A night of populism, power and inner pain
Sydney Morning Herald
Tuesday August 25, 2009
SYDNEY SYMPHONYOpera House, August 21SAINT-SAENS' Third and last Symphony (the "Organ Symphony") was written in 1886 €“ the year after Brahms's Fourth and last. Brahms is credited with inheriting the mantle of Beethoven, but this did not prevent Charles Gounod cheekily describing Saint-Saens as "France's Beethoven" at the Organ Symphony's premiere.This exhilarating performance under the indefatigable Yannick Nezet-Seguin underlined the gulf between French and German symphonic conceptions. In Germany a symphony was akin to a work of philosophy, whereas in France, ever since the French Revolution, there has been an element of public spectacle.Of course, there is no reason why a symphony can't be both €“ witness Beethoven's Ninth €“ but while Saint-Saens threaded the work with subtle symphonic connections, it was in the spectacle that he excelled. What a pity he isn't around for modern opening ceremonies.Nezet-Seguin nursed the expressiveness of the slow movement with care, and the blend between organ tones (David Drury) and orchestra was subtle and clear.Those who listen aghast at the excess and populism of the blazing finale, with emphatic punctuation from the full organ, carefully crafted brass and woodwind chords and moments of glittering underscoring from the two pianists (with shades of the Carnival of the Animals, written the same year), clearly haven't understood Saint-Saens' conception of the symphony.Before this the cellist Han-Na Chang brought out the visceral intensity of Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No. 1 in a reading that thrived on fateful drama. In the first movement she clung tenaciously to the work's raw rhythmic power, eschewing tonal beauty to emphasise the work's disturbing implacability and grimness.In the second movement she cut back to moments of such quiet inner pain that, effective as the playing was for those close, one wondered whether listeners at the side and back would have heard.In the cadenza, an extended transition into the finale, she played as one possessed, as though emulating the depictions in Japanese Noh drama of distressed souls, tormented to madness by unavenged wrong. With sensitive accompaniment from Nezet-Seguin, this was a performance of singular vision but limited projection.
© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald