Friday 21 November 2014

A Pair of Fifths

Last season, the Toronto Symphony under guest conductor Thomas Dausgaard gave a memorable performance of Nielsen's Symphony # 3 in harness with Beethoven's Violin Concerto.  I gave this concert a two-thumbs-up review (you can read it here: A Repertory Staple and a Canadian Rarity ).  At this program there was also a printed notice that the series of Beethoven and Nielsen would continue this year, with the same conductor and with pianist Jan Lisiecki playing three of the five Beethoven piano concertos.


So last night I attended the concert which paired the Symphony # 5 of Nielsen with the Piano Concerto # 5 ("Emperor") of Beethoven.  All my remarks last year about the appropriate relationship between these two composers still hold true today.  And the partnership of Dausgaard with the TSO was still memorable in this most unusual symphony.  Dausgaard and Lisiecki, as expected, struck sparks with Beethoven left, right, and centre.


Since the Nielsen symphony is so little-known here, I want to direct you to my blog post about that work before going on to discuss the performance:  A Symphony Like No Other.
The concert opened very appropriately with the overture to Don Giovanni by Mozart.  This was a big-orchestra performance (and none the worse for that), and very much more than just an also-ran in the evening as a whole.  The opening "statue music" is one of the most Romantic and powerful things Mozart ever wrote, which perfectly justified its placing in this program.  Dausgaard and the orchestra played it with appropriately hair-raising intensity, and then followed with a slightly hectic but still tightly integrated reading of the jovial allegro.  The overture normally ends on a dominant chord, upon which the curtain rises and the music flows straight away into the opening aria of the opera.  For this concert, the alternative "tailored" concert ending was used.


Next we got the Beethoven concerto.  This, of course, is a true repertoire "standard", and one where many music lovers know and love the sound at least of every note in the score.  But still, there's nothing quite like a live performance to wake you up to features of music that you might not hear if you weren't really concentrating.


(Yes, I admit it -- I do listen to classical music as a background to other activities.  Mea culpa....)


What struck me was that the long first movement, so grand and dramatic, is mainly grand and dramatic for the orchestra.  A very large percentage of the pianist's contribution is quieter, more meditative, occasionally even dreamlike.  I think maybe my perceptions were clouded by the overwhelming memory of the dramatic opening cadenza-introduction -- but it proves to be very much the exception to the rule.  I've had occasion to write about the impressive musicianship of Jan Lisiecki before, so I won't trouble to say it all again.  But for me, one moment on the piano stood out -- the famous passage of parallel rising and falling octave scales in the middle of the development.  It's marked to be loud, and some pianists make that an excuse to become thunderous.  But this is not Rachmaninoff, not even Brahms, and if the scales are too loud the fascinating bassoon counter-melody will be lost.  Lisiecki began loudly, but scaled his tone back after the first few notes and the bassoon line came through loud and clear.  I also liked the way the coda was built very naturally and organically by conductor and soloist, the crescendo sounding not the least bit "interpreted" but completely integral.


The lyrical slow movement too was simply beautiful, as it must be because like so many of Beethoven's slow movements, the music is beautifully simple.  The transition to the finale without break sounded exactly like the performers were holding their collective breath (and I'm sure they do!) but when the lightning stroke shot out and the rondo began, it was a bit too fast for comfort.  It should be rapid, energetic, lively and life enhancing -- but not hectic, and there were several times when it felt like a hectic scramble to the finish line.  Worse, there were a few spots where it sounded like the soloist and orchestra were getting away from each other in the race.  It wasn't blatantly obvious, it certainly didn't fall apart, but it did take a bit of the shine off the beauty of the two earlier movements.


But cheers all around were certainly well merited, and Lisiecki's playing of a Chopin waltz as encore was lovely, beautifully light and airy, and letting the acoustics of the hall do the work of carrying the sound outwards.


The Nielsen Fifth Symphony was magnificent.  Right from the get-go, it was obvious that the orchestra had the work firmly in their sights.  Dausgaard is a rather "minimalist" conductor whose beat sometimes seems to stop altogether, but he plainly had no trouble keeping the orchestra together in the most wayward passages.  The noble melody that arises during the first movement and leads to a triumphant climax was marked by magnificent horn playing.  The snare drummer gave the wildest, most anarchic account I've ever heard of the famous improvisation ("as if at all costs he wants to stop the progress of the orchestra" as Nielsen said), with positively hair-raising results.  The woodwinds were screaming as wildly as in any of the most extreme passages in Mahler, giving a true feeling of desperation to the struggles of the aspiring melody.  The offstage drumming at the end began loudly but faded slowly right down to the edge of audibility with magnificent control.


The second movement sounds rather confused at the opening (by the composer's intention), but the composer's favourite triple-time asserted itself clearly soon enough.  Dausgaard led the orchestra in a magnificent account of the fiendish fugue, with the different continuation after each entry of the fugue subject clearly delineated.  The second, slower fugue is played by strings with sordines, and sounded as otherworldly and remote as I have ever heard in recordings.  The final triumph was beautifully built up and the timpani rallentando at the end perfectly controlled.  Definitely a performance to remember!



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