Master of the Copper Mountain

The Bavarian State Orchestra and Kent Nagano played Strauss and Bruckner

The Bavarian State Orchestra has the unofficial status of embodying the European tradition. This is the oldest orchestra in Germany (its age is counted from the middle of the 16th century) and perhaps the most glorious (it includes premieres by Wagner, as well as Richard Strauss, Hans von Bülow, Bruno Walter as music directors). Since 2006, the historically honored Bavarians have been led by a Japanese-American and anti-conservative in the European coordinate system, Kent Nagano, a recognized intellectual and specialist in modern symphonic music. The alliance between Nagano and the Bavarian State Orchestra makes a strong impression, also because Nagano is by no means a revolutionary. He combines modern and traditional contexts, mixes reason with sensitivity and achieves great persuasiveness, which is welcomed not only in Bavaria, but also in Russia, where Nagano some time ago was almost a real partner of the Russian National Orchestra. But he hasn’t come for the last seven years. His seemingly dryly rationalistic and at the same time stubbornly passionate style had been somewhat forgotten, but now instantly came to life in detail.

We started with Strauss’s “Metamorphoses for 23 String Instruments,” a fundamental work in European history and generally rare in Moscow: it just so happened to turn out to be terribly popular here. At least a few days ago it was played by Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra. Their performance was impeccably smooth in terms of intonation, shamanistic in the sense of form (as is often the case with Gergiev with modernism) and ended with a sad end - for some reason unexpectedly.

The Bavarians lost to the Mariinsky in sound harmony. But the generalized sorcery of the Mariinsky’s performance is simply not comparable with the freedom of thought, feeling, timbre and attitude to the plasticity of the plot, with the precision of experiencing the form and the relief of happiness and grief in the Bavarian-Naganov version, even despite the roughness of the intonation texture.

The same freedom, precision and Mozartian relief made the second and main number of the program a success - Bruckner, a rarity in our area. The seventh symphony is one of the “lightest” in the massive legacy of the esoteric organist - it was an attraction not only of unprecedented repertoire generosity, but also of defiant orchestral class. Even though Nagano straightened the lines of Bruckner's multi-story building, relegating the strings (primarily the violins) to secondary roles, the entire structure came out blindingly clear and strong without heaviness. Nagano simply placed it on a huge, graceful mountain of wind instruments, which, in turn, showed a skill unprecedented in these places - an outstanding clarinet, and horns, horn tubas, trombones, performing in stunningly harmonious choirs, with a soft cello attack and so obedient to the precise conducting plastic, as it happens. It's like they're little violins. The mixture of mystical swell and ecstatic primitivism of this “orchestral mass” can be unfolded in another way, but for Nagano and the Bavarians it became a circus of bold, handy, broad-shouldered skill, completely redeeming the possible lack of visionary frenzy. Moreover, the conductor made this copper mountain rise into the air with more or less one glance. In addition, mountains of this quality and class are usually simply not visible from here.

Yulia BEDEROVA