The Helsinki Philharmonic has been in town this week (Műpa, November 27th). There is a very strong performing tradition in Scandinavia and the standard of orchestral playing worldwide has seldom been better, so one would expect a national flagship orchestra to be good – and this one is. Saturday’s program did, however, have a distinctly conservative feel about it – a little surprising that they did not bring Finnish music with them.
If the urge to be mainstream precluded, say Rautavaaaura, there are plenty of familiar shorter pieces of Sibelius which might have fitted the bill. In the event, we had the great Dane, Carl Nielsen. Nielsen’s evocative concert overture, Helios, is a good enough opener, well-crafted and a fine example of Nielsen’s as a weaver of orchestral tapestry but not substantial enough to demonstrate the mastery of form revealed in the symphonies. The slow, quiet introduction and coda were handled with delicacy and the orchestral climaxes of the central section were delivered with vigour and verve.
The second half belonged to Brahms. For a composer to make a conscious decision to retire is unusual. The fourth symphony was to be his swan song and it is clear that form and technique are high on the agenda. There, a tightness of texture, a disciplined approach to formal structure which is not always a trademark. The finale is a passacaglia leading to a coda of such peremptory brevity as to be almost businesslike. At a time when tonality was coming under pressure as composers sought ever wider ranges of expression, Brahms tells us that it is still possible to write a symphony with a formal structure in diatonic mode and remain original. Even so, the music has moments of drama and of tenderness. The task is to reconcile the romantic content with the formal structure without losing sight of either. John Storgard’s conducting clearly had the architecture in mind, even if some of the tempi were a touch on the pedestrian side in the opening movement. The scherzo was especially good with fine attacking playing, especially in the strings. The closing passacaglia was an object lesson in how to reconcile the formal and the expressive – the flute solo was especially beautiful – and the symphony ended in the no nonsense way that Brahms surely intended.
The centrepiece of the concert, however, was Jean-Yves Thibaudet playing Liszt – probably the reason most were there – and they were not disappointed. Thibaudet is an interesting musical character whose repertoire is varied and which has, over the years, embraced film music, operatic transcription and jazz. His image creation, complete with designer wardrobe, might point to a flamboyant personality of the kind that makes musical purists distinctly uneasy. The unease is short lived. He is a remarkable musician and completely at home in the 19th century repertoire. He has an assured technique – absolutely flawless in the Liszt A major concerto on the occasion – and a sense of the compositional method which, unlike Brahms, is far more to do with the overall feel of the music than concern with formal structure. Liszt does not lack formal discipline – far from it – but his approach to classical forms is unconventional and flexible. It takes a subtle and sympathetic approach to combine the virtuoso and lyrical elements of this fairly short piece. Tibaudet has this in bucket loads and was ably supported by the orchestra and conductor. Wonderful stuff indeed.
Műpa/Palace of Arts (Béla Bartók National Concert Hall, Festival Theater)
1095 Budapest, Komor Marcell utca 1.
Műpa host myriad concerts (spanning classical, jazz, pop and rock), theater and dance performances.