Royal Albert Hall
Bach – Cantata: ‘Ich habe
genug’, BWV 82
Bruckner – Symphony no.9 in D
minor
Christian Gerhaher (baritone)
Bernhard Heinrichs (oboe)Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra
Philippe Jordan (conductor)
Bruckner, Bruckner, wherever
one goes; From Salzburg
to London, he is with us, he is with us indeed, and will be next week too. (I
shall even be given the Third Symphony another try, on my birthday: the things
I do for Daniel Barenboim…) Still, at least it seems to mean that fewer
unnecessary Mahler-as-showpiece performances are being foisted upon us. Moreover,
in this case, it was good, indeed great Bruckner, rather than one of the
interminable number of ‘versions’ of interminable earlier works.
Keen though I was to hear the
Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra in Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony, for he principal
attraction for me, and for a good part of the audience, was in any case the
extremely rare opportunity to hear a Bach cantata played by mainstream
performers – especially, so it seemed, when the soloist was Christian Gerhaher.
According to the programme, there had only been two previous such opportunities
to hear Ich habe genug at the Proms:
in 1956 and in 1962, with Heinz Rehfuss and Hermann Prey as soloists, both
enticing prospects indeed. Ian Bostridge performed the version for high voice
(with flute obbligato, rather than oboe, and period instruments) in 2000.
As it was, Philippe Jordan, heedless
of the size of the hall, opted for a very small orchestra (oboe, strings
6.4.3.2.1, chamber organ) and, perhaps more to the point, insisted throughout
that the strings play in very subdued fashion. An advantage of smaller forces
can often be a greater willingness to play out, but not here. It is a
reflective work, of course, and does not need to sound like Mahler (or
Bruckner), but the approach nevertheless seemed perverse; I can imagine it
might have worked better on the radio. The opening aria was taken at a ‘flowing’
tempo, which is to say considerably faster than would ‘traditionally’ have been
the case. On its own terms, it worked well enough, but memories of, say, John
Shirley-Quirk with Neville Marriner, or Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (with various conductors) were anything but effaced. Gerhaher’s use of head-voice, moreover, left
this listener at least longing for something deeper, darker. There was
certainly greater resolution, though, upon the da capo. His diction, whether in arias or recitatives, was
impeccable. Bernhard Heinrichs’s oboe playing was unfailingly musical, very
much a second ‘voice’. ‘Schlummert ein’ was again relatively swift, although I
felt Gerhaher might have done more with the words without coming anywhere near
over-emphasis. And Jordan’s pauses seemed excessive: disruptive more than
anything else. The following recitative offered much more in the way of verbal
emphasis, as did, to a lesser extent, the final aria, ‘Ich freue mich auf
meinen Tod’. Here I was rather taken with the swift tempo, which engendered something
of a spirit of defiance.
Jordan seemed very much to have
rethought ‘traditional’ approaches to Bruckner, but to rather more successful
effect. Once past a rocky opening – devoid of mystery, and of much else too,
not helped by an onslaught of coughing – we heard some fine playing indeed from
the young players of the GMYO: first strings, then the oboe soloist, and so on.
The first movement was taken pretty fast, but not unrelievedly so. Intriguingly
pointillistic woodwind matched well string pizzicato playing, and added to a
sense of provisionality; this was no ‘cathedral in sound’ of cliché. There was,
moreover, a strong sense of development: necessary here to avoid a sense of
mere repetition. And there was a sense of intimacy too: not the constraint of
the Bach performance, but something penetrating deeper, to the very essence of
the musical lines. The moment of return was duly awe-inspiring: what a
wonderful orchestra this is! Was the approach too fragmentary, though? Perhaps,
perhaps not. It was certainly interesting. There was no wanting of power in the
coda.
The scherzo opened with a
lightness that was far from non-committal, more Mendelssohnian perhaps.
Response thereto was anything but light, although one could certainly hear
Bruckner as an heir to Schubert (his Ninth Symphony in particular). Perhaps it
was a little too driven, but it was certainly not dull. There was occasional
insecurity concerning pulse, though. The trio was full of incident, proving
both urgent and, occasionally, a little languorous. I liked its range. The
finale developed the sense of late Romantic hypertension. There was nothing
comfortable to this view of Bruckner, which was all to the good. Both the
virtues and the drawbacks of the previous movements endured. Jordan proved,
however, especially able in highlighting the contrasting nature in the musical
material. Moments of crisis registered; much, it seemed, was at stake. The
close was blissful, Schubertian.
