Here at the Salzburg Festival, some rehearsals of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra are open to the public. There was one such rehearsal on Saturday morning. First, let me give you a memory.
I attended one New York Philharmonic rehearsal in my life. It was open to the public. (I’m not sure whether the Philharmonic is still doing that.) I figured it would be interesting to watch Lorin Maazel rehearse the orchestra in Mahler’s Symphony No. 7. The concert was that night. I would review the concert—and say something about the rehearsal, probably, in the course of my review.
Looking back on it, I was naïve. I thought the rehearsal would be a “real rehearsal”—with stopping and starting and so on. With instruction. With a little philosophizing, maybe. With technical things worked out. Instead, this rehearsal was a run-through. Maazel basically ran the orchestra through the symphony, saying almost nothing.
And it stood to reason: Why would an orchestra expose a “real rehearsal” to the public? Why would an orchestra want to show how the sausage is made? What if there are embarrassing moments for certain players, or other awkwardness? Those things ought to be private, away from public eyes.
Anyway, this run-through of the Mahler Seventh was a total dud. Workaday. Mechanical. Practically lifeless. I was kicking myself: How stupid to have come to this rehearsal! And now I have to return tonight, and hear it all over again!
Ladies and gentlemen, the concert that night presented probably the best Mahler 7 I have ever heard in my life. Maazel was totally alive. The music was deep, meaningful, and electric. An utterly involving musical experience.
It was like Maazel had a switch: on and off. And when he wanted to switch on—great. (Sometimes he was in the off position even in concert. A mercurial fellow, Lorin Maazel. Brilliant. Valery Gergiev is much the same way: switching on and off.)
Enough Memory Lane, back to the Great Festival Hall, in Salzburg, on Saturday morning. Riccardo Muti was rehearsing the Vienna Philharmonic, in an unusual and interesting program—an effective program, too. It began with Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6, the “Pathétique”; continued with a Liszt symphonic poem—No. 13, “From the Cradle to the Grave”; and ended with some opera—the prologue to Boito’s Mefistofele.
By the way, have you ever heard of a program beginning with Tchaikovsky 6, rather than ending with it? I had not. An innovation.
The Great Festival Hall was maybe two-thirds full. The members of the Vienna Philharmonic—whom I had only seen dressed up—were dressed down, which made me smile. There were even some T-shirts and sneakers onstage. The concert was a run-through, pretty much. Muti said a few words here and there, but it was basically a run-through.
Were the conducting and the playing mechanical? Workaday? Not at all. This was like a concert, I would say, and a good one. Did Muti conduct any differently in rehearsal than he would have in concert? I have a feeling that some of his gestures were extra-emphatic, for the purpose of conveying a point. Otherwise, this was “concert Muti,” you might say.
I will not give you a review, because this was a rehearsal, even if a concert-like one. But I will not resist a few words.
The sound of the Vienna Philharmonic is . . . well, exceptional. Sound—great sound—is not everything in music, far from it. But it is not nothing. And great sound may be especially welcome in a Tchaikovsky symphony. The orchestra was rich and lush. Under Muti’s baton, it was also taut. Disciplined. Richness and lushness within tautness and discipline—that’s the ticket.
Almost never do the VPO’s “first-deskmen”—there’s an antique phrase—disappoint. I am talking about the principal players. In the case of the “Pathétique,” the bassoon, Sophie Dervaux; the clarinet, Gregor Hinterreiter—others. And how strange it is to hear unflubbing French horns. French horns are born to flub. These players seem not to know it.
After the third movement—that stirring G-major march—an audience applauds. It can’t be helped. The ending begs for applause. When the audience applauded in the Great Festival Hall, Maestro Muti started to leave the stage, as though the symphony were finished. Then he stopped, as if remembering, “Ah, sì: this work has four movements.”
Muti was highly personable, all through the rehearsal: playful, funny, charismatic. The orchestra and associated forces—more about them in a moment—seemed to love it.
If you ever have the opportunity to hear Liszt’s “From the Cradle to the Grave,” take it. It is the thirteenth of his thirteen symphonic poems. He wrote it from 1881 to 1883. (Liszt, born in 1811, would die in 1886.) What a beautiful, striking, and skillful composition. It begins with the gentlest rocking of the cradle. Muti conducted this with great tenderness, without a baton. And then it goes through life, or one vision of it.
In a conversation later in the day, Muti and I talked about Liszt. He has always championed him. But hang on, does Liszt need championing? This composer of a hundred famous piano pieces, and a basket of songs? Orchestral Liszt, however, is much less known. The “Dante” Symphony. The “Faust” Symphony. The symphonic poems, including this last one.
The rehearsal, like the concert, or concerts, to follow, ended with a prologue: that to Mefistofele. Arrigo Boito is a librettist for the ages. But when he wanted to write the music as well—he could do it.
For the prologue, Muti had before him the orchestra; a large chorus; a children’s chorus; and a bass singer—Ildar Abdrazakov, our Mephistopheles. Abdrazakov is a longtime favorite of Muti’s. He has handled bass duties in many a Muti performance.
Like the conductor, Abdrazakov was playful in this rehearsal, letting his hair down a bit. In the prologue, there comes a time when the devil says, “Ah! Sì, Maestro divino.” On the word “Maestro,” Abdrazakov nodded toward Muti, prompting smiles all around.
I would like to end on an actuarial note—but not a macabre one, I don’t think. I had a thought when Muti was conducting the children’s choir. A few of them will live into the twenty-second century. And then will be able to say that they sang under Muti, born in 1941—some of whose teachers were born in the nineteenth century.
The continuity of music: a blessed thing.