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Brahms: The Romantic (concert)
Saturday, 28 June 2008
Royal Festival Hall, London
“…the outstanding Simon Keenlyside and… Heidi Grant Murphy sang their difficult solos with the combination of seriousness and eloquence that is the hallmark of Brahms” The Guardian
“Baritone Simon Keenlyside was on top form, delivering his solos with excellent musical as well as German diction.” Musicalcriticism.com
.Heidi Grant Murphy, Soprano.
Simon Keenlyside, baritone
Lorin Maazel, conductor
.Philharmonia Chorus
Philharmonia Voices
Philharmonia Orchestra
Brahms: The Romantic (3)
Variations on a Theme by Haydn (St Antony Chorale), Op.56a
Ein deutsches Requiem, Op.45
What the critics say
Richard Whitehouse, Classicalsource, 30 June 2008
http://www.classicalsource.com/db_control/db_concert_review.php?id=6014
To complete this three-concert “Brahms: The Romantic” series, and just a few hours after the second one, Lorin Maazel conducted an oddly balanced but well-contrasted programme that brought out the more reflective side of the composer's genius.
Variations on the St Antony Chorale (the latter not composed by Haydn) received a reading that was unerringly paced and equally well thought through as an expressive entity. Best were the slower variations – the minor-key Fourth was exquisitely poised and the lilting Seventh made the epitome of 'grazioso' – but there was no lack of purpose or energy elsewhere, while the relatively extended finale saw proceedings through to an imposing but never bombastic apotheosis in which the triangle contribution was less irritating than is usually the case. Modest in its overall dimensions though it may be, this work endured as the variation 'template' for the best part of a century, and such a lucid account as this underlined why.
Ending the present series with “Ein deutsches Requiem” (A German Requiem) made sense in several ways. Brahms surely never contemplated a choral symphony, but this setting of extracts from the Lutheran Bible has a formal rigour that is pointedly symphonic, while its overall expressive range is the widest of any of his works. Maazel (who made a notably underrated recording of it with the Philharmonia Orchestra some three decades ago) steered a secure but never uneventful course – eschewing tensile agitation and solemn contemplation, while touching on the pathos and resignation which define just what this work is about.
The opening 'Blessed are they that mourn' unfolded with an appealingly unforced eloquence, with the resonant interplay of cellos and double basses a pleasure to savour, then the sarabande-underpinning of 'For all flesh is as grass' was ominous though never dragging; Maazel bringing out the wistful charm of the interlude at 'Be patient therefore' and launching the fugal continuation of 'But the word of the Lord endureth for ever' with no change of tempo and no break in continuity beyond that engendered by the music. The intensive fugato at 'The soul of the righteous' was powerfully sustained (its pedal point absolutely in focus), then 'How lovely are thy tabernacles' became a pastorale of affecting naivety.
Heidi-Grant Murphy's limpid if slightly tremulous tone was well suited to 'And ye now therefore have sorrow', while Simon Keenlyside brought the requisite fervency to his contributions in the third and sixth movements – though in the latter, Maazel did not evince Klemperer's trick (as recorded) of proceeding from the coursing energy of 'The shall be brought to pass' (superbly incisive here) to the fugue at 'Thou art worthy, O Lord' (perhaps the work's least inspired section) without appreciable drop in intensity. The closing 'Blessed are the dead' can itself seem anti-climactic, but was finely delivered here – not least in the degree to which its many thematic allusions were resourcefully drawn into an outpouring of quiet strength and also great tenderness that proceeded to its concluding repose with a beguiling restraint. Throughout the performance, the Philharmonia Chorus and Voices sounded to be in exceptional form.
A memorable evening in which Maazel never sought to impose his magnetic personality on the music. Clearly his rekindled association with the Philharmonia Orchestra looks set to yield some excellent music-making.
Martin Kettle, The Guardian,
Tuesday July 1, 2008
http://music.guardian.co.uk/live/story/0,,2288290,00.html
Rating: Four out of five stars
Lorin Maazel's three Philharmonia Brahms concerts, the four symphonies followed by the Haydn Variations and the German Requiem, were billed as "Brahms: the Romantic", but in the hall they came across more as Brahms the classicist. Three back-to-back Brahms concerts makes one realise yet again that no composer is as self-disciplined. None makes more out of such small motifs - the opening movement of the fourth symphony is the greatest triumph of this approach - and none is as unsparingly attentive to the forward-looking use of older musical forms, as the fourth's closing movement (expertly navigated by Maazel) proves.
On the basis of his showman reputation, Maazel might not seem an obvious choice in this repertoire. But his controlled and controlling way of making music actually suits Brahms well. As Maazel wrote in the programme essay, Brahms works best when conductors avoid rhetorical flourishes and decline to pump up the phrases or dawdle sentimentally. Disciplined drive is the key to Brahms, and that is what Maazel and the Philharmonia delivered.
That approach worked most successfully in the first and fourth symphonies, less happily in the more expansive second. Yet the performances were never less than interesting. The Philharmonia players responded to Maazel's concentrated approach with some superbly disciplined playing, particularly in the lower strings and the woodwind.
Maazel's strict direction was a virtue in the requiem, too, preventing this great work from billowing aimlessly, as it sometimes can. Both the outstanding Simon Keenlyside and, after a faltering start, Heidi Grant Murphy sang their difficult solos with the combination of seriousness and eloquence that is the hallmark of Brahms.
Hilary Finch, The Times, July 1, 2008
London comes last. Lorin Maazel spent the weekend “reprising” (in his own words) a project he had already taken to the Bavarian Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic: to revisit Brahms's symphonies yet again. Was this the grand climactic finale, then, or the last weary leg?
It all began somewhat inauspiciously with a technically flawless (there is no baton like Maazel's) but disengaged performance of Brahms's Symphony No 3. No surge of energy coursed through the opening phrases, and the slow movement almost stopped in its tracks. Maazel's body language seemed to say that he was happy to take pride in the Philharmonia's playing and let everything fall into place.
There was more to admire in their performance of the Fourth Symphony. Here Maazel's determination not to let too many Brahmsian expressive fuses blow too soon did create a balance of rigour and relaxation, a sense of space for the final passacaglia's variations to find their true energy and passion. Maazel revealed the coherence and craft of the symphony and his players responded with respect.
Later in the day, a slick performance of Brahms's so-called Haydn Variations provided an overture to the German Requiem. Here Maazel's clarity of direction and long-sighted view of the work drew the best from a rigorously trained Philharmonia Chorus.
Theirs was the might and the power to move: in the easeful breathing of the opening blessing for those who mourn, and on to the powerful shifts of tempo and pacing as they sang of withering grass and fading flowers.
The soloists were disappointingly and bafflingly cast. Simon Keenlyside cannot fail to give his all, but in terms of vocal colour and temperament, this isn't his piece. And Heidi Grant Murphy's tremulous soprano was not up to the demands of even a brief appearance. Let's hope that a revisiting of Maazel's own music in 2009 will yield rather more than his less than thrilling rendezvous with Brahms.
Agnes Kory, musicalcriticism.com, 30 June 2008
http://www.musicalcriticism.com/concerts/phil-maazel-brahms-0608.shtml
Rating: Four out of five stars
For me the most gratifying element of Lorin Maazel's presentation of Brahms symphonic works is the transparency of the large structure as well as the lucidity of even the tiniest details. Maazel clearly knows every single note and conducted the whole cycle, including the massive Requiem, from memory. And there are also human elements which inspire admiration: looking and moving at least twenty years younger than his age, the 78 year-old conductor seems perfectly at ease while standing and conducting for over an hour at a stretch.
Maazel's Brahms interpretation can be summed up best by himself. In the programme notes he writes that 'I believe an interpreter of Brahms's symphonic oeuvre cannot truly enter into his idiom without an intimate knowledge of his chamber music. In that realm, Brahms succeeded in expressing the delicacy of his passions with a subtlety and restraint few, if any, have ever achieved. No bombast there, no vacuous declamations. A conductor, conversant with the sonatas, trios, quartets at al., can learn to eschew rhetorical flourishes, saccharine pulping of phrases and maudlin dawdling. In place of sentimentality, sentiment. In place of the abstract imposition of interpretive 'concepts' (with all its attendant posturing), disciplined, visceral drive.'
Maazel does indeed know Brahms' chamber music - eight years ago I attended his violin recital at the Barbican Hall where he performed all three Brahms violin sonatas from memory – and approaches Brahms' large works from the angle of chamber music. It is rare, if at all, to hear the timpani so integrated in ensemble as during this Brahms cycle: for example I should mention a short dialogue between the first violins and timpani in the last movement of Symphony No. 2 and another of these dialogues between strings and timpani in the first movement of Symphony No. 4.
The Philharmonia Orchestra presented the cycle with the title 'Brahms: The Romantic'. Hardly a revelation, but a possible cause for misunderstanding. Those who came to the concerts with expectation for what Maazel described in the programme notes as 'rhetorical flourishes, saccharine pulping of phrases and maudlin dawdling' might have been disappointed. Sometimes even I - an admirer of Maazel – found the sentiment understated: the grand opening cello theme in the slow movement of Symphony No. 2 and again the opening cello theme in the slow movement of Symphony No. 3 sounded less than espressivo, although this might had to do with the interpretation of the guest principal cellist. (Why do orchestras use guest principals? Surely they could deliver quality from within their own ranks?) However, or exactly because of the disciplined restrain during the journey from the beginning of the compositions towards their end, Maazel's finales were bursting with passion and grandeur. On the journey we encountered delicate or robust dances, beautiful songs and sentiments of all kinds in a great variety of tone colours.
The orchestra played magnificently throughout the whole cycle. The clarinet solos delighted the senses as well as the intellect, brass and horns were majestic, the violas sang on their instruments as rarely before. Concert master Zsolt-Tihamér Visontay delivered the violin solo at the end of the second symphony's slow movement with pure and unforced tone, sensitive phrase endings and excellent bow control over the long sustained last note (which lasts for three full bars in slow andante sostenuto).
In spite of his economic conducting style, the large combined forces of the Philharmonia Chorus and Philharmonia Voices responded splendidly to Maazel's directions. This surely has to do with excellent preparation yet chorus masters (and German language coaches) were not specified in the programme notes. Careful scrutinising of the chorus page shows couple of chorus master names half-way through the text, but there is no way of knowing who was the gentleman who took a bow with the combined chorus after the well–deserved audience ovation. Soprano soloist Heidi Grant Murphy's rhythm was not always accurate and her vibrato too was slightly unsteady. Baritone Simon Keenlyside was on top form, delivering his solos with excellent musical as well as German diction.
Maazel wrote about Brahms that 'Only genius can reconcile passionate expression and compositional imperatives'. Regarding interpretation and performance, Maazel is not far off from this maxim.
