The Philharmonia and Christoph von Dohnanyi are partway through a series of concerts entitled The German Romantics. The piano concertos of Brahms and Schumann are its primary focus. The aim is seemingly to strip Romanticism of any concept of sentimentality or self-indulgence, and to present it as hard-hitting, violent and dangerous.
Brahms's Second Piano Concerto and Schumann's Fourth Symphony were juxtaposed, with Wagner's Siegfried Idyll completing the programme - and proving, by far, the least disturbing work of the three. This may partly have been due to Dohnanyi's handling of the score, which was slow, calm and unruffled almost to the point of being soporific. His trenchant style, it should be added, has never been ideally suited to Wagnerian fluidity, though in Brahms and Schumann he can be electrifying.
Schumann's Fourth, one of the most revolutionary of symphonies, could have been a turning point in musical history, had it not been deemed abstruse in his own day. The 19th century, soon to take on board with equanimity Wagner's harmonic and structural innovations, was unable to cope with its cyclic, unbroken structure and with Schumann's remorseless shuttling of themes from one section to the next. Its emotional terrain is still disquieting. Schumann, mentally disturbed for much of his life, turns Beethovenian exaltation into outright mania. Dohnanyi is uncompromisingly visceral and in-your-face with it, screwing the tension more and more as the work's thematic repetitions begin to pile up. He is nowhere more alarming, however, than in the transition from the third section to the finale, where the whole edifice briefly collapses into sonic mayhem and has to gear itself, in desperation, in order to continue.
His approach to Brahms's concerto is similarly uncompromising, frequently tipping a work often described as magisterially serene into something closer to a controlled explosion of rage. The pianist is Yefim Bronfman, stylistically jagged and ferocious, matching Dohnanyi turn for turn. Bronfman's response to the opening horn call stirs from the depths, riddled with tension rather than calmly floating up. The cross-rhythms of the scherzo are immaculately controlled, yet intensely pressurised. Even the humour of the finale proves delusory as the momentum gathers and the tone darkens. It is a radical interpretation, though a persuasive one. The audience went wild when it was over.
