Jeremy Denk (piano, above), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Kazuki Yamada

Gershwin An American in Paris (1928)
Clyne ATLAS (2023) [CBSO Co-Commission: UK Premiere]
Ravel Pavane pour une infante défunte (1899, orch. 1910)
Mussorgsky orch. Wood Pictures at an Exhibition (1874, orch. 1915)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Wednesday 1 May 2024

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

This evening’s concert by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra may have taken its overall title from the final work, but ‘pictures’ were everywhere in evidence and not merely those ‘at an exhibition’ – not least with Kazuki Yamada as enthusiastic as ever at the helm.

While it loses out to his Rhapsody in Blue in the popularity stakes, Gershwin’s An American in Paris is surely the most successful of his orchestral pieces for matching its immediacy of imagery to a resourceful structure. Encouraging the CBSO to a bracing response in the outer sections, and with Jason Lewis’s nostalgic trumpet initiating that pathos-laden central phase, Yamada secured a response whose full-on expression was offset by too sectional an approach – the music proceeding in a stop-start fashion rather than unfolding organically as it should.

Over recent years, the New York-based Anna Clyne has emerged among the leading British composers of her generation, with this first UK hearing for her piano concerto ATLAS keenly anticipated. Inspired by the eponymous and epic collection of the artist Gerhard Richter, this likewise falls into four ‘volumes’ rather than movements, which also underlines their relative formal freedom. Certainly, the ingenious interplay between soloist and orchestra is a tough challenge which Jeremy Denk met head-on – whether in the coursing energy then yielding eloquence of the opening Fierce, alluring textural overlaps of Freely, intimate, the lilting nonchalance of Driving or cumulative activity of the final Transparent with its surge to an emphatic close that (as with this work overall) was capricious and allusive in equal measure.

Doubtless motivated by Denk’s coruscating virtuosity, the CBSO gave its collective all in a work which (rightly) appealed to those present – the pianist responding with his deft take on the Heliotrope Rag co-written by Scott Joplin and the tragically short-lived Louis Chauvin.

After the interval, a rare moment of calm – Ravel’s Pavane for a Dead Princess given with a studied if never stolid grace, Elspeth Dutch’s horn and Katherine Thomas’ harp enhancing its appeal. As with Fauré’s Pavane, this is ideal music for opening the second half of a concert.

And so, to Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition – heard here in the orchestration by Henry Wood which preceded and was duly superseded by Ravel’s. Wood is more interventionist, not least by reducing the recurrent ‘Promenade’ to a stealthy introduction, but not necessarily less faithful to the piano work’s spirit – hence the scabrous immediacy of Gnomus, sombre aura of The Old Castle (Andrew McDade’s tuba balefully intoning on high above stage-right), or fatalistic tread of Bydlo with its evocative percussion. Respighi was probably taken by this glowering depiction of Catacombs with a ghostly recollection of the promenade hardly less effective, and if Baba Yaga gets summarily curtailed here, the crescendo of bells launching The Great Gate[s] of Kiev set the tone for a treatment whose opulence borders on overkill.

Not that this inhibited the CBSO from projecting Wood’s organ-clad texture to the maximum, to the enthusiasm of an audience that erupted in the lingering resonances at its close. Quite a way to end an impressive performance, and a memorable concert, on a day that saw Yamada become this orchestra’s Music Director and the CBSO launch ‘A Season of Joy’ for 2024/25.

Click on the link to read more on the current CBSO concert season, and also to read about the recently announced 2024/25 programme. Click on the names for more on pianist Jeremy Denk, conductor Kazuki Yamada, and composer Anna Clyne

Published post no.2,168 – Saturday 4 May 2024