SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Suk, Schumann, Dvořák: Jean-Efflam Bavouzet (piano), London Philharmonic Orchestra, Neeme Järvi (conductor), St. David’s Hall, Cardiff, 7.10.2010 (GPu)

Suk, Scherzo Fantastique

Schumann, Piano Concerto

Dvorak, Symphony No. 9

Two chances to ‘hear’ the famous pigeons that Antonin Dvořák kept in his garden at Vysoká – once mimicked in his son-in-law Josef Suk’s Scherzo Fantastique and once echoed in Dvořák’s own New World Symphony framed that subtlest of Romantic piano concertos, Schumann’s only contribution to the genre. A good programme, played with high musicianship by all concerned – and with real inspiration in at least two cases.

Suk’s Scherzo Fantastique was written in 1903 and while largely exuberant – not least in the lively dance for the woodwinds – here very attractively played and very effectively integrated into the whole – the work is not without its intimations of the dark side of life (it is a sad irony that Suk’s wife, Otilie Dvořákova, was to die in 1905, a year after Dvořák), a sense which seems to pervade even Suk’s most celebratory works. The hymn-like cello theme was a tonal delight and elsewhere Jarvi produced some crisply defined rhythms. At times, though, there was a kind of overall gloss to the sound which flattened out emotional contrasts and left some details a little perfunctory.

Any reservations of that sort wholly disappeared as soon as the Schumann Piano Concerto was underway. The small orchestra for which the work is scored produced some exquisite (and evocative) chamber-like textures; Neeme Järvi’s conducting here was masterly, the orchestral balance well-nigh perfect (though from where I was sitting one could have done with the thoughtful oboe solo in the first movement, structurally and thematically so important, being just a little more prominent) and his contribution to the dialogue of piano and orchestra both precise and sensitive. The playing of Jean-Efflam Bavouzet was an unalloyed delight. Bavouzet’s recent CDs – of Debussy, Haydn and Bartok, for example – have garnered a multitude of positive reviews, which they have certainly merited. But I can’t be the only one who has sometimes had the experience of finding their first ‘live’ experience of an artist whose recordings they have admired sadly disappointing. That was far from happening on this particular occasion.

Bavouzet’s capacity to be both muscular and delicate, to develop lines with wonderful clarity while also discovering all of Schumann’s poetry made his performance thoroughly memorable. Without the slightest excess or sentimentality, without the merest hint of self-aggrandisement or ‘listen-to-me playing’, he had the audience gripped and held tight throughout. His playing in the cadenza of the first movement breathed humble love and serenity; the second movement sustained a fascinating (and fascinated?) sense of intimate conversation, and soloist and conductor alike preserved the remarkable purity of this astonishing music, the long melody for cellos played radiantly. The intimate was still part of the mix, even in the more ostensibly heroic moments of the closing allegro, and the whole was finally a celebration, an affirmation of joy and its possibilities. This was a memorable performance – both for the beauty of Bavouzet’s playing and for the subtle manner (which spoke eloquently of years of experience) in which Jarvi’s direction of the orchestra complemented that playing.

For all its very real qualities, Dvořák’s New World Symphony has never seemed to me the most profound of creations, not a work which has at its core the kind of struggle or conflict that characterises so many great works in symphonic form. When the sound of triumph rings out in the fourth movement one is tempted to wonder over what it is that triumph has been achieved. Perhaps for reasons such as these, quite a few concert performances of the symphony can seem decidedly routine, usually technically assured but often relatively short on inspiration or involvement. This was different; paradoxically a relatively straightforward performance of the symphony – free of excessive conductorly interventions – served to remind one afresh of the remarkable quality of Dvořák’s orchestral writing and, naturally enough, of the beauty of some of the work’s melodies. The syncopations of the opening were crisp and there was some real sense of conflict to the more dramatic passages in this first movement. There were some sharply etched contrasts of tempo and dynamics and slower passages were beautifully voiced.

In the Largo that follows the early wind chords were firm and solemn, and the famous cor anglais melody – splendidly interpreted by Sue Bohling – benefited from the perceptive intelligence with which Jarvi complemented it by his direction of the accompanying strings. It was only right that Jarvi called Bohling forward to the front of the stage for an individual acclamation at the end of the work. There was a propulsive (but unrushed) quality to the scherzo, the interleaved trios not so bucolic as in some readings but with a gentle elegance that made for effective contrast. Propulsion, an unfailing forward impulse, characterised the Allegro con fuoco, but Jarvi’s delineation of themes made clear the network of thematic interconnections which link this movement to its predecessors. The ‘triumph’ in this performance was not so much a matter of the spiritual, the moral or even the psychological, so much as a joy in the successful coming together of form, of closure achieved. I cannot pretend that this performance entirely overcame some of the reservations I confess to having about this symphony, but it came as near or nearer to doing so than pretty well any other performance I have experienced.

Glyn Pursglove