When things get erotic between violin and cello

Paavo Järvi sprints through the Tonhalle Orchestra’s new Bruckner cycle, but the performance of the 3rd symphony still needs some fine-tuning. Above all, a magic moment in the first part with the violinist Janine Jansen and Bernstein’s meditations on love stays in the ear.

The Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra inaugurates the Grosse Tonhalle with Paavo Järvi with Mahler’s Third Symphony, photographed on Wednesday, September 15, 2021, in Zurich.

Christian Beutler / Keystone

Paavo Järvi sets the pace. As a conductor, the music director of the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra does not exactly belong to the group of the slow ones, with whom the music develops from a deliberate basic pulse. Järvi, who will turn sixty in December, still has youthful vitality and much of his fascination stems from the irresistible pull his performances draw from it. In Zurich, however, Järvi is now also stepping up the pace as a program planner: the new concert cycle with all of Anton Bruckner’s symphonies, which only began in mid-September, has already reached the third of the nine officially numbered symphonies after just six weeks.

There is a reason for the rush: Next week they want to present the 3rd, 6th and 8th symphonies for the first time as part of a four-day guest performance in the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie. This residency, which is intended to strengthen the international reputation of the orchestra, was actually planned for 2021, at that time with the previous Tchaikovsky cycle; but it fell victim to the pandemic. So now Bruckner, and the speed with which the conductor and his musicians work through these long, demanding works speaks for a solid technical and artistic basis on which the rehearsal work can build from the first minute. However, the tempo also harbors a certain danger, as this week’s performance of the 3rd symphony in the Tonhalle shows.

Concentrated power

Not that the rendering of the Third in the late 1889 version lacks fire – Järvi stays true to his energetic approach, the music pushing forward almost incessantly; Bruckner’s often meandering forms appear as clear as rarely. Nothing is meaningfully exaggerated or stretched out here, the monumentality of Bruckner’s musical language arises solely from the inner dynamics, from the wide-ranging development arcs and the sometimes powerful sound eruptions. At the same time, however, this is where the problem lies: The constant tension required for this purposeful reading means that the sound – as in the eighth at the start in September – cannot breathe and swing out enough.

The resulting hardships should probably be counteracted by even more intensive acoustic and group rehearsals, especially with the brass section. The Bruckner cycle of the Vienna Philharmonic under Christian Thielemann, also compiled from live recordings, shows what refinement is lacking here: Where the Tonhalle Orchestra shines and shines a little superficially, the sound of the Viennese lives and vibrates, it glows from within , even in the dynamic peaks. It is quite possible that the final touches will still be developed in the repeats of the concert – at the latest the ruthlessly analytical acoustics of the Elbphilharmonie will bring it to light.

Incidentally, they themselves had previously proved that the Zurich musicians are capable of similar differentiations as the Viennese: in the extended solo passages of the brass section in Olivier Messiaen’s orchestral work “L’Ascension”, with which the program began. This first part of the concert seemed like a colorful contrast to the concentrated power of the Bruckner symphony after the break.

The subject of all subjects

The violinist Janine Jansen was responsible for the colors. She appeared as a soloist in Leonard Bernstein’s Serenade after Plato’s “Symposium”. This piece from 1954 is one of the few works by Bernstein that have established themselves in the repertoire apart from the famous musicals such as “West Side Story” and “On the Town”; nevertheless, on Friday it was heard for the first time ever in a Tonhalle concert. This is all the more astonishing when, thanks to Janine Jansen, one can experience how much charm and wit this disguised violin concerto can exude.

Jansen vividly characterizes each of the seven philosophers whom Bernstein has faithfully arranged to debate in Plato’s famous essay about nothing less than the nature of love. Appropriate to the theme of all themes, it sounds sometimes fiery, sometimes thoughtful, sometimes quarrelsome, then passionate again, soon euphoric and finally even openly erotic when the violin engages in a very intimate dialogue with the cello.

Paul Handschke, the new solo cellist of the Tonhalle Orchestra, manages a truly magical moment here: He engages the soloist in a real dialogue, not just seconding, but just as self-confident and nuanced as Jansen (which is saying something for this world-class violinist), so that at some point you really no longer know who has the better “arguments” on his side. The well-worn politician’s phrase “at eye level” suddenly gets a new musical meaning, and Handschke is rightly included in the jubilation for Jansen at the end.

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