After the mighty artillery of the Berliner Philharmoniker, here was a German-themed and German-delivered Prom full of subtle, even heart-warming, surprises. The Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, that most collegiate of period ensembles, pivoted backwards at the end of the show to bow gracefully towards Henry Wood’s bust. Before their all-Schumann programme led, nimbly and genially, by Sir Simon Rattle in his least maestro-like mood, they had collectively bowed to us, the audience.
During the final applause, Rattle (pictured below) came back to share a glass with principal bassist Dane Roberts: after, apparently, the player’s final outing with the Freiburgers. And Isabelle Faust, after an achingly inward and involving performance of Schumann’s violin concerto, followed up not with the Bach movement I had expected, but an encore of an adagio by Carl Friedrich Abel. There’s even a Proms connection here because, along with fellow German-in-London Johann Christian Bach, Abel in the 1760s founded the city’s first regular concert series.
This mood of relaxed and companionable warmth – with Rattle notably laid-back but never too loose – served a high purpose. Neither Schumann’s violin concerto (shelved in discomfort by its dedicatee, Joseph Joachim, and first played only in 1937) or his Second Symphony count as Proms, or indeed many people’s, favourites. They are sometimes overshadowed by biographical data (the syphilis-related illnesses and depressive bouts that stalled their creation); Joachim rejected the concerto for its supposed dark disturbance. So these pieces can be off-puttingly presented as strenuous wrestles with gloom and crisis. If not quite ugly ducklings (both works host episodes of astonishing lyric beauty), they can look from a distance like troubled and moody relatives, short on winning charm.
Rattle, Faust and the Freiburgers did something accomplished, and rather affecting, here. They employed those fresh, relatively light, un-pompous period sonorities to liberate the music from any fear of entrapment in a claustrophobic, knotted psychodrama. That inner conflict was undoubtedly present and audible: the agitated lurches and twists of the symphony can seem to mock its C major identity. Still, serenity, tenderness and, yes, joy burst through again and again. The two inner movements of the symphony were among the loveliest things I have heard at the Proms this year, while the finale positively glowed and purred.
We began with the overture to Genoveva, Schumann’s only opera. From the crisp articulation of the strings at the start you knew that, for Rattle with these players, direct communication mattered more than splashy gestures. Natural horns soon told us that this ultra-polished brass would retain its human touch, with no heavy-metal brashness. With violins to Rattle’s left, cellos and violas to his right, but the basses sited up beside the brass (pictured below), the configuration emphasised clarity of line, contrast of effect, vividness of colour.
Genoveva made a fine appetiser for the concerto, delivered by Faust with a quiet, inner-directed ardour. This was a journey through perplexity, anguish and relief that always proclaimed, not “Look at me!”, but “Come with me”. It would be conventional here to complain that she could sound too soft and understated for this venue. Frankly, I never thought so (from the back of the stalls). Rattle, who knows Albert’s foibles inside out, made sure that the Freiburg ensemble blended with her as collaborators, not competitors.
Especially in the hushed rapture of the “Langsam” adagio, this could feel like a chamber recital – with Rattle under his silver mane swivelling to steer one group or another – more than an orchestral concert. Faust’s lovingly spun melodic lines, with their liquid seamless flow, hardly needed any vibrato, which made the occasional touch she applied all the more striking. Sly shifts of rhythm and dynamics made the polonaise, with its stately lilt, a danceable delight.
A rush-free equilibrium prevailed, even as Faust (pictured above) launched into dazzling, super-fast passagework. As for the Abel encore, its meditative grace reminded us of the deep debt to the Baroque Schumann incurred, not least in the concerto, and so amply repaid.
In the Symphony, Rattle’s attentiveness to the Freiburg period sound – and their own excellence – ensured that the potentially clotted sequences in the first and last movements flowed freely. Gentle and ripe, those horns announced a mellowness beyond pain that the rest of the work confirmed. Rattle brought openness, lucidity and momentum to the most tangled thickets here.
Still, he saved the absolute best for the middle movements. First the fairy mischief of the scherzo, so close to Mendelssohn’s Dream or Berlioz’s Queen Mab, packed full of wit and merriment in every tempo change and, at the end, flitting off into a breakneck accelerando. In Rattle’s hands it sounded skittish, effervescent, not (as with some interpretations) neurotic. Then came the broad, wistful plangency of the adagio espressivo: melancholy, yes, but a sadness redeemed by its beauty. Here the Freiburg winds sang out with solo voices to savour: Ann-Kathrin Bruggeman’s oboe; Lorenzo Coppola’s clarinet; Jani Sunnarborg’s bassoon. Rattle let the feeling in this music take its own good, but never draggy, time.
The finale never ran into the sand (as it can): without undue hurry, Rattle sustained onward motion and made the abrupt transitions count. From the Freiburgers he drew playing, that for all its historically-informed commitment, never sounded dry, austere or academic. After all, period fidelity in such works means respect for Romantic depth and intensity of emotion.
We shared all of that. The recovery of joy, when it arrived, felt authentic, without hysteria or hyperbole. Dane Roberts richly deserved his toast. So did all his colleagues.
