A majestic ‘Alpine’
Symphony from the RLPO – shame about the slide-show
Royal
Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra at Symphony Hall ★★★★
Near
the end of his epic musical traversal of a mountain peak Richard Strauss
launches a storm. It’s the only genuinely pictorial effect in this huge tone
poem which is, as Beethoven said about his ‘Pastoral’ Symphony, "more the
expression of feeling than painting". There are none of Don Quixote’s
bleating sheep, Beethoven’s cuckoos and quails or Mahler’s alpine cowbells. The
storm is Strauss’s set piece and even the most innocent listener is left in no
doubt about what’s happening; the plink-plonk string pizzicati of the first
raindrops, ominous rumbles of approaching thunder from the basses and bass drum
and then the apocalyptic eruption complete with wind-machine going full pelt.
The RLPO under Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider did it complete justice; I’d have donned a
souwester if there’d been one handy.This was exactly as it should be – so why
spoil it by projecting a slide of forked lightning in the night sky? It added
nothing and annoyingly distracted attention away from the musical experience.
The
Alpine landscape photographs by Ben Tibbetts were there to “create an
experience to remember”, which they did but not in the way intended. A couple
of them were spectacular with the metaphysical menace of a Romantic landscape
by John Martin, but Strauss was giving us all the aesthetic sublimity we
needed, leaving us free to create our own images if desired. Keeping the
overhead lights on full and using a relatively tiny screen also vitiated the
planned visual impact. If you want an audio-visual spectacular don’t do it on a
shoestring budget. At one point the LPO’s excellent oboe had a crucial solo, an
isolated moment of sudden stillness before the storm’s frenzy – the lone
individual dwarfed by Nature’s immensity. What was the visual analogue for this
emotion of existential doubt? Another slide of another mountain. The power of
the orchestra’s performance – every section at the top of their game – deserved
our undivided attention which this “concept” concert impeded us from doing.
Before
taking up the baton Szeps-Znaider was one of the world’s top violin virtuosos.
He’s not lost his touch and his warm full-toned Guarneri “del Gesu” violin was
a delight in Bruch’s Violin Concerto No 1. The LPO’s strings, with
Szeps-Znaider rightly using antiphonally divided fiddles for extra clarity,
provided some luscious support with the soloist ensuring that Bruch’s
hyper-romantic slow movement weaved its familiar but always welcome magic.
Norman
Stinchcombe