Music
Notes from America
Peter Phillips
According to the much-thumbed prospectus sitting on the public ticket desk at the Albert Hall, 14 of the available 38 concerts in the final month of the current season are or have been sold out. Presum- ably some more may yet get there. This is an impressive tally given the size of the place, the point of interest being that the successful ones seem to be those which have an attractive theme or famous item rather than those which are guaranteed to be excellent performances.
For instance the Viennese Night (16 August), the Tributes to Malcolm Sargent (10th) and Henry Wood (19th) and Hick- ox's Carmina Burana (4 September) have sold out, where the two concerts by the Cleveland Orchestra (27 and 28 August) did not, and those of the Los Angeles Phil- harmonic (30 August and 1 September) have not at the time of writing. Both per- formances by the Berlin Philharmonic were played to capacity crowds earlier this week, but then this orchestra is still widely reck- oned to be the finest in the world.
For me it has been the visit of the Cleve- land Orchestra under Christoph von Dohnanyi which has been the high-point of recent days. These American orchestras very often seem to cultivate a needle-sharp crispness of attack, a strength of ensemble which can be overwhelming, especially in the big romantic symphonies. I rather admire this approach over the more wal- lowing rubato-full playing of the ex-com- munist orchestras or the smoother sound of the German and Austrian Rolls Royce ones; the Americans, not surprisingly per- haps, are at the forefront of the Nineties' approach to interpreting romanticism, making it sympathetic to modern people through their efficiently controlled sound, reliably tuned and modulated. The trend which they epitomise will change again, of course, as it must do; but these players are so well trained that they are still likely to be leading it. We'll see what the Los Ange- les and Pittsburgh Orchestras come up with in the next fortnight; but I still recall a recent performance of the Bruckner Sev- enth Symphony at the Festival Hall given by the San Francisco Orchestra which was the most formidable playing I have ever heard. In addition the Cleveland Orchestra sports some superlative players — a first trumpeter, for example, who could so fill the Albert Hall with glorious sound that single-handedly he raised the impact of the last, heroic bars of Mahler's First Symphony.
This Mahler, in the Cleveland Orches- tra's Prom of 28 August, was preceded by Stravinsky's Violin Concerto and Webern's orchestration of a Bach ricercar in the Musical Offering. The Stravinsky was played by a 28-year old, Christian Tetzlaff, whose modest tone and slightly insecure rhythm seemed to leave the audience wondering quite what the thrust of the music was meant to be. The first of the two Arias was particularly uncertain in being taken too fast. The problems posed by the Webern/Bach were more innate. There is no reason why orchestras should not play six-part counterpoint, but with their cus- tomary reliance on foreground and back- ground in symphonic textures, it can easily wrong-foot them. They become uncertain of their role in it, unsure how the balance between the parts is supposed to be or where the climaxes are. Symphonic conduc- tors particularly have trouble, not used to flapping away redundantly while a superbly intricate pre-determined mechanism calmly and inevitably unwinds itself before them. I chuckled. I have always wanted to know what someone like Dohnanyi would do with Tallis's Lamentations.
On a different subject and partly because "It's either post-natal depression or she's making an omelette" I don't know how else to make the com- plaint; the ticket touts at the Proms have been more obnoxious this year than ever before; which is to say they have been more in evidence, louder, coarser, more argu- mentative with each other and more persis- tent. They are unfailingly the first people one comes across on approaching the Hall, demanding and heckling, a thoroughly dis- agreeable start to the evening. Have the authorities given up? I remember past years when a pre-recorded message was broadcast round the outside of the place telling the virtuous to avoid such like the pestilence. If somebody doesn't do some- thing about them sharpish I shall launch a campaign of letters to the national dailies, which should be jolly tedious for every- body.
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