The opening minutes of the opening piece at Tuesday’s City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra matinee were fascinating, and in hindsight indicated everything about the remainder of the concert. This was Smetana’s Vltava, and Anna Rakitina was eliciting the most remarkable effect: tumbling flutes and clarinets, sounding as if they existed outside a realm where pulse or bars existed, being held in check by gentle, exact pizzicato notes. This combination of elegance and precision was answered shortly after, on the entrance of the big tune, with a pronounced flexibility, allowing the melody to shape the tempo, bringing to mind that peculiar elasticity of the Viennese waltz.
What Rakitina demonstrated here was, on the one hand, a strong sympathy to the music’s Romantic character, yet articulated with a clarity and precision that was felt strikingly Classical. An unexpected approach, perhaps, yet the results spoke for themselves. Smetana’s character study of the Czech river was revealed with beautiful lucidity, teasing out a host of inner details – particularly a sequence of brass accompaniment figurations – in the process bringing such refinement to the work that its ensuing climax felt shockingly raw, intensely threatening.
The same couldn’t be said for Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations, in part due to the obvious limitations of Jaemin Han, admittedly a young player but one who clearly has scope for improvements in technique and intonation. However, the main issue here was the same Classical approach, which one might have expected to be ideal for music connected to Rococo stylings. Yet no one on stage seemed sure about what they were trying to achieve. The CBSO were restrained, punctilious, but as a consequence dynamically flat. This enabled Han to project, and while there were signs of passion, the sum total nonetheless sounded tepid, almost entirely matter-of-fact. The shape, structure and nature of the material seemed a total mystery – it was like listening to someone try to speak a language they don’t know.
Thankfully, the opposite was the case in Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique Symphony. One could make a case that Rakitina’s Classical approach caused the work to sound excessively polarised – slow outer movements versus quick inner ones – though if anything this underlined the inherent mixed messages being conveyed by the music itself. The second movement Allegro con grazia was taken literally, Rakitina twirling it into an irregular courtly dance, while the following Allegro molto vivace brought echoes of the burbling flow from Vltava, Rakitina again bringing out details such that the orchestral focus was in a state of flux, causing the ear to leap from instrument to instrument, enhancing its sense of play.
But it was in the outer movements that the performance, and the concert, reached its zenith. A sombre, exquisite opening Adagio, allowing the lyrical weight to speak without affectation or exaggeration. Here again was that intuitive treatment of melody, responding to line, contour and cadence in order to make it individual and personal. As such (again bringing to mind the Smetana) the music’s subsequent fire was sharp and brutal, with Rakitina delivering astonishing vividness in its large, roiling tuttis. The brass were especially powerful here, with blazing trumpets terrifying from above while trombones expressed dark anguish from below. The final Adagio lamentoso demonstrated more of this lyrical elasticity, now applied liberally, colouring the symphony’s final poignant passages with a subtle sense of desperation in its urgency. Even here, though, the performance was restrained, making the work’s final sag into low register blackness achingly painful.
Though unexpected, Rakitina’s ‘Romassical’ interpretative approach yielded significant details and wonders, rethinking music that has become all too familiar, allowing it to speak afresh.
