Eugene Tzikindelean, Kirsty Lovie (violins), Adam Römer, aDavid BaMaung (violas), Eduardo Vassallo, aArthur Boutillier (cellos)

Gardner True Self (2023) [CBSO Centenary Commission: World Premiere]
Tchaikovsky String Sextet in D minor, Op. 70, ‘Souvenir de Florence’ (1890)a

CBSO Centre, Birmingham
Thursday 8 June 2023 (2pm)

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

This last of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s Centre Stage programmes for this season brought together the most heard work for the relatively limited medium of string sextet with a Centenary Commission for string quartet by a composer born and based in Birmingham.

Best known for her diverse arrangements of African-American classics taking in Odetta and Alicia Keys, Bobbie-Jane Gardner has also written extensively for classical ensembles; most recently Up on the Toes (the slippery stair dance) for brass quintet (recorded by Onyx Brass), and now True Self. Taking its cue from the Buddhist virtue of absolute happiness, this latter unfolds along an ‘innocence to experience’ trajectory prior to a new awakening – the whole piece founded on a motif whose ‘childlike’ innocence is pervaded by its own vulnerability.

Harmonically subtle and rhythmically agile, True Self received what sounded a committed reading from the CBSO players – notably in the opening section when the music stirs gently but insistently into life, and towards the close when it touches on a resolution not so much tentative as anticipatory. Maybe these nine minutes could yet prove the first stage of a large-scale work or series of pieces? At any rate, it left a thoughtful and affecting impression, and will hopefully be taken up by other quartets seeking a worthwhile addition to the repertoire.

Souvenir de Florence has never been out of its respective repertoire, and this performance gave it its due – not least an impetuous opening Allegro as made the most of Tchaikovsky’s frequently dense part-writing, with a thrillingly climactic lead-back to the reprise, followed by an Adagio whose emotional build-ups were never indulged or overbearing. Even so, the speculative central interlude (with its edgy sul ponticello exchanges) might have benefitted from a touch more ambivalence to set the expansive sections either side into greater relief.

There was no doubting the trenchancy of the Allegretto, outwardly an intermezzo but with a scherzo-like capriciousness across its trio, while the unabashed rhetoric of the final Allegro was finely controlled as this movement reached a close of suitably breathless exhilaration.

You can read all about the 2023/24 season for Centre Stage at the CBSO website. Click on the composer name for more information on Bobbie-Jane Gardner, or visit her Soundcloud page