United Kingdom Coleridge-Taylor, Liszt, R. Strauss: London Symphony Orchestra / Sir Antonio Pappano. Barbican Hall, London 12.2.2023. (MBr)
Coleridge-Taylor – Ballade in A minor, Op.33
Liszt – Die Ideale
R. Strauss – Ein Heldenleben
London’s main orchestras have had a protracted historical past of selecting opera music administrators to guide them, particularly over the past half century. This is particularly the case with the London Symphony Orchestra – Antonio Pappano would be the LSO’s fourth principal conductor with such a background since Claudio Abbado in 1979. This live performance showcased why a Pappano legacy with the orchestra is perhaps a particular one – it’s about magnificence, it’s about sound, and it’s about why a symphony orchestra doesn’t must be, properly, identical to a symphony orchestra.
It is true that not the whole lot on this programme was well-suited to displaying us this. Liszt’s Die Ideale is, frankly, an horrendous piece of music – the penultimate of the composer’s 13 symphonic poems. It is, in fact, simply this author’s view that Liszt actually couldn’t compose nice music for the symphony orchestra. Die Ideale – initially written in 1857 to commemorate the revealing in Weimar of a double statue of Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang Goethe – is much less concerning the occasion and extra about what one may really feel from studying Schiller’s poem Das Ideal und das Leben (The Actual and the Ideal Life). No matter how laborious Pappano tried, and irrespective of how exquisitely crafted the LSO performed this twenty-five-minute piece, somewhat than trying to reconcile the mind and the soul, or to in some way search to outline the battle between mankind’s struggles and his want for perfection, it felt like sitting by way of a gloriously learn, however totally boring, narration of Kant’s Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Indeed, the Maestoso final motion of the Liszt (though the work is performed with out breaks) had a form of ‘Kantean’ density however nonetheless managed to sound undeniably spectacular – though it might have been a merciless irony had the LSO in some way expended a lot of their collective energy right here that that they had inadequate in reserve for the work after the interval, Ein Heldenleben.
But no. And what a efficiency of Strauss’s magnificent tone poem we acquired. This was, in virtually each manner, a markedly superior Heldenleben to an excellent one given by Mariss Jansons and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in January 2019 on the Barbican. It was exactly Pappano’s ear for drama – the Verdian storm which he dropped at the opening of ‘Der Held’ – how not often have these horns sounded so emphatic, hammered in with such drive, for instance? How typically have Strauss’s critics sounded as scorching, as acerbic, as sheerly vicious as they did on this efficiency? There was nothing meek concerning the woodwind right here – the vindictiveness within the oboe, clarinet and flute was savage. Strauss depicts his spouse, Pauline, in a fairly extraordinary violin solo in ‘Des Helden Gefährtin’, and Roman Simovic’s was some of the ravishing I’ve ever heard – and I’ve heard many, many performances of this work. What was outstanding about it was the entire distortion of time – Pappano lavished on Simovic all of the house he wished, all of the love of a fantastic operatic aria. Simovic would, in flip, spin traces that have been tonally wealthy, uncharacteristically balletic for this work. It was flawless however fully, endlessly artistic. Simovic’s Pauline was invented to sing by way of this Heldenleben; she was right here to quell, even to seduce, the ardent and heroic Strauss.
Pappano’s willingness to focus on ‘voices’ within the rating proved to be peerless. The harps emerged with astounding readability – by no means a forgone conclusion on this work. Even the percussion was given an identification – the cymbals that whispered and hissed like serpents, the resonant however baritonal timpani. ‘Des Helden Walstatt’, with a refrain of trumpets off-stage, lacked nothing in readability. Best of all, Pappano was merely wonderful in ‘Des Helden Friedenswerke’, pulling again virtually in sostenuto – a lot as Barbirolli would have, and whom Pappano is so resembling as of late – to let the orchestra’s strings sing that nice love theme; it was a spellbinding second. With magnificent horns on the finish – particularly the golden solo of Diego Incertis Sánchez – this had been a radiant efficiency. In some ways, it was one which set a benchmark for a really human, very operatic form of manner of decoding this endlessly fascinating masterpiece.
Maybe, nonetheless, it was all the time going to be this fashion. The live performance had opened with Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Ballade in A minor, Op. 33. It is a comparatively early work by Coleridge-Taylor (1898) – though since he died in 1925, at simply 37, this isn’t actually saying very a lot. A greater composer – or a barely older Samuel – would most likely have edited down the work however would virtually actually not have touched the 2 beautiful sluggish sections. The inspiration is Elgarian – little doubt about it – and Pappano acquired from the LSO strings taking part in of astonishing magnificence. I’d be hard-pressed, in truth, to say I’ve ever heard the LSO strings sound higher than this – they virtually sounded as in the event that they have been free-bowing in that form of Stokowski manner; the sheen was simply pure silk, however with a magical richness of tone rigorously layered on prime.
The Liszt apart, this live performance had been particular. But greater than that it’s, I feel, a preview to what might be one of many nice musical partnerships.
Marc Bridle