Musikverein: Entrancing guest performance with Stradivari viola

When the good Lord distributed the sounds to the instruments, he meant it particularly well with the viola and gave it the most sensual of all string tones. Niccolò Paganini noticed that too. When he came across a Stradivarius viola, he ordered a viola concerto from Hector Berlioz. Instead of a virtuoso piece, Berlioz composed a program symphony with solo viola. Of course, this "Harold in Italy" was nothing for Paganini, because it couldn't shine with the Harold's melancholy and loneliness.

Romantic flights of fancy with Berlioz and Brahms

How lucky that Paavo Järvi and his Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra had this wonderful piece of music with them for Sunday's guest performance at the Musikverein, which Antoine Tamestit transformed into an enchanting station drama: about Harold's luck in the mountains, where Tamestit played his Stradivarius viola in the dialogue with harp and clarinets elicited the most beautiful sounds, through the delicate arpeggios in the sacred singing of the pilgrims' choir to the smothered sighs at the final feast of the robbers. Minutes of applause.

The romantic flight of fancy continued after the break, this time with Johannes Brahms' Piano Quartet in G minor, arranged for orchestra by Arnold Schönberg. What the Tonhalle Orchestra, with its brilliant and at the same time expressive sound, elicited from Arnold Schönberg's ingeniously orchestrated score was a real delight. And because the enthusiasm of the audience in the Golden Hall did not want to end, conductor Paavo Järvi and the orchestra added a furious performance of Brahms' Hungarian Dance No. 1 in G minor as an encore. (Miriam Damev, 31.1.2023)

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