The Bear and the Rooster

There may be lots of inaccuracies in this, but it's after 2 a.m. and I want to go to sleep. So I'll post it as is, with my apologies.

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This evening T., Ge., J. and I betook ourselves to the Philharmonic, braving the chills of this snowy day, passing across the rimy grass at the Kulturforum, and wandering briefly under the sky where the ghostly white clouds strayed across the blackness. Inside it was perfectly warm, and we wended our way through the great, bright foyer and the flocks of quietly cheerful or quietly hostile concertgoers, decidedly belonging to the quietly cheerful camp. Our seats were perched above stage level out in front, and we had a good view of all musicians, save the basses at the rightmost nook of the stage. There was an impressive array of chairs, for a veritable army of violinists, violists, cellists, bassists, flautists, oboists, bassoonists, trombonists, percussionists, and trumpeters. There was a celesta, two cymbals, a gong, big crimson drum, tambourine, two timpani, a triangle and xylophone, etc. The golden parquet, the blond wood chairs, the dark brown of the basses, and the copper glare of the timpani formed a most pleasing tableau as we waited for their occupants to enter.

The light on the stage became more glaring, the musicians filed in, the tardier portion of the audience straggled in, and the conductor, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, strode onto the stage in evidently excellent spirits. Then the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin began to play Tchaikovsky's Francesca da Rimini. Before the concert I had read up on the tale that inspired it. It comes from a passage in Dante's Inferno, where the wandering protagonist interrupts his journey through the eponymous nether regions in order to parley with old acquaintances whom he finds in the region allotted to lusty sinners. Francesca had married some person who apparently wasn't too agreeable, when she and her brother-in-law Paolo decided to read Arthurian romances together. They came as far as the episode with Queen Guinevere and Sir Lancelot, and never went further, for they were unwisely inspired to a spot of kissing; at which point the husband (who is going to hell too, only later, as Dante helpfully informs us) stopped by, flew into a jealous rage, and stabbed them both to death. As for the music, it was the Ride of the Valkyries without the horn theme, just the strings wuthering up and down the scale, like demons flitting and swooping, hither and thither, through the atmosphere of hell. Then there was a peaceful episode where one of the woodwinds, possibly a cor anglais, had a lyrical solo, followed by pastorally amorous string passages and a fleeting answer by the flute (the man was evidently the more talkative entity in this relationship). Then the Ride was back, as were the fortissimo passages that had a hectic effect on my blood pressure, hammering in the point that the couple were pretty darn damned. Then the music came to an end with four or so thunderous whacks of the timpani, which I surmised were the stabs of the angry husband.

After a break for applause, it was on to Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 2, with the soloist Lisa Batiashvili, who was born in Tbilisi and presently lives in Munich. Her opening phrase was very beautiful, and she brought out the individuality of her violin's tone excellently. Altogether the touch was lyrical but not self-indulgently so, and the technique was inconspicuously irreproachable, as is ideal. The overall physical approach was a very athletic one, with much bending and so on, but it wasn't painful to watch even for one as humourless about theatrics as I. The violinist was absorbed in the conductor's direction and turned often to face and consult him, with a disregard for the audience that was rather likeable and an even more likeable lack of the knowing smirks that often characterize these consultations. She is decidedly not a lady-violinist, and there was a refreshing absence of revealing gowns, lavish make-up, and of the showily "graceful" movements that are often employed to emphasize a violiniste's femininity for the sake of CD and ticket sales.

What I missed in this concerto was the Russian character which, I think, could have been found and and should have been brought forth, even though the piece is in my view principally an attempt to mimick the French modernists. Mostly this concerto was not my cup of tea, though it could be worse, being an experimental jumble of disparate and insignificant motifs, which can be rendered palatable through a glowing tone and a whimsical imaginativeness of interpretation, but which is not particularly worthwhile. (I doubt that the previous sentence could have been snobbier, but oh, well.) In any case, there were many curtain calls and an encore. There the soloist played a Georgian folksong, to the accompaniment of four or so of the string players in the orchestra, which everyone visibly enjoyed.

*Intermission* (Where we stay in our seats and chatter cheerfully.)

After the break came Debussy's Jeux, which was essentially a stream of effects: strings evoking the sweeping of leaves here, cascading of the harps there, and that sort of thing. But it was agreeable while it lasted — not going anywhere really, but not boring. Theoretically I have much more use for Tchaikovsky than I have for Debussy, but these Jeux were much more distinctively and originally Debussy than Francesca da Rimini was distinctively and originally Tchaikovsky. Oddly enough, I even liked Ravel, for whom I don't have much use apart from some famous orchestral piece whose name I've presently forgotten.

The Ravel was, specifically, a rendering of Daphnis and Chloe, an old Greek tale of a sheep-herding foster brother and sister to whom it is revealed that they adore each other after much bucolic bliss. This is yet another species of romantic tale that I don't find at all romantic, as there is no surer way of leading a stifling and claustrophobic existence than marrying a person who has an identical upbringing and life experience. Anyway, as Ravel interpreted the tale, there was a very morning-ish (or, to employ a term from one of my online novels, matutinal) opening, burgeoning with clichés like trilling flutes for birds and scales on the harps and strings for the rising of the sun or who knows what. Then there was, fittingly, a great deal of the aforementioned bucolic bliss, woodland oboes and hunting horns and the like. It was hilariously over-the-top, very sweeping, and every musical instrument had its moment. I was much more excited than I should be at my mature years by all the interesting instruments, and squealed internally when, for instance, the triangle or the piccolo flute made its appearance, or when the harps had a phrase or so. Altogether the music was familiar; it resembles the score to every black-and-white film ever made. Apparently Wagner and Ravel were the alpha and omega of Hollywood composers.

Altogether my impression, not being used to comparing orchestras or knowing what is good or bad, was that the orchestra was very good and that its tone was especially remarkable. It may be balderdash, but I once read that different orchestras choose different approaches to the bowing, so that in the Israeli Philharmonic the players are permitted to find their own bowing, which apparently leads to an interesting, if a trifle anarchic, multiplicity of sound; in this case the bows of the strings rose and fell in an incredibly unisono movement. The unwieldy contingent of musicians was capable of astounding lightness and versatility as well as swelling sound, the dialogue that ran from the strings to the woodwinds and from the violins through the cellos to the basses and so on ran fluidly, and above all I thought that the tone was quite lovely. The music did not have an overly rehearsed effect at all; it was alive. What I thought was missing was the edge that would have counteracted the intermittent tendency to be nearly lush.

At the end we reemerged into the cold, cold air, running across the Kulturforum to the bus station to grow warmer, and then waiting in a literal huddle for the bus to arrive. Yet we were in a good mood. I'm glad that I'm beginning to enjoy my outings wholeheartedly — instead of going somewhere on my own initiative and on my own, out of a sense of duty, only to feel depressed by how little I get out of it — and also that I'm bothering to read up on things before I go. In the process of doing the latter, I have, for instance, discovered a very nice biography (over several webpages) of Prokofiev.

P.S.: The subject line is probably highly incongruous, but the rationale behind it is that, since bears are sort of Russian and the rooster is an emblem of France, these animals represent the nationalities of the composers.