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University Centre Auditorium
March 6, 2009
In 1860 Joseph Hüttenbrenner wrote a letter to Johann Herbeck, director of the Wiener Musikfreunde, asking if he could sing in the society's chorus and suggesting that Herbeck might care to examine some manuscripts by his brother Anselm.
The most astonishing part of the letter, though, was at the end, when Hüttenbrenner added that Anselm had in his possession a symphony in B minor by Schubert: "it is a treasure. We put it on a level with the great Symphony in C, Schubert's instrumental swan-song, and any one of the symphonies by Beethoven."
Remarkably Herbeck did not follow up on this tantalising information for five years, when he visited Graz and called upon Anselm, who had been a friend of Schubert and had known Beethoven, but was by now a somewhat embittered old man. Employing all of his diplomacy and tact Herbeck managed to extract the manuscript from its keeper's possession.
Thus it was that, on December 17, 1865 - some 43 years after its composition and 37 after its composer's death - Herbeck conducted the world premiere of what is now universally known as The "Unfinished" Symphony. (Many composers have begun symphonies which they did not complete, Schubert several times: the definite article, though, always applies to Schubert's B minor.)
The first part of Friday's University of Victoria Orchestra concert concluded with a glowing account of Schubert's most popular symphony.
It has been some little time since I heard this all-too-familiar work in person, but it was the performance itself which impressed itself so deeply on my mind; this was as far from a by-the-numbers reading as one could wish for. The orchestra played superbly and János Sándor's control was absolute, both over detail and the "long line", as witness the series of mini-crescendos within the overall arching crescendo of the work's opening minutes.
Of the many instrumental highlights, a few cannot be overlooked: the menacing double bass tremolando at the opening of the first movement's development section, the solemn nobility of the trombones, the lyrical wind soloing (especially clarinetist Liam Hockley and oboist Lesley Hatten) in the andante.
Apart from his first piano concerto, all of Johannes Brahms's orchestra music was composed within the period from 1873 to 1887. The Symphony No.4 of 1884-5 is his last purely orchestral score (the Concerto for Violin and Cello followed a year or so later) and is a worthy farewell to the form.
Like the music itself, Friday's performance, which closed the evening, grew in power as it progressed. Sándor took the opening at a fairly deliberate pace, but this permitted him to gradually ratchet up the tension throughout the first movement (although without employing quite such extremes of tempo as did Furtwängler) so that the intensity of the coda was verging on the unbearable - as, indeed, it should.
But what really caught my ear in the performance was the way in which Brahms's orchestral colours - so often portrayed as a kind of palette of sepias and browns - were conveyed; this was not a series of dull, homogeneous textures, but a fascinating, at times almost pointilliste sound. Rarely, if ever, have I been so taken with the sheer sound of Brahms.
The lyrical, compressed andante moderator opened with a fine horn call and some delectable wind playing over commendably weighty and precise string pizzicatos; the scherzo, more than living up to its marking of allegro giocoso, was ebullient and vigorous - and I must mention the contribution of percussionist Michael Au: as one of the two mainstream repertory works to feature the triangle prominently, the temptation to treat the part as a solo must be - judging from performances I've heard - almost irresistible. Not here: the triangle added a frisson to the sound, but did not obtrude.
Opinions about the last movement differ and alway have. Max Kalbeck, present when Brahms and Ignaz Brüll played the work privately on two pianos in September 1885, adamantly refused to accept the notion of a passacaglia as a finale to a symphony. Brahms, however, stuck to his guns: if a variation movement was good enough for Beethoven to close the "Eroica", it was good enough for him.
For some (like John Horton in his BBC monograph) the finale "conveys a sense of fulfilment...it radiates heroism, the culmination of a spiritual pilgrimage". For others - and I suspect Sándor is, like me, of their number - it is a profoundly tragic movement.
Whichever view one tends to, there is no denying that the movement has a tremendous cumulative power, only reinforced by the quieter interludes, such as the extraordinary passage for (almost) unaccompanied flute (the excellent Tobias Mosey).
The final coda was quite shattering in its force and intensity. A truly impressive achievement.
As Felix Mendelssohn's reputation has grown in recent decades, it seems that some of his more popular music has suffered something of a decline. One example would be the overture, The Hebrides - also known as "Fingal's Cave", after the natural formation on the Hebridean island of Staffa which partly inspired the music, although it was actually written before the composer's visit - which seems to have been far more frequently performed when I was younger.
This was a perfect opener to the concert; Mendelssohn is a more restrained composer than either Schubert or Brahms: even if the music had been composed after his visit to Staffa, one would have surmised that it was across a fairly calm sea. Exciting though the music becomes at times, it is never threatening (as opposed, say, to that double bass tremolando in the Schubert).
Once again the performance was excellently proportioned and played.
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