There have not always been sunny days at the Madrid performances of the Vienna Philharmonic. On January 20, 1998, the legendary New Year’s Concert orchestra was loudly whistled after a disastrous performance of the Bolero by Ravel, in the National Auditorium, under the direction of Lorin Maazel. It was “the biggest failure not only in recent history, but probably in the entire history of our orchestra,” its former president Clemens Hellsberg acknowledged a few weeks later in the Musikblätterthe parish sheet for its subscribers.
They redeemed themselves, three months later, with an excellent Mahler under the direction of Zubin Mehta. However, in the six visits that the Austrian orchestra has made to the Ibermúsica cycles, until the last one in 2016 (the one in 2020 was canceled due to the pandemic), it has always hovered over that ghost of the disappointment of 1998. But, once more, the applause and cheers of the Madrid public standing on its feet, last Tuesday, October 1, at the end of the Symphony no. 10 in E minor op. 93by Dmitri Shostakovich, show another success. But it is worth clarifying that, in reality, it was a performance where the quality and virtuosity of the ensemble took precedence over the music.
Shostakovich deeply admired the “brilliant orchestral culture” of the Vienna Philharmonic. This was stated in 1955, after listening to it under the direction of Karl Böhm and, twelve years later, he sent him a congratulations on the occasion of his 125th anniversary that was published in the Musikblätter: “The Vienna Philharmonic has won the ardent love of music lovers around the world.”
However, the Russian composer’s symphonies have never been a regular part of his repertoire. Not only did they not premiere any of them in Austria, unlike the Vienna Symphony, which offered first auditions of ten of its fifteen symphonies, but the Tenth It is one of the most common, although it has only been scheduled four times. And since the last time they played it, with Mariss Jansons as conductor, nine years have passed.
The Italian Daniele Gatti (Milan, 62 years old) returned to the podium of the Viennese Philharmonic, after nine years of absence, and after overcoming “inappropriate behavior” that caused his sudden dismissal as head of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw in 2018. This is a regular conductor at the Philharmonic’s subscription concerts, since 2005, and who has conducted two of the ensemble’s last visits to Madrid, in 2011 and 2012, with symphonies by Beethoven, Brahms and Mahler.
This Tenth It was his first Shostakovich symphony with the Viennese orchestra. A work written in 1953 as a reaction to the uncertainty and hope that followed Stalin’s death. and the extensive moderate The initial sound was so comfortable, lacking in mystery and free of tension that it seemed endless. Of course the creaminess of the Viennese strings in their lower register and Gregor Hinterreiter’s clarinet solo were excellent. However, the theme played by that woodwind instrument was extracted by the Russian composer from Primordial light (Primal Light), of the Resurrection Symphony of Mahler, and more specifically his verses Man is in greatest distress / Man is in greatest pain (man is immersed in the greatest misery / the man is immersed in the greatest pain). A sensation that only intensified slightly in the climatic development, with powerful metals, although the erratic comfort returned in the recapitulation.
Shostakovich contrasted the broad opening movement with a brutal, brief scherzoso many times indicated as a portrait of Stalin since the false memoirs of the composer published by Solomon Volkov. In any case, we hear little clarity in the articulation with rushed syncopations in a dense and barely threatening fortissimo. Even the sinister fury at the end of the movement, which the composer cleverly prepared with a piano passage, took on a strange circus air.
The worst came in allegretto which follows where Shostakovich uses the famous musical acronym DSCH (the notes D-E flat-C-B according to German musical spelling). A musical portrait of the nervous and apprehensive Shostakovich’s outbursts that are appeased, up to eleven times, by the horn playing another musical acronym, in this case of his lover Elmira Nazirova (ELMIRA: the notes mi-la-mi-re-la ). But it all sounded so monotonous that the excellent horn soloist Josef Reif added some suspense with a slight error in the third repetition of the Elmira theme.
Fortunately, the best of the symphony was heard in the final movement. In the beginning andanteGatti achieved the ideal meditative atmosphere of these staves with a dense low string on which wonderful and exotic solos of oboe (Sebastian Breit), flute (Luc Mangholz) and bassoon (Lukas Schmid) rose. But the allegro final and everything relied on the comfortable virtuosity of the strings, wood and brass of the Viennese orchestra, which never lost its elegance or composure in the most abrasive moments of the work. And their glorious horns shone, supported by the timpani, at the end, in the last reiteration of the composer’s acronym.
There wasn’t much point in ending the evening with a tip. Even less do it with the Hungarian dance no. 5by Brahms, just as they did on their last Spanish tour of Oviedo, Granada and Seville with no. 1. And, to make matters worse, it is now played much worse than the one we heard last June. In any case, the concert opened with another unusual composition on the stands of the Vienna Philharmonic: the ballet Apollon Musagèteby Igor Stravinsky, a work that they had not played since 2007, in which Gatti also directed. A composition, from 1928, written for strings that the Italian commanded fluently and supported by the exquisite sonority of the Viennese bows. But where, once again, there were few memorable musical moments. Not even the ethereal and poetic pas de deuxin which Apollo chooses Terpsichore to enter Parnassus, stood out from the relative general opacity.
The best of Stravinsky were the solos of the concertmasterthe Bulgarian violinist Albena Danailova. It was a true declaration of the image of modernization that the Austrian orchestra tries to give with many instrumentalists on the strings along with the second stands of the flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon. This return of the Vienna Philharmonic to Madrid is part of a small Spanish tour that will continue today, October 2, in Zaragoza, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of its Auditorium, and will end on Thursday, the 3rd, in Barcelona, as the inauguration of the season of the Palau de la Música Catalana.