SYMPHONY CONCERT. Thursday 9 November. At City Hall Cape Town. CPO conducted by Martin Panteleev, soloist Sophie Pacini; Smetana: Overture, “The Bartered Bride”; Chopin: Piano Concerto No 1 in E minor, Op 11; Brahms: Symphony No 1 in C minor, Op 68.
DEON IRISH reviews
The second concert of the summer season featured Brahms’ monumental first symphony, with a first half of altogether lighter (although musically no less difficult) works.
Smetana’s busy overture to his 1866 opera, The Bartered Bride is a vicious test for orchestral strings (and one can’t help thinking it to have been the inspiration for Puccini’s later 1904 introduction to Madama Butterfly). On this occasion, the CPO strings – including a considerable number of ad hoc players, of which more later – rose to the occasion with distinction.
Solo contributions were of a high standard
One can’t really say as much about the succeeding concerto, a work which received what was for me a disappointing performance. The concerto – the composer’s first in the genre – is not without its structural difficulties: the enormous length of the opening exposition (all of 332 bars!); the rather mannered use of the orchestra (essentially strings only for accompaniment; full orchestra only for expositions and interludes).
Yet, despite being written at a relatively youthful 20 years, Chopin’s pianistic style was already formed in its essentials: a certain innate melancholy, the frequent sense of emotional turmoil, the lyrical beauty of the ornamented melodic lines, the advanced harmonic progressions.
It was these latter two elements that were, for my taste, the missing ingredient in Pacini’s performance. Oh, of course, they were not wholly absent: one can hardly play the right notes without simultaneously delivering the melodic line and its supporting harmonies.
But rather that they failed to attain that character, so elusive but distinct as to have given rise to the adjective, Chopinesque.
A fine sense of architecture
There is a liquidity to Chopin’s melodic writing – a fluency coupled with an impression of organic growth – that is elusive but immediately recognisable. The same can be said of other composers; but, in the case of Chopin, it really has less to do with the accurate playing of the notes than the manner in which they are delivered.
The way in which the harmonies are developed and integrated with the melodic line is another essential element of the required character. It is almost as if elements of an earlier polyphonic tradition have been incorporated into the compositional style, with the melodic development being inextricably caught up in harmonic progression.
I found this account of the solo part too overtly aggressive and piano tone too edgy to qualify as satisfactorily Chopinesque. Equally absent, for me, was this sense of organic growth. It was particularly missed in the lovely central Romanze, a gentle larghetto which looks ahead to the Nocturne writing of later years. It was simply too fast, and the idyllic quality was in consequence dissipated.
Panteleev’s Brahms suffered from the sheer weight of ad hoc players. It would appear that a number of key orchestral players were away on tour with Cape Town Opera. It seems an odd thing to allow one’s orchestra members to go on tour just when this Brahms symphony and other major works of the symphonic season are to be performed.
Which is not to suggest that any of the ad hoc players are unworthy. But – as the Springboks have by now surely learnt – one breaks up tried and trusted combinations at one’s peril. People who are used to playing together do so in a manner quite different from those unused to each other.
Solo contributions were of a high standard – especially oboe and clarinet – and the guest player delivering the signal principal horn solos had an almost faultless evening. But trombones were somewhat hesitant and lower strings occasionally lacked projection.
Panteleev also has a penchant for faster tempi: for my taste, the central episode of the allegretto rather ran away and the accelerando in the finale was overly aggressive. Set against this, however, was a fine sense of architecture and a true capturing of the sheer inventive scale of this monumental work.
WS
