SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

SEEN AND HEARD UK  CONCERT REVIEW
 

Prom 34 - Franz Schreker, Korngold and Mahler: Leonidas Kavakos (violin), Deutsches Symphonie–Orchester Berlin, Ingo Metzmacher, Royal Albert Hall, 10.8.2010 (BBr)

Franz Schreker Nachtstück (Der ferne Klang) (1903/1910)

Korngold Violin Concerto in D, op.35 (1945)

Mahler Symphony No.7 (1904/1905)


Immediately after the First World War, Franz Schreker was declared to be the greatest musical dramatist after Wagner – probably because his erotic dramas proclaimed the power of the libido over everything else. His success didn’t last long for with the rise of Nazism, his work was declared to be Entarte Musik and, being half Jewish, he didn’t stand a chance. In June 1932, Schreker lost his position as Director of the Musikhochschule in Berlin, a year later his position as professor of composition at the Akademie der Künste, suffering a stroke in December 1933 and dying on 21 March 1934, two days before his 56th birthday. By the time of his death his music had become irrelevant and unwanted. It’s only since the 1970s that his oepras, and the handful of orchestral scores, have found an audience, and they have proved to be highly coloured, dramatic, harmonically fascinating, and, most important of all, easily approachable.

The Nachtstück is a fifteen minute interlude from his opera Der ferne Klang. It’s opulently scored, richly romantic in character and sound and it made a radiantly beautiful opening to a big concert. Metzmacher and his players showed exemplary understanding of this complex score, making it an easy experience for the listeners. This was as important a performance as the various English pieces we’re being given this year.

Korngold’s Violin Concerto has, finally, become a repertoire work. Indeed, so often is it performed that I once heard Gil Shaham, another advocate of this marvellous work, say that when he offered the work to concert promoters they would ask for something different as everybody wanted to play the Korngold! Would that his Symphony was suffering the same fate! Kavakos was totally in control of the emotional side of this work, and it is a very emotional piece, but he never allowed himself to overplay the score. With admirable restraint he simply let the music flow from his fiddle and create garlands of beautiful sounds to fill the hall. Even the virtuoso finale never seemed like hard work, it was just a further, if faster, exposition of melody. Metzmacher and his orchestra gave admirable support.

As an encore, Kavakos gave us Ruggiero Ricci’s arrangement of Francisco Tárrega’s Recuerdos de la Alhambra [Memories of the Alhambra] (1896). Certainly this was a change from "probably the world's most heard tune", Tárrega’s Gran Vals, which became aNokia ringtone, and seems to be all we ever hear of this composer these days.

It’s 35 years since I last heard Mahler’s 7^th Symphony and, at the time, I hated the work. To be sure, although I had heard most of Mahler’s works I didn’t know them, so I came along tonight in the hope of discovering something I’d been missing. There are times, in all Mahler’s works, where one is tempted to grab him by the shoulders and give him a good shake, demanding to know why he has done what he had done. I felt this quite strongly during this performance. Of all Mahler’s Symphonies this is surely the most neurotic; full of nervous energy, never really settling down to any one tempo or mood for too long. Metzmacher had the measure of the music from the start and displayed a real intelligence when it came to the structure of the work, making the many disparate sections come together as a cohesive whole, and he never allowed the seams of the music to show – which can happen all too often in poor Mahler performances. Climaxes were devastating and the more reflective music was as delicate as you could want. I’m still not totally convinced by this work, but Metzmacher’s consummate interpretation, and his orchestra’s committed playing, has gone a long way to convince me that I’ve been missing something.

 

Bob Briggs

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