Nobody seemed to mind that this programme was short
measure: Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta
and Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony hardly added up to a full evening,
but that did not stop people coming. The house was all but sold out,
as far as I could see. However, doubts that presented themselves when
the same orchestra played at the Royal Festival Hall in 2000
returned afresh.
It was the Andante tranquillo first movement of the
Bartók that effectively scuppered Janson’s account. A creeping
literalism jarred in this mysterious, disembodied music so that the
climax missed its mark. This somehow incomplete feeling cast a shadow
over the remaining three movements, each of which seemed, strangely,
to get better than the last: lack of adequate warm-up, perhaps?
A welcome element of wit crept in to the second movement,
which was otherwise noteworthy for its cutting-edge timpani playing
and a real incisive edge from the strings. However, only in the ‘Night
Music’ Adagio did Bartók’s true spirit peek out from behind its
curtain: just as well, really, as this movement represents the emotional
heart of the piece. An adequate amount of emotional release brought
Janson’s account to a close leaving in its wake a curiously uncomfortable,
insubstantial and incomplete feeling in this listener.
Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony is the subject of much
debate as regards its musical ciphers. The whole piece is full of mysteries
– as is its opening. Or it should be, but here it was remarkably perfunctory,
despite some wonderfully liquid clarinet playing (towards the end of
the movement, the two clarinets appeared to be super-glued together,
so precise was their ensemble!). Unfortunately, climaxes failed to make
the shattering experience they should in a reading that was marked by
Janson’s predominantly short sighted conception. If the pyrotechnics
of the Allegro suited this orchestra to a tee (it was undeniably exciting,
but perhaps for the wrong reasons: shallow virtuosity is no substitute
for true understanding of this composer’s world), the orchestra seemed
unwilling to underline the vulgarities of the third.
A pity, too, that the big statements of the DSCH motif
of the finale seemed bombastic. The Tenth can be a weighty musical statement
that leaves the listener exhausted (Rostropovich, for example, knows
this). Here, it merely seemed misrepresented.
Colin Clarke
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