Sunday, August 11, 2024
Royal Albert Hall, London
This was not an evening to be a critic. The crowd, and even the R3 presenter, infatuated. But here goes anyway. Daniel Barenboim set a somnambulant pace for the opening of Brahms’s Violin Concerto. It was lifeless, and if Anne-Sophie Mutter’s first entry had some fire it wasn’t long before she too was suffering from lethargy, although the quicker music did fire-up if prone to lapsing back to the starting gate. Of course, it’s Mutter’s style to be combative, never mind if the tone curdles somewhat, and she can certainly spin a generous line, sometimes a confiding one. The first movement (including Joachim’s cadenza) was heavy weather – difficult to escape Celibidachian connotations (not that I would wish to); however, there is a difference between the real thing and being under his influence, which Barenboim has willingly been (far less so Mutter, in Munich there were irreconcilable standpoints when rehearsing Sibelius). Brahms’s second movement, a genuine Adagio this time, opened with a poetic oboe solo, and the Finale had a spoonful of paprika added. As a heartfelt encore, a “prayer for peace”, she said – which of course this orchestra symbolically stands for, ever since Barenboim and Edward Said co-formed it twenty-five years ago – Mutter offered the ‘Sarabande’ from a Bach Partita, BWV1004 I believe.
As for Schubert 9 (sometimes numbered as 8), even without repeats, this was a long and sepia-tinted haul, a stately view of the music if rhythmically acute and clearly detailed, something of a throwback, maybe a retort to ‘authentic’ performance. Yet there were miscalculations, such as the jolting acceleration into the first-movement coda that by its close had turned into a grandiose caricature of itself. Vistas were opened up in the second movement, an Andante tread, yes, but with the con moto disregarded, and the catastrophe of the climax underplayed. The Scherzo was buoyant, if with little heard of the timpani figures, the Trio pleasingly lilting, and the Finale, the tempo akin to Barbirolli and Knappertsbusch, easygoing if less gemütlich than either, the music gradually reaching the finishing post, coolly. It was no doubt what Barenboim wanted, his players devoted.
Thanks for this honest review while the majority of other reviewers seem to have been blinded by the political dimension of Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan project. Barenboim is one of my musical heroes but I remain unconvinced about the humanitarian aspect of his orchestra’s function. I treasure my memories of great Barenboim performances over long decades but I am saddened by the public display of his crippling illness.