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Vladimir Jurowski and the LPO live - Four years later [long]

Posted by Chris from Lafayette (A) on October 13, 2014 at 13:46:06

Four years ago, I attended a concert by the London Philharmonic at their home, Royal Festival Hall, in London's Southbank Center (Oops! - I mean Centre). This orchestra, together with their conductor, Vladimir Jurowski, seems to have carved out a niche for itself as one of the most versatile organizations in the UK: not only do they play concerts and produce recordings (now on their own label too), but they sometimes serve as an opera orchestra (in concert and on recordings) and do film scores and pop-oriented music too, PLUS they apparently do a lot touring and outreach. The program I saw four years ago (also conducted by Jurowski) fairly defined the word, "eclectic": Haydn's Symphony No. 63, Matteo D'Amico's "Flight from Byzantium" (a world première), a group of Dufay Motets (with the Hilliard Ensemble), and Bartok's "Miraculous Mandarin" (complete).

The orchestra is now on a tour of the US - they were in Southern California last week (Santa Barbara, Northridge, Costa Mesa), and, yesterday and today, they're appearing at Davies Hall in San Francisco. At the end of this week, they will play one concert each in Chicago, New York, and Toronto.

I attended the concert last night as a result of an agreement which my son (who likes jazz fusion) and I had made earlier in the year to broaden each other's horizons: I attended an evening at Yoshi's last month in exchange for his attendance at the LPO concert in Davies last night. The program consisted of the following works:

• Dvorak: The Noonday Witch
• Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 3 (with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet)
• Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6 (Pathétique)

Although this looks like a program of warhorses, I think that the Dvorak symphonic poems are not encountered in concert that often - this was the first time I had heard any of them live thus far. I love these works: they're late pieces wherein the Wagnerian influences have returned (in contrast to his middle-period works in which the influence of Brahms is more pronounced), and yet Dvorak's musical personality is so strong that Wagner could never have written them. Not only are they harmonically interesting, but Dvorak's orchestration is displayed at its most masterful. At the first appearance of the creepy witch music in the hushed strings (just before the witch's equally creepy theme on the bass clarinet), the hall went absolutely silent, so struck was the audience at the music's subdued eeriness. When the brass section takes up this same theme as it breaks out into a chilling fortissimo, the effect is simply hair-raising! I found that a couple of the oboe solos were played with what seemed to me an odd-sounding rhythmic distortion - I wondered if this was intentional or not. Some of the balances were just a bit off (in terms of the main line not having enough prominence - at least from where I was sitting), and I attributed that to the likelihood that the orchestra had not quite gotten used to the particular resonances and reverberation of Davies Hall. Nevertheless, this was a dramatic and effective performance, which I was very moved by. Another interesting feature of this performance was that Jurowski divided the violins (firsts on the left, seconds on the right), so that the part writing was easier to hear.

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet is a pianist I know best from his recording of the complete Debussy piano music on the Chandos label. This hi-rez (24/96 2-channel download available) recording is among the very best examples I know of in capturing a startlingly realistic piano sound, and Bavouzet's performances are extraordinary - which is not to say I might not prefer to listen to Zimerman or Koroliov in the Preludes on a given day. They're all great performances. Bavouzet has just recently recorded ALL the Prokofiev piano concertos (also on Chandos, also with a 2-channel hi-rez download available), but I haven't yet heard it. Bavouzet's performance of the Third was hugely enjoyable, although he had a funny rhythmic "breath" that he took in a couple of spots in the first movement. In addition, he would occasionally stamp both feet down for emphasis as he was playing (a bit like Andre Watts used to do - maybe he still does?), although Bavouzet did not do it to the distracting extent that Watts did when I've seen him. The rhythmic builds were extremely effective (as they usually are in this concerto!), even though in one of the second movement variations, Jurowski let the tympanist have his way, and Bavouzet temporarily lost the decibel battle! Nevertheless, the performance (now with the violinists massed all to the left) generated the kind of kinetic thrill we want in this music, and it deserved the whooping and shouting (and obligatory standing ovation!) it received. Bavouzet obliged with an encore, Massenet's Toccata. I would guess that not too many (even on this site) know this piece, but I have Bavouzet's recording of it and I play it often (too often for my wife, who hates Massenet!). The predominant motion in this piece is actually faster than that in the well-known Schumann Toccata, but, perhaps paradoxically, the Massenet is easier to play. Bavouzet actually pushed the tempo in this concert faster than he does on his recording, resulting in a couple of inconsequential wrong notes - but he was playing "on the edge" to the audience (as he should!) and they loved it!

I never tire of hearing the Pathétique Symphony - of course, it requires considerable emotional investment, and you have to be ready for it. It's not for casual listening, and as my wife and I joke about the last movement, "That's a sad, sad song!" (a description which we stole from Kool and the Gang!). This is a work that allows for many different types of interpretation, and Jurowski was somewhere in the middle between letting the emotion all hang out and keeping a (British?) stiff upper lip. Many of the solos (flute, clarinet and bassoon especially) were ravishing, and each movement made a differentiated emotional impact. (The violins were once again divided left and right.) There's no composer who wrote more heartfelt music than Tchaikovsky did, and I felt this performance really did get to the heart of the music. It was spoiled at the end however by some doofus who wanted to be the first to applaud, even though Jurowski had still not dropped his hands. There was also the expected thunderous ovation at the end of the third movement too (per our recent discussion here on this phenomenon a couple of weeks ago). Jurowski actually began the fourth movement "attacca", so the applause unfortunately obscured the first couple of measures.

So you're a touring orchestra and you end your program with the Pathétique Symphony. People are expecting an encore, but what can you play after the emotional devastation of the last movement? You're not going to play "Stars and Stripes Forever", that's for sure! I thought Jurowski came up with a brilliant choice: it was the last completed work of Anatole Liadov, which Jurowski announced as "Mournful Song", but which you can find in other listings as "Nénie". So this Liadov work, which I had not heard before, extended the emotion of the last movement of the Pathétique. Like an earlier orchestral work by Liadov, "The Enchanted Lake", this "Mournful Song"/"Nénie" is extremely beautiful, and some of its woodwind writing shares some figures with that equally beautiful earlier work. So the concert ended with a couple of "downer" pieces, but I think that was the right way to conclude things.

Overall, despite the fact that not every "i" was dotted and every "t" crossed (as far as the playing and the balance were concerned), I was very affected by this concert, I continue to view Jurowski as one of the brightest lights of his generation, and I would certainly return to hear the LPO many more times!

Now. . . this being AA, you're no doubt realizing that I have left out something very important from this post. And that is the question, did they have babes in this orchestra? Well of course they had babes! Where shall I start? Maybe with the Guest Principal of the Second Violinists, Victoria Sayles:



She did NOT play with a lot of writhing (per our recent discussion of the principal violist in the LA Phil), but she had a way of turning out her ankle (in her stiletto heels) that was just wonderful! Now I understand the attraction of this in Victorian times! ;-)

Or, there was principal cellist Kristina Blaumane:



Most of her pics on the internet make her look just slightly chubby, but she must have lost weight in the meantime and she looked great last night - good for her!

There were many more than these two, but I did feel obliged to provide at least a couple of samples here!

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