Proms Mini-Reviews 2

Prom 5: Semyon Bychkov and the WDR Symphony
Wagner, Mendelssohn, Schuller and Strauss

Poor Semyon Bychkov. He was supposed to be the great conductor of his generation. Twenty years ago he was world-famous as an example of moral courage for standing up to the Soviet system at great risk to his career, and so respected as a conductor that Herbert Von Karajan designated him as his handpicked successor at the Berlin Philharmonic. But Karajan resigned and died before he could make up with the Berlin Phil, and shortly thereafter the Soviet Union fell and Valery Gergiev took Bychkov's spot in the public imagination as the 'Great Russian Conductor.' After twenty years of declining reputation, his career seems to have resuscitated with newfound life that is mostly due to his partnership with the anachronistically-named West German Radio Symphony of Cologne. But this concert was his very last as their Music Director. Why is he leaving? If this concert was any indication, the partnership is not quite as fruitful as is generally alleged. It began with a performance of Wagner's Lohengrin Act I Prelude that was beautifully played but so efficiently paced that it begs speculation as to whether Bychkov cared at all. Like Lothar Koenigs a few days before in Die Meistersinger, Bychkov simply didn't even seem aware of or care how much power can be unleashed by Wagner. This was a followed by an exceedingly odd performance of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto by German violinist Viviane Hagner that was only intermittently inspiring. Hagner's wide warble of a vibrato was entirely inappropriate for Mendelssohn, as was her pacing - far too slow in the first movement, too quick in the second, and quite variable in the third. Furthermore, if you end the concerto with an enormous acceleration, why not do the same at the end of the first movement? The odd results made for occasional excitement, but far more often made this wonderful piece sound flat and uninvolving. Following the Mendelssohn was a piece by Gunther Schuller - the archetypal member of America's musical establishment. Now in his mid-eighties, Schuller has been an insider on the American scene since joining the horn section of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at the age of twenty. He is not only a composer and horn player of renown but also a teacher, conductor, arranger, editor, bandleader and writer of considerable abilities. The work of his played in this concert , 'Where the Word Ends' got quite a bit of bad press in the British press, not all of it deserved. To be sure, it's not an instant classic. But Schuller's eclecticism can be rather confusing at first hearing. This piece was nearly as much Blues as Berg, Satchmo as Stravinsky. It functioned as though Schuller constructed a stream-of-consciousness echo chamber in which all the various influences of a mid-20th century classical musician in New York were thrown together. In its way, it was a mass of fascinating raw material constructed far too chaotically to create a great work. Even so, a piece that should make people curious to hear a lot more Schuller. Lastly came a performance of Strauss's Alpine Symphony that was bound to be as fine as the fine recording these forces made together a few years ago. The Alpine Symphony is one of those pieces very easy to dismiss, and even harder not to love. It is Strauss's enduring paean to nature, vulgarity and Mahler. The kitsch and the sublime meld seemlessly in this piece, and for those qualities I love the work passionately . This was not nearly as hard-driving a performance as was given last year by the Staatskapelle Dresden as conducted by Fabio Luisi, and perhaps suffered as a result. It was a performance with the type of Wagnerian style that Bychkov should have loaned to the beginning of the night. His tempos were almost uniformly broad, with beautifully lush string textures and incredibly characterful solo winds. Under Bychkov's hands, the work emerged as a piece of hallucinatory tone-painting. A mountain painted by the more disturbed cousin of Van Gogh and Munch. Bychkov leisurely journey gave us a uniquely vivid picture of Strauss's mountain, unfortunately the vividness was offset by a lack of vitality which more propulsive tempos would have given. Semyon Bychkov may yet prove to be a great conductor (the Sergiu Celibidache of our age?) but he needs much greater than what was on display here.
C

Prom 6: Beethoven Nite
Paul Lewis Piano: BBC Symphony Orchestra Conducted by Jiri Behlolavek
Beethoven Piano Concertos and Overtures

"It was as though Lewis gave the performance I heard in my head from the time I was six years old. It is probably impossible to put into words how wonderful this was, so I won't even try. This performance had every possible quality this concerto requires and held them all in near-perfect balance. This was worthy of the greatest masters of the keyboard. Keep your ear on Lewis, he may already be a master." This is what I wrote about Paul Lewis's performance of Beethoven's 4th Piano Concerto two years ago with Vassily Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. I wish I could say that lightning struck twice but this performance was not quite on the same level. Perhaps Lewis, having now recorded the concertos, suffers from a bit of over-familiarity. Or maybe he was exhausted from having already played the First piano concerto earlier in the concert. Complaining about musicality on this level is quibbling, but effects which Lewis integrated seamlessly into the whole stood out from one another as though the pianist were going through a checklist of things to remember in each individual phrase. His performance of Beethoven 4, easily the most difficult of Beethoven's piano concertos from a musical point of view, was nothing less than very good and sometimes inspired. It was paced almost perfectly, holding poetry, form and drama in equal balance. But that highest level of magic that he provided two years ago in spades was missing. All the evidence necessary was to listen to his other performance in the same concert. Lewis's performance of Beethoven's 1st piano concerto had all the brio and poetry his performance of the fourth seemed to lack. The performance of the 4th sounded like a performance by an extremely intelligent, conscientious but calculating musician (Aimard?). But the performance of the 1st sounded as though this were how Ray Charles would have played Beethoven. Paul Lewis still may be a master, but even the very greatest have better and worse trips to the stage. If this was a worse trip, Paul Lewis is still one of the very best around. The rest of the concert was filled by two Beethoven overtures = Egmont and The Creatures of Prometheus which the BBCSO performed under the baton of Jiri Behlolavek with surprising vitality. Behlolavek has been responsible for some Beethoven snoozers over the years, so it was a delightful shock to hear the BBCSO playing Beethoven under him with such life.
A-

Prom 7: Maria Joao Pires plays the Chopin Nocturnes

Alicia De Larrocha is dead, and Martha Argerich doesn't give recitals anymore. So Maria Joao Pires is now the Grand Old Lady of the Piano. Like De Larrocha, she has that easy natural fluency that seems to adapt to the challenges of any composer, something can only happen with the aid of a fearsome musical mind. But like Argerich, she plays with an easy freedom, not so much adapting completely to the composer but adapting the composer to her own personality. But whereas Argerich's persona can seem volatile and neurotic, Pires is elegant and unperturbed. She's one of the keyboard's natural poets, able to conjure a gorgeous singing tone from the piano that few in history have ever matched. With Alfred Brendel now retired, she's almost indisputably the world's most accomplished Mozart pianist, and she does many other composers almost as well. Pires has been known for her Chopin for many years. She brings an incredibly sensitive lyricism to these pieces, creating a dream-like haze of sound that suggests far more than it states. But all the same, it's not the whole story. This is a perfect representation of the perfumed, 'French' side to Chopin - the delicate dreamer and seductive romantic par excellence. This is the Chopin of Alfred Cortot and Ivan Moravec, and it is great piano playing of a type. But where in this playing could you find Chopin the revolutionary? Chopin the Polish Nationalist? Chopin with the Slavic soul? No doubt Richter and Claudio Arrau would have made something far different sounding out of these pieces. But my favorite Chopin players: Hoffman, Rubinstein, Lipatti, Ashkenazy, Pollini, Zimmerman and maybe Yundi Li, found ways to combine the best of both approaches. Chopin's genius lies in the fact that right beneath his immaculate elegance was a volcano precipitously on the edge of eruption. Those pianists, for all their differences, always found ways to suggest the huge emotions lying just beneath the elegance. Pires seemed to cover up the explosiveness in a surfeit of beautiful sound.
B+