United Kingdom Edinburgh International Festival [2] – Brahms, Dvořák: Isabelle Faust (violin), Sol Gabetta (cello), Bamberger Symphoniker / Jakub Hrůša (conductor). Usher Hall, Edinburgh, 7.8.2024. (SRT)
Brahms – Double Concerto
Dvořák – Symphony No.9 ‘From the New World’
The Bamberger Symphoniker are in the Edinburgh for a four-day stint, and when you have a three-gig residency you can afford to throw away a concert on some pretty mediocre music. This they did last night, with excellent performances of middle-ranking music from Hans Rott (his Symphony No.1) and Bruckner (his Symphonic Prelude).
Tonight, their second concert, felt like really getting down to business, though, with two central pillars of the classical repertoire played by top name visiting soloists. In fact, in their respective fields it is hard to get much higher than Isabelle Faust and Sol Gabetta. They brought aristocratic grace and surging intensity to their playing, fulfilling brilliantly the different personae that Brahms writes for them. They made for artful sparring partners in the rival cadenzas of the opening, and competed to steal the limelight in the finale, but in the slow movement they moved in perfect lockstep, the honeyed warmth of Brahms’s themes sounding as beautiful and condensed as you could imagine.
The orchestral sound was great, too, but conductor Jakub Hrůša’s finest achievement was to avoid any issues of balance so that the cello could always be heard. The quartet of horns sounded terrific, but they were always held in check so that Faust and Gabetta retained the top billing. This might be Brahms’s least inspired concerto – go on, admit it! – but a performance like this makes the strongest case for it you could imagine.
Pairing Brahms’s least effective concerto with Dvořák’s most popular symphony illustrated the central themes of the Bambergers’ Edinburgh International Festival residency: forging connections and passing on the torch. They did this also in their encores, two of Brahms’s Hungarian Dances that had been orchestrated by Dvořák. So, of course, the New World symphony sounded terrific as played by them. In fact, they are probably the best qualified German orchestra to play Czech music of any kind, considering that the orchestra began life as the Prague’s German Philharmonic Orchestra and only moved to Bamberg after the Second World War.
And that pedigree shone through, both in the playing and in Hrůša’s direction. There is a terrific mitteleuropäishce warmth to their sound, coming through especially in the warmth of the string tone but also in the clarity of their brass. Hrůša harnessed that to bring Dvořák’s symphony to glowing life, but he also shaped the sound with deep sensitivity. The perky third theme of the first movement, for example, was heard many times but never sounded the same way twice, and he leaned into the trills of the third movement’s trio with particular vim. The drama of the finale hung together with plenty of sparkle, balancing the heart-quivering melancholy of the slow movement. They are back with more Dvořák and Suk on Friday 9th August. If it is anything like this then it will be unmissable.
Simon Thompson
The Edinburgh International Festival runs at venues across the city until Sunday 25th August. Click here for details.
Featured Image: Bamberger Symphoniker and cellist Sol Gabetta in the Usher Hall © Jess Shurte
The concert of Bruckner/Mahler/Rott concert was definitely not mediocre as the standing ovation by a good many of the audience attested.
I attended the Bruckner/Mahler/Rott concert and an couldn’t agree with you more Keith. There was nothing mediocre about the music or the performance. I can’t thank Jakub Hrůša and the Bamberger Symphoniker enough for their masterful work bringing Hans Rott’s symphony to life.