Irish Timeswriters review Mullova, Labèque and the London Symphony Orchestra/Gergiev at the NCH in Dublin.
Mullova, Labèque
NCH, Dublin
Stravinsky- Suite italienne
Bartók/Szigeti- Hungarian Folk Tunes
Schubert- Fantasy in C D934
Ravel- Violin Sonata
IF VIKTORIA Mullova were a chef, she'd be creating dishes that seem at once straightforward but also mysterious, with a hint of something unexpected that's not easy to identify.
But she's a violinist, so she plays music with apparent straightness, sharp articulation, elegant phrasing, and a tone that's lean rather than rich. She takes away a lot of the expressive bulges that others focus so much of their attention on. She doesn't like to highlight overt virtuosity. In fact, she often more or less buries it with breathtaking bow control.
She doesn't hog the limelight either. Her recital partner, Katia Labèque, is a formidably gifted player and doesn't need to trim her imaginative excursions when engaging in what is often seen as an accompanying role.
So at the National Concert Hall on Thursday listeners were for once treated to a performance of Ravel's 1927 violin sonata that fully respected his remark about the violin and piano being "in my opinion essentially incompatible".
Mullova and Labèque went their own ways in this sonata, and yet everything somehow meshed. Ravel's creation sounded altogether fresher, altogether more modern as a result.
Labèque was unfazed by the unreasonably demanding filigree of Schubert's late Fantasy in C, and Mullova also managed to package her barrage of notes with neat circumspection. But even in such a refined performance, there was no escaping the fact that Schubert seems to have left this piece in need of tightening up.
Joseph Szigeti's arrangement of Bartók's Hungarian Folk Tunesgave Mullova an outlet for soulful expressiveness. Labèque found opportunities to add a few florid interventions of her own, and before the official end the two engaged in an elaborate departure from the printed musical text.
The disparate personalities in this duo - Mullova mostly classically minimalist, Labèque tending towards the fancifully interventionist - were given free rein in the Suite italienne. The always polished Labèque sought out new angles and emphases that the music didn't seem to call for. Mullova, by contrast, was consistently to the point. - Michael Dervan
London Symphony Orchestra/Gergiev
NCH, Dublin
Stravinsky- Petrushka (1911)
Tchaikovsky- Symphony No 6 (Pathétique)
LESS THAN 20 years separate the composition of Tchaikovsky's Pathétiquesymphony and Stravinsky's Petrushka.
But those 20 years brought some of the most radical developments the musical world has ever seen, and the Tchaikovsky symphony is as fully of the 19th century as the Stravinsky ballet score is of the 20th.
Valery Gergiev's handling of the two works with the London Symphony Orchestra at the National Concert Hall on Friday served to highlight the contrast between them.
His Petrushkawas full-on in its jauntiness, tight in rhythmic discipline, sometimes a little bleached in colouring, and always probing in detail.
The performance often seemed to narrow the gap between foreground and background material in a way that emphasised the forward-looking aspects of the music, and tended to favour exhilaration over pathos.
The change after the interval could hardly have been more radical.
The tonal balance of the orchestra shifted downwards, the colours became darker and richer.
The atmosphere was brooding and laden yet excitable, the rubato often extreme but carried off as if there were some extraordinary torque keeping the players on the right curves.
But, most of all, this was a performance driven by fluctuations of emotion, and for the listener those fluctuations were as compelling as a command which brooked no resistance.
Gergiev's swooning, soaring, despairing Tchaikovsky carried all before it, and left an enraptured audience to clamour in vain for an encore. - Michael Dervan
