Tonight:
5°c
Barry Millington's rating
Short on thrills
By
Barry Millington
30 Mar 2007
Valery Gergiev has become such a regular visitor to the London concert scene that we are in danger of prejudging what we are to hear.
Take last night's concert with the LSO. The Debussy, surely, would be full-blooded Russian symbolism rather than delicately nuanced French impressionism. Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, on the other hand, would be power-driven, high-octane, electrifying.
Gergiev may not be as predictable as he sometimes leads us to believe, however, for this was only half the story.
Debussy's La Mer was indeed brightly coloured, glittering: full of sparkling, forward-placed detail that on the face of it painted a vibrant seascape, but one that lacked the shimmer and play of light so crucial to Debussy's conception.
The third-movement Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea depicted the angriest and choppiest of waters. But all three movements were overwrought, with sometimes ear-shattering climaxes.
The Prélude à L'aprés-midi d'un Faune similarly recalled voluptuous Scriabin rather than suggestive Mallarmé.
There was an unsettlingly sensuous quality to the Rite of Spring, too, not least in the Mystic Circles of the Young Girls. The work hurtled by, though, dispatched with the seemingly effortless virtuosity that the LSO can unfailingly deliver.
The effect was of a curious kind of foreshortening. Each of the two parts was projected as a grand sweep, a continuous narrative. But it was at the cost of the barbaric primitivism that lies at the core of this iconic work.
In truth, there was more of that quality in the acerbic, hard-edged reed-work of Stravinsky's Symphonies of Wind Instruments that began the programme.
There was no shortage of brute force either in Prokofiev's rarely performed cantata Seven, They are Seven. But the Rite, for all the theatrical pause before the final paroxysm, lacked the visceral excitement that defines the work.
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Reader views (3)
If the music wasn't noisy and primitive enough, the audience made up for it with an absurd volume of coughing and spluttering. As Beethoven said, "Cattle, asses...".
- Andy Hamilton, Bishop Auckland, UK, 02/04/2007 20:01
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As a piece of programming this was absolutley fascinating, allowing pivotal early 20th century works by Debussy and Stravinsky to refract off one another. Gergiev knows that rhythmic patterns from Rimsky-Korsakov's Sheherazade surface in Debussy's La Mer and his performance had strong Russian accents. With extraordinary attention to detail, but also massive brass, crushing timpani and towering climaxes, at times it even seemed to inhabit the same world as Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. It was certainly not the shimmering and quintessentially French seascape that Bernard Haitink conjures up so exquisitely with the LSO, but it surely was viscerally exciting and, within this particular context, a unique and almost shamefully thrilling experience.
Debussy's Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune was more ravished than ravishing, its langorous sensuousness abandoned to the hot-house of Scriabin's ecstatic frenzies.
Gergiev has few rivals in Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. He conducts it marvellously, with a sustained ferocity that acknowledges the work's architecture, yet he allows its lyricism and the subtlest of details to breathe. This shattering performance took us back, not only to the Rite's cultural origins almost a century ago, but also to the primordial, feral core of human existence. The LSO played with awe-inspiring, visrtuosity, displaying the full range of its multitude of talents, voluptuous woodwinds, trenchant strings and weighted, gleaming brass. Mesmerising.
- Graham Eskell, Colchester, Essex, UK, 01/04/2007 13:39
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I think both the Rite of Spring and La Mer were electrifying performances. Le Mer had a depth one just cannot find anywhere on CD and Gergiev and the LSO look the Rite of Spring to a completely new level. This coupling should be issued as an LSO Live CD for general release. Gergiev and the LSO are a great match - they very much stole the show at last Year's Proms with a superb performance of Tchaikovsky's 6th, and last Thursday's concert was another dazzling performance by a conductor and orchestra that leave a unique fingerprint on pretty much anything they turn their attention to.
- Geoff Rowbottom, Surrey, 31/03/2007 11:50
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