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SEEN AND HEARD UK
CONCERT REVIEW
Elgar: Introduction and Allegro, op.47 (1905)
Schumann: Cello Concerto in A minor, OP.129 (1850)
Vaughan Williams: Symphony No.5 in D (1938/1943)
This is the third concert conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy I have attended within the past year and yet again a fine orchestra has not shown itself to best effect because of uninspiring interpretations and weak leadership. As a pianist Ashkenazy has few peers, but as a conductor, for me, he lacks the very strengths that, as a pianist, he displays in every note he plays.
Elgar's great Introduction and Allegro
was given with the Sacconi Quartet - one of the best
of the younger quartets working at the moment - but
even their participation failed to ignite this
performance. The fault must be laid at the
conductor's door for Ashkenazy didn't seem fully to
understand where the music was going. The
Introduction was uneventful, and once the allegro
started Ashkenazy put his foot on the accelerator at
the point where the quartet starts its chatter in
semiquavers. This should be in the same tempo as
what has preceded it and here it felt rushed - the
same thing happened in the recapitulation. The fugue
started too quickly and Ashkenazy failed to increase
the tempo when it was required, so rather than a
build up of excitement things progressed without the
necessary incident. Also, at the end of the fugue
there is a short passage for the solo cello which
leads back into the allegro, but here it was given
as an end to a section, rather than as a
continuation. At the end the Welsh tune was given in
its full glory but without passion.
Raphael Wallfisch played the Schumann
Concerto as if it was a better, and more
important, work than it actually is, and I was
convinced of its qualities, such was our soloist's
advocacy. The orchestration isn't Schumann's best
and there was nothing Ashkenazy or the orchestra
could do to enliven it. The duet between soloist and
principal cello, in the slow movement, was perfectly
achieved.
Vaughan Williams's Fifth Symphony
is one of the greatest symphonies of the twentieth
century, and not just by an Englishman. Much of the
music is of an heightened emotional state and it
needs very careful handling to make it speak and
reveal its many secrets. As with his performance of
the Elgar, I felt a lack of control and purpose in
Ashkenazy's interpretation: he didn't really
understand his destination before he started his
journey. Also, as with the Elgar, the music was
given as a series of separate events rather than as
a continuously developing whole. Climaxes were
poorly built, always arriving too quickly rather
than growing out of the texture, and the sense of
awe and wonder, which fill this work, was totally
missing. Barbirolli, Tod Handley and Bryden Thomson
all had the measure of this work, and I had the
pleasure of hearing them all in this work in live
performance; Ashkenazy has a long way to go to reach
the heights of their interpretations.
Bob Briggs