Vienna Philharmonic @ the BBC Proms

Berg
Lulu Suite

Bruckner
Symphony No. 9 in D minor

Vienna Philharmonic
Franz Welser‐Möst

Tube strike notwithstanding, the Vienna Philharmonic attracted a virtually full house and rightly so. In terms of technical expertise and the projection of a distinctive corporate sonority, neither performance could be faulted. That said, the occasion was something of a lost opportunity. In Salzburg the same forces had coupled Bruckner’s Ninth with Weinberg’s 1946 Second Symphony (for strings), Op.30. Earlier, in New York’s Carnegie Hall, they presented Berg’s Three Pieces for Orchestra, Op.6 as an alternative ‘completion’ of the Bruckner, running the two works together without a pause. Now nearing the end of his prolonged tenure in Cleveland, Franz Welser‐Möst has been leavening his diet of Austro-German classics with such unexpected gestures, including forays into lesser known Prokofiev and Korngold. By coincidence the death had just been announced of his predecessor in post, Christoph von Dohnányi, also a regular guest with the Viennese between 1966 and 2019. There was a studious objectivity about the music-making tonight which suggested certain continuities, welcome or not. 

With the possible exception of Herbert Blomstedt no living conductor knows this Bruckner symphony better than Welser‐Möst and he makes its processes and structures abundantly clear. That said, there is nary a hint of the sonic cathedral about his rendering whether spiritual or purely metaphorical, no striving after profundity. For some this may have been a relief, for others it merely left a void. In recent years the adoption of a relatively fleet and mellifluous way with the score, at odds with the maestoso tendencies of Bernard Haitink and his generation, has been thought necessary by those advocating the switch to a four-movement ‘finished’ Bruckner 9.  Yet Welser‐Möst is a three-movement man and his own tried and tested pacing has different roots. Tempos for the outer movements were decidedly swift (Haitink in late career could take ten minutes longer over the Symphony and still make us feel that every second mattered), the voice of the orchestra surprisingly forward. That magnificent, saturated, burnished string sound was very much intact but there was a tendency to solid, monochromatic blare, at least from my seat, and the absence of any real pianissimos belied the general meticulousness.

The first half was just as puzzling. If you’re going to do the Lulu-Suite at least you could bring along a singer, no?  The playing of the three sections presented was gorgeous – steady rather than taut (so unlike the Bruckner) – and without much in the way of sleaze, gloom or threat. We seemed disconnected from the drama, the closing scene intensely moving almost despite itself.