United Kingdom Tchaikovsky: Bruce Liu (piano), Philharmonia Orchestra / Santtu-Matias Rouvali (conductor). Royal Festival Hall, London, 10.3.2022. (MBr)
Tchaikovsky – Francesca da Rimini; Piano Concerto No.2 in G major; Symphony No.6, Pathétique
This rather long concert – it lasted almost three hours – was given over to just one composer, Tchaikovsky. Part of the reason for its length was the change of piano concerto: Tchaikovsky’s B-flat minor concerto for his G major. We also had a change of soloist, Nobuyuki Tsujii being replaced by the recent 18th International Chopin Piano Competition winner, Canadian Bruce Liu.
I cannot last remember a young pianist (Liu is 24) making his UK debut with a piano concerto quite so risky – or as obscure – as this one. The G major is rarely played for several reasons – not least the fact that many of Sergei Taneyev’s observations, after he performed the work in 1882, still stand today: the first and second movements are too long, and the second has almost nothing to do with the piano at all. But it is also hampered by a lot more. It often sounds more like Schumann in places – in fact, it is more Germanic than many of Tchaikovsky’s previous works. Written very closely to the Fourth Symphony you would hardly think it possible these were from the same composer. Although its structure is unquestionably inventive for its time – the multiple cadenzas, the chamber-like intimacy of some of its writing, its tendency towards the sonata rather the concerto in places – it can seem so badly structured as a concerto that it can come across in performances as very clunky. Its inordinate length – a more spacious account can equal Brahms’s B flat concerto – means it needs a pianist of considerable skill to bring it off. Having said that, parts of the concerto are brilliantly conceived for the right pianist. There is no lack of drama – or rather the music is there to create it – and Tchaikovsky places the concerto in the right keys for a pianist to conjure up enough colour to explore the darker recesses of the work. There is no lack of virtuosity either, as you would expect from Tchaikovsky; the second cadenza – and there are plenty of those in this concerto – is especially brilliant.
Liu’s great advantage is that he knows the work well – why would you play this hybrid of a monster concerto otherwise? He may well not have played it since 2019 (according to an extract from an interview in the booklet) but my few run-ins with this concerto have not received a better performance than this one. For a piece that needs a lot of intensity of expression to save it from dissolving into unwieldy stretches of playing, Liu brought many imaginative and individual touches to the long first movement. Some of his long tonic pedalling was exquisitely played to send us in a more brooding direction, although what was also notable was his tendency to space passages between the piano and orchestra (as this concerto pretty much is written to allow) so parts of the first movement sounded more intimate than is more often the case. The problematic second movement – fundamentally a trio for piano, violin and cello – can leave the piano stranded for long stretches, but more than that can strain a pianist into deciding how far he should compete with the other instruments. This particular performance proved a fascinating experience to listen to. The Philharmonia’s leader, Zsolt-Tihamér Visontay, took one risk with his solo and that was to dominate the other two – even to the extent that in his amorous exchanges with the solo cello, a little coyly played by Karen Stephenson, it sometimes felt like pure domineering. Liu did little to counteract this odd balancing, and rather directionless rhetoric, although Tchaikovsky is as much to blame for how it turned out as the three soloists here. The final movement brought Liu back into focus and was a technical tour de force. A difficult movement to balance since its tension can easily unwind before we get to the coda, Liu was precise to an exceptional degree. And he dashed it off with brilliance.
There was a great deal in this performance of Tchaikovsky’s G major Concerto that was memorable and that made it such a compelling one. Liu is interesting because he takes a less overtly virtuoso route and gave us one which was calibrated by detailed touches and deft individual strokes of drama. The rarer view of Tchaikovsky’s piano concertos is that there is a deeper core to the music that can be explored. It was perhaps not surprising that one of the freshest things about this performance was that it had all the hallmarks of the crystalline clarity and jewel-like precision of Chopin with the tempestuous drama and vivid colours of Tchaikovsky to drive it along. We don’t always get Tchaikovsky played this way. Liu plays in a way which strikes a fine balance between the virtuosic Titans and Apollonian humanism with a dash of Dionysian fire and individuality thrown in. In that sense, it was a telling and highly original performance and a UK debut that was very notable.
I rather wish the rest of this concert went quite as well as the concerto did. Francesca da Rimini – with the G major Piano Concerto also sharing a connection to Taneyev – is one of Tchaikovsky’s most personal and emotionally tortured works. Although the piece is inspired by Dante’s Inferno, Tchaikovsky also wrote it after hearing Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen at Bayreuth and although the influence may not be pervasive or lie very much at its heart it is certainly part of Francesca: its chromaticism, the unusually low basses and even the storm all suggest some Wagnerian influence so soon after his visit to Bayreuth.
I have not heard many performances in concert which do this work justice and Santtu-Matias Rouvali’s didn’t either. Tempos were not necessarily an issue; this was largely a fluid account – neither too fast, nor too slow. But there was little shape to how Rouvali used these tempos either. The music didn’t move with mercurial brilliance; nor did it generate the kind of kinetic tension that held the attention. It had begun with understated cellos and basses, and this would be a feature throughout the performance. That flatness, that lack of expressiveness, in part held back the pathos that much of this music has – Francesca’s main melody lacked breadth and would do so throughout the entire performance; the Philharmonia’s strings were also earthier than usual – certainly nearer the visionary muddiness of Dante’s Hell than the portrait we might have expected to see. The storm was not without its moments – but its turbulence and turmoil have been better characterised by other conductors and orchestras and I found the coda to the performance as flat as the beginning; it fizzled rather than dazzled.
Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony fared better, despite some shocking playing at times (what one earth some of the woodwind were doing was incomprehensible). If the opening note on the bassoon was hesitant this did not, in fact, give any clue to the rest of the performance which became one of considerable excitement and tension. Rouvali got his tempos about right here; for some, they may even have been on the fast side. The anguish and turmoil of this symphony is entirely different to that of Francesca – or indeed any other Tchaikovsky work – and if Rouvali’s performance of it was a long way short of getting anywhere close to the work’s emotional core there were upsides to what he did achieve.
The briskness of much of the first movement gave way to a surprisingly intense and explosive development. Quite how violent this music should be is in the gift of the conductor and Rouvali took an impressively destructive approach to it. I personally have little time for performances where the descending octaves are spread too quickly; so it seems does Rouvali who brought genuine gravity and power to them, even if the timpani may have been a touch restrained (perhaps he needs to listen to Furtwängler in his Cairo performance who is anything but restrained). Neither of the middle movements caused much difficulty – the Allegro con grazia shuffled along, meters nicely articulated in what was largely a generically done waltz although it sounded remarkably fast. The Allegro molto vivace was swift if not always detailed and Rouvali was sly enough to move straight into the Adagio to stifle applause.
Beautifully played, with some cracking dramatic contrast between the strings and woodwind at the very opening, this never dragged and yet managed to retain an element of intensity to it. Some of the string playing was unsparing as it spiralled towards its closing moments; but Rouvali – if he had been reticent with some of the timpani elsewhere in this concert – crushed the rejection of Fate by a single gong stroke that was remarkable for its resonance and suggestion of victory.
It was certainly a better ending to a concert that had begun so very unpromisingly. What clearly did stand out – and in a very big way – was the UK debut, and a significant one, of Bruce Liu. He made what is largely considered a second-rate concerto sound anything but that – a substantial achievement in itself.
Marc Bridle
This concert was recorded to be broadcast by BBC Radio 3 on 16 March 2022. The Philharmonia Orchestra filmed this concert for a future Virtual Reality project and for release on YouTube. Throughout April each piece will be released with an introduction by Santtu-Matias Rouvali.