Does Stravinsky's Agon work in the concert hall? That was the question raised by Riccardo Chailly's decision to make it the centrepiece of his London programme with his phenomenal Amsterdam orchestra. Written for George Balanchine and the New York City Ballet in 1957, Agon (meaning "contest" in Greek) is a pivotal work that both takes Stravinsky's stripped-back neoclassicism to its logical extreme and marks the start of his late conversion to post-Schoenbergian serialism.
It is music of relentless severity; a suite of fragmentary movements based on shuttling rhythmic and melodic figurations, it strives for a bleak austerity of timbre as pairs of instruments engage in a series of ritualised battles with each other. Baroque fanfares indicate moments of triumph and assertion. Stravinsky's one concession to sensuality is the string-rich pas de deux, the only section of the work in which the dour mood is broken by emotional warmth.
As a showpiece for the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, it's unfailingly impressive. Though this is an orchestra of virtuosos, the instrumental duos subordinate flamboyance to expressive integrity, while Chailly's pacing is ideally laconic. Yet shorn of the vertiginous, sinewy beauty of Balanchine's choreography, Agon comes over as a cerebral experience that remains unengaging.
The precariousness of Agon's transposition from stage to concert platform was heightened by Chailly's choice of Stravinsky's Firebird as its companion piece. This was a performance of outstanding colouristic richness and dramatic drive, with a genuinely hellish Danse Infernale, a heady opulence in the Berceuse, and a galvanic finale (much faster than usual) that had the audience whooping for more.
Music by Ravel formed the first half of the programme, with a brooding version of Alborada del Gracioso, followed by a revelatory account of the Piano Concerto in G. In place of the usual deco restraint, Chailly opened up a modernist landscape in which the disparate elements of jazz and lyricism jangled and collided with disturbing resonance. The Adagio, far from expressing poised calm, seemed a slow crawl into protracted dissonance. The soloist, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, played with unusual sombreness, exposing a darkness in the work that many interpreters prefer either to ignore or avoid.
