Austria Salzburg Pageant [6] – Rachmaninov and Mahler: Yefim Bronfman (piano), Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra / Manfred Honeck (conductor). Grosses Festspielhaus, Salzburg, 22.8.2024. (MB)
Rachmaninov – Piano Concerto No.3 in D minor, Op.30
Mahler – Symphony No.5
Rachmaninov’s music requires a decent formal command, particularly for a piece on the size of the Third Piano Concerto, to dispel suspicions of the rhapsodic, or at the very least to make sure that rhapsodic qualities contribute to a way of a higher entire. Yefim Bronfman and Manfred Honeck are very appreciable musicians, but on this efficiency, the primary motion didn’t fairly for me cohere as it would. Its conversational opening, understated but on the transfer, compelled, as if ‘recalling’ music whose origin was misplaced within the mists of time. The efficiency was swift, maybe just a little an excessive amount of at occasions, although that’s absolutely preferable to lapsing into sentimentality; it enabled one to take heed to usually kaleidoscopic harmonies coming collectively thematically, particularly within the piano half, although the second thematic group already sounded just a little distended. The event part was properly exploratory and the recapitulation had a correct sense of return; just some sense, at occasions, of fairly why we moved from A to B was at occasions missing. If the dearth of heaviness was welcome, Bronfman bringing out passagework affinities with Prokofiev in addition to Liszt, there have been occasions when Honeck stored down the Pittsburgh Symphony just a little an excessive amount of.
The second and third actions redressed that relative imbalance, rhapsodic components extra correctly built-in. Honeck and the orchestra had been extra keen to take the lead, strings correctly allowed their head for the primary time. When the superb Pittsburgh brass had spells within the limelight, that includes extra prominently in a richly protean finale, the temperature rose additional. To some extent, I believe this was a efficiency conception, an expression of trajectory; looking back, it appeared a pity that the higher urgency – versus mere pace – couldn’t have been learn again into the primary motion. The viewers, although, disagreed, seemingly acclaiming the efficiency with out reservation.
Mahler carried out the Rachmaninov concerto in New York in 1910, with the composer as soloist. It’s troublesome to consider another apparent connection between the 2 works and in addition troublesome to say the mixture labored to Rachmaninov’s benefit. Nonetheless, the efficiency of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony skilled one main problem of its personal, although not one for which the performers had been in any method accountable. The opening promised glorious issues, the Pittsburgh solo trumpet – as, subsequently, the brass part as a complete – spellbinding in his macabre opening solo. From the outset, this primary motion sounded extra grounded than its first-half counterpart, Honeck speaking a clearer sense of the place it was heading. It felt like a funeral march, or fairly set of obsequies, with out in any sense being lowered to an implied programme. This was, as Mahler at all times insisted, music, not a musical rendering of one thing else.
An additional power of Honeck’s studying was his robust sense of the symphony’s division of 5 actions into three ‘elements’, the second motion very a lot following on from and necessitated by the primary. Right here, the generative function of rhythm got here to the fore. If there have been events after I wished the strings may dig deeper, there was nothing particularly mistaken with the taking part in. In such music, one usually, nevertheless unfairly, recollects favoured performances or recordings of the previous; such recollections could be tinged by unreliable romanticism and maybe mine had been too. Brass nonetheless seized the initiative for an exhilarating first rendition of the chorale. A sure harshness at climaxes gave the impression to be deliberate. What, then, was the issue? An odd noise to be heard above the orchestra, each in pitch and seemingly in location. Though it gave the impression of an enormous mouse, I assumed it have to be some form of digital interference. I used to be nearer initially; it transpired a bat had come to the celebration and was voicing its appreciation.
After a brief pause during which the issue was in some way resolved, we heard a correctly liminal, transitional Scherzo, its neo-Bachian counterpoint clear and directed. The Adagietto satisfied equally: just a little gradual by present, modern requirements, however there isn’t a one strategy to carry out this music, during which trend is as unwelcome as in Bach or Mozart. It’s maybe unsurprising, given Honeck’s pedigree as a string participant, that we heard chamber music writ giant. He dealt with the transition to the finale with as nice ability because the connection between first and second actions, the fifth motion then continuing with welcome hints of the sardonic. I puzzled at occasions whether or not it was just a little missing in sheer abandon, however all got here collectively completely for the chorale, whose introduction and jubilant aftermath imparted sense to a lot of what had preceded them. I say ‘a lot’ solely as a result of the flying rodent’s disruption to my expertise had been extreme: an important pity. It was nearly made up for, although, in a splendid encore efficiency of Ochs’s waltz from Der Rosenkavalier, rubato judged in echt Viennese trend.
Mark Berry
