What you could usually not observe so closely when you experienced the conductor Philippe Jordan during his time at the Paris Opera: How precisely he articulates, mediates interventions, keeps an eye on individual groups of instruments. From the orchestra pit in Paris, which he recently swapped for that of the Vienna State Opera as chief conductor, music by Richard Wagner, including a complete ring cycle, sounded accurate and yet also sufficiently mystified, creatively nebulous.
In the end, Wagner lacked the orchestral ascension
That was a little different now in Munich’s Herkulessaal, where he made his debut with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra with Wagner’s Faust overture, among other things. The precision was sometimes on the verge of pedantry, overly meticulous guidelines prevented the musicians from playing more freely, from which the necessary sonic mystery play could have developed. The mood remained cool, only gradually did the sound gain warmth from the strings; now a note was allowed to fade out and linger and create more space. But in the end, and that is what the Wagner conclusions stand for, what was missing was the moment of light, that glistening disappearing, the orchestral ascension.
Franz Liszt’s “Dance of Death” offered other possibilities, especially since the piano plays a leading role here. The French virtuoso François-Frédéric Guy resolutely hammered these variations into the keys of the medieval Dies-Irae sequence, which lives on not only in the Requiems settings, but also in numerous compositions from the 19th and 20th centuries. And Philippe Jordan structured a complementary counterpart with the BR-Symphoniker, whereby he built a huge sound structure in the interplay of solo parts and communicating sections. Nevertheless, the piano remained the dominant force; Liszt creates a spectrum of colors on this instrument like hardly any other piano composer. The treble part often sounds so playful like a bell, as if it would flow directly into the pointillist fantasies of Claude Debussy. And even the brooding Allegro fugue at the end often seems to be more of a sound mystery than a demonstration of calculated counterpoint, as other composers like to celebrate in their final movements.
Liszt’s Faust Symphony, on the other hand, is about something completely different from the start, namely the bold development of a new form, a new symphonic narrative style. The one-movement symphony, which no longer wants to be, is now quite deliberately called symphonic poetry, because it wants to catch up with this in the competition of romantic art forms. Liszt stands for this new model like no other, and he uses the familiarity of the Faust figure as a paradigm of romantic existence to create an orchestral character narrative. It is more of a drama of the soul and the interplay of black and white silhouettes and large-scale color paintings, with large areas in pastel in between. These not only concern the figure of Gretchen, but also the young Faust, who not only appears with a pathetic gesture.
The basic character of an orchestra, which has grown over the years, does not change for one evening
There are two souls recognizable, but more subliminal, entangled in more complex developments. However, they are not so much the business of the BR Symphony Orchestra, who always work most convincingly when they are allowed to stretch out to great effects and get the entire apparatus going with mechanical precision and force. Jordan may have fought a losing battle here, but for one evening the basic character of an orchestra, which has grown over the years, does not change. Perhaps Jordan also wanted Liszt’s Faust to be understood a little more down to earth than that of Wagner’s. Sometimes you had the impression that he was making sure that everything and everyone stayed on the carpet with a strict hand. But it often becomes dangerously clumsy, too earthly, devoid of the atmospheric, which Liszt also co-composed. The massive overwhelming finale with choir and soloist then succeeded as expected and quite literally through the final wrestling of the inclined audience.