Tribute to Klemperer

Philharmonia/ Andras Schiff ***
Barbican Hall, London

The indefatigable Andras Schiff is taking time off from his year-long Bach retrospective to join the Philharmonia for a series of concerts dedicated to the memory of Otto Klemperer. Since we're nowhere near a Klemperer anniversary, the tribute is, one suspects, acutely personal.

Klemperer was the Philharmonia's first principal conductor, assuming the post in 1964 when the orchestra was battling for survival. He then steered it through what was for many its golden age. His achievement was captured in a series of landmark recordings, of which Schiff became an ardent fan in his teens.

There are other points in common, too: forceful (though very different) personalties; a willingness to speak out on matters of political principle; above all, the belief in music itself as a humanitarian, moral and redemptive force.

Klemperer was for many the supreme exponent of Mozart and Beethoven, and Schiff's programmes consist of a concerto by each, separated by a Haydn symphony.

He directs the concertos from the keyboard, which is fine for Mozart but worked less well with Beethoven's Emperor, in which the piano writing keeps the soloist so busy that responsibility for holding the performance together falls ultimately on the orchestra's leader. (Klemperer, his health impaired in later life by a series of strokes, was heavily reliant on his leaders, too).

The result was a hair-raising experience, almost incredible to watch, though not always penetrating the heart of the work. When not playing, Schiff, bouncing off the piano stool, coaxed emotion from the orchestra with a series of extravagant, dramatic gestures.

Led by James Clark, the Philharmonia was acutely responsive and dynamic, but Schiff's pianism is fierily twitchy, sometimes lacking in limpidity, and the whole had a nervy quality in music that should be magisterial, titanic and Olympian (adjectives usually applied to Klemperer's conducting, as well as Beethoven's concerto).

Schiff is also less than happy as a Haydn conductor. His performance of the 95th Symphony, sumptuously played, didn't always capture the sudden swerves of mood, the lightning transitions from bitterness to buoyancy, that it really needs if it's going to work. In Mozart, however, Schiff's approach is peerless. The 12th Concerto was bracketed with the A Major Rondo, which Mozart may have originally intended as the work's finale. The balance between emotion and form was immaculate, so that even the most simple musical gestures were infinitely telling.

The concerto's emotional ambivalence was maintained throughout. Above all, the performance had a spaciousness, an intensity and a resonance of which Klemperer himself would have been proud.

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