Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique/ Gardiner, St John's, Smith Square, London
A midsummer night's magic
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Your support makes all the difference.Incidental music to Shakespeare through the ears of two German composers provided magic in a programme devised by John Eliot Gardiner for his Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. Both Weber and Mendelssohn were captivated by A Midsummer Night's Dream. Oberon, Weber's last opera, was first performed in London in April 1826 and in Berlin the same year. Taking part in Berlin was the 17-year-old Mendelssohn who announced his intention to "dream the Midsummer Night's Dream", and embarked on an overture that he finished a month later. Oberon has not enjoyed the success of Mendelssohn's incidental music to the play, music that Mendelssohn only completed 17 years after the overture.
Weber's opera is perhaps best known for its overture, which bristles with early Romantic footprints. Hearing both overtures together is striking: Mendelssohn had listened well, copying the horn-induced magic and introducing deliberate harmonic hesitations – what were those fairies up to? The acoustics of St John's Smith Square are not ideal for fast-moving music that demands clarity of articulation, and after the slow introduction to Oberon, Weber's frothy wizziness seemed doomed. But through the haze came tenderly shaped phrases, elegantly paced, the open, valveless brass hallooed in the warmth of St John's.
Whether my ears had grown more accustomed to the acoustics, Mendelssohn's agitated music (after the interval) cut through with far greater clarity. His incidental music is as magical as it is miraculous: fairies and donkeys play before the eyes. The ORR's wind produce the purest of sound on instruments far from their modern counterparts, while the strings on gut shimmer with light tremolo bows. Gardiner chose a selection of movements, Gillian Keith (soprano), Diana Moore (alto) with four members of the Monteverdi Choir providing words and vocal contributions. The trumpets were on their feet for the springiest of Wedding Marches.
This orchestra displays the widest of colours with the widest of dynamic range; subtlety is all. Confusing, then, to have a one-dimensional soloist in Beethoven's Violin Concerto. Viktoria Mullova may have espoused the cause of "authentic" playing, stringing her Strad with gut, but it has done nothing to melt her icy performance. St John's is small and this should have been Beethoven as chamber music, the soloist mingling with individual members of the orchestra, particularly those wonderful bassoons and clarinets. But was she listening to them? Her technique is fabulous but, oh, for some tenderness, a graceful portamento... a little magic?
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