This DVD contains what appear to be two separate broadcasts of concerts
from the ‘Munich Piano Summer’ of 1988. Confusion is caused by the fact that
we are several times informed that the performance of
Concerto for
myself is of the world premičre, while the booklet note by Marcus
Woelfle tells us that the work was first given in
Vienna in the
same year. I presume the latter statement is a simple error, although it is
repeated in all three languages in which the note is given. The composer’s
webpage does not clarify the matter, and his publisher’s site gives no
details either.
Friedrich Gulda in his later years had a reputation as a cantankerous
eccentric, and it has to be admitted that his appearance in both these
concerts, with massive round tinted glasses and a crochet skullcap that
looks like a tea cosy, do nothing to dispel that impression. Gulda, mind
you, had a very high opinion of himself. In a letter to the German critic
Franz Endler, he stated: “I am the most important creative Viennese musician
of the second half of our century. This is because I have composed valid
works that lead our music out of the blind alley of twelve-tonery and of
other, unworldly, anti-musical and anti-human practitioners and give it back
to the relaxed affection and love of the public.” Well, it is a worthy aim –
although one may take leave to doubt how any composer who has composed so
few works of substance - three concertos in the 1980s - can be regarded as
that important. Never mind: if he didn’t think his compositions
were worthwhile, he presumably wouldn’t have written them. He even went to
the extent of apparently allowing his death to be announced prematurely, so
that he could read the published obituaries – now there’s confidence for
you.
The opening of the
Cello Concerto, with its jazzy rhythms and
contrasting lyrical passages, and the soloist accompanied by a noisy jazz
drum-kit, sounds very similar in style to another work for similar forces
written at around the same time, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s
Variations.
Heinrich Schiff throws himself manfully into his task, although one gets the
distinct impression that he only manages to make himself audible above the
brass accompaniment by virtue of discreet amplification. There is even some
echo in places which sounds as though it may have been electronically added.
Although the concerto is described as being for “wind orchestra” there is
also a guitar, a string bass and percussion (including drum-kit) with
prominent parts throughout. The guitar is only audible during the quieter
passages such as the beautiful second-movement
Idylle which lies at
the core of the work and leads to a fiendishly difficult cadenza before the
march-like finale. This performance may well have been the final one that
Schiff gave of the work which he had commissioned. In 1988 he was proposing
to perform the concerto at the Salzburg Festival, but dropped it at the
request of the Festival managers in favour of a Haydn concerto. Gulda
reacted badly, complaining that “he never made the slightest effort to
champion the work that I wrote for him and that he and I made into a
success.” That said, his championship of the work is not at all in doubt
here, and his playing throughout simply sizzles. The music blends jazz and
folk elements, but Gulda denied any sense of irony in his employment of
these popular idioms. However the sheer vulgarity of the final march, which
became positively Sousa-like at times, is surely meant to cause laughter –
and indeed the audience supplies this.
The “sonata concertante for piano and orchestra” subtitled
Concerto
for myself is very much in the same easy-going vein, immediately
approachable and enjoyable. Critics at the time of the premičre
characterised the work as a “declaration of love to classical music” but I
would say that the jazz elements are much more noticeable, with the
ubiquitous drum-kit much in evidence. Indeed there are passages throughout
the concerto which remind one of the classically-inspired improvisations of
Jacques Loussier. The slow middle movement, with its poignant oboe solo at
the beginning of the end, reminds one of similar sections in the Ravel
two-handed concerto or the Shostakovich
Second Concerto. The middle
section is much more upbeat; and it leads into a cadenza which makes
thorough-going use of all the expanded techniques of the
avant-garde: crashing forearm clusters as well as plentiful
excavations inside the lid of the piano. Although this section is described
as a “free cadenza” Gulda can be seen in places looking anxiously at an open
score tucked inside the piano. His use of
avant-garderie is
carefully enfolded in a controlled atmosphere of improvisation which is not
only effective but haunting. After that the finale is an upbeat
Latin-American romp. The booklet lists an “encore” but this simply consists
of a repetition of the closing bars of the concerto, during which Gulda
distractingly prances round the stage jigging like an ageing rock star – not
the most enticing of images.
Indeed Gulda as a conductor does not seem to get the best out of the
orchestra in either of the concertos. He indulges himself in platform antics
which would make Bernstein blush — along with occasional vocal exhortations.
Although the orchestra indulge him – the oboe soloist in the slow movement
of
Concerto for myself really deserves a separate credit – they
don’t seem over-enthused either. The small body of strings in the piano work
sound seriously under-powered, but this may be the result of the recording
balance which also diminishes the sound of some delicate percussion effects
to near-inaudibility. The booklet notes contend that the
Concerto for
myself is “too closely associated with the artist Gulda himself to be
performed by any other musician”. Even so, one would like to hear the work
with a different pianist and an independent conductor who could get more
sheer body out of the strings. There are several alternative recordings,
with different soloists, of the
Cello Concerto, but none of the
piano work.
Gulda waged a perpetual war with critics, describing them as “classical
music idiots” and “arseholes”, but he insisted to the end of his life that
it was “necessary to give people something they could feel truly comfortable
with”. He certainly succeeded with these two works, and the audience applaud
rapturously at every break in the music in the best pop-concert manner.
Paul Corfield Godfrey
