Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment/Bychkov
The Anvil, Basingstoke
5 April 2014
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| Semyon Bychkov |
When Ludwig van Beethoven died, in 1827, 20,000 people lined
the streets of Vienna to watch his funeral procession pass. Among them was the
30 year old Franz Schubert, an ardent admirer of his older colleague, but when
he himself passed away, a year later, his death was little marked beyond his
own circle of friends and family.
Beethoven’s fame was immediate and unprecedented; Schubert’s reputation
grew slowly over many decades, thanks in part to the rediscovery of his epic
final symphony, subtitled the ‘Great’, which the Orchestra of the Age of
Enlightenment and eminent Russian conductor Semyon Bychkov placed alongside
Beethoven’s Seventh for this Anvil performance.
The vast scale and difficulty of Schubert’s ‘Great’
Symphony (sometimes dubiously known as the Ninth) baffled those who saw the
score in the first years after it was composed. Today, however, it’s now a
central part of the repertoire and the OAE proved how totally modern orchestras
are able to manage its hour-long duration. Bychkov chose his tempos carefully,
making sure to sustain the piece’s remarkable, unbroken momentum, and the orchestra
responded with beautifully refined and tireless playing that balanced their
customary concern for historically-informed performance with richness of sound
not always associated with period-instrument ensembles. So many of Schubert’s
late masterpieces speak to us with a profound expressive power that seems
barely believable from such a young man, and this symphony is no expectation –
this is never truer than in the infinitely touching central section of the
third movement, rendered with melting tenderness by orchestra and conductor.
Bychkov’s steadiness and certainty – such virtues in the
Schubert – proved less well suited to Beethoven’s feisty Seventh Symphony,
dubbed “the apotheosis of the dance” by Richard Wagner. Much of this music
revolves obsessively around dance-infused rhythms and motifs, needing an
excitable performance to truly bring it to life. Perhaps Bychkov hoped to
retreat from the crazed power that can inhabit this piece and invest it with
greater nobility, but in putting off the energetic vigour until the finale he
missed the riotous unpredictability that courses through this music. He wanted
for nothing from the orchestra, but the impression was of an approach better
suited to one composer than the other.
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