Tchaikovsky: Valery Gergiev/ Mariinsky Orchestra
Cadogan Hall, 4th & 5th March 2019
Uneven. Unpredictable. Unprepared. The Mariinsky Orchestra’s visits to the UK can be all those things, mostly down to the punishing schedule of its artistic director, Valery Gergiev. Their two-evening Tchaikovsky mini-residency at Cadogan Hall was no different. Sandwiched between performances conducting La Scala’s new Khovanshchina in Milan, one wonders how little rehearsal time the whirlwind maestro had to work on these scores. Given the audience’s very late admittance to the hall on Monday evening – just ten minutes before the scheduled start time – not much. Occasionally, it showed. But at their best, these performances reminded me that there are few interpreters so inside Tchaikovsky’s music.
Valery Gergiev
© Valentin Baranovsky
In these three concerts (the first was in November), Gergiev paired music from Tchaikovsky’s ballets with the last three symphonies. Monday evening’s performance didn’t have a great start, Gergiev on autopilot through an eight-movement Swan Lake suite cobbled together in the 1950s which concluded with four of the national dances, hardly the most polished diamonds in this gem of a score. (How wonderful, though, to hear the trumpet solo in the Neapolitan nailed so precisely, a rare occurrence in Bow Street.) Gergiev dragged the Waltz to a near standstill, the four cygnets plodded awkwardly, as if someone had tied their pointe shoe ribbons together. Elsewhere, speeds were lightning fast – as they are when he conducts for the Mariinsky Ballet, head resolutely buried in the score. Pity the dancers forced to keep up in St Petersburg.
The next evening, The Nutcracker was a different story. Eschewing the advertised opening numbers, Gergiev slipped straight into the post-party reverie right the way through to the conclusion of Act 1. Speed was less of an issue here; the music for the great transformation scene and the journey through the pine forest are less about sheer dance, but more about symphonic sweep. Hearing the Mariinsky strings in this score was liked being cloaked in the plushest velvet. The only idiosyncrasy was the grand pas de deux from Act 2, taken at a daringly slow tempo, Gergiev reducing the strings to a breathless whisper at one point. Cannily, he then offered an encore – a delectable Waltz of the Flowers – before the interval, for nothing deserves to follow the Pathétique.
This was an account of the Sixth Symphony which burned with white-hot intensity. Both symphonies were conducted without a score, Gergiev focusing almost all his attentions on the violins with hawk-like eyes, ready to pounce on any indiscretion. He must trust his cellos and double basses more, turning his back on them for all but their important cues. The Fourth was often an electrifying affair, Gergiev sometimes stretching the musical line, but never losing the thread. The strings strummed their third movement pizzicatos like a flamboyant guitar ensemble, while the finale was explosive.
But it was the Pathétique which delivered the greatest emotional punch. The first movement was packed with drama, the 5/4 waltz flowed at a lilting gait, the Scherzo bridled and fumed. But that finale… yes, there was lamentation, but of the fierce “rage against the dying of the light” variety until Tchaikovsky pares back the orchestra section by section when Gergiev, forced to address his lower strings, brushed away the final fade-out, followed by a profound silence that nobody seemed willing to break.