Gil Shaham’s second
concert with the Philharmonia (there will
now unexpectedly be a third when he appears
as soloist next Saturday in Beethoven’s violin
concerto) was everything it should have been
– and more. A long-time advocate of Samuel
Barber’s exquisite violin concerto (though
in this instance he played with a score),
he gave the kind of sumptuous performance
perhaps only Shaham is capable of delivering.
To this day, he remains the most individual
sounding violinist to come from that boiler-house
of DeLay/Juilliard teaching; at times during
his performance he brought a sound to his
violin that made him sound close to Mischa
Elman, the most distinctively toned violinist
of the last century.
Barber’s violin concerto
is unusual in that it keeps entirely separate
its unusual juxtaposition of lyricism and
virtuosity; Shaham’s performance of it, whilst
effortless in the moto perpetuo final movement,
laid claims to greatness in the way that he
moulded the most breathtakingly expressive
lines in the preceding movements. One of the
advantages of hearing his performance in the
concert hall was that the balance between
soloist and orchestra came across as more
naturally placed than it does on his LSO recording
of the work; how wonderful to hear how vividly
Barber integrates the solo part within orchestral
textures and how plaintively the principal
melody of the second movement rises first
on an oboe and then on a cello, clarinet,
violins and horn before the soloist’s magical
entry. If Shaham was almost upstaged by Christopher
Cowie’s sublime oboe playing it wasn’t to
be as Shaham unleashed a dewy and melancholic
sheath of sound that was as impassioned as
it was warmly toned. Although Shaham’s tone
is already big (and effortlessly big) he produces
the most stunning breadth of sound on the
G string and on the E string brings a wider
vibrato to his playing than is usual. The
panache he brought to the final movement –
mostly written for page after page in triplets
– brought with it a lighter tone yet it all
remained festooned with a delicacy of touch
that was enchanting. His double-stopping –
so fearlessly precise – was matched in articulacy
by the sudden shift from triplets to semiquavers
in the work’s final bars.
Throughout, the Philharmonia’s
playing was impeccable – as it was during
the rest of the concert. Beginning with Adams’
‘The Chairman Dances’ from his opera Nixon
in China the orchestral playing was never
less than precise, even if Adams’ proto-minimalism
seemed less inventive today than when I first
heard it in the opera house. But David Zinman
encouraged the orchestra to play with flair
– not least the superlative woodwind section,
in a busy afternoon for them. Also brilliantly
played was Copland’s Appalachian Spring
– though it remains a rather bland work, even
when as evocatively delivered as it was here.
Quite in a different
league was the Philharmonia’s performance
of Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West
Side Story. Here we had an orchestra revelling
in Bernstein’s virtuosic showpiece – even
clicking their fingers when required to do
so – and enjoying every minute of it. The
virile drama of this score has rarely been
so evocatively displayed as it was here –
eruptive violence in the prologue (along with
some really authentic sounding jazz rhythms),
melodious – and soaring - string lines in
‘Somewhere’, a testosterone drenched ‘Mambo’
and a truly skittish ‘Rumble’ that was as
brutalised as it was tragic. Indeed, the superlative
percussion playing in ‘Rumble’ might just
well be the highlight of a concert was outstandingly
delivered in every way.
Marc Bridle
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