Haydn, Mahler/Schnittke, Tchaikovsky Alena Baeva (violin); London Philharmonic Orchestra / Omer Meir Wellber. (conductor/harpsichord/piano). Royal Festival Hall, London, 01.03.2025
Haydn Symphony No. 49 in F minor, ‘La Passione’ (1768)
Mahler/Schnittke Piano Quartet (1878/1988, arr. Wellber/Kagarlitsky, 2024)
Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in D, Op. 35 (1878)
Re-orderings and substitutions affected this concert, but the end result remained memorable. Originally, violinist Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider was the billed soloist; a last-minute substitution meant that programme order was well as soloist was changed (the Haydn was to have been second).
Haydn’s Symphony No. 49, the so-called ‘Passione,’ was composed shortly after the composer took up the position of Kappelmeister at Esterházy. This is the very epitome of a ‘Sturm und Drang’ piece; but the first movement includes references to Passion music. The shape of the symphony, too, is that of a sonata da chiesa (so, it starts with a slow movement). It never fails to impress: the performance by The Mozartists and Ian Page at Wigmore Hall in 2018 springs to mind.
Omer Meir-Wellber, who takes up the title of General Music Director at the Hamburg State Opera in 2025, is both intelligent and fiery. His mobility, whether on the podium or a a keyboard, is ever in alignment with the music and his interpretation. The opening Adagio of the Haydn was certainly impassioned, but what stood out most was the impeccable delineation of textures. The tempo seemed perfect for the profundity of this music. Wellber’s harpsichord contributions were as energetic as his direction in the Allegro di molto that follows, an insistent note repetition on harpsichord (in reaction to that on violins) very much part of the generation of both energy and direction. The LPO strings certainly dug in; the Minuet and Trio found a dance-like gait with underlying angst (and there was some sterling high horn playing from the first horn in the Trio). The finale is marked ‘Presto,’ and certainly owned both speed and drama, the LPO clearly responding with verve to Wellber’s direction.
The Mahler Piano Quartet movement of 1876 is most often heard as a stand-alone piece, and that was how Benjamin Grosvenor and friends presented it at the Queen Elizabeth Hall back in 2020 (review). This, though, was a fascinating opportunity to hear Mahler’s piece in a string orchestra and piano version by Wellber and Karen Kogarlitsky, followed by their arrangement of Schnittke’s completion of Mahler’s fragment for the Scherzo of the Quartet (which is also known under just the title of “Piano Quartet” by Schnittke!). This was also the World premiere, a fact that went unremarked in the LPO programme: also, the Boosey website link seems to imply there was to have been choreography and dance. That is definitely the case for the Leipzig performance (the piece is actually presented as a collaboration with Leipzig Gewandhaus), but here we had just the music. Mahler left a mere 32 bars of the Scherzo, and Schnittke create something that is, as he explains, an attempt to ‘recall something which had never been accomplished’.
The arrangement of the first movement begins with solo strings (violin, viola, and cello); leader Pieter Schoeman’s solos had tremendous sweetness later on in the movement. There is a real free-flow of invention from Mahler, which came across well. Just occasionally it felt that Wellber was overpedalling, but the climax was undeniably powerful. The Scherzo was utterly remarkable, however: Mahler meets Shostakovich meets Schnittke. Highly gestural, encrusted with piano clusters, this was Mahler’s embryo of a Scherzo taken for a long, long walk. The performance was massively engaging; from the first moments of what sounds like a ‘slippage’ of Mahler to a full-on rethink via Schnittke’s extraordinary imagination, It would be wonderful to think that this arrangement (of both movements) could gain at least a toehold into the repertoire.
Here’s.performance of the first movement in its chamber original, with lovely line-up: Gidon Kremer, Veronika Hagen, Clemens Hagen, Oleg Maisenberg:
Mahler: Piano Quartet (i)
.. and here is the Mahler/Schnitke, but in the chamber version. Gidon Kremer again, now with Maxim Rysanov (viola), Giedre Dirvanauskaite (cello), and Andrews Zhlabis (piano):
Sometimes substitutions, especially last-minute ones, result in s frisson that elevates a performance to great heights. Such was the case here. Kyrgyzstan-born Alena Baeva is no stranger to the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto: there is a rather difficult to source recording of her performing it with the Sendai Philharmonic Orchestra under Pascal Verrot, released in the wake of the Third Sendai International Music Competition.
There is also a performance available to stream from Düsseldorf, with the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra under another interesting young conductor, Alexandre Bloch (below). I mention this as Baeva is equally strong of technique and musicality, but the London performance was made by the collaboration between Baeva and Wellber. The musical chemistry was intense; plus, no recording, surely, can capture the sheer beauty of Baeva’s sound. Violin soliloquies (cadenzas, ruminatory lines) were transfixing; and Wellber ensured that orchestral re-entrances were subtly and perfectly calibrated. Baeva appears to have a complete technique that, here, was completely at Tchaikovsky’s disposal, her top range sweet, her lower strong and tensile. There was a majestic element to the first movement that was highly impressive; it was Baeva’s cantabile in the hushed intimacies of the central Canzonetta (marked Andante and delivered as such) that took this almost into the spaces of an operatic song; and a special mention for the molten clarinet solos by Benjamin Mellefont, the LPO’s Principal. Baeva and Mellefont created heavenly counterpoint, and, elsewhere, pianissimi to take us to the Elysian Fields. A finale of both virtuosity and character rounded off probably the most rounded, finest performance of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto I have ever heard live, Wellber perfectly in control of his forces and absolutely with Baeva.
Here’s that YouTube performance I mentioned:
An encore, and an appropriate one: the first movement of Ysaÿe’s Sontaa for Solo Violin No. 5 (G major, Op. 27/5). The movement is marked “L’Aurore” (the dawn); and Baeva reminded us in her brief spoken introduction that there is ‘always sunrise after darkness’. It was a transfixing close to a concert of unique programming and insight. I look forward to seeing Omer Meir Wellber again, and soon, hope. And if Alena Baeva is in tow, all the better.
And here’s more good news: there is a YouTube of Alena Baeva playing the Ysaÿe as an encore, this time at the Pärnu Music Festival in Estonia, 2020:
