IN GREAT music, the silences can be as important as the sounds. In the brief silence after the final note of a wonderful recital, the magic of the piece and the interpreter coalesces in the mind, and it is this which was roundly wrecked last week at
the Edinburgh International Festival by everyone from the audiences to performers.
But first the positives. The LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA's three-day romp, under chief conductor Valery Gergiev, through Prokofiev's Symphony Cycle and his violin and cello concertos last weekend was a rigorously enlightening musical epic.
Prokofiev's history is a difficult one – composing at times under Stalin, his two last symphonies have often been dismissed as 'unimportant'. In revisionist style, Gergiev's Prokofiev cycle was staggering. Interspersed with the two violin concertos (played by Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos with brilliance in his unfussy, insightful style, and the long and exhausting Cello Concerto given an intense and at times soaring performance by Russian Tatjana Vassiljeva), the seven symphonies are stylistically vastly different, as Prokofiev ranged from his classical First – springy, effervescent and delightful under a light-batoned Gergiev – to his mechanical, machine-like Second.
Gergiev has a supreme touch and passion for this diverse repertoire. Finding lyricism amid the ballet-inspired music of Prokofiev's Fourth Symphony, he ratchets up the pace thrillingly, and the Fifth – often a favourite for its intense lyricism and allusions to his Romeo And Juliet – was full of climaxes, tension and colour.
On the final night it was the Seventh, written as a 'Youth' Symphony so that it did not have to pander to Stalinist artistico-political parameters, that impressed, the LSO's clean, rich palette painting with massive, breezy strokes the nostalgic, playful and dark score. The ending, sounded out on glockenspiel, left the audience transfixed and – for a few glorious moments – in rare and rapt silence.
The next day, as Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the combined forces of the MONTEVERDI CHOIR, ORCHESTRE REVOLUTIONNAIRE ET ROMANTIQUE and the evocatively named period brass outfit, Her Majesty's Sackbuts and Cornets, came to the final chord of a superlative performance of Brahms' Deutsches Requiem (German Requiem), the collective held breath of the Usher Hall was rudely destroyed by a small cabal in the stalls insanely clapping before the last note had finished resounding round the hall to the apparent anger of Gardiner. A masterpiece destroyed.
It had been an evening of immaculate sound from the Monteverdi Choir, from the opening austere, monstrous gilt of the Begräbnisgesang, composed by Brahms to be 'sung around the grave', alternately compassionate and deeply thrilling under Gardiner's forces, to Heinrich Schütz's 1636 Musikalische Exequien, paving the way in Baroque fashion for Brahms' Deutsches Requiem made stately and expansive by the conductor, orchestra and choir.
The SCOTTISH CHAMBER ORCHESTRA played the following evening in the Usher Hall under the new EIF honorary president Sir Charles Mackerras. The time-honoured pairing have become well known for their period-infused but finely contemporary Mozart – here the Symphony No 40, bright and vivacious, followed by the Piano Concerto in C Minor with Alfred Brendel on the first night of his two-night farewell tour to Edinburgh.
The Queen's Hall entered its second week with the continued varying luck of the first. SUSAN BULLOCK, making her Festival debut, and MALCOLM MARTINEAU presented a programme of songs by Schubert, Britten, Grieg and Liszt written in other languages, showing off Bullock's talent for characterisation and dramatic colour, albeit sometimes seeming rather too weighty for this intimate venue.
Bullock was at her most engaging in the Britten adaptations of Pushkin's The Poet's Echo, which she sings as if scraping the poet's soul. His French folk songs in the second half threw up that rather tricky question of interpretation – the folk song 'transcribed' into sophisticated lieder – but Bullock, as she romped like a completely unreconstructed 'peasant' through 'Quand J'etais Chez Mon Pere' bemoaning her 'skinny flocks', had every robust, cheeky answer. Martineau excelled.
A less successful transposition came later in the week by eminent cellist and pupil of Rostropovich, MISCHA MAISKY. The flamboyant Latvian, known for changing his outfit (Issey Miyake, for those sartorially interested) mid-concert and sporting something closely resembling a very large medallion, is renowned for his expressive technique and imaginative interpretations, but his devotion to the transcription of the Russian song repertoire is at times rather infertile.
The result sometimes seems mawkish, although the Eastern edge of Rimsky-Korsakov's Nightingale And The Rose sounded very well on Maisky's fine instrument. It didn't help that the Maiskys – 20-year-old daughter Lily on the piano not as seamless a partner as might be assumed – rushed through this recital with not a second's break between songs, an irritating and debilitating device.
A rather more rowdy clientele packed the Usher Hall for ALFRED BRENDEL's last-ever concert at the Festival – the 77-year-old retires at the end of this year.
Everything that you need to know about Brendel, whose phenomenal career and intelligent playing continually reassesses the great masters, came in his playing of the Beethoven Piano Sonata in E Flat and the subsequent Schubert Piano Sonata in B Flat. While appearing to do less than more overt, technically obvious counterparts, Brendel does much more, the Beethoven fantastic, spacious and brilliant, the Schubert laid open and apart, its structure revealed, nurtured and made as extraordinary as Schubert intended. And while the fifth star of this review is in part a 'lifetime achievement' star, most will agree it was entirely worth it as we watched a genius of the keyboard say farewell to his loving – if somewhat unruly – Edinburgh fans.
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All runs ended. Edinburgh International Festival runs until August 31 •
www.eif.co.ukThe full article contains 1022 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
