Christoph Poppen (left) may not be a fashionable household name to many, but a deeper scrutiny reveals not just an impressive discography as long as your arm, but a variegated and busy musical career as widely-travelled pedagogue, academic, soloist, chamber musician and conductor. Only just on 8 September 1999, Poppen was in town with his ensemble, the Munich Chamber Orchestra to perform a programme which included Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante with the musical polymath himself in the solo violin's part.

More recently, Poppen has also been recording for the Hänssler Bachakademie as well as the noir German label, ECM. Morimur, which was just released, has reached number one in the classical charts in Germany and number four in the North American continent, with at least three more albums for ECM in the works. Next year, Poppen is looking forward to the premiere of a new work by Wolfgang Rihm, written for the Munich Chamber Orchestra and Juliane Banse (a.k.a. Mrs Poppen).

It then comes as a surprise that Poppen has elected to perform in a conventional programme of classical warhorses - albeit with a touch of the Romantic, to be sure - but not repetoire which fully tested the capabilities of the conductor. No surprise, either, that the audience turnout was pretty good with crowd-pleasers Mendelssohn's and Schubert's names on the evening's marquee.

Mendelssohn's evocative sketch of the Hebrides was the evening's curtain-raiser, and beautifully done it was, too. Rolling waves conjured by the sinuous falling motif, punctuated by crashing whitecaps of brass and percussion, transformed the Victoria Concert Hall into the eponymous subterranean cavern. The melodic line flowed seamlessly between various sections of the orchestra to conjure a halcyon portrait of watery crests and troughs; Poppen also brought out more than the hint of a storm in the agitation of the central development.

Dynamics were not expansive, and the picturesque seascape was occasionally marred by untidy ensemble in the big climaxes. It could have been the too-close proximity of the horns and trumpets to the back wall of the hall which imparted a fairly dry, and therefore vulnerable, quality to the brass timbre.

More Mendelssohn was served up in the form of the diminuitive First Piano Concerto. In the starring role was Portugese pianist Artur Pizarro (right), performing with an orchestra for the first time in Singapore; his previous visits were all in recital programmes. From the onset, Pizarro adopted a very literal reading of the composer's tempo indication, molto allegro, and with very, very much fuoco.

Using liberal amounts of pedal, Pizarro set a feisty tempo that had the orchestra scampering to keep up with him, notwithstanding that he was also playing from a score and turning pages as he went along. Nonetheless, his virtuosity and fluency with the music was nigh effortless. Poppen and the orchestra supported superbly, despite moments of slipshod ensemble.

Like the Violin Concerto, the Piano Concerto continued without pause into the slow movement; the violas and cellos took up the first figure with a rotund timbre, a tad just too thick and syrupy for the hall. But there was no denying the effectiveness of Poppen's heart-on-sleeve empathy for the music. On Pizarro's part, his manner was rather deliberate, almost as if he had not yet fully unwound from the hijinks of the previous movement - but it stopped short of being too onerous, thankfully.

The orchestra introduced the last movement at a tempo which, at first hearing, was perhaps too slow to pass for Presto, and sure enough, Pizarro cranked the speed up a gear when the piano entered. With rhythmic resilience and white-hot bravura, Pizarro always emerged from the affray of orchestral tuttis as a blithe spirit: an interesting fermata here, a glittering roulade there. This was a smashing performance alone worth the price of admission.

Surprisingly, there was no encore (despite four curtain calls) - Pizarro evidently had obliged with Chopin's Op.25 No.1 the previous evening - but he did immediately turn up in the lobby to meet the enthusiastic audience and sign autographs. A pity that his Hyperion CDs weren't brought in for sale: the difficult-to-find Vianna da Motta album would have been a godsend for piano afficionados.

Schubert's monumental Great Symphony (the Ninth) was the sole offering following the break. Not all the audience disappeared; it was marginally diminished, and you'd notice it only if you were looking out for it. But was it serendipity or just poor programming that this particular symphony had only received an airing not five months ago at the Singapore Arts Festival ?

It has been argued that Schubert's idea for a grandiose full-scale symphony resulted in massive amounts of repetition around a few key ideas - a contention which, at face level, is not without its merits. Schumann, of course, famously referred to this work for its "heavenly length" (emphasis on first than last word). Poppen cleverly avoided this pitfall by adopting a flowing tempo and moving the emphasis and embriodery of the main idea around the various sections to bring out the contrasts.

The initial tempo was marginally faster than a mere Andante, with accentuation on the beats. Even discounting the somewhat indifferent opening fanfare, the orchestra on the whole responded well to the guest conductor, bounding along with an idiomatic pastoral feel. If the orchestra was not bursting outright with spontaniety, at least Poppen brought a breath of freshness.

 

Death and the Menschen

Morimur ("We go into death..."), with a Jean-Luc Goddard movie still for the cover picture, is not one for the casual collector. It is the culmination of years of research by Professor Helga Thoene into the music of Bach's violin partitas and sonatas, and the chorale quotations hidden therein - specifically, the massive Chaconne of the D-minor Partita and specific feasts in Catholic calendar: Pentecost, Easter and Christmas. The underlying theory is that the violin music was written by Bach in memory of his first wife, Maria Barbara, who died and was buried while he was away on a business trip; Bach only received the news upon his return to Cöthen-Anhalt and took the blow badly. Prof Thoene's contention is that themes of death and resurrection were very much on Bach's mind as he composed the Partita, and hidden therein (deduced by means of numerological analysis) was music from the religous chorals. The most interesting aspect of all this is Poppen and the Hilliard Ensemble performing respectively movements of the Partita and chorales, culminating with the Chaconne given simultaneously in counterpoint with the chorales. Even without this eyebrow-raising conclusion, Poppen and the vocalists give polished performances. Recording is first-rate, and the noir coffee-table-book location photography by Roberto Masotti in the 80-page sleeve booklet is not to be missed.

The second movement found meticulous playing from the new principal oboe, Ms Rachel Walker: her delivery of the melody was as melancholic as it was darkly humorous. The consolatory reply from the strings was just as splendid, leading to some lyrical interjections. Clearly this was not the type of slow movement which could be construed as romantic, and Poppen did not attempt to play it as such. Rather, his reading was inspired more towards as a focus on the melodic line. The pizzicato strings near the close of the movement were especially to be savoured.

The Scherzo came as a jocular tang of relief after the robustness of the slow movement, with an unmissable Beethovenian relish to it. There was a folk-like flavour in the Trio, and kudos to the woodwinds (and especially the erstwhile oboe, again) for some delightful playing.

If Poppen was saving the best for last, he certainly gave no prior hint. With an earsplitting barrage of fanfares, this was indeed a splendid beginning to the over one thousand bars of music to follow. This was a showcase the orchestra's mastery of the core classical repertoire, not to the flexing of great muscular reserves of stamina (which comes from playing things like Mahler Nine five times in nine days).

The principal oboe's fetish with Schubert continued here; ditto the pianissimo strings. The swinging four-chord motif was cleverly developed and evolved to fruition by Poppen with a touch of the chimerical. Unlike the Zurich Symphony, it did not degenerate into an interminable exercise of running out the notes. No surprise, then, that Poppen and the musicians took the work home with a bang, if something just short of an apotheosis. I for one would not mind seeing Poppen in performance again - perhaps next time with him playing the violin as well, or delving into more adventurous territory: a touch of Wolfgang Rihm, Sofia Gubaidulina or Osvaldo Golijov, perhaps ?

The concert ended early - it was over by 10:15 pm - reflecting the current trend with symphony management to put together programmes with more sensible lengths. An examination of the approximate timings given in the programme book (10+21+48 = 79 mins) is about the same as that of a long-playing CD; a good policy. The bigger surprise, though, was the missing pre-concert talk, which has lately become de rigeur. Slippage already, or a mere hiccup ? The audience is watching.

WILLIAM BEH is still waiting, among other things, for a Bruckner cycle.

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