Pianistic Pyrotechnics

I am missing my annual visit to the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts in London’s Royal Albert Hall. My first visit was in 1947 and in the following year I had a season ticket, and have tried most years to go to one or two concerts since. But thanks to B.B.C. TV I have watched several of this year’s programmes, and it has been almost as good as actually being there. I think the programming has been a bit odd – even esoteric – with an emphasis on anniversaries of one sort or another, but that’s a question of preference and taste.

I have just been watching a re-play of two of this week’s concerts, both featuring works for piano and orchestra. Stephen Hough concluded his survey of all four of Tchaikovsky’s piano concertos with a bravura performance of the composer’s Concert Fantasia in G major with David Robertson conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Generally agreed to be an unequal piece, it was new to me and I enjoyed it very much, as did the audience. Full of piano pyrotechnical challenges, Hough who has become a favourite of the promenaders, was fully equal to its demands.

The previous night the renowned Chinese pianist Lang Lang played Chopin’s Piano Concerto No.2 in F minor. I have since read a fairly cool review of his performance, the critic implying that the pianist 'played' with the music. Certainly he is a performer, in love with music to the point of ecstasy, flirting, smooching even with the key board, but also achieving exquisitely delicate and faultless playing. The audience went mad when it was over, and the encore, almost a formality, was never in doubt. He is an astonishing and still very young artist, and on this occasion had the advantage of being beautifully accompanied by the Staatskapelle Dresden, conducted by Fabio Luisi.

What is it that makes ordinary mortals play like these and many other virtuoso pianists? Much of the time most of these two weren’t even looking at the keyboard, their fingers dashing up and down with consummate confidence, Lang Lang in particular, seeming to commune with higher powers - or the Albert Hall ceiling. Learning to play the piano was one of many of the things I have tried to do and failed. (Learning Spanish is another!). I managed to plod through one of Beethoven’s early sonatas, but never became proficient enough to play without being glued to the score and making many errors. I even stumble at this computer’s keyboard! And yet here are these amazing international artists who seem to belong to another species of human being and bring such delight to those who love music.

B.R.

Music and Message

This has been a remarkable weekend at the London Promenade Cocerts. Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra has performed in three programmes, the first and third of which were televised.

The orchestra itself is an event. Conceived by Barenboim and his friend the Palestinian born critic Edward Said, who died in 2003, it comes together each summer and consists of young musicians from Israel and Arab countries. Barenboim – surely one of the very greatest artists of the age – insists that the orchestra is not a political project but a humanitarian one. He describes it as an ongoing dialogue linking the universal, metaphysical language of music with the continuous dialogue between people of all ages. It is, he says, a forum where young people can express themselves freely and openly. ‘We believe in only two absolutely necessary political ideas – there is no military solution to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, and the destinies of the Israeli and Palestinian’.

The orchestra has performed throughout the world in the ten years of its existence, and received a tremendous welcome, in a packed Albert Hall on Friday and yesterday. There is an amazing rapport between conductor and players, with Barenboim almost reluctantly accepting the immense applause of the audience. He seems, as he conducts, to respond to his musicians as much as to direct them. It was Liszt, Wagner and Berlioz on Friday and with another chamber concert of Mendelssohn and Berg later that evening, Barenboim smiled at the audience and said – ‘the encore is at 10.15’! It was Beethoven’s opera ‘Fidelio’ yesterday, with its inescapable message of freedom for imprisoned people. Splendid performances, rapturously received. On Friday, listening alone and yet feeling part of a community of hope in peace and justice, I was near to tears, as I am sure were many others.

There is an interesting connection with Spain for readers of these blogs. The orchestra has its summer school in Seville with some young musicians from Spain now also taking part in the orchestra as well. The Barenboim-Said Foundation is financed by the regional government of Andalucía to develop education through music projects based on the principles of coexistence and dialogue. This of course in a region – as Barenboim pointed out in an interview in the interval on Friday –where once Jews and Muslims lived together in peace.

Let Barenboim have the last word. ‘The Divan was conceived as a project against ignorance. A project against the fact that it is absolutely essential for people to get to know the other, to understand what the other thinks and feels, without necessarily agreeing with it. I want to create a platform where the two sides can disagree and not resort to knives.’ He has done so.

B.R.