This type of concert is, perhaps, the hardest type to review. If it had been extraordinarily good or exceptionally bad, it would have provided more interesting reporting and reading. But a performance of the (usual) high standards that we have come to expect at the Dewan Filharmonik PETRONAS needs no further description, one feels. Lavishing heedless praise would be tantamount, it seems, to carrying coals to Newcastle.

The first time I saw Simon Preston in concert was back in 1988 on his Singapore debut at the Victoria Concert Hall. There was Mozart's four-wind Sinfonia Concertante on the programme, in addition to Preston's offering of a Guilmant symphony and a brace of solo works (Walton's Crown Imperial and Bach's G minor Fantasia and Fugue), rounded off by the orchestra with a diabolically wayward Bolero. Preston has since performed a few more times in Singapore and Malaysia (inaugurating the Klais in the Dewan, no less), so perhaps the less-than-sold-out attendance at this evening's concert wasn't that much of a surprise.

Preston (left), a long-time stalwart of the baroque repertoire, has made a number of celebrated recordings, notably with Trevor Pinnock and The English Concert on the Archiv Produktion label, so it was a matter of interest how he would interpret and perform with Kees Bakels and his multinationally cosmopolitan band. This was also my first time (as far as I can recall) hearing the Malaysian Philharmonic in a wholly baroque/early-classical programme, a mix of the well-known and some less familiar things.

The evening, for instance, opened with Handel's Organ Concerto in F, famously nicknamed "The Cuckoo and the Nightingale". (Film buffs will no doubt remember its appearance in George Fenton's score to Les Liaisons Dangereuses, in the stalking-Valmont-in-the-country sequence.) As would be expected, between Preston and Bakels, both of them pretty much had Handel totally surrounded. The rapport between Bakels and the players, of course, needs no description. The first movement Larghetto thankfully was not excessively slow (it had more of an Andante-ish feel to it than anything), and Preston's left-hand/right-hand fingerwork in the second movement (which gives the work its nickname) was deliciously delightful.

Seated at the portable organ console between the first and the second violins, with the conductor just peripherally within vision, Preston alternated the cuckoo calls between the Swell (top) and the Choir (bottom) manuals, left hand in animated conversation with the right-hand nightingale chirping. There was no less élan in the two remaining movements - the ornamental filigree in the Allegro finale was also savoury.

Haydn's miniature "Echo" Symphony was a smart filler between the two organ works. Bakel's approach was direct and crisp, as usual, although the violins were a bit untidy in some of the the first movement details - but there was no doubting the musicians' responsiveness to their director.

 

Norman del Mar's treatise Anatomy of the Orchestra describes the organist as "an exceptionally accomplished specialist in his own field". Simon Preston, of course, is entirely in his own class, and seems to show no signs of abating. Indeed, he only completed a recording of the entire works of Bach at the age of 61. Benjamin met him backstage at the Dewan Filharmonik PETRONAS to share some of his thoughts. His career development I guess I was always lucky; when a particular phase in my life ended, there was always something else that came along. Back then, when there was still army conscription, one way to avoid service was to get a deferment by going to college. So, a few years out of school, and after spending some time at the Royal Academy of Music, I tried for Cambridge and luckily ended up as the Organ Scholar. His early career in London After about five years at Cambridge, I went to Westminster Abbey as the Sub-Organist after the post opened up. (The previous person had passed away.) I was about 23, 24 then, and London was the cultural hub of artistic activity. Pierre Monteux was conducting there; so was Bernstein, Previn, and I performed with all of them, and the London Symphony as well. I spent about five years in London, playing and recording before I went freelance - for example, playing continuo parts with the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields. Moving to Westminster Abbey When I decided to go to Westminster Abbey in 1981 (as organist and Master of Choristers) my intention was, you could say, to make things better. The music was in a terrible mess then - and this was Westminster Abbey, the most important church in England - and I felt that I could do a better job. Westminster Abbey is a great building. I played at the 900th centennial - or whatever that's called (laughs). Did you know it was consecrated in 1065, the year before William the Conqueror arrived. On choral directing There is a certain English choral tradition, from Britten and Walton, going all the way back to Byrd and Tallis. At Christ Church (Oxford), you have to realize that a lot of (the choristers) were students, and I thought it was important to expose them to different influences. We did a lot of performances and recordings - Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms, Bruckner and Haydn, as well as commissions by English composers, modern works. Performing with Britten Britten was a wonderful conductor in rehearsal; he had very sharp ears. If he caught something, he would say it immediately. And then, he was famous ! I mean, people just wanted to perform for him. In the recording of the War Requiem (which has been re-released), there is a rehearsal sequence - and he actually mentions me by name, "Are you all right up there, Simon ?". (laughs) Working on Amadeus I "wrote" the music for Salieri. (David Shaffer) wrote a clever story about the rivalry between Mozart, whose musical gift came from God, and Salieri, who really tried very hard but could never get close. I had to take what Mozart wrote, and then take away the good bits that made it "good", and turn it into something ordinary which Salieri might have written. In the movie, there is a scene where Salieri writes a little march to welcome Mozart - you remember, the scene where the emperor plays the tune, and Mozart already has it all in his mind and then transforms it, improves it and makes it his own - and eventually incorporating the music into his opera (The Marriage of Figaro - BC) as Non più andrai. On the story between Mozart and Salieri It was all fictitious, of course, that apocryphal first meeting between Mozart and Salieri. (David Shaffer's) play was based on a story by Pushkin. That was turned into an opera - it was Rimsky-Korsakov, wasn't it - called, I believe, Mozart and Salieri. I remember I went for the first (theatrical) production, and an English composer did the music. It was absolutely diabolical, you couldn't wait to run out of the theatre ! (laughs) Playing the Copland Organ Concerto I'm not sure who recommended me. It might have been the manager of the St Louis orchestra, who had heard a recording of mine - playing the Poulenc - and there it was. Quite unthinkable at the time: an American orchestra under an American conductor performing an American composer - with a British organist ! (laughs) Recording Copland It was all done in St Louis and their hall did not have an organ. They wanted me to play on an electronic organ, and I refused. I mean, if it was a concert performance, I would have said yes - but not for a recording ! So we had the usual concert performances in the hall, and then we did the recording in a St Louis church which had a decent organ in it, one of those huge grand things. Copland's Organ Concerto redux I played it again when Slatkin came to London and conducted it at the Proms. There was even a "live" recording issued of it, I believe. Copland originally wrote the Concerto for Nadia Boulanger, whom he studied with, for a tour in America. I wasn't even the first to record it - apparently there is an earlier version of it, performed by E. Power Biggs ! (laughs) I don't know if you can find it now, though.

The second Preston showcase of the evening was Haydn's Keyboard Concerto in C, here performed on the organ with (probably inauthentic) trumpet and timpani parts. It is perhaps revealing that this item was not specifically designated for any one keyboard instrument, coming "between the spaces" in the harpsichord's decline and the emergence of the piano as the instrument for domestic music-making. The organ, piano and harpsichord could not be more dissimilar in character, but there can be no faulting Hadyn's shrewdness in hedging his bets (with perhaps an eye on music sales) by writing music suitable for any of the three.

Certainly, there were figurative techniques clearly meant more for stringed keyboard but Preston just bounced and intoned his way through them with aplomb. Again, his clever use of registration to add colour - something nigh undoable on piano or harpsichord - more than made up for the organ's lack of nuance in other areas. The moderate dollops of ornamentation were unpretentious and just right for the silvery-toned timbre of the Klais instrument. If there was anything to fault here (as well as in the symphony), it was the orchestra's relatively small dynamic range - and we know that they have done better than this.

Coming after the break, Mozart's seven-movement, forty-minute Posthorn Serenade, next to Haffner Serenade, is deceptively one of the longest works Mozart wrote in the orchestral genre. That said, the eponymous posthorn only appears twice in all the works of Mozart, both of them in popular repertoire: here in the sixth movement, and also in the last of the Three German Dances K.605, Die Schlittenfahrt ('The Sleigh Ride'). (Hands up, those of you who can name the symphony and movement in which Mahler also uses one of these contraptions...)

Using an even bigger ensemble than the Haydn symphony, it occured to me that an alternative programme would have been to drop the Haydn symphony in the first half, and frame the Posthorn in the second with Mozart's two assessory Marches, K.335 and K.320a. Another permutation of this work (which was performed for the Sunday matinee) was to do it as a Symphony - in Mozart's own reduction - comprising the first, fifth and seventh movements (and not sixth, as the programme notes suggest).

Bakel's baronial leadership etched a convincingly genteel picture of Viennese summertime in the outdoors, an occasion to savour as depicted by the felicitous writing of Mozart. After a natty opening, there followed the three quasi-Sinfonia Concertante movements featuring duets, pairing the flute alternately with bassoon and oboe. Although the horns hiccuped (discreetly, I might add) in the first Menuetto, the solo parts throughout were resplendently done.

The minor key Andantino was more darkly coloured, even waxing tragic in character. However, elegance was still their watchword of the evening and the MPO did not disappoint. For the posthorn movement itself, I didn't really expect to see the long, straight natural instrument, as used by original mail coachmen - and they didn't: it was executed here offstage on a brassy flügelhorn. Between each phrase, Bakels allowed for rubato that distended the tempo, but never more than would have been excessive.

The final Presto came right along with plenty of bounce, the evening's soloist Preston (judiciously seated in one of the box seats with his minder) sashaying along with glee. The audience responded with four curtain calls and Bakels obliged with an encore, asking "Shall we do the Posthorn again ?" and eliciting some nervous laughter from the audience who thought he was referring to its fifty-minute entirety. He meant only the posthorn movement.

Again, even in the encore, the crispness of the ensemble and their rich vein of timbre after nearly a hour on stage was nigh impressive: no hint of ossification, but an international-standard performance even in "extra time".

BENJAMIN CHEE remembers playing Die Schlittenfahrt (in transcription, of course) for his Grade One organ examination.

Return to the Classical Index!... or Visit the Inkvault archives!

1.2.2002 © Benjamin Chee

All original texts are copyrighted. Please seek permission from the Classical Editor
if you wish to reproduce/quote Inkpot material.