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United Kingdom Beethoven, Sibelius, Prokofiev: Janine Jansen (violin), London Symphony Orchestra / Gianandrea Noseda (conductor). Barbican Hall, London, 29.1.2023. (CS)
Beethoven – Overture, ‘Coriolan’ Op.62
Sibelius – Violin Concerto in D minor Op.47
Prokofiev – Symphony No.6 in Eb minor Op.111
This London Symphony Orchestra programme on the Barbican Hall positioned three strongly distinctive musical voices aspect by aspect: three substantial musical statements, all in minor keys; two acquainted, one much less incessantly heard; every given a recent, thought-provoking studying.
‘Whereas most other modern composers are engaged in manufacturing cocktails of every hue and description, I offer the public pure cold water.’ Sibelius’s oft-quoted comment about his sparse, seeming self-effacing Sixth Symphony highlights that work’s avoidance of each over-charged Romantic rhetoric and trendy, expressionist angst. The implied inward-looking austerity, and the music’s affinity with the weather, may also appear to characterise the opening of the composer’s Violin Concerto, the whispered oscillations of the orchestral violins inviting the soloist to hitch them with a tune sung from afar. Indeed, describing a efficiency by the Austrian violinist Emmanuel Tjeknavorian – who in 2015, at 20 years-of-age, gained the prize for the very best interpretation of Sibelius’s Violin Concerto on the International Jean Sibelius Violin Competition – with the Philharmonia and Michael Sanderling in February 2020, I discovered the opening solo to encourage photos of ‘a bird easefully circling in a sun-shimmering sky above glistening ice’.
Well, there was no ‘glistening ice’ on this efficiency of Sibelius’s Concerto by the Dutch violinist Janine Jansen. This was heart-on-sleeve, megawatt Romanticism – wealthy, meaty, commanding, driving ahead with unremitting depth. Whereas I discovered that the energy of Tjeknavorian’s sound to be allied with subtlety and an interior stillness, Jansen appeared to attempt to speak the work’s unceasing dynamism, swaying and bending low into the phrases after which standing tall to venture with absolute command and energy, and with immensely concentrated consideration to color and element.
I confess I want the fleeting silveriness of Pekka Kuusisto: the sense of thriller and one thing elemental – extensive vistas of time and area – that his unhurried spinning of Sibelius’s cool strains evokes. Of one thing historic and true being slowly given breathe and delivered to life – the coolness and purity its very depth. But, there was no denying the communicative persuasiveness of Jansen’s strategy and it was complemented by Noseda who inspired the LSO to surge into and thru the instrumental climaxes, and who turned the musical corners with well-oiled fluency.
Jansen used a large vibrato to place lots of flesh on the bones of that first solo assertion within the Allegro moderato and the wealthy heat was sustained by the arpeggios, runs and double-stops, her tone a beautiful mix of sumptuousness and metal. Often on this motion the Eb minor Largamente, triggered by the soloist’s surging ascent, looks like a wonderful rush of adrenalin in distinction to the calmer previous woodwind theme; right here the alternative was true – it was a second of leisure, of indulgence within the Romantic lyricism. Jansen’s cadenza was unflinchingly pushed and decided, the voicing strongly etched, the harmonic route clearly articulated by the position of the decrease notes within the multiple-stopped chords, whereas at all times sustaining the impetus of the road. And, after that, Jansen’s G-string melody roared – and, if that sounds a bit fierce, then one would say that the fireplace supplied comforting warmth. There was ferocity on the shut of the motion, although, as Noseda coaxed thunderous stabs from the LSO.
The lengthy low line firstly of the Adagio di molto was superbly formed, once more with beguiling heat, and if the horns complemented Jansen’s Brahmsian weight, then the music was ‘lifted’ by the rising pizzicatos within the decrease strings and the violins’ mild syncopations. There was great energy from the strings within the tutti string climaxes, although, as Noseda achieved each breadth and continuity.
I missed a few of the playfulness of the Allegro, ma non tanto. The music was filled with ‘purpose’ slightly than high-spirited, and, for me, didn’t actually ‘dance’ – although Jansen’s bow had me mesmerised within the opening theme as she swept by the down-bow after which used the hooked dotted rhythms to work her approach again to the heel, with the slick sleight-of-hand of a conjurer shuffling a pack of playing cards. Noseda judiciously balanced percussive drive with lyricism within the tutti episodes, neatly clearing the air for the solo violin episodes. Those Sibelian pedals on the shut that create ‘false endings’ of rising pressure needed to work exhausting to realize their impact, given the unalleviated depth of what had preceded them, however the explosiveness of the ultimate three sforzando chords that accompanied Jansen’s high-octane crescendo ascent was met with rapturous applause from the capability viewers within the Barbican Hall. And one younger admirer, who proffered a bouquet, was given a heat, real hug by the evidently delighted Jansen.
Sibelius’s afore-cited comment strengthened an aesthetic place that the composer had taken in 1907 when he met Mahler, through the latter’s tour of Finland. To Mahler’s assertion that ‘the symphony must be like the world. It must embrace everything’, Sibelius countered, ‘I admire the symphony’s model and severity of type, in addition to the profound logic creating an interior connection amongst all the motives.’ That ‘profound logic’ discovered voice in Jansen’s encore, the Largo from the C Major sonata for solo violin – a palette cleanser wherein the tune now sang clear and pure, the inward-looking depth paradoxically communicative and entrancing.
Nineteenth-century commentators oft remarked the originality of Beethoven’s musical concepts and his improvement of them. E.T.A. Hoffmann, for instance, highlighted the best way Beethoven’s openings create pressure and anticipation, noting in an 1812 evaluate of the Coriolan Overture that the ‘principal theme of the Allegro has a character of irresistible restlessness, of unquenchable longing … the transposition of this theme a tone lower is unexpected and increases the tension’. He concluded that every one combines to create, ‘the highest pitch of expectation for that which the rise of the mysterious curtain will reveal’. Noseda appeared decided to emphasize such destabilising undercurrents in his studying of the Overture. As within the Sibelius, string forces have been diminished and there was area for the woodwind solos to come back by because the dynamics veered extensively between extremes. Noseda fairly actually threw himself into the musical drama, urging his gamers with virtually violent sways of his physique, and vigorous jerks and scoops of his arms. I discovered the general impact considerably fragmentary – slightly too stressed – although there was no denying the vigour and expressive urgency that Noseda conjured.
Prokofiev’s Sixth Symphony is a reasonably uncommon customer to live performance halls. It’s a traditionally vital work, although. First carried out in Leningrad in October 1947, when it travelled to Moscow two months later it provoked denunciation by the Communist Party and the Union of Soviet Composers. His Fifth Symphony might have gained a Stalin Prize earlier that yr, however the Sixth was excoriated as ‘expressionist and neurotic’, ‘abnormal, repulsive and pathological’.
To twentieth-century ears, the symphony’s modernism appears unremarkable, and there’s a lot lyrical magnificence, significantly within the lengthy central Largo. Conducting an enlarged string part to enrich the intensive wind and brass forces, Noseda formed the delicacies of this motion expressively, sustaining the prevailing breadth of line, however countering the lyricism with episodes of quasi-mechanical percussiveness – skilfully balancing emollience and aggression. The glory of the total, flowing tutti sound grabbed the ear and coronary heart: a beautiful expansiveness of color and timbre, spanning from tuba to piccolo, with harp, oboe, trumpet, strings shining in between, cohering into an embracing lushness.
The Allegro moderato was extra chiselled, austere, its colors darkish, the temper tense. The strings’ unison fragments have been lithe, horn solos plaintive but penetrating. Noseda created a persuasive sense of an accumulating musical argument, the music by some means each trendy and classical in spirit. There was a Haydn-esque ‘lightness’ firstly of the Vivace, too, flute and tuba ‘duetting’ above celli pizzicatos, the violins’ articulations impressively crisp and ethereal. But, that the breeziness is ironic, painfully so, was made more and more evident, the jauntiness giving method to jarring hammer blocks – unambiguously grim and grave.
Claire Seymour