Thursday, May 26, 2022
Southbank Centre, London – Royal Festival Hall
Guest Reviewer, Ateş Orga
Some concerts you don’t review. You’re just glad you were there, to share and remember, to have breathed the occasion. Herbert Blomstedt, ninety-five in July, directed a performance of Bruckner Seven as towering, glowing and resonant as the cathedrals that were the composer’s environment and inspiration. The great E-major cupolas crowning the flanking movements defined majesty and magnificence – strings soaring beyond the clouds, the trumpet-edged brass columns organ-like in their registration, the kettle-drum E-pedals glorying in crescendo. The massive Leviathan climax of the Adagio – in a reading following Nowak but otherwise acknowledging the wartime Haas edition in omitting cymbals and triangle (though not timpani) – thundered deep more than triumphed bright, the semitone-dropping bass-line (G-sharp/A-flat to G) swinging the whole torso from C-sharp minor to C-major in one epic spine-tingling cosmos of sound and tension, the gates of Heaven before us. The Wagner tubas of the coda – the contrabass tuba of the heavy brass (two-o’clock position) having moved over to join them, left-back of stage – intoned their lament with a solemnity and perfection of tuning (major third in particular) rarely so tearfully sublime, the pizzicatos at the close bidding the softest of farewells to mortal life. Corporately and soloistically, the Philharmonia – antiphonal violins, cellos and basses to the left – was supremely responsive, loving and in love with the tall, stooping old master guiding their journey, un-opened blue study-score before him, hands ever expressive and releasing, giving every player their moment, every now and again rising to full height in the oceanic vastness of Bruckner’s vision. Seventy minutes spent, emotionally and physically drained, the packed house rose to a man, no ovation enough to do justice to the revelation witnessed.
Opening the programme, the debate, aria (Andrew Mellor’s “black pearl” F-sharp minor), and singspiel frolics of Mozart’s ‘big’ A-major Piano Concerto K488. Rarely rising about mezzoforte, the pages free of adornment, Maria João Pires’s characteristically crystalline articulation (plus flutter pedalling) ensured no note or turn was lost. The formal structure was unlaboured, her dovetailing with the woodwinds in the second and final movements a classic study in reticence yet commitment, the dialogue beautifully integrated. With Blomstedt handling his reduced forces like the classiest of chamber ensembles, everyone intent on listening and matched phrasing, this was intimate, elegantly projected music-making. The world of Vienna a century before Bruckner.
Thank you for this eloquent review, Ates, your recollected descriptions so musically compelling, so musically insightful and expressed with such command of the language as to recreate for those who were not there the ethos of what was clearly an inspiring and unforgettable occasion. How many national newspapers also reviewed this concert? Did Radio 3 ‘take’ this concert on the day BBC-tv’s channel 4 death sentence was announced? – the last, not wholly before time, reducing the BBC’s daily ten television channels to only nine – no, they did not: whilst this concert was taking place, lost forever to the stars, Radio 3 broadcast Running Riot ‘the National Youth Orchestra performing Stravinsky’.
When Mrs Thatcher became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1979, Britain had three television channels, none of which broadcast around the clock. When she left office, eleven years later, it had over 200, many of which did. Those who imagined that the televising of classical music would benefit from these greater opportunities found their hopes short-lived. The arrival of satellite television and the vast expansion of output, including increased BBC programming, saw the regular televising of classical music – opera, orchestral concerts, chamber music, solo instrumental and vocal recitals – disappear forever from their screens.
Such pre-1990 programmes as André Previn’s Music Night – a weekly hour-long BBC-1 broadcast of orchestral music with the London Symphony Orchestra, whose viewing audience was measured in millions, brought classical music to many who otherwise would never have had the opportunity of coming into contact with it, but Previn’s programme, popular as it became, was by no means the first live televising of hour-long classical orchestral concerts. It is not often realised that when independent television began in England, in 1955, it was inaugurated by a live concert by Sir John Barbirolli conducting the Hallé Orchestra. Conductor and orchestra had entered into a contract with Associated TeleVision to present live concerts of classical music every two weeks on Saturday evenings – ‘arts programming’ was then considered a crucial element in all aspects of broadcasting, and was also enshrined in Contract Law.
BBC Television had shown live classical music reasonably regularly since 1936, when the Corporation became the first in the world to broadcast television programmes. Ten years after inaugurating commercial television in the United Kingdom, Sir John and the Hallé were once more recording, on Thursday September 9 1965, an hour-long concert of classical music, introduced by Sir John, for later BBC transmission. That same evening, BBC-1 was televising a Rossini Opera live from Glyndebourne: over half-a-century later, such events have become unthinkable, so the BBC’s failure to capture last night an artistic occasion so eloquently described by Ates, demonstrates the paucity of artistic understanding of those responsible in the centenary years of the Corporation’s founding.
As I understand it, Radio 3 asked to broadcast it, but Maria Joao was sadly not willing. I was there as a punter, and it was an unforgettable evening. For me the Bruckner was even finer than at Haitink’s farewell Prom.
Very annoyed and disappointed with Pires, but surely Radio 3 could have recorded the Bruckner??? It wouldn’t be the first time that microphones have been switched off deferring to a soloist’s wishes. So, we could have had Blomstedt’s Bruckner after all … bugger!
Pires was happy enough for this Berlin K488 to be broadcast live: https://www.classicalsource.com/concert/berliner-philharmoniker-herbert-blomstedt-bruckner-3-maria-joao-pires-plays-mozart-k488-live-webcast/
I had hoped to be at the Blomstedt concert but a meeting that overrun prevented me going. This review leaves me gutted at missing the concert. Instead I listened to R3 broadcast the National Youth Orchestra and spent much of the first half in disbelief at the utter rubbish the kids were playing and too much of it. I had to switch off, losing the Stravinsky, but given R3 has its favourite music and performers on a loop, I expect there will be another Rite soon. There was one last week from J Nott!!!
I was lucky to attend this wonderful concert. As mentioned in this review, I was ’emotionally drained’ at the end of it (the Adagio, in particular, brought tears to my eyes). The enduring standing ovation celebrating an outstanding performance by a first-class orchestra and a great conductor was well-deserved. Pires and Blomstedt acknowledged the public compliments with humility and class.
What a wonderful review by Ateş Orga and of course it was a concert which it was a privilege to attend, and I would agree that the Bruckner was finer than Haitink’s last at the Proms, and perhaps there was too much emotion attached to that occasion.
For me K 488 was less than a triumph, and I lay the blame not only at the bottom heavy arrangement of the orchestra, with the basses and celli booming away on their sound boxes. but particularly at the string strength used. This was far too excessive for the sublime, unforced playing by Maria João Pires, and perhaps she realised that this might be the case when she declined the BBC invitation to broadcast. Playing the piano would never be a ‘battle’ for her.
The Bruckner was absolute heaven, from a conductor who clearly commands the respect of so many orchestral players, of which I was one for many, many years.
In my fantasy world what I would like to do is line up so many ‘conductors’ and invite them to sit in the choir seats, in whatever hall, for a Blomstedt concert and to learn. There they will see no histrionics, no podium thumping, they will see someone who has not just picked up the score on the plane on the way over, and they will not see the sneering down the string lines when things don’t quite go to plan, never the ‘conductor’s’ fault of course, nor would they see the tearful orgasmic moments, such a vital part of the ‘maestro’ scene. They will search in vain for an ego on the rostrum, but what they will see is someone who commands real respect from the musicians before him, whose confidence in his rôle is matched by the confidence he has in their abilities.
One of the viola players tells of being on ‘cloud Herbert’ on the way home, something those of lucky enough to be there can identify with.
One of the features of an outstanding performance is the reluctance of the players to leave the stage afterwards as if wishing to remain in the moment. Such was particularly the case with the horn players, five French and four Wagner who had together made such a tremendous contribution. It was a memorable evening.
A superb concert, the silence of the audience adding to the occasion, especially at the end of movements, and rapt attention throughout. I was at first disappointed that the cymbal and triangle were omitted at the climax of the Adagio but the force of the timpani and the thrill of the brass (I was sitting just behind the Wagner tubas!) was very moving. Personally, this was a Bruckner 7 to hear again, but sadly Radio 3 denied us that opportunity. The Mozart concerto in Pires’s hands seemed to foreshadow Beethoven in many ways and the rapport with the woodwinds was striking. Let us hope that Blomstedt returns soon to provide us with more Bruckner, still a very much under-rated composer.
What a shame Pires got in the way, and an equal shame that Radio 3 didn’t have the gumption to just record the Bruckner, which seems to have been an amazing performance and a great loss to those of us not there.
Four pizzicato at the close of the Adagio, not seven. I was there. So, too, obviously was Mr Orga. But it was four.
Correct! I was on the platform. 3 more bowed notes- don’t know why. Discuss!
NB: “seven” has now been removed from Ates’s review. Colin
A particularly interesting raft of comments, valuable and insightful to read, for which thank you all. As for those four rather than seven pizzicati at the end of the Bruckner Adagio, I evidently must have missed them – occasion, memory, association otherwise, and ears presumably having played odd tricks on the night. Apologies. The holograph, 1st edition (1885) and Nowak revision (identified in the programme) give the customary seven. Only Haas gives four (the final four) – justified cadentially if nothing else, the melodic motion having ceased. One of those instances described by Deryck Cooke of “two different Bruckner Society scores … issued under the Haas and Nowak regimes [where] we need not talk about two different ‘versions’ where they show no structural divergencies at all but only a number of subsidiary differences in texture and/or orchestration and/or phrasing. With [No 7] the two Bruckner Society scores represent, not different ‘versions’, but one and the same Bruckner score in two slightly different editions” (Musical Times, January 1969). Furtwangler, Haitink, Jochum, Karajan, Wand were all ‘Haas four’ advocates. Celibidache opted for seven. The absence of BBC microphones can only be put down as tragedy, or a lack of willingness on the part of programmers to compromise. Better no Mozart than no concert at all.