Philharmonia/Maazel - The Royal Festival Hall, London
Erica Jeal, The Guardian, January 25, 2003
Posted: 2003-01-27 09:21:00
Revolution should have been in the air at this Philharmonia concert. Beethoven's Symphony no 3, the Eroica, was the first great symphony by the man who redefined the genre, and Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, a technicolour trip with a feverish underlying narrative, was perhaps the first
piece of large-scale orchestral music that could properly be called theatrical.
But even exceptional works can sometimes sound ordinary. This didn't seem quite the same Philharmonia that had brought such exhilaration to their Mahler concert under Benjamin Zander just four days previously. And while the
conductor, Lorin Maazel, concentrated on grandeur, the details that would have allowed for real, building excitement - the shaping of lines, the creation of sumptuous musical textures - took a back seat. If somewhere there is a conducting textbook with diagrams to show correct
posture, it could well have taken Maazel for its model; he keeps his feet firmly on the ground and looks the picture of authority. If he moves anything other than his arms and head, you know he really wants something to happen -
as when he whipped up turbulent playing from the violins in the opening movement of the Beethoven.
But the designation of Funeral March was taken a little too seriously in the second movement. The third, with a hushed beginning and a boisterous trio of horns in the middle, was more effective. The long pause Maazel left between the introduction to the finale and the movement proper was almost humorous. After that, though, it was all serious, and ultimately the symphony's rebellious streak was crushed by his safe approach. The Beethoven could survive this lack of wit, but the Berlioz fared less well. A leaden prologue to the first movement set the tone, and the waltz movement conjured up the opulent setting of the ballroom without suggesting that the ball itself might be any fun. It was only in the finale, the Witches' Sabbath, that the work began to take off. The brass dominated easily - perhaps too easily - with a pair of tubas thundering out the plainchant from the mass for the dead above the melee.
Still, it was too little, too late. If this was supposed to be an
opium-addled ride through the tortured life of an artist, the drugs weren't working.
