Two of Bartok’s masterpieces filled this evening with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, conducted by Alan Gilbert. His Third Piano Concerto, written during his final months, has a consistently lyrical flow to it. In Igor Levit’s hands, it also had a beguiling depth and range of sonority quite rare in my experience. There was a magic rustling in the woodland at the start, life gently awakening as the first rays of sunshine warmed the earth. Very quickly, with the stretching of limbs came a playfulness, tempered by wistfulness on the return of the main theme, with warmly supportive accompaniment, Gilbert following his soloist all the way with acumen.
The heart of the concerto is its central movement, uniquely called Adagio religioso by the composer, remarkable for the perfect poise of Levit’s individual notes as well as the weight of the contrasting chords. An opening mood of contemplation and repose, where the Beethoven-inspired chorale was lovingly and tenderly caressed along, picked up speed in the middle section’s night music, complete with echoes of insect and bird calls, before an expansive drawing together of the various threads, underpinned by organ-like sonorities from the woodwinds and mighty strokes of the tam-tam. The concluding Allegro vivace was full of joie de vivre, the contrapuntal elements relished by both soloist and orchestra, before culminating in a coruscating finish.
Bartók’s only opera, Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, is a true child of its time. Written in 1911, just a few years after both Salome and Elektra, it reflects the preoccupation with fin-de-siècle darkness and decadence as well as the emergent field of modern psychology. Ill-fated female curiosity, of which Eve, Lot’s wife, Psyche and Pandora are simply earlier examples, takes centre-stage. Judith wants to know, and she’s not going to let Bluebeard stop her!
A near impossibility in terms of vocal casting presents itself. Bluebeard needs to get up to a high F, if a bass, or down to low G, if a baritone. In turn, Judith should ideally be a mezzo with a top C, not a soprano making valiant attempts to enter the mezzo range. Both Michelle DeYoung and Gerald Finley were ideally matched, embedded within the orchestra, relatively statuesque in stance, delivering idiomatic-sounding Hungarian with clarity and conviction. She had a slight tremulousness at the start, as if to reveal Judith’s initial anxiety about the course she had embarked upon; he found an inky blackness for those moments where Bluebeard struggles to assert his authority. The increasing intensity of their discourse developed from the prologue of the bard, spoken with sagacity by Dávid Csizmár, and its concluding entreaty to the audience to listen in silence. Among the many vocal highlights were DeYoung’s repeated declaration “Mert szeretlek” (Because I love you) in response to Bluebeard’s questions about her motivation, and the varied colouring which Finley found for his reiterated “könnyek” (tears), as she demands to know why she is confronted with a vast sheet of water.
But the evening belonged to Gilbert and his superb orchestra. Under his urgent and compelling direction the players responded with a singular quality of expressiveness. I loved the rich earthiness of the strings and their sudden shivers for moments of maximum chilliness, the icy-toned trumpets that cut through the gloom, the plangency of the cor anglais, the sardonic gurgling of the clarinets, the fluttering of the flutes in the vale of tears, the hammer blows and wind-machine as doors opened, the blood-curdling climaxes of the full orchestra, powerfully underpinned by the organ. I loved Gilbert’s instinctive feel for pacing, his absolute conviction about the score. I loved it all.
