Spellbinding performance does justice to a masterpiece

MUSIC
STEPHEN HOUGH PERFORMS MENDELSSOHN
Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Opera House, June 4
★★★★
Reviewed by PETER MCCALLUM

In 2023, Sydney Symphony chief guest conductor, Sir Donald Runnicles, introduced Idyllium, by German composer Detlev Glanert to Sydney audiences alongside the work which shaped it, Brahms’ Symphony No. 2. Glanert has written musical reflections, or “distorting mirrors” as Runnicles described them, on all four of Brahms’ symphonies.

Stephen Hough at the Sydney Opera House during an earlier performance.Credit: Craig Abercrombie

In this concert, Runnicles brought us Vexierbild: Kontrafaktur mit Brahms in which the themes and energy of Brahms’ Symphony No.3 float by like afterimages on the retina. Like Brahms’ work, Vexierbild starts assertively, the opening trombone notes quickly rising through the orchestra only to disperse into flitting woodwind fragments.

After a restless first section driven by syncopated compound rhythms and images of the defining motives of Brahms’ first movement, the music subsides to stasis in which memories of Brahms’ third movement hover in the air. The opening returns with some energy until it slows down as though being dragged to a halt, before a quiet close on the third of the chord.

It is as though the motive that had animated both Brahms’ and Glanert’s works had been brought to some kind of glowing finality. The SSO followed this with Brahms’ actual Symphony No. 3, in which Runnicles eschewed unduly emphatic articulation and strutting energy in favour of naturally shaped ideas which evolved with Brahms’ fluid rhythmic regroupings, extensions and elaborations.

After idyllic simplicity from clarinets in the opening of the second movement, the strings, under concertmaster Andrew Haveron, embellished this idea’s recurrence with rich warmth, rising to memorable intensity at the climax. The cellos were unrushed as they began the lilting third movement (which had haunted the central section of Glanert’s piece), but rather unfolded its charming irregularities of line with floating melancholy. The finale busied itself with subdued energy, the second theme on French horn issuing forth with noble confidence before closing quietly.

The first half began with Mendelssohn’s Overture, The Hebrides Opus 26 (‘Fingal’s Cave’), played here not as an image of a lonely place on a hostile sea but more as an inner terrain of thoughtful solitude, which eased warmly when clarinettist Francesco Celata brought back the second theme.

Stephen Hough then played the same composer’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Opus 25, with commanding brilliance and consummate maturity, driving its first movement with stormy determination, its second with comely grace and simple beauty and the third with fleet virtuosity and a lively kick of the heel.

Hough’s visits to this country are always welcome and his performances of Mendelssohn and Brahms (in an earlier concert) on this tour have provided musical utterances of cogency, wisdom and beauty.