Is there anything Paavo Järvi cannot do? Maestro and music director in several continents, mentor, communicator, impresario, musician extraordinary, steering a sure-footed path through the staples of the 19th-century symphonic repertory, encompassing recorded cycles of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, with Bruckner and Mahler still to come. But is there perhaps a chink in the armoury of apparent invincibility? Could this be Franz Schubert? In his latest visit to the Elbphilharmonie with his Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Järvi chose to perform this composer’s first two symphonies, separated by one of that century’s big fiddle concertos.
When you think of Schubert, you think of Lieder. With more than 600 songs to his credit, one can only surmise how many different threads of melody must have been running through the teenage composer’s head. Like Mozart, he was an effortless tunesmith. His First Symphony, resplendent in D major, was written when he was just 16. Järvi’s approach highlighted characteristic touches in Schubert’s later output: the deliberately dark and soulful colours from his superlative woodwind section; the effervescent and festive flourishes on natural trumpets in the outer movements; the trio section in the third movement, already sounding like a Beethovenian Scherzo, imbued with Gemütlichkeit through captivating birdsong from flute and oboe. And yet, it frequently sounded rather academic and mechanical, the players never fully inside what would have been an unfamiliar score.
If there is one thing Schubert shares with Bruckner, it is the requirement for the music to breathe. Far too many of the string passages in the Symphony no. 2 in B flat major were hustled along or dangerously clipped, as though the delicious wind detail mattered more – and these players rightly claimed all the limelight. There was no lack of whirlwind energy in the concluding Presto, but no real joy either. This was Schubert almost through gritted teeth rather than bathed in smiles, sounding like the wrong kind of circus music with pat-a-cake-man rhythms from the timpanist.
Järvi’s qualities as an accompanist were much in evidence for Veronika Eberle’s performance of the Violin Concerto in D major by Brahms. They were certainly on the same page. This was all the more remarkable, since for the entire traversal Eberle appeared wrapped up in her own world, moving very little, head bent towards her instrument, eyes closed, allowing herself only the briefest of smiles towards the conductor before the start of the Finale. From her very first entry, after a weighty orchestral introduction, it was clear that this would be a dramatically inflected, rhythmically taut reading. There was plenty of bone and technical assurance: she made light of the countless technical difficulties including rapid broken chords, scales and double stopping.
Henryk Wieniawski was wrong to call the work “unplayable”. Moreover, Eberle showed its expressive range to the full. She often displayed a beguiling sweetness of tone, a smoky richness when playing on the G string, a wonderful tonal range stretching from the ethereal to the earthy in the central Adagio, never over-indulgent in sentiment yet maintaining a strong narrative line throughout. The only real miscalculation came in the Finale. Here, the lover of talk, Tokaj and Turkish cigarettes seemed very much in a hurry, the gypsy influences a distant recollection, the forward-driving momentum pointing ahead to later propulsive explorations of the instrument.
Overall, there was much to admire in the playing of the Kammerphilharmonie. Not the least of felicities in the Brahms was the emergence of much inner string detail. I just wish the special voice that Schubert has as a composer had not been subjected to so many constraints: sing, Paavo, sing!
