Loud and clear with the London Philharmonic

Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic with Vadim Repin on violin.

There's always something to be said for taking on a warhorse, even if it's Beethoven's Fifth, that warhorse of all warhorses - which conductor Vladimir Jurowski (above) sent through its paces with the London Philharmonic in their Celebrity Series appearance at Symphony Hall last weekend.

That said, I'm not quite sure what (if anything) new Jurowski had to say about the Fifth - yet oddly, I have to admit, whatever it was, he said it well.  And loudly, too.  For Jurowski assembled enormous forces for the Fifth - not quite the army Daniel Barenboim mustered for his siege on the Second and Third a few weeks back, but close. And as you know, I'm not all that sympathetic to arena-rock Beethoven anymore; almost every investigation of the grand Ludwig van I've heard in the past half decade has been on original instruments, with smaller, more probing ensembles.  I've read that Jurowski nodded to period performance by utilizing period horns and timpani, but somehow the individual profiles of these instruments were swallowed in the onslaught of the rest of the orchestra. I admit the idea of a post-modern orchestral sound, drawn from both the modern and period traditions, is highly intriguing - but solving the problems of balance inherent in such a new formulation is going to require a deep re-consideration of orchestral forces, rather than just a handful of period add-ons.  Meanwhile, when it comes to the grand gesture, the titanic climax - I hope we can agree they're pretty much played out. I mean by the time bad rock bands are imitating your sound, you know the intellectual jig is up; can't we leave the heavy orchestral metal to Emerson, Lake and Palmer (or von Karajan), wherever they are?

Still, if Jurowski's touch was heavy, it was also precise; while what was most striking about the Philharmonic was its chunky bass (the perfect reverb of Symphony Hall has rarely gotten more of a workout), the conductor shaped that thunderous thump with a meditative, muscular lyricism.  And he hardly let the Fifth sink into a repetitive crunch; indeed, the shifting dynamic he sustained throughout the work was remarkable.  The famously insistent knock of the first four notes of the opening movement seemed sculpted afresh for each of their many variations, and the ensuing Andante con moto seemed more singing than usual - even if it stutters in any number of ways.  The third movement proved more interesting still - Jurowski let the orchestra drop to something close to a whisper (comparatively) before roaring into the final Allegro, whose multiple finishes he negotiated with convincing energy, if not purpose.

The deep end of the orchestra's sound proved even more appropriate to the first half of Jurowski's program, the leviathan Violin Concerto No. 1 by Shostakovich.  Penned during the waning years of Stalin's reign, the concerto delivers this composer's familiar mix of intellectual melancholy (even despair) with a recurring clash of colossal forces, and a manic, crude kind of zeal.  The Russian-born Jurowski's heavy but sensitive hand (which drew particularly strong work from the winds) proved a good match to the concerto's Stalinist demands - but the focus here is inevitably on the soloist, who plays almost relentlessly throughout, often through long sequences of devilish difficulty.  

Violinist Vadim Repin - another Russian - was more than up to these technical requirements, hanging onto both intonation and clarity as he scrambled madly through thickets of double and triple stops. Still, he seemed to be operating at one remove from the composer's concerns; this is music that should set your hair on end, and Repin never seemed possessed, or tinged with actual madness. Indeed, his best moments came in the desolate Nocturne, and the eloquently anguished - and poignantly sane - passages of the third movement (in which a four-note motif, in the one bridge between the two halves of the program, faintly echoes the Fifth).  Still, he and Jurowski were operating in near-perfect synchrony, particularly in the shattering final Burlesca.  In my more skeptical moments during the program, I wondered if it hadn't been concocted as a kind of big, bold, unspoken audition, as Jurowski is clearly in the running for the top spot at the BSO.  But to be honest, by the finale of the Fifth, I think many in Symphony Hall would have been happy to give him the job.

From Berlin with love

The Philharmonia Quartett Berlin (at left) really needs no introduction, given the orchestra referenced by its name - these are four players on holiday from what is probably the best (and certainly the most prestigious) symphony on the planet.  Be that as it may, however, they're still orchestra players - who are often known more for sublime craft than for electricity or passion.

Which isn't to say the Philharmonia only colored within the lines at their Celebrity Series concert last weekend (their Boston debut) - they just rarely let rip.  But at the same time, they undemonstratively demonstrated something far more than craftsmanship (even far more than the finest craftsmanship).  Their readings of the Shostakovich Quartet No. 13, Beethoven's "Razumovsky" and Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" revealed superb insight and an unfailing musical intelligence.  I'm glad I heard them. But at least until the Schubert,  a sense of over-arching musical meaning often eluded these expert players, perhaps because they seemed to prefer attention to detail to construction of a grand statement.  Having shed their conductor (these days the erstwhile Simon Rattle), you sometimes got the feeling they still needed one.

The Shostakovich quartet - a late one - proved most problematic.  In it the Russian master faces death squarely, like Beckett, and without illusion or even hope; still,  despite its bracing honesty, the piece clearly is keening at times - other moments come off as paroxysms of sheer terror - and the composer's characteristic wicked scratch still has a little life left in it.  Even more to the point, the quartet closes with a seeming scream, and then a few clock-like ticks: the last seconds of life are dripping out.  Yet the Philharmonia's studious approach seemed to bring out every facet of the work without conveying either its grief or its sense of bitter acceptance; thus it was absorbing as a musical demonstration without being gripping as drama.

Better was the Beethoven "Razumovsky" - even though again the Philharmonia's devotion to detail seemed to undo the kind of impression the piece can make in other hands.  But to be fair, this time the problem lies right in the music: the "Razumovsky" seems to steadily pose brilliant, even grand, ideas, only to diminish them, even fritter them away - and the Philharmonics (that's what I'll call them from now on) refused to fudge on that; they followed Beethoven's instructions to the letter.

The best, fortunately, was yet to come: the famous Andante con moto of "Death and the Maiden" was just about everything it should be: sublimely lyrical, yet delicately poised and effortlessly balanced.  This music, of course, lies near the beginning of the long sweep of nineteenth century music that is the Berlin's specialty, so it was no surprise the quartet should have such a nuanced understanding of it.  But I was almost shocked by what came next (as an encore): a really stunning reading of the slow movement from Debussy's single string quartet; in a way, it struck me as the best playing of the night.  But then Debussy is all about texture, about atmosphere, rather than statement; and this offered the Philharmonics' wonderful craft a special opportunity to shine.

Of music, history, and music history

A violinist plays for Russian troops during WWII.

There's an inherent problem in assessing performance when experiencing works of genius for the first time - otherwise, I'd be doing handsprings over the recent BSO performances of Shostakovich's Second Cello Concerto and Bruckner's Ninth under the baton of Marek Janowski. Local reaction to the concerts was somewhat muted, however, and this was my first exposure to either work live - so, contrary to my reputation, I'll be a little hesitant in my assessment, and simply say (here goes) that the concert was the most exciting I've seen from the BSO in a very long time. And in some ways whether it was the BSO and Janowski, or Shostakovich and Bruckner, that lit my fire is incidental to a deeper issue: the symphony's stance toward music that is engaged with history.

For as the Globe's Jeremy Eichler pointed out, James Levine has "steered clear" of Shostakovich and Bruckner, even though both are deeply embedded in the global saga of the last century or so. Bruckner, of course, played second fiddle only to Wagner on Hitler's hit list (that's the big guy himself paying his respects to the composer, at left), while Shostakovich served as both Stalin's darling and whipping boy - below he's on the cover of Time during WWII, goading the Russians on with radio addresses and the Leningrad Symphony.

Ever the apologist, Eichler merely comments, "More power to [Levine] for sticking to the works he believes in." I'm more intrigued, however, by what this omission in the maestro's taste might mean. As I've said before, Levine often strikes me as a kind of musical gourmand addicted to the succulence of technical difficulty; he sometimes seems to be picking out modernist challenges like candy from a tray. You can make an Apollonian case for this kind of thing, I suppose, but then when you encounter music that's not merely inwardly-facing but engaged with the world, the former style's brilliance can suddenly seem very hollow. It's hard for me, therefore, to imagine preferring the arcana of Schoenberg or Carter to the gripping sorrow of Shostakovich, and of course the concert world is slowly coming to the same conclusion: the great Russian has become a concert hall staple, and Bruckner is finally emerging from the shadow cast by you-know-who's admiration.

But while both may be great, Bruckner (left) is by far the weirder. Immense, yet truncated (the composer never finished its fourth movement), the Ninth Symphony pushes chromaticism way past its Wagnerian sources, and into uncharted harmonic space, before climaxing in one of the most famously dissonant "crashes" in the repertoire. Occasionally the development of one musical idea suddenly "stops," the symphony observes a moment of silence, and then resumes with an entirely new theme. Add to this the fact that the scherzo is slower than the trio, and that we never get back to our "home key," and you have a very strange musical beast indeed - yet one that is almost insistently compelling, and lit by sudden flashes of nearly ecstatic enlightenment. It's easy to see how the orgiast in Hitler would have responded to the pounding bacchanal in Bruckner, but somehow I managed to appreciate the composer's half-mad glory without leaping into a goose-step. And while the Globe faulted conductor Janowski for not "welding" the piece into a "structurally cohesive whole," to my mind the jagged architecture of the performance was instead an interpretation, a decision, not a failing. At any rate, if it was a mess, it was a thrilling one.

By way of contrast, the Shostakovich (the composer at left, at about the time of the Second Concerto), was all controlled melancholia - but with a sardonic, disorderly edge. Cellist Truls Mørk ably essayed the central melodic lines, but it was generally the orchestral accompaniment that proved most haunting. Here Shostakovich draws from folk song - he even includes a vulgar little ditty called "Come buy my pretzels" - but gives the material an almost savagely ironic spin. Heedlessly happy, and imbued with a lightly cruel energy, the tunes keep returning, even after repeated sighs from the cello, which is itself occasionally silenced by a sudden thwack from the timpani. It's hard to fight the impression that this amounts to a harrowing vision of a Russia gone mad, especially when Shostakovich recapitulates his themes with startling ferocity - in the final conflagration, the pretzel song has become overpowering, and dances this time to the crack of a whip. The concerto ends with a truly eerie effect: quietly, as if at a great distance, the percussion defiantly taps out its little tune - unstoppable, for better or worse.

In many hands all this would have been a meaningless sequence of exquisite effects - but somehow guest conductor Janowski imbued them with what amounted to metaphor. But what is this alchemy, precisely - how were Shostakovich and Janowski able to encapsulate a social comment (much less a whole critique) within a sound? Such effects suggest a sensibility that goes beyond the musical, and encompasses at least the literary and historical - and thus may almost by definition elude James Levine (hence, perhaps, his avoidance of these composers?). But something tells me the music of Shostakovich, hewn as it is from some of the darkest experiences of the twentieth century, will last much longer than the intellectual noodlings of the L.A.-era Schoenberg. If only the BSO had a conductor who could embrace it.