A special moment at the close of the musical season was marked by the meeting, after 20 years, of conductor Erich Bergel with the National Radio Orchestra. Bergel conducted several times the Cluj Philharmonic – his first and most faithful love – in the past three years. Anyway, time heals the most profound of wounds, and the much awaited and contested moment has finally arrived: a Brahms Festival including Concerto No. 1 in D minor, with Argentinean Nelson Goerner as soloist, as well as Symphony No. 1 in C minor. Maestro Bergel found the ensemble much rejuvenated after so many years but this did not prevent him from reminiscing about the golden days when he had worked for the Mozart-Bruckner cycle, so appreciated by the music lovers of the time.The sound of the Piano Concerto by Brahms – a symphony with a compulsory piano, as it is also called – did not express a collaboration most adequate to Brahms' style. This was partly because of the inconsistency of the soloist ( who missed the necessary stamina and momentum for this piece although at times he played with a surprising sensitivity and quality of the sound, especially the slow movements), and the hesitant, unacceptable intonations of the instrumentalists. Symphony No. 1 was performed at the expected artistic level though. The baton of the master required and managed to obtain a logical, fluent, well chiseled discourse in the sphere of expansive romanticism, with an intense vibrato of the strings, suggestive color touches of the winds, and outstanding solos of the woods. I also felt the special emotional participation of the orchestra, giving the cue to the conductor-guest, whom we would very much like to have as one of ours. If the young pianist did not manage to be convincing with the score of Brahms' titanic concert, in exchange, after only two days, he played Mozart (Concerto in A major KV 488) at the Radio Concert Hall under the baton of Horia Andreescu, and proved a revelation. This was to be expected especially by those who listened to him a year ago at the Athenaeum, playing Mozart and Chopin. His equal, supple technique, the brilliancy of the sound as well as the profundity and variety of the nuances characterized a conspicuous performance of the Concerto heralding a great interpreter of the genre and not only.
Romania libera no 992, July 7, 1993
by Ruxandra Arzoiu
