In an indifferent performance of The Rite of Spring, it’s easy to forget quite how much excitement this music can generate. Last night’s performance by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg and Aziz Shokhakimov was anything but indifferent; all that excitement flooded back.
You can listen to The Rite of Spring with a memory of a dance performance in your mind’s eye, or perhaps your imagination of one. But you can also listen to it purely as music. In that case, if the music is played with such overwhelming clarity and energy as the OPS achieved, it’s a remarkable experience.
The defining feature of The Rite is the number of different things happening concurrently: rhythms, harmonies, timbres. The risk of muddle is ever present, but last night, every phrase rang so clearly that you could pick up many simultaneous things in unimaginable amounts of detail. Shokhakimov’s control over balance was extraordinary. Whether a grumbling trill on bass clarinet, a shimmering harp arpeggio, the skirl of a flute or a pizzicato string figure, nothing was lost in the orchestral mass. In the big pounding rhythms or the extravagant brass, the power generated was massive. All that clarity reinforced how groundbreaking this music remains. I doubt it has been bettered – including by Stravinsky himself – as a showcase of how many simultaneous sounds an orchestra can create, all bound into a coherent whole.
Shokhakimov eschews histrionics and makes no attempt at controlling different groups of players with different parts of his body. Rather, he focuses on one item at a time that he feels needs adjustment. He exudes energy, but also confidence that his players know what to do. One suspects that the hard detail work has all been refined to a T in rehearsal.
At 1,800 seats, Salle Érasme is the largest of three halls within the Strasbourg Convention Centre which can be used for conferences as well as music. The acoustic is bright, clear and seriously loud. That served the Stravinsky perfectly, adding the afterburners to an already potent jet engine. It didn’t work quite as well for the first half of the programme. Debussy’s Printemps, in the 1912 orchestration by Henri Büsser that Debussy supervised after his original score was lost, was well controlled by Shokhakimov and suitably rapturous, with particularly telling oboe lines giving a hint of the virtuosity we would see later in the programme. But this was a big orchestra in a lively room and the overall sound was very robust indeed – a Spring in the direction of Stravinsky's and a shock to the system if one expected Debussy's trademark delicacy and nuance.
The opening of the Mozart Piano Concerto no. 22 in E flat major was brisk and joyful. Jan Lisiecki seemed to treat the weight of every note with extreme care, as if he were on first name terms with every one, the individual sforzando ones as well as the short ones in fast passagework. The cooperation between soloist and orchestra was first class, particularly the phrases in the slow movement where soloist and woodwind meld together. But for all Shokhakimov’s diligent attention to balance, ensuring that the piano was never swamped, this was another very full-bodied performance and never quite touched the sublime.
To close, a vignette from The Rite. Frequently, the percussionist playing the bass drum would lift his stick well behind his shoulder and therefore start his stroke half a bar before the stick hit the skin – in the absolute certainty that the beat would land at exactly the right time. Now that’s real confidence in your conductor and colleagues. I want to see more of Shokhakimov.
