"Sometimes I get sick and tired of the young conductors, and even the young singers, where you can see that they don't care a damn to know the tradition, they think it's a waste of time… Sometimes I am very negative about the future of opera—so much that I wonder how much longer I am going to conduct opera." Such were the feelings of Riccardo Chailly when interviewed in Frank Scheffer's 1998 documentary film Attrazione d'amore, recently released on DVD by Juxtapositions. The film explores Chailly's relationship with Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, of which he was chief conductor from 1988 until 2004, when he left to become music director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, as well as, happily, general music director of the Leipzig Opera. Such profiles of classical musicians are rarely edgy or hard-hitting, but this one at least manages to avoid the crawlingly hagiographical character of so many—not least because it has the unusual virtue of assuming that its audience will already have some interest in and knowledge of classical music (for which reason, no doubt, it is unlikely to get a showing on British television). It is fortunate that Chailly has not yet decided to renounce the opera pit, since, as Opus Arte's DVD of the 2004 Amsterdam production of Verdi's Don Carlo clearly demonstrates, there are few conductors who can combine his dramatic instinct with his ability to respect and animate the details of an operatic score.
Chailly's decision to leave Amsterdam for Leipzig was the source of some puzzlement: after a few tense years at the start, Chailly's relationship with the Concertgebouw had deepened into one of obvious mutual respect and had secured some of the finest orchestral work in Europe. Also, of course, while the Concertgebouw is at the top of the European orchestral league, the Gewandhaus is regarded as only a good second-ranker. To judge from their London debut together at the Barbican this March however, that looks very likely to change. On Scheffer's film, one of the Concertgebouw players recalls that Chailly's energy had such an immediate effect on the orchestra that they found themselves playing much more extrovertly than they had before, and Chailly seems to have had the same effect on the Leipzig musicians. As someone who is concerned with traditions of performance, Chailly clearly values the fact that the east German Gewandhaus, like the Dresden Staatskapelle, has maintained its own tradition in a way that more international ensembles have not, and in their performance of Mahler's 7th symphony, Chailly made great use of their ability to produce distinctively dark sonorities and richly separated textures. What he added was a degree of both technical precision and sheer energy that I, at least, have not heard from this orchestra before, and which resulted in a performance of this most difficult of Mahler's symphonies that was not just convincing but electrifying. We can only hope that the Barbican will provide regular opportunities to experience how the Leipzig orchestra develops under its new conductor—for it offers the promise of very great things to come.
Is Uchida best on CD?
Mitsuko Uchida is much in evidence in London this year. She returns to the Barbican at the start of April for a recital of Mozart, and in March appeared at St Luke's for an enterprising programme of Viennese piano and chamber music. The programme began with a performance of Alban Berg's Lyric Suite by the Brentano Quartet, ended with a performance of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, with the German actress Barbara Sukowa as the narrator, and in between Uchida played Schubert's Impromptus D899. The performances of the Second Viennese School pieces were all one could have hoped for. The Lyric Suite is often cited as evidence that 12-tone music need not be difficult—and the Brentano's performance would certainly have helped that case. The players knew just when to blend and when to play as soloists so that the musical argument was always open to the ear. No less impressive was Sukowa's rendition of Schoenberg's sprechgesang. If this was closer to speech than it often is when performed by professional singers, this was entirely to the work's advantage, making Schoenberg's expressionistic lines all the more strange and highly strung. Sukowa's rapport with the musicians was exemplary (especially with Marina Piccinini's flute) and together they made this a genuine piece of chamber music rather than one for lunatic with accompanying instrumentalists.
If there was a slight disappointment, it lay in Uchida's playing of the Schubert, which had too few moments of simple repose and often seemed somewhat mannered. Uchida is a pianist of tremendous spontaneity, and this carries the risk of a certain edginess as well as the promise of playing that is urgent and compelling. A couple of years ago she gave a recital at the Festival Hall of Beethoven's last three sonatas, and then too I found her playing too frenetic. Now Philips have released a CD of her in these works and the difference is extraordinary. Whether her playing has benefited from the reduction in adrenalin that comes from playing for the microphone rather than an audience, or whether her interpretations have just had time to settle, her performances on the disc are indeed compelling. She remains unafraid of the dramatic moments in these works, but is sensitive too to the passages that demand simplicity and reflectiveness. This is Mitsuko Uchida at her best—and that is high critical praise.
