly what a piano can do in this world of sound and how to do it. So move over Maurizio Pollini and enter Elissò Virsaladze.

I have described the Virsaladze sound in past reviews as masculine and uncompromisingly steely. That is the first sound she gave us with the crashing chords of the opening. There is a similarity of opening with the Grieg concerto, which, of course, postdates Schumann. Fifty years ago the two concertos were competitors for the most performed piano concerto; later, the Mozart concertos came into their own in popularity and displaced the race.

But that authoritative opening gave way to an arresting cantabile – still unflinching in its delivery and anything but sweet, though nevertheless singing in tone. To judge from contemporary accounts, it was a piano sound like this which distinguished the playing of Clara Wieck, Schumann’s wife, who gave the first performance in 1845. And this is what probably promted Richter’s praise of Virsaladze.

Virsaladze’s tone in the Intermezzo is such a contrast to the opening that it sounds as if another pianist were playing. She has the good sense here to get out of the way of the music and let it speak for itself. Andantino grazioso says Schumann, and that indeed is exactly what she gave us.

The vitality which creates the sunshine of the Finale calls for another sound. And again, Madame does not disappoint. She was much helped here in keeping it briskly moving by Pappano, who is famous for his skill in pacing.

This brings me to the highlight of the evening, and on this the audience made it clear that they agreed with me. As an encore, the Great Lady gave us Vogel als Prophet (The Prophetic Bird), op. 82 no. 7 of the Waldszenen – a mere whiff of a piece, showing Schumann’s real genius. Schumann has the happy knack of suggesting a piece without actually stating it. But of course, it takes the magic fingers of Elissò Virsaladze to embroider these sounds never heard before on the piano.

Jack Buckley