The Vienna Philharmonic roadshow dropped by the Barbican for 2 nights last week led by the irascible octogenarian, Lorin Maazel, conducting sans score. Fiona Halliday however is puzzled by all the girls on stage...


I found it hard at first to concentrate on ther ‘Rites of Spring’ despite the hypnotic, snakey bassoon solo that opened it. I was distracted by counting the number of women on stage. Why? Well there were a lot of them. There was (shock & horror) a female hornplayer, a female flautist and a female bassoonist which really is rather unheard of. It puzzled and set my mind grinding on the matter.

These young women aren’t actually members of the Vienna Philharmonic, which to date only has 3 female members out of 126, which is the lowest number of women in any international orchestra. I reckon that 8 of these extra women we saw on stage are mere substitutes, and the sceptic might wonder whether they were part of a PR move to make the orchestra look more inclusive than it actually is, given the extremely, though much disputed, chauvinist history of the orchestra which has caused it problems in the past.

That said, they gave a good account of the ‘The Rites of Spring’, one of the greatest, most blistering and violent sonic scores of the 20th century. Maazel, evoked with great and seamless confidence and panache the great kaleidescope of crashing dissonances and twisted symmetries and evil clashing arhythms, though the soundbox of the Barbican wasn’t perhaps the best setting for the evil maelstrom.

Stravinksy first came to the concept of the young pagan girl who dances herself to death in 1910, 100 years ago. This is the same year as Freud first articulates the Oedipus Complex, the same year as Schoenberg writes his ‘Theory of Harmony’, when the suicide rate of Europe, in particular Vienna, rocketed, no one so fond of a handsome corpse as the Viennese it seemed – they coined the word ‘schoen leich’ to describe it. In ‘Rites’ there is this morbid fascination with the beautiful corpse, and in it a sensibility that has as much in common with Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt as Russian peasant lore.

The Philharmonic did the Bruckner 3 after (why not first?) which is a bit of a soufflé compared to what preceded it and a bit of soufflé compared to Bruckner’s own 8th and 9th, though it wasn’t quite the snorefest I had braced myself for and the orchestra teased out moments of tender brilliance and crashing climaxes. In Bruckner’s distinctive use of restless harmonies, odd modulations and dissonances we can indeed see the seeds of Stravinksy already sown which is why
I puzzled over why it was played first. Playing Bruckner after Stravinisky turns the fury of a shedding snake into the slow lumber of a Disney dinosaur, or ‘langsam’ as they call it in German.

Then Maazel tagged on a couple of Brahms’ Hungarian dances at the end, though there was a certain over-enthusiasm to the proceedings that left me irritable. Considering how overplayed they are it was all a bit glib swoosh and swoon and ‘buckle up folks we’re on spin cycle’.

This orchestra has a taller rounder darker sound beamed from some forgotten mythical past. Yet analogously ‘Rites’ is a piece that fills you with claustrophobia for the cloying conservatism of the contemporary classical music world as exactly epitomized by an institution like the Vienna Philharmonic. It leaves you with a feeling of dark unease. I couldn't keep my mind off the women I saw on stage. There must have been nearly 10 of them and I hope that these young women do herald the delayed, new spring of the Philharmonic and not just another false dawn.