This issue has no doubt been prompted, or at least been given greater
significance, by the death of Claudio Abbado earlier this year. It comes as
a timely reminder of the wonderful work he did with these two fine youth
orchestras. He was the very first conductor of the European Community Youth
Orchestra — as it was then known — founded in 1976. Ten years after that, he
himself founded the Vienna-based Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester.
Most of this CD, then, consists of music from a concert by the ECYO at the
Salzburg Festival in 1979, the final track being from the same festival and
venue, some twenty-five years later. From a purely musical point of view,
that final track, with the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, is for me the most
interesting, as it contains the still comparatively rare original version of
Mussorgsky’s
Night on a Bare Mountain, which Abbado had recorded
with the LSO a couple of years previously. It’s a wild, chaotic piece, but
full of extraordinary music – and is a completely different composition from
the Rimsky-Korsakov version we are more used to hearing. The young players
get stuck in with relish, and if the ensemble is often far from perfect,
that doesn’t matter too much – indeed, in this savage music, it almost
enhances the impact.
The earlier part of the CD begins with a lively performance of Beethoven’s
Prometheus Overture, with beautifully turned woodwind solos. Then
Schönberg’s
A Survivor from Warsaw, with the celebrated actor
Maximilian Schell providing the narration. It’s a difficult piece to bring
off; the speaker must co-ordinate closely with the music without seeming
bound by it — this being the one and only thing
Survivor has in
common with
Peter and the Wolf. To describe Schell’s performance as
‘melodramatic’ is unfair, because this composition is exactly that – a
melodrama. It’s a word that came into general use in the nineteenth century,
meaning simply melody+drama, without the disparaging sense that it has now
gained. Schell is, for my taste, over the top, which doesn’t do this
undeniably powerful work any favours. However, the orchestral playing is
excellent, as is the full-throated contribution of the Vienna Youth Choir at
the climax.
The performance of Stravinsky’s
Firebird Suite no.2 of 1919 is,
again, superbly played by the young orchestra, but is, I’m afraid, marred by
two things: a recorded balance which renders the opening nearly 45 seconds
functionally inaudible, plus a number of audience members who consistently
choose the quietest moments to cough
fortissimo. That’s especially
distressing in moments like the ineffable coda to the second movement,
‘Ronde des princesses’, but also affects the ‘Berceuse’, with its
exquisitely phrased bassoon solo, and the
tremolando transition to
the finale. Strange, as this concert was recorded in August. Perhaps it was
cold in Salzburg that Summer.
The Death of Tybalt from Prokofiev’s
Romeo and Juliet
has a breathless sense of excitement, but also suffers from some very shaky
ensemble – it feels like an encore that may not have had
quite
enough rehearsal. I found it interesting, though, to hear Abbado’s
remarkably slow tempo for the final stages of this piece, the section that
follows those fifteen massive staccato chords. Checking with the score, I
see it’s marked
Adagio drammatico, with a very slow metronome mark
of crotchet = 48; in other words, 48 to the minute. It’s so rarely taken at
this speed and the pay-off is felt in enormous dramatic weight and
power.
My reservations make it clear, I hope, that this is a somewhat specialised
issue; but admirers of this wonderful conductor — of which I am definitely
one — will want to hear this, and will find much to enjoy.
Gwyn Parry-Jones
Masterwork Index:
The Firebird
