Unpredictable Inevitability

“You can, more often than not, tell how good a performance of Mahler’s Fifth will be from its opening trumpet call. Here, the Philharmonia’s principal, Alistair Mackie, struck just the right balance between stridency and tragedy. Daniele Gatti’s direction of this symphony was not, however, one of balance, still less one of compromise. London audiences have heard a lot of Mahler over the last two or three years, but this performance was surely one of the greatest. Violent and febrile, its journey from darkness to light was thoroughly convincing, the kind of performance one lives through rather than simply watches.”

C’est moi, on last night’s performance of Mahler 5 from Daniele Gatti and the Philharmonia Orchestra. You can read the full thing here. I might have got a bit carried away with the adjectives, but this performance deserved it. I think I’m just about getting over it, but I’m not quite sure (and I think my review is the first, so I await the thoughts of others, particularly Boulezian). I was still bouncing even after the two hours it takes me to get home from the Festival Hall. Unpredictable inevitability at its finest, I would venture to suggest, and a performance I’ll carry with me for a while.

Although I knew of Gatti’s enviable  Mahlerian credentials, I actually went to this concert to hear his Bayreuth-infused excerpts from Parsifal. Sadly, the Philharmonia were rather tentative in that, but still, an unforgettable concert. Take note, Bostonians….

Rachmaninov: Étude-tableau in A Minor, Op.39 No.6
Rachmaninov: Étude-tableau in B Minor, Op.39 No.4
Rachmaninov: Elegie in E Flat Minor, Op.3 No.1
Rachmaninov: Étude-tableau in E Flat Minor, Op.39 No.5
Beethoven: Sonata No.13 in E Flat Major, Op.27 No.1
Scriabin: Sonata No.5, Op.53
Prokofiev: Sonata No.6 in A Major, Op.82

Yuja Wang (piano) 

Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
1 May 2012

Yuja comes with a reputation. Aside from being a protégé of Claudio Abbado, she’s been the victim of a great deal of fuss over her fashion sense on stage, and other such irrelevant crap. It’s a pity, really, because she shows signs of becoming a very formidable pianist indeed, and her technical skills already outshine most. Hands, surely, can rarely have moved so fast. Born in Beijing and Curtis-trained, that kind of thing is expected. Much less so is her sensitivity of phrasing, her innate sense of propulsion, and her degradation and purity of attack. This was not, of course, a programme heavy with intellectual load, though attention to structure in the Beethoven and Prokofiev promised much. She has clearly come a long way already at 25, more so than other pianists of similar training who shall remain nameless. But there was – here at least – a fury of interpretation and a ferocity of drive, coupled with a willingness to step back and a twenty-first century sense of rhythm.

The Rachmaninov shorts open Yuja’s new album of encores and semi-encores – ‘Fantasia’ – and they pretty much work as a suite, even if the first key change from A minor to B minor is a bit steep. The rolling thunder of the A minor Étude-tableau is a great way to open a concert, growling into life and snapped away again here with a bite that’s lacking on the disc. This first piece was notably militaristic, looking forward to the Prokofiev later on. The second juxtaposed staid rhythms against the precipitous neatly, flowing well despite its pauses. (Curses upon the chap who decided to begin – alone – thumping applause between the second and third pieces.) The Elegie was played exactly as it was written – a late adolescent’s work, full of bleak hopes and overblown emotionality, and therefore I loved it. When the first theme returned, its shattered state of mind was harrowing. The shift into the E flat Étude-tableau worked brilliantly, and this again had its elements of searing loneliness, a torrential passion. This was genuinely tingly stuff.

Beethoven’s first ‘quasi una fantasia’ sonata represents a much different challenge, and one that foxes much more experienced pianists. With strongly characterised playing once again, Yuja revelled in Beethoven’s accents and his stark contrasts from the start with a stillness to the right hand and a precisely articulated left. A particularly rapt third movement led into a blisteringly madcap fourth, its phrasing insistent. If the rapier intellect of a Pollini or a Barenboim is years off, there was a charming sense of architecture to Yuja’s performance, the return of the opening material bringing a watery, Mozartean smile. Still, there was more of an inkling that Beethoven was still very much in charge here, the pianist’s mastery not quite there. If Yuja is serious, Beethoven can wait, but this was a creditable performance.

More so, much more so, was an astonishing Scriabin fifth sonata. Yuja has particular talents in Scriabin (as do others of today’s younger pianists, like Melnikov and Sudbin), and this had typical attack, the notes pounced upon unsuspectingly. Fragments of mysticism were almost Messiaenic, and if it sounded at times as if Prokofiev was threatening to burst through the music’s surface, it was an utterly gripping ride.

Prokofiev has never been UI‘s cup of borscht, though it’s much more palatable in concert. This sixth sonata, the first of the ‘war’ sonatas, can be performed dripping in irony, but not here, and it was all the more horrifying for that. Yuja constantly pointed up the distortions and grating dissonances of this piece, tonality at times seeming to go beyond breakdown. There was a quality to this that suggested Yuja was playing on the edge whilst fully in control. The second movement had the venom the first had lacked, and a lackadaisical languidly to its more reflective passages. The brooding moodiness of the waltz-like third movement led to a finale taken at a pace at one too quick and just right. Here was astounding virtuosity to be sure, and if we could not expect the electricity or philosophical depth of a Richter, rhythmic intrigue and a surprisingly long sense of line more than made up.

The encore, incidentally, was a rapid-fire version of Horowitz’s variations on Carmen.

Rachmaninov’s piano roll of his own Elegie in E flat minor: