SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Shchedrin and Mahler: London Symphony Orchestra, Olli Mustonen (piano); Valery Gergiev (conductor). Barbican Hall, London 19.11.2010 (JPr)

Shchedrin: Piano Concerto No.4 ‘Sharp Keys’

Mahler: Symphony No 1 in D

In Act V of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream the Duke, Theseus, is choosing his wedding night entertainment from a list he is given and one is 'A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus and his love Thisbe; very tragical mirth. Merry and tragical! tedious and brief! That is, hot ice and wondrous strange snow. How shall we find the concord of this discord?’ His Master of the Revels, Philostrate, replies 'A play there is, my lord, some ten words long,which is as brief as I have known a play; but by ten words, my lord, it is too longwhich makes it tedious; for in all the play there is not one word apt, one player fitted.’

Now many musical commentators would have you believe ‘very tragical mirth’ or ‘discord’ is apt for Gergiev’s Mahler that continues to divide opinion between condescending critics and enthusiastic audiences. If ‘condescending’ seems a little harsh from someone who does not have a music degree it is only because there is more than just a passing tendency to ‘second guess’ what Mahler would have liked. Gergiev is ‘a man of the theatre’; Mahler also spent more time in the theatre conducting than he did with his ‘second job’, in his case composing. Well known too is that Mahler adjusted the sound world of his (and other composers’) symphonies – and even the orchestration – depending on the venues he was performing in. So why shouldn’t Gergiev ignore the instruction for a solo double bass at the start of the Third Movement of Mahler’s First Symphony and employ the entire section if he feels it will give a more appropriate sound to the music?

Gergiev’s Mahler is never self-indulgent and he adheres to brisk tempi throughout all the symphonies. Here once again we were on a rollercoaster in Vienna’s Prater and there were thrills, spills, excitement and intense drama. For those saying Gergiev’s Mahler lacks ‘emotion’ what more do they need than the palpable frisson that the maelstrom in the brass at the end of the work gave to most of the audience judging from their enthusiastic ovation? It was so much better than the rather anodyne account I heard recently in a cinema relay of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Simon Rattle.

In the first movement there was an incredible haunting spaciousness to the offstage trumpets and a wonderful vibrancy to the ‘Ging heut’ Morgen übers Feld’ (one of the Wayfarer songs) main theme melody. The second movement moved ‘strongly’ (as Mahler requests) and the Ländler was bold, foot-stamping and bucolic. By contrast, the slow, third, movement is a funeral march where the ‘hero’ of the symphony is conveyed in triumph to his grave accompanied by material from the well-known ‘Frère Jacques/Bruder Martin’ children’s song. This, as well as the Klezmer band music was suitably evocative. One of Gergiev's great gifts as a conductor is that he coaxes refined, elegant, playing from the ‘engine’ of mighty orchestras such as the LSO; the strings, winds and brass. It is the latter section that excelled in the kaleidoscopic incandescence of that ebullient, climactic, fanfare at the end of the final movement.

Unfortunately the work that opened the programme - and lasted for an interminable forty minutes - was another work by Rodion Shchedrin, his 1991 Piano Concerto No.4 ‘Sharp Keys’. As indicated in my earlier review of LSO’s new season, Shchedrin’s music is being heavily featured. At least the piece I heard then was only eight minutes long (‘tedious brief’) and to borrow from Shakespeare again, the length of ‘Sharp Keys’ ‘is too long, which makes it tedious’. Never has something quite outstayed its welcome as much as this. Eyes were shut even in the critics seats (not me) and other members of the audience kept looking at their watches (including me).

Wasn’t it obvious when you read that the concerto was commissioned by the Steinway Foundation - presumably the piano manufacturers - that all it has to do is show-off what the(ir) piano can do. Played without flat notes (for no apparent good reason) and mainly in the brighter treble clef it was like a series of piano exercises by a pianist who had wandered into - and was interrupting by his playing - a rehearsal of Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll or maybe at one point, the end of Mahler’s First Symphony that we would later hear. The young Finnish pianist, Olli Mustonen, seems to be fairly familiar with Shchedrin’s musical world as both soloist and conductor; despite a fine, though perhaps not flawless, technique he seemed to find this concerto, alternatively percussive or contrapuntal, hard-going. He had his eyes fixed on the score before him and his frequent mopping of sweat from his brow with his sleeve was rather inelegant and the shaking out of his fingers I found quite distracting.

Jim Pritchard