Hamburger Abendblatt Reviews: Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich

 Hamburg Konzertkritiken

Paavo Järvi and Víkingur Ólafsson sweep the Elbphilharmonie

 

Hamburg. The pianist Víkingur Ólafsson shows his unmistakable signature in the piano concerto by Schumann's piano concerto. And surprises with an announcement.

 

Paavo Järvi gives the monkey sugar. The Elbphilharmonie audience has already cheered him and the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich enthusiastically, so they go one better and add Brahms' Hungarian Dance No. 1. It froths and undulates and twirls almost to a standstill, only to increase the tempo to the point of breathlessness. As if Hungarian and not Estonian were Järvi's mother tongue. Great pleasure, great jubilation. Everyone can agree on Brahms, especially on this first of two evenings given by the Tonhalle Orchestra in Hamburg. The programme is entitled ‘Fascination Classical Music’. The organiser ProArte has come up with this title for programmes that are also digestible for beginners.

 

When the strings begin with Arvo Pärt's luscious lament ‘Für Lennart in memoriam’, this is indeed contemporary music, as one lady remarked with a worried undertone when looking at the programme booklet. But it doesn't sound like it. Pärt only rarely sparks a small harmonic disturbance in the velvety stream of sound. The now 89-year-old has long since left the avant-garde's prohibitions on thinking behind him. What matters to him In this case, it is the memory of the politician Lennart Meri, who, like Pärt himself, suffered under the repression of the Soviet system.

 

By the way, ‘digestible’ does not mean that the music is simple. This becomes clear in Schumann's piano concerto at the latest. A forte beat in the orchestra, then soloist Víkingur Ólafsson goes on a rampage, conquering the keyboard with his jagged chords. The lighting changes abruptly and the woodwinds play a melancholy, songful passage, to which the piano responds again.

 

Schumann's music is so jagged that listening to it gives you the feeling of being able to look into his soul. This is of course due to how finely Ólafsson traces all these nuances. He takes his time to immerse himself meditatively, but then he bursts into a fortissimo. This pianist has an almost immeasurable wealth of tonal colours, his articulation ranges from needle-sharp staccato to deliberately blurred streaks of sound, his signature is unmistakable.

 

Järvi moderates the dialogue with the orchestra with a slender tone. Only sometimes not everyone jumps up in time when the soloist and conductor press the accelerator pedal again. After Ólafsson has thanked the audience for their enthusiastic applause with many bows, he makes it clear that this rousing concerto is hard work for everyone involved. ‘Cheers!’ he says, taking a sip of clear liquid from a glass and then clarifying: ’That's not vodka, that's water.’ General merriment, humorous conversation with presenter Michael Becker, two encores, in short, the atmosphere is marvellous.

 

In Schumann's Third after the interval, the orchestra then sparklingly demonstrates how Järvi has moulded it as chief conductor. Together they modelled the figures and dared to create sharp contrasts. The horns powerfully blow their unison fanfares, while the violin sections imitate each other in clapped staccato passages. In the merciless acoustics, only the first violins sometimes fall apart in terms of sound. So be it. In the Brahms encore, they are all one again.

 

Elbphilharmonie: The horn blows with Ligeti happily alongside

 

Ligeti, Adams and Lutosławski in one programme - that sounds like a lot of new music. Paavo Järvi and the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich served up a well-digestible programme of Pärt and Schumann on their first guest evening at the Elbphilharmonie. But the second programme is, surprise surprise, also palatable and tonal. Nothing avant-garde, certainly not of the sour variety that condemns anything that smells remotely of melody as bourgeois.

 

Even the radical György Ligeti once started young. With the ‘Concert Românesc’ from 1951, one of his most frequently performed works, the audience is immediately involved as the orchestra and its leader set off in search of clues. Behind the sparse movement titles lies the sound world of Ligeti's childhood, which the composer processed, remodelled, rewrote and masterfully condensed. In the introductory Andante, the strings spread out an idyll, to which the composer soon adds a pinch of melancholy and two pinches of folk harmonies. No kitsch, nowhere. 

 

Järvi had already proved himself to be Hungarian in terms of tonal language the previous evening, but he could also be Romanian, he moulds the musical characters so confidently and so pointedly. In the third movement, the horn cheerfully blows the natural tone row with everything that is crooked about it - and his colleague answers from the rank. The piece picks up more and more groove, the strings crawl quietly over the strings like ghosts, the solo violin pounds out its dance rhythms and then literally drowns in the breathless tutti chase.

 

The commission for ‘After the Fall’ for piano and orchestra was given to the American John Adams by a veritable consortium that includes both the orchestra and the Elbphilharmonie. Adams, known as a grand master of minimal music, wrote the solo part for Víkingur Ólafsson. On the first evening in Zurich, he performed

Schumann's piano concerto on the first evening in Zurich. And now? He discreetly blends into the constantly changing orchestral colours. This is mimicry at the highest level. Who says that a solo part has to show off?

 

You could almost see ‘After the Fall’ as a commitment to democracy. We are happy to accept that these days, especially from America. Adams' stream of sound flows along beautifully and tonally, with precious motifs dancing on the waves, entering into the constantly shifting layers. Minimal music draws the listener into a trance, but the performers have to stay awake, because rhythmic rapids lurk beneath the glittering surface. Every now and then something gets lost in the maelstrom, but Adams can withstand it.

 

To round off the concert, the Zurich visitors perform Witold Lutosławski's Concerto for Orchestra. The work is nothing less than a sonorous declaration of love to the super instrument - and a tribute to his colleagues and predecessors. The traces of Eastern European folk music are reminiscent of Bartók, who also wrote a concerto for orchestra, the rhythms of Stravinsky - and when the timpani has the floor at the beginning, nobody in Hamburg can help but think of Brahms' First. Cosmopolitan, entertaining and exciting right up to the last bar.