THE QUICK AND THE DEAD
by Kevin Shopland
Budapest Sun, Hungary
May 2 2007
May 02, 2007 01:27 pm | Lucy Westenra after she has been drained of
blood by Dracula. The lassitude of Lazarus after he has been raised
from the dead. Alive, yes, but no real pulse, no real life to speak
of. A sort of netherworld undead existence.
These were the images that came to mind when I heard young Armenian
violinist Sergey Khachatryan play the Beethoven Violin Concerto with
the BBC Philharmonic at the Palace of Arts on Apr 21.
His interpretation of the Beethoven was so slow and lacking in pulse
that it seemed dead in the water.
Which was not what I expected. His biographical notes accompanying the
concert program booklet were impressive: won the eighth International
Jean Sibelius Violin Competition at age 15 in 2000; five years
later won the prestigious Queen Elizabeth Violin Competition in
Brussels; has appeared as soloist with the New York Philharmonic,
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and
others; has played under the baton of Kurt Masur, Bernard Haitink,
Christoph von Dohnanyi, etc.So far, so good.
And Khachatryan could play absolutely beautifully: perfectly in tune,
gorgeous tone, many different tone colors, flawless technique.
But he seemed to lack a sense of classical style that could have made
this a wonderful experience.
Khachatryan robbed the opening fast movement of its dynamism. In place
of typical Beethoven first movement energy there was a maddeningly
inappropriate lyrical intimacy.
It was so slow that I began to dread what the next movement, the
genuine slow movement, would be like.
Sure enough, it was even slower. And the quiet passages were so quiet
as to be almost inaudible.
All very refined, but out of place. The last movement could do nothing
to rescue what had come before, and, besides, when Khachatryan got
the chance, he slowed down the tempo again.
The BBC Philharmonic itself, under the direction of Gianandrea Noseda
fared no better.
They certainly didn’t drive the soloist to exciting heights in the
concerto. Mozart’s Don Giovanni Overture, which opened the concert,
was likewise slow and uneventful.
The concert ended with Schubert’s great C major Symphony, which was
better than the first half, but still lacked satisfying phrasing.
Real winner
The piece is full of repetitive figures which need to be shaped in
waves in order to avoid repetitiveness.
By contrast, the concert of the Hungarian National Philharmonic on
Apr 19 was a real winner.
Maestro Zoltan Kocsis got the ball rolling at full speed with a
brilliant reading of Haydn’s Symphony No 101 in D major (The Clock).
Witty and wistful, this Clock was full of surprises and excellent
solos, particularly the flute playing the "wrong" notes in the trio
of the minuet.
Kocsis brought transparent textures and impetuous impatience to this
Haydn masterpiece.
And if Khachatryan just didn’t cut it for me, the same was not true
of soloist Vadim Repin in the Brahms Violin Concerto with Kocsis and
the National Philharmonic.
He gave the Brahms all it demanded: energy and passion, virtuosity
and Romantic lyricism, and playful trills and the joy of the dance
in the Hungarian finale.
Kocsis and the Philharmonic contributed the clarity and rhythmic
vitality that helped propel the soloist and give him fire to breathe.
Repin was not playing the piece as some inner statement for himself,
but rather as the big public work that characterizes the concerto form.
Repin acknowledged the applause with an even more brilliant encore,
if that’s possible.
He played a solo piece by the Belgian violinist-composer Eugene
Ysaye, which gave Repin the opportunity to show a more advanced,
Post-Romantic side to his technique and musical sensibility. It was
really an awesome performance.
This excellent concert closed with the large colorful canvas of
Rachmaninov’s The Bells, a setting of the poem by Edgar Allen Poe,
for chorus, vocal soloists and orchestra.
Attila Fekete’s voice was steely sharp in the opening movement,
while Eszter Sumegi was simply beautiful and nostalgic in the second.
The National Chorus took center stage in the third movement, having
no problem cutting through the powerful sound of the large orchestra.
Finally, Russian baritone Anatoly Fokanov sang the closing funeral
dirge in the way that only a real Russian can sing.