Musical perfection - the Bamberger Symphoniker, Jakub Hrusa, and Patricia Kopatchinskaja

Many years ago, when I was a student, I, along with many others, bought a new stereo system and we regularly listened to chosen LPs to assess the relative merit of the purchases. One of the disks was Istvan Kertesz’s Dvorak Symphony No.8 on Decca. The recording and playing were both crisp, sure, and sonorous. The entries were decisive, the interpretations subtle, and the dynamics generous. Until last night, I thought I had heard the definitive interpretation of this familiar, but never disappointing, work.

The last night in question was a performance by the Bamberger Symphoniker under Jakub Hrusa who, for me, arrived with a certain reputation to prove. What was it about this conductor that now seems to have the world of classical music at his feet? Well, the list proved to be long - and included precision, dedication, vision, cooperation, and, above all, a sheer delight in music. I began with a question and by the end of the evening it, along with many others had been definitively answered.

This performance of Dvorak’s eighth symphony was more than memorable. The pianos were piano, and the fortes were forte. These are platitudes, perhaps, but nonetheless often and crucially such elements can be smoothed out to a generalized shape which hides the music’s detail, especially in a piece so well-known and as often played as this. Jakub Hrusa, from the very first notes of Beethoven’s Leonora overture number three that started the concert, was clearly someone who wanted to shape the sound, to make sense of the musical argument. It is this vision of the work’s shape and construction that makes the listeners’ experience complete. I cannot remember a performance of this Beethoven overture where the transitions were quite so clear and contrasted, where the dynamic changes added to the musical experience rather than merely punctuated it. And equally, it was the same with the Dvorak Symphony. The attention to detail, the continual consideration of the question of what the composer was trying to say produced a performance that was utterly memorable.

And so to the central work in the program. I like to save the best to the last. Igor Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto uses no bombast at its surface and its employees little which is merely an opportunity for the soloist to show off. But at the heart of the piece is a dialogue. often humorous, between the soloist and selected bands from within the orchestra, which itself behaves differently from a conventional concerto accompaniment. Stravinsky always concentrates and contrasts sonorities, grouping instruments into surprising combinations of timbre and harmony. The work progresses as a dialogue between the storytelling solo part, amid interjections and comments from the orchestra.

To work as music that communicates, this piece needs a soloist who can overcome the technical challenges with ease, whilst at the same time, maintaining a conversation with the different orchestral elements. Patricia Kopatchinskaja was not only able to do this, but also to raise the performance to a perfected artwork. One was not conscious of ‘soloist and orchestra’, one felt only that one had entered a music world, understood it’s highly personal language and shared its vision and thus become a partner in the experience, not a mere onlooker.

Patricia Kopatchinskaja’s performance of the Stravinsky Violin Concerto was one of the most memorable musical events. I can recall in over fifty years of concert-going. The playing was perfect, but that wasn’t the point. It wasn’t the virtuosic performance that made the difference. Such adjectives simply don’t apply when an experience is so completely absorbing that all you hear is the communication and the message, not just the voice that tells the story. Music, after all, can say things in ways that words can’t. That is why we listen to it. And I will be listening to this performance in my memory for the rest of my life, and happily so.

Patricia Kopatchinskaja made the point that much of Stravinsky’s music in the concerto takes the form of chamber music. And, as an encore, she unusually presented more chamber music in the shape of part of the violin and cello duo of Ravel, the Bamberger’s principal cello playing the second part. Like the Stravinsky, this work was full of humour and contrast, but here, Ravel also delved into the surreal. Music is a language, and the Bamberger orchestra, Jakub Hrusa, and Patricia Kopatchinskaja were simply its voice.