Giltburg’s Beethoven enlightens the dark between the RPO’s Berg and Stravinsky

Berg’s Three Pieces for Orchestra (1913-14) and Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (1913) framed this Royal Philharmonic Orchestra concert because of their proximity to World War 1, in a series the RPO calls “Lights in the Dark”. Conductor Vasily Petrenko made some prefatory remarks on that theme and the programme, noting Berg’s work was a response to criticism of his orchestral writing from his teacher, Arnold Schoenberg. Berg has clearly assimilated what he needed from the instrumentation of Mahler and Richard Strauss (and Schoenberg) but the resulting score goes beyond them to form a pinnacle of Viennese expressionism.

Berg warned the first conductor that his work was very difficult for the players, needing thorough rehearsal. The orchestra is an enormous one, with two timpanists and four percussionists, although the opening from tam-tam, timpani and cymbal is very quiet. Petrenko led his musicians through such a complex score with authority, and the RPO responded with flair, precision and, for the central climax of the opening Präludium, power. The middle movement, Reigen (Round Dance), brings in a waltz, though this music is far in spirit from any ballroom. The concluding March is as long as the first two movements put together. Eloquently played, it lacked only the last degree of expressionist fervour. Berg was pleased when told his score resembled pieces by Mahler and Schoenberg played simultaneously. The work indeed ends with the same heavy hammer blows used in Mahler’s Sixth Symphony, delivered with an almighty thud to close the door on life.

Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto also has wartime links, being composed in 1809 when Vienna resounded to Napoleon’s artillery barrage. The title Emperor, used only in English-speaking countries, would not have pleased Beethoven given his political views, but does suggest the work’s grandeur, well represented here in the orchestral performance. The piece has its military aspects, but more of the parade ground than the front line. Boris Giltburg, standing in for the indisposed Paul Lewis, played the opening cadenza-like flourish as if he was the composer improvising it at the keyboard. His every solo passage brought that same feeling of creating as much as recreating the score, often at a slightly slower speed than the preceding orchestral part, but never enough to impede momentum. Perhaps that came from standing in very late, but felt more like instinctive musicianship.

The Rite of Spring filled the platform of the Royal Festival Hall once again, in a performance stronger in savage outbursts than in the haunting ritual aspects, though again very well played, not least in the many solo moments. There was some splendid barking from the horns in The Augurs of Spring and elsewhere, and thrilling trumpet playing for The Dance of the Earth that ends Part One. The Sacrifice, Part Two, may have made more of its moments of Debussian impressionism, if only to provoke the composer’s wrathful shade by pointing out his influences. But many moments were exciting almost to the end of The Sacrificial Dance, marred only by the insertion of an unmarked caesura before the last chord. The composer himself, in a published review of a 1969 recording said “the ending is a disaster. Boulez separates the upbeat from the downbeat… turning a not-very-good idea into a vulgar one.” If only that had served to banish the practice, but it persists and Petrenko is not alone.