Review - Barenboim's Bruckner Project starts at Southbank

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Piano Concerto No.24 in C minor, K.491

Anton Bruckner: Symphony No.7

Staatskapelle Berlin
Daniel Barenboim conductor, piano

16 April 2012, Royal Festival Hall, London

*********************

Barenboim is on a roll at London's Southbank centre.  His 2008 performances of the 32 Beethoven sonatas were a major musical landmark.  They married powerful artistry with his particular star charisma and I've rarely seen a London audience receive a musician so rapturously. For once it was fully justified.

2010 brought fine performances of the 5 Beethoven piano concerti with his Berlin Staatskapelle orchestra. The only recent blot has been a splashy Liszt Piano Concertos evening with Boulez last year which for all its posturing rather sat back on its heels.  Now he has returned for a one week, three concert residency with this ensemble.  This visit finds Barenboim and the Staatskapelle measuring themselves against Bruckner's three last symphonies - all of them pinnacles of the symphonic repertoire.   Tonight's concert coupled the 7th Symphony with Mozart's 24th Piano Concerto in which Barenboim was himself both soloist and directing the orchestra from the keyboard.

This was very much a concert of two halves.  The less written about the Mozart the better, however the Bruckner touched greatness.

The Mozart 24th concerto is one of his most dramatic, yet tonight never achieved lift-off.  The opening failed to cohere and the orchestra remained tentative throughout.  Barenboim has plenty of experience conducting these works from the piano, but his playing seemed distracted and the cadenzas failed to catch fire.  None of this was helped by very slow tempi.

All was forgiven in the Bruckner.  Right from the start conductor and musicians were one - focused and confident.  The Staatskapelle played the opening movement with great  freshness and purity, and Barenboim gave the unfolding layers a sense of inevitability.  The concluding pages were thrilling in their majestic assurance. The adagio further illustrated the ensemble's integrated sound, richer than I recall from previous visits.  The Scherzo brought real attack and fire and the sometimes problematic finale was driven home in fine style.  Throughout Barenboim's control of structure, maintenance of forward pulse and flexibility in bringing out those wonderful Bruckner moments of repose and climax was exemplary - well in the Jochum or Furtwangler class.  This was a very intense experience.

There was an unusual occurrence at the end.  A couple of minutes before the end the first violins' playing wasn't to Barenboim's liking.  As the waves of applause started at the conclusion he was making some testy points to his concertmaster - someone had blundered.  A few minutes later they made up and Barenboim passed him a flower from his bouquet.   That the conductor should make such a public display of displeasure shows his serious commitment to his art, and it may have been the exalted heights achieved in the first three movements that made him annoyed at a blemish in the fourth.  Regardless, this concert will certainly rank as one of the best Bruckner evenings I will have the pleasure of attending.