Moments of Magic
SARAH HIDDLESTON
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Sensitive, canonical, triumphant — Zubin Mehta's concert had the audience on its feet.
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MAESTRO IN COMMAND: Zubin Mehta conducting his orchestra. Photo: V. Ganesan.
Zubin Mehta is India's outstanding gift to the world of Western classical music. It was a privilege to hear the maestro who brought with him the Bavarian State Opera — one of Europe's oldest and most distinguished opera orchestras — to perform at the Music Academy in Chennai on Monday. With a programme from the central canon of Western classical music, the concert could not have failed to have the audience on its feet.
Both conductor and orchestra were clearly delighted to be playing on stage rather than out of the opera pit. It was a sensitive, thoughtful performance of a repertoire that would resonate in a region affected by the tsunami, from the fateful opening triplet of Verdi's Force of Destiny (1869) through Schubert's contemplative 8th Symphony (1822) to the rousing and victorious strains of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (1808).
The concert began with the Verdi overture. This can hold its own outside the opera house thanks to the power and melody of Verdi's music. Three arresting brass chords opened the piece, and Mehta carefully developed the dialectic between the nervous insistency of the strings and the long lamenting melody of the Allegro launched by the clarinet. He took us through an energetic and intense movement, which was nevertheless rendered strictly fugato. The music broadened to a climax with the melodic phrases taken from the heroine Leonora's momentous prayer to the Virgin to find peace in death.
Schubert's unfinished masterpiece, the eighth symphony, is considered a significant development in his skill as an orchestral writer. Why did he not complete the work? The apocryphal story is that the ever-sociable Schubert stuffed the score into a drawer and went out for an evening with his friends instead. It is possible that the encroaching syphilis that killed him at 31 prevented him from going back to finish it. It is more likely that he was trying to cope with the formidable legacy of Beethoven's symphonic output and struggling with his own expression.
Romantic interpretation
Interestingly Mehta moved away from a classical representation of the work to a more early romantic interpretation. In the first movement, taken more moderato than allegro, the slower tempo allowed the melody to travel fluidly between the strings and woodwind sections of the orchestra. Thus the conductor cleverly emphasised Schubert's breadth of ideas over momentum.
The opening bars of Beethoven's Fifth and its simple but monumentally important transition from C minor to C major expresses the most powerful of human emotions. Every significant symphony since the great Fifth has been written under its influence or in reaction against it. The fluency and energy of the entire piece, written in 1808, is highlighted in the first movement through rapid key changes and marked fluctuations in tempo.
In Beethoven's re-working of an established form in the manner of Haydn in the Andante, a lilting A flat major is interrupted three times by triumphant bursts of C major. Finally, compacting what are usually two movements into a single allegro with a finale, the last movement begins with a minor scherzo and brings with it an atmosphere of hushed mystery before finishing in a blaze of C major. Accompanied by the traditionally sacred trombones, the symphony 's central expression of the individual's struggle for self-realisation is resounding. In contrast to more overbearing styles of performance, this was a more exploratory, perhaps more conscientious, portrayal of such a renowned work.
Nevertheless it opened with great verve, and after a slower Andante and scurrying fugato scherzo it brought the concert to a jubilant and emphatic close. One encore was not enough for the adoring crowd whose calls for more yielded two recitals of Johann Strauss — the Tritsch-Trasch Polka and the overture to Die Fledermauss.
After the concert, Mehta was heard remarking that performing in an auditorium designed for Indian classical music posed special challenges, and the orchestra had to work much harder to connect with the audience.
"You heard only one-third of what we played but we were energetic," he explained. "What Chennai needs is a concert hall. You will need to build a shell." The maestro hoped the concert, presented on the anniversary of the tsunami, would inspire generous donations to enable fisherfolk in the devastated areas to rebuild their lives.
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