Iván Fischer unmasks the real Stravinsky
Classical Budapest Festival Orchestra/fischer Royal Festival Hall, London SE1 ★★★★★
WAn unsuspected tenderness shone through at the end as the orchestra rose to sing ‘Ave Maria’
ho was Igor Stravinsky? Was there an essential core behind the constant parade of different styles: the Russian primitivist, the up-to-the-minute Parisian sophisticate, the jazzer, the sober back-to-bach classicist? Or was there nothing behind the mask?
The two all-stravinsky concerts from the Budapest Festival Orchestra were bound to raise that question. They didn’t display every mask: there was no sign of the post-1950s ultramodernist Stravinsky, more’s the pity.
But still, the contrasts on display were so startling it was hard to believe that the music came from the same person. In the orchestra’s thrilling second concert, on Friday evening, there was the heartless wit of the
Concerto in D for strings, followed by the even more brilliant Capriccio for piano and orchestra, inspired (according to the interesting programme note) by what Stravinsky described as “The Beau Brummells” of music: Mendelssohn and Weber.
Finally, came a piece that wears no clothes at all save for the odd bear-skin – Stravinsky’s evocation of ancient Russian ritual, The Rite of Spring.
Clothed or not, the kinship between the pieces was immediately evident, thanks to the supremely sharp, energised performances. That stubborn “wrong” bass note at the beginning of the Concerto in D, which doesn’t agree with the harmony above and so gives a huge dissonant kick to the music, found an echo an hour later; in the “Ritual of the Rival Tribes” in
The Rite of Spring, a similarly wrong bass note grinds against the savage fanfares above. The orchestra’s founder and conductor Iván Fischer understands so well that Stravinsky’s mind moved even faster than his rhythms, which is what makes the music so exciting.
But it also means that the brilliance can flash by without registering, so Fischer took time to let certain things really tell. The parody of a graceful dance in the first movement of the Concerto in D often seems merely brittle, but Fischer slowed it right down so the curtseys and bows became huge and surreal.
In the Capriccio, he was joined by the young Georgian pianist Nicolas Namoradze, who showed just as keen an understanding of Stravinsky’s blend of wit, balletic grace and stifled expressivity. He made the ballroom roulades and scales and odd little mechanical basses soft and tender rather than brittle, while Fischer urged the solo string quartet and plangent cor anglais to seize the odd moments of lyrical warmth.
Then came The Rite of Spring, where any suggestion of lyrical warmth might seem beside the point – but Fischer encouraged us to hear it in the “Mystic Circles of the Young Girls”. And where savage clarity was required, he and the orchestra provided it. The clash of two rhythms in the “Ritual of the Rival Tribes” has never seemed so brutal.
Finally, after the cheers and the standing ovation, came the masterstroke of the encore. The players put down their instruments, rose to their feet and sang Stravinsky’s modest little Ave Maria. Pagan savagery was stilled, and an unsuspected tenderness towards the Mother of God shone through.
Yes, there was a real person behind those many masks, and a heart too.