SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Schubert, Beethoven, Mozart:  Freddy Kempf (piano), Mozarteumorchester Salzburg / Ivor Bolton St. David’s Hall, Cardiff, 17.11.2010 (GPu)

Schubert, Symphony No. 8

Beethoven, Piano Concerto No.2

Mozart, Symphony No. 41

Although I have been lucky enough to make a series of visits to Salzburg (through my day job rather than through music) and have attended plenty of concerts in the Mozarteum (and, by the way, the Student Café, ‘Moz’, is warmly recommended as one of the pleasantest places to get a very affordable lunch in an expensive city), I have never actually heard the Mozarteum Orchestra playing on home territory. There was an irony therefore, in the fact that exactly a week after returning from Salzburg I should have had the opportunity to hear the orchestra play just down the motorway.

The Mozarteumorchester – in whose foundation no less than Constanze Mozart played a significant role in 1841 – has a long and (mostly) distinguished history behind it. Since 2004 Ivor Bolton has been Chief Conductor and under his leadership the orchestra’s performance of a wide range of repertoire (their present Salzburg season includes works by Bruch, Bruckner, Ravel, Mussorgsky, Messiaen, Rameau, Bach, Bizet and, of course, Mozart) has attracted many plaudits; but it is probably fair to say that the ‘Viennese’ canon lies at the heart of their work. Certainly that repertoire is central to their current British tour, of which this was the first concert. And how well they play it!

Bolton’s reading of Schubert’s Unfinished was rather more Classical than Romantic, while precisely acknowledging the stylistic liminality of Schubert’s work. There was an unforced nobility to the performance, the relatively small forces (under forty) producing marvellously clear textures, Bolton’s direction ensuring a perfect sectional balance. The opening movement was taken slowly, with an air of intimacy which was never in danger of making the music seem merely confessional. Some dynamic contrasts were less forceful than one might have wished, but both here and in the ensuing Andante the string sound was a joy, the clarity with which musical argument was presented – not least in the closing pages of the slow movement – very impressive. This wasn’t the most emotionally expressive of readings, but it was thoroughly satisfying on its own terms.

In Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.2 Freddy Kempf was a dynamic, but poised, soloist; at times, indeed, the contrast (though of course it was as much a relationship of complement as of contrast) between Kempf’s ‘attack’ and the ‘smoothness’ of Bolton’s direction of the orchestra, became a central feature of the dialogue between soloist and orchestra. Climaxes were attractively and persuasively built by soloist and conductor alike in the first movement, and Kempf’s playing of the cadenza, full of unexpected accents and rhythmic patterns made one think of the impact the young Beethoven made as a pianist. In the slow movement, Kempf’s work had about it a kind of innocence, an acceptance of the main theme’s serenity at face value, in which Bolton’s direction was wholly sympathetic. In the final movement there was a new drive to the orchestral playing and a relishing of its odd rhythmic effects. Overall this was a performance which eloquently registered the work’s grounding in Haydn and Mozart, while finding hints of the new directions in which Beethoven was later to take the form.

The evening closed with a splendid performance of the Jupiter. In the opening Allegro the potentially conflicting demands of energy and formality were perfectly reconciled; vigour and refinement were equally evident, and the overall sense was of music which contrived to be both thoroughly public and intensely private at one and the same time. The Jupiter’s quality of generic subversion (akin to that of the Mozart’s great operas) was well articulated, its refusal to settle for either ‘tragic’ or ‘comic’, for grandeur or intimacy, rather to seek means of integrating the easy opposites of convention in pursuit of a more complete view of human experience. The famous aphorism (variously attributed) has it that “Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think.” The greatest of Mozart – and the Jupiter certainly falls into that category – is an eloquent demonstration of what ‘Life’ is to someone whose capacity to both think and feel is fully developed. The slow movement’s deceptively simple balance of lyricism and unease, the alternations (though the relationship is subtler than such a word can suggest) of courtly poise and a subtext of uncertainty – both were beautifully, and compellingly, realised. The Finale brought a startlingly clear account of the music’s interplay of voices, a fascinating (and thoroughly musical) demonstration of how the movement again refuses the simple categories of genre, in its remarkable combination of fugal structure with sonata form. Bolton and the Mozarteumorchester laid before the listener, in all its complexity and clarity, one of the great acts of musical and stylistic synthesis. As was the case elsewhere on this programme, this was not a performance which went in for easy emotional gestures, or for the extremes of emotional characterisation. But in terms of the pleasures and satisfactions to be had both from beauty and clarity of orchestral sound and from high musical intelligence which communicated the inner dialogue of voice and structure, this was a thoroughly rewarding evening.

Glyn Pursglove