Above: Daniel Harding conducting the Royal Concertgebouw at Carnegie Hall; photo by Fadi Kheir
~ Author: Ben Weaver
February 14th & 15th, 2019 - The Royal Concertgebouw’s two-night residency at Carnegie Hall with conductor Daniel Harding (limping on and off stage, and his unexplained injury did not impact his conducting) was a largely marvelous event. Allowing young members of the National Youth Orchestra of the United States, wearing gigantic white pins which Maestro Harding wore also in solidarity, to join them for Schumann’s great Manfred Overture, Op. 115, was a lovely gesture.
Robert Schumann composed his incidental music to Lord Byron’s epic poem Manfred in 1848-49 when his mental state was already rapidly deteriorating. The rest of the score is rarely performed, but the Overture is widely thought to be his finest symphonic work. Brahms quotes it in his 1st Symphony Three solemn chords - which bring to mind Die Zauberflöte Overture - led to a mournful melody that quickly transitions into an urgent theme of Manfred wandering among the Alps. This is the same Manfred who inspired Tchaikovsky to compose his Manfred Symphony. Manfred’s torment at his beloved’s death is evoked beautifully by Schumann and was articulated touchingly by the musicians. The young players, no doubt inspired by their more experienced colleagues from the Concertgebouw, rose to the occasion with marvelous performances and clean ensemble work. The audience greeted them warmly.
The full Concertgebouw took the stage for the rest of the concert. Mozart’s 40th Symphony (composed in 1788) and Brahms’ 4th (composed nearly 100 years later in 1884) have one major thing in common: they both begin in the middle of a thought, as if the melody started in silence and someone turned up the volume late. Mozart’s 40th was composed during one of Mozart’s most difficult periods: he was broke and having just moved his family into cheap apartments in a period of only 6 weeks composed his 3 greatest Symphonies: 39 - 41. The 40th is thought to be the most autobiographical of all, with its melancholy and desperation - sprinkled with bursts of humor and light - it attracted future admirers as diverse as Schumann and Arnold Schoenberg.
The famous, breathless melody that opens the work feels like you are joining a conversation mid-way. I am not the first person who has noticed such an unusual beginning: conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt speculated that Mozart may have composed the last 3 symphonies as a unified work, which is why the 40th has no real beginning and doesn’t have an elaborate conclusion like the 41st. The symphony also exists in two versions: the original one without clarinets and a revised edition with clarinets and adjustments made to the other winds accordingly. (Brahms acquired both manuscripts in the 1860s and donated them to the Society of Friends of Music in Vienna, where they remain today.) Maestro Harding opted for the original version, sans clarinets. The opening Allegro molto was beautifully played, the opening theme - so gentle in the beginning you could barely hear it - growing more urgent with each repeat. But the Andante was lacking in drive, too relaxed and courtly. A driven Menuetto brought back some fire, but the Finale was a mixed bag.
I hoped this would be just a quirk of this particular work and Maestro Harding’s view of it, but alas, Brahms’ Symphony No. 4 amplified and multiplied the problems.
Brahms’ last symphony did not find easy acceptance upon its premiere. It was mocked by the likes of Hugo Wolf and George Bernard Shaw, who were decided Team Wagner in the war of Brahms v. Wagner (a war Brahms never personally joined). Even Brahms’ biggest champion at the time, the critic Eduard Hanslick, wrote that the Fourth’s charms are not “apparent at first glance.” Its future champions, however, included (as with Mozart’s 40th) Arnold Schoenberg, who admired its structural complexity. The gorgeous first movement, with its seamlessly interlocking melodies and autumnal mood, was taken very slowly by Maestro Harding. In fact, even more than in Mozart, the slow section were extremely slow all through the symphony. And my objection is not to Harding’s definition of slow, but that with the tempo the volume vanished as well, and with all that the energy and through line of the music were gone. The Symphony became a series of starts and stops, trying to rediscover the excitement in the faster sections and having it all dissipate over and over. Disappointingly, the performance never got off the ground.
Fortunately, on the following night, everyone seemed to be back on form.
New York premiere of Guillaume Connesson’s Eiréné (2017), commissioned and premiered by the Concertgebouw in 2018, was warmly greeted by the audience. Connesson calls the work a “nocturnal poem” about ancient Greece’s goddess of peace. The work’s constantly shifting moods, harmonies and tonalities sometimes reminded me of Debussy’s ocean waves, sometimes Stravinskian rhythm and sometimes Berg-esque neo-Romanticism, particularly Lulu, by way of nontonality. It is a fascinating piece, and at only 10 minutes in length, leaves one wanting to hear more - and then again.
Above: Pierre-Laurent Aimard
One myth surrounding Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto, composed between 1809 and 1811, is that it acquired its nickname “Emperor” after the premiere performance when someone in the audience shouted pointing to the stage “Behold, the Emperor!” That never happened (the nickname was anointed by the work’s English publisher), but after French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s performance of the work with the Concertgebouw on Friday night, I wanted to shout to Monsieur Aimard: “Behold, the Emperor!” His performance of this supremely difficult and great work was one of the finest concerto performances I have ever heard. Aimard comes to composers like Beethoven by way of contemporary music; it is with modern music that he made his name and reputation beginning in the 1970s through his work with Pierre Boulez’s Ensemble Intercontemporain, where Aimard was piano soloist. When in the early 2000s it was announced that he would perform all of Beethoven’s concertos with period instrument specialist Nikolaus Harnoncourt, many eye-brows were raised in surprise. But the result was easily one of the finest recorded cycles of the concertos and Aimard’s interpretations have only deepened over the years.
The majestic opening of the concerto, and the extended piano solo that follows, with Aimard’s muscled but nimble playing, set the tone which Maestro Harding and the Concertgebouw embraced. The partnership between the 3 melded into a perfect whole. The heavenly slow movement was the sort of time-stopping music making that will linger in the mind for a long time and the breathtaking finale was a master-class in both showmanship and class. Aimard’s effortless, gravity-defying playing inspired a huge reaction from the audience and a big standing ovation.
Sitting back down at the piano Aimard said that between Beethoven and Strauss (still to come) he could only play an encore by either Beethoven or Strauss. He settled on the Scherzo from Strauss’ Piano Sonata, Op. 5. An early and under-appreciated work, the short but exciting Scherzo was given a thrilling performance by Mssr. Aimard.
Richard Strauss’ tone poem Ein Heldenleben, Op. 40, is one of those technicolor aural spectaculars that has launched a thousand movie scores. Strauss dedicated it to the Royal Concertgebouw and its chief conductor at the time, Willem Mengelberg, so it’s a work that is in the blood of every musician who plays in the orchestra. The score calls for a massive ensemble, including five trumpets (to play on and off stage), eight horns and dozens of strings. Maestro Harding divided the violins on either side of him, with cellos next to the first violins and violas next to and double basses behind the 2nd violins.
The work is divided into six parts: the triumphant opening theme identifying The Hero soon turns into the mocking of The Hero’s Adversaries through atonal, squeaking and squealing winds. (Early critics called it “a monstrous act of egotism,” which Strauss enjoyed very much.) The magnificent The Hero’s Companion is a series of solo violin cadenzas with brief interruptions from the orchestra, representing Strauss’ wife, the soprano Pauline de Ahna. Strauss left very detailed instructions on how he wanted all this to be played by the concertmaster. Concertgebouw’s concertmaster, Liviu Prunaru, played with a sweet, honeyed tone. This may have been the loveliest, most Romantic representation of Strauss’ beloved I’ve ever heard. I wondered if Strauss’ description of his beloved wife as “very complex, a trifle perverse, a trifle coquettish, never the same, changing from minute to minute” matched Prunaru’s interpretation exactly. But perhaps it doesn’t matter. His playing could have made a stone swoon. The movement ends with a ravishing Love Scene that many a film composer has used as “inspiration.” The Hero’s Battlefield was a stunning, heart rate-raising march of doom with its extensive use of the extensive percussion section. The Hero’s Works of Peace was like a greatest-hits montage of Strauss’ own works; he quoted liberally from some of his most popular works, including Also sprach Zarathustra, Don Juan, Death and Transfiguration and Til Eulenspiegel. Maestro Harding kept this rootless, panoramic movement together beautifully and finally The Hero’s Retirement from this World and Fulfillment is a heart-felt adieu to the world, without the pain and darkness of Death and Transfiguration, but rather as a welcomed peace.
Above: Daniel Harding and the Royal Concertgebouw onstage at Carnegie Hall; photo by Steve J Sherman
To say that the Concertgebouw played this all nearly perfectly is an understatement. With Heldenleben - and with the Beethoven Concerto earlier in the evening - the orchestra and Daniel Harding really came together to give a generous, all-encompassing night of musical thrills. The audience clearly wanted an encore and was willing to keep applauding for one. Alas, it was not to be; perhaps it is difficult to follow a performance like this.
~ Ben Weaver
[Note: these concerts were originally to have been conducted by Daniele Gatti, and were to have included Weber's Oberon overture rather than Schumann's Manfred.]