Restless but unsatisfying Mendelssohn from Eschenbach and the Oxford Philharmonic

It’s fair to say that the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra divides opinion. Their repertoire is limited and Music Director Marios Papadopolous is known more for his business acumen than his penetrating interpretations, cultivating a quite remarkable group of donors. This allows the orchestra to entice big names onto its podium at the Sheldonian Theatre: Maxim Vengerov, Víkingur Ólafsson, Martha Argerich among others. On a beautiful spring evening on Thursday, it was the turn of Christoph Eschenbach.

The orchestra has been undertaking a celebration of Bach and Mendelssohn. The initiative throws up some fascinating comparisons; in his programme note, Sir Nicholas Kenyon describes the circumstances surrounding Mendelssohn’s famous revival of the St Matthew Passion in 1827. It is clear which composer the Oxford Philharmonic prefers playing, however. The Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream is in many ways a perfect opening, with the beautiful stillness of the string writing matched by the brilliant intensity of Mendelssohn’s most visceral orchestral outbursts. The wind chords were well handled, despite Eschenbach’s at times rugged conducting style. 

That style was less suited to the chamber music of Bach’s Violin Concerto in E major. The soloist was the renowned Thomas Zehetmair. Oxford has become a centre for Early Music and Baroque, Bach in particular; groups such as Instruments of Time and Truth and the Oxford Bach Soloists have brought a certain crispness and an immediate sound to performances of his music in the city. Perhaps a revival of the older style is a good thing for modern listeners too accustomed to historically-informed performance practices. Nonetheless, there was quite uninspired playing from the orchestra here, and the more Romanticised playing in the central movement seemed out of place. Eschenbach didn’t look, nor did his players sound, to have much new to offer. Zehetmair’s playing was faultless, but the concerto sounded incongruous juxtaposed with the Romantic intensity of the Mendelssohn numbers.

But the heart of our programme was Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony. This music plays to the orchestra's strengths, particularly in the rabid momentum of the finale. The playing was incisive, particularly the strings, although more expression and greater line were often necessary. Eschenbach did not attempt much in the way of dynamic differentiation. The balance between sections was often skewed, though the brass section resounded in the third movement’s horn calls.

Known for harking back to the Romanticised sounds of German conductors in the early 20th century, Eschenbach did not indulge us with his interpretation of this much-loved symphony. The last movement certainly had much in the way of agility – the opening was superb – but it was rather a constant stream, rather than offering the inlets and tributaries that a work like Mendelssohn’s requires. The orchestral balance had something to do with that. Eschenbach had the violins arranged antiphonally, for example, but made little of it. Big funding doesn't always yield results.