Walking through Yoyogi Park to get to NHK Hall in warm and muggy weather on Saturday afternoon was a sweaty affair, so it was a relief to settle down to the cool composure of Paavo Järvi as he raised the baton in a programme of works by Schumann and Schubert. It’s a mark of his mastery that with the least fanfare he delivered an afternoon of superb musicality without second guessing the composers’ intentions.
Much as Beethoven’s reputation as a composer dwarfs that of Schumann, they both attempted only one opera. Schumann’s Genoveva, which does not regularly feature in performance nowadays apart from the overture, is based loosely on the medieval tale of Genevieve of Brabant who was wrongly executed by her husband for adultery. Genoveva initially received a poor reception which seems to have persisted. Yet the overture is an elegant and imaginative work. Although the Genoveva overture by itself is not enough to rescue Schumann from criticism of his “dense” orchestration, Paavo Järvi showed what a thoughtful performance could do to showcase the composer’s talents. The polished but subdued tone of the strings in the NHK Symphony Orchestra also helped to reduce their dominance. The opening was sombre and heavy, a prescient suggestion of the tragic fate that would befall the protagonist Genoveva, but the clarinet was able to break through with a speck of brightness. The horns were prominent in a beautifully shaped section of radiant lightness that followed an impassioned plea. The trombones brought the work to a close in a glorious celebration of Genoveva’s innocence.
Schumann’s Cello Concerto in A minor received no better acceptance than Genoveva, and he had difficulty drumming up interest among performers and publishers alike. Through the years it has become fashionable for performers to have their own opinions of what Schumann intended, to the extent of ignoring the score. The pinnacle of disrespect must have been Shostakovich’s attempt to improve its orchestration. It was refreshing to hear Tanja Tetzlaff and Paavo Järvi give a moving and insightful account of the work without resorting to unnecessary modification or embellishment. Above all, Järvi’s sensitive handling of the orchestral parts made the performance a true collaboration between orchestra and soloist. He tamed an orchestra of Brahmsian scale to give a Mozartian effect. The pace of the outer movements was brisk and lively, and the soloist was eloquent and expressive. As the lush and polished strings laid a bed of feathers, the horns chimed in to add colour to the emotion. Pizzicato strings remained in the background in the second movement, and the soloist was goose pimple-inducing in her evocative treatment of the heavenly, beautiful melody.