Another perspective on the the stirring series of Maazel concerts with the
LSO at the Barbican:
The Arts: Energy with a vengeance
The Sunday Telegraph (United Kingdom) February 27th, 2000
By Michael Kennedy
Maazel and the LSO Romeo et Juliette Piano 2000 THE LSO has been
taking time off at the Barbican from celebrating Pierre Boulez's 75th
birthday to celebrate Lorin Maazel's 70th, both events occurring next
month. Neither gentleman looks or acts anything like his age.
I heard two of Maazel's four concerts. He is widely regarded as
expositor rather than interpreter. This is too unfair and generalised
a verdict and perhaps stems from preoccupation with his baton technique
which surely has no equal among present-day practitioners for
unequivocal clarity. An orchestra can be in no doubt of exactly what
he wants. But in music he loves and understands, he is not content
only with faithful reproduction of the notes.
Strauss's Symphonia domestica, for example, was given a magnificent
performance on Tuesday in which not only the fabled virtuosity of
the orchestration was fully realised but the expressiveness behind
it was conveyed with poetic intensity. This is not a score for
faint-hearts or those with squeamish tastes. For those of us who
love it, faults and all, as much as he obviously does, Maazel piled
it on with a vengeance, giving a Bernstein-like display of athleticism
on the rostrum into the bargain. At the other Straussian extreme,
in the elegant pastiche of Le bourgeois gentilhomme, he was no less
affectionate in phrasing. He was having a party and the LSO accepted,
with evident enjoyment, his invitation.
A few days earlier he provided an understanding accompaniment to
Rostropovich's increasingly wayward but no less enthralling playing
of Dvorak's Cello Concerto. The great cellist now inclines to
sketchiness in some of the technically most demanding passages, but
in his big-hearted expression and broad phrasing of the heartbreaking
melodies he is still unsurpassed. Maazel's relentless drive emerged
in Tchaikovsky's Symphony No 4, but this work can take it and the
outer movements are the better for it.
This concert also included the first performance of Maazel's own The
Empty Pot for narrator (Jeremy Irons), treble (the assured Matthew
Godfrey), children's choir (New London) and orchestra. This is the
tale of a small boy who, through honesty, is chosen as his successor
by the Emperor of China. It might claim a place among similar fey
pieces if written for chamber forces instead of requiring a Mahler
Eight array.
James Kearney
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