CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★
The stage was set for something grand and imposing. Filled to overflowing with just short of a hundred players on the platform, nine basses in line along the back like sentries, the same number of horns on the left wing. We were treated to a performance of Bruckner’s Symphony No.9 that justified these massive forces. There are two main approaches to this valedictory work. The first sees it as the culmination of the nineteenth century tradition, gaunt, grand, broad in scope and tempi. The second as a precursor of twentieth century angst, existential doubt and terror. Kazuki Yamada adhered to the first path, his expansive, though never dragging, tempi approaching those of Giulini and the Vienna Philharmonic’s nonpareil recording of the work. The spell is cast in the opening notes, the groundwork of tremolando strings, and then a call from the horns presaging some mighty message – a wonderful start.The scherzo was just about perfect. Inspired by the scherzo of Beethoven’s fifth, with its sinister mock playful goblin tread, Bruckner expands them to Wagnerian proportions with Fasolt and Fafner in a gigantic roundelay of terror. Yamada elicited some terrific playing from the CBSO, demented biting strings and thudding timpani, the Trio sections offered only slight relief with Bruckner’s ambiguously creepy thematic undertone always present.
Artists aren’t always the best judges of their work. Bruckner considered his ninth unfinished and laboured on a fourth movement. He had finished it with the third movement but didn’t realise it. The musicologist Michael Steinberg wrote that given, “how beautiful the close of his Adagio is, I would go so far as to say thank God he was not able to finish the fourth movement.” I say “Amen” to that. Oliver Janes’ clarinet began it sounding like a soul in the wilderness – half an hour later Marie-Christine Zupancic’s ethereal flute and a quartet of mellow Wagner tubas wafted us up to the empyrean. Wonderful. Karajan, a great Brucknerian, said there was a golden thread in each of his symphonies that must be followed. Yamada, notably in the first movement, hasn’t found it yet but I look forward to hearing him and the CBSO continue their quest to find it.
Mozart’s greatest music dazzles, disturbs, ravishes, elates and leaves us gaping at his genius. His Piano Concerto No.26 ‘Coronation’ contents itself with charm which made it palatable for the court of Emperor Leopold II at his coronation in 1790, hence the nickname. ‘Mostly Mozart’ would be a more accurate sobriquet since the overworked composer left the score without a cadenza, the left hand part virtually blank and two of the movements without tempo markings. He simply busked it on the night. I would have loved to hear the CBSO’s outstanding wind section relishing Mozart’s rich writing in concertos 22 and 24 but they had little to do here. I assume 26 was soloist Martin Helmchen’s choice. Perhaps he wanted the challenge of embellishing and elaborating all the score’s blank pages? The central movement’s charming main idea, for example. is repeated four times without variation giving the player, as Alfred Brendel judged, "so much opportunity for improvisatory figuration, and needs it so badly to come alive.” That wasn’t Helmchen’s agenda as his programme note made plain: “There are very few pianists who would dare to improvise live in concert – I certainly will not be!” So except for the cadenza – provenance unspecified – we got the printed notes and nothing more. It was all very pleasant and (here we go again) charming, with Helmchen always elegant and graceful but I longed for a little adventure and daring.
Norman Stinchcombe