Category Archives: Orchestral

In concert – David Cohen, London Symphony Orchestra / Sir Antonio Pappano: Vaughan Williams 9th Symphony, Elgar & Bax

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David Cohen (cello), London Symphony Orchestra / Sir Antonio Pappano

Vaughan Willams Symphony no.9 in E minor (1956-57)
Elgar Cello Concerto in E minor Op.85 (1919)
Bax Tintagel (1917-19)

Barbican Hall, London
Sunday 15th December 2024

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Picture (c) Mark Allan

Sir Antonio Pappano‘s conducting of Vaughan Williams’s Sixth Symphony in March 2020 will be recalled as almost the final live event before the descent of lockdown. Forward to the present found him tackling the composer’s Ninth Symphony under outwardly different circumstances.

Such context is significant given this work picks up where its predecessor left off, the Sixth’s fade into nothingness making possible that ominous and otherworldly beginning of the Ninth. Few conductors opt for its rapid metronome markings, but Pappano’s was an unusually broad conception of a first movement whose Moderato maestoso marking was evident throughout. Any lack of cumulative fervency was more than countered by a luminosity which permeates the music’s textures, and nowhere more so than with that lambent aura conveyed by its coda.

More an intermezzo than slow movement, the ensuing Andante sostenuto may have taken its cue from Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles but its interplay of bleakness, violence and ardour satisfies on its own terms and Pappano’s take was audibly cohesive. Nor did he misjudge the Allegro pesante of a scherzo which veers between the martial, sardonic and the ethereal with as much formal freedom as VW allows his ‘reeds’ in pointing up its expressive recalcitrance. Despite being marked Andante tranquillo, the finale is no peaceful comedown and Pappano was mindful to balance the expansively unfurling arcs of its opening half with the mounting intensity of what follows. Moreover, those three seismic ‘gestures of farewell’ summoned an emotional frisson that felt comparable to anything Vaughan Williams had previously written.

If it no longer elicits the lukewarm response as at its premiere, the Ninth Symphony remains elusive and often disquieting. Securing an impressive response from the London Symphony Orchestra, flugel horn and saxes evocatively in evidence, Pappano certainly had its measure.

A pity it was thought necessary to place this work in the first half, as following it with Elgar’s Cello Concerto felt a little anti-climactic. Not that David Cohen, securely established as LSO section-leader, was other than committed – his reading, gaining conviction as it unfolded, at its best in an Adagio of suffused eloquence then a finale that built purposefully to a soulful if not unduly emotive culmination and brusque payoff. Neither the unfocussed first movement nor a brittle scherzo hit the mark but, overall, this account was more then the sum of its parts.

Following Vaughan Williams’s and Elgar’s last major works with a middle-period one by Bax might be thought sleight-of-hand as regards programming, but the latter’s March for the 1953 Coronation would hardly have seemed apposite and Tintagel provided an undeniably rousing send-off. For all its indebtedness to Debussy, its surging Romanticism is its own justification and Pappano ensured that every aspect of this alluring (and on occasion lurid) seascape could be savoured to the fullest – not least its apotheosis then a conclusion of resplendent opulence.

Hopefully Pappano will schedule further British music in addition to continuing his Vaughan Williams cycle. Whatever else, Bax seems tailor-made for the LSO’s virtuosity such that his Second or Sixth symphonies, or another of his tone poems, would assuredly leave their mark.

For more on the 2024/25 season, visit the London Symphony Orchestra website – and for more on the artists click on the names David Cohen and Sir Antonio Pappano. Resources dedicated to the composers can be found by accessing the Vaughan Williams Society, The Elgar Society and the recently formed Sir Arnold Bax Society

Published post no.2,397 – Thursday 19 December 2024

In concert – Martin Helmchen, CBSO / Kazuki Yamada: Mozart Piano Concerto no.26 & Bruckner Symphony no.9

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Martin Helmchen (piano, below), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Kazuki Yamada (above)

Mozart Piano Concerto no.26 in D major K537 (1788)
Bruckner Symphony no.9 in D minor WAB109 (1887-96, ed. Nowak)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Thursday 12 December 2024

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Pictures (c) Beki Smith (Kazuki Yamada), Giorgia Bertazzi (Martin Helmchen)

This last concert before its Christmas and New Year festivities found the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra back with music director Kazuki Yamada for a coupling of Mozart and Bruckner that worked well as a programme over and above its D major-D minor framework.

Lauded for decades after his death, Mozart’s Piano Concerto no.26 was then dismissed as one of his few mature failures through a steely brilliance concealing little, if any, more personal expression. While it may lack the pathos or ambivalence that inform its dozen predecessors, its extrovert nature is complemented by a poise to which Martin Helmchen was well attuned. The martial undertow of its opening Allegro was offset by its winsome second theme and by the harmonic freedom of one of Mozart’s most capricious developments, then the Larghetto had a lilting charm cannily offset by the suavity of the closing Allegretto. That the autograph omits much of its piano’s left-hand part has led others to extemporize their own completion, but Helmchen restricted himself to cadenzas that were inventive and never less than apposite.

Yamada and the CBSO were unwavering in support, making for a performance that certainly presented this work to best advantage and reaffirmed Helmchen’s credentials as a Mozartian. Hopefully this soloist’s and conductor’s first Birmingham collaboration will not be their last.

Birmingham audiences had not so far encountered Yamada in Bruckner but, on the basis of his Ninth Symphony, here is a composer for whom he has real affinity. Not that this performance had it all its own way – the first movement, if not lacking either solemnity or mystery, did not quite cohere across its monumental span. Each thematic element was potently characterized, but their underlying follow-through felt less than inevitable such that the development lacked something of the centripetal force needed for a properly seismic impact, though the coda built with due remorselessness to a baleful close. If the Scherzo’s buoyant outer sections eschewed the ultimate violence, Yamada judged almost ideally the contrasting tempo for its trio – which latter emphasized a spectral or even sardonic humour which is surely unique in this composer.

In the absence of a finale (though such a movement was well on its way towards completion, as numerous realizations attest), the Adagio represents this work’s nominal culmination. Here orchestra and conductor gave of their interpretative best. Once again, the issue is how to fuse its almost disparate components into a sustained while cumulative totality and Yamada faced this challenge head on – the music exuding gravitas but with enough flexibility of motion to encompass its textural and emotional extremes right through to an apotheosis numbing in its unrelieved dissonance. Not that it pre-empted the coda’s benedictive quality from endowing closure on this movement as on the work as a ‘whole’, woodwind and strings gradually being drawn into the timbre of horns and Wagner tubas as these resounded eloquently into silence.

It hardly needs to be added that the CBSO’s playing abetted this impression, while Yamada’s placing of the double-bases in a row at the rear of the platform audibly galvanized the music-making and so set the seal on a performance which will doubtless linger long in the memory.

For details on the 2024-25 season A Season of Joy, head to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra website. Click on the names to read more about pianist Martin Helmchen – and the orchestra’s principal conductor Kazuki Yamada

Published post no.2,394 – Sunday 15 December 2024

In concert – Eugene Tzikindelean, CBSO / Kazuki Yamada: Elgar Violin Concerto & Walton Symphony no.2

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Eugene Tzikindelean (violin, above), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Kazuki Yamada (below)

Elgar Violin Concerto in B minor Op.61 (1909-10)
Walton Orb and Sceptre (1952-3)
Walton Symphony no.2 (1957-60)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Wednesday 4 December 2024

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

His tenure so far as music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra has shown Kazuki Yamada to have real sympathy for British music, hence it was no surprise to encounter this programme of works by Elgar and Walton, which itself proved (unexpectedly?) satisfying.

Following on his highly regarded performances of Nielsen and Walton over previous seasons, CBSO leader Eugene Tzikindelean took on Elgar’s Violin Concerto for a reading which was fine if not consistently so. The opening movement, in particular, lacked forward momentum in its restless first theme so that not enough contrast was established with its rapt successor – the highlights being Yamada’s vigorous handling of its orchestral introduction and a development as powerfully sustained as it was combatively rendered. Tzikindelean was more fully at home with the central Andante, its variously reflective and heartfelt melodies drawn into a seamless continuity enhanced by a notably beguiling response from the CBSO woodwind. Whether or not the most profound of Elgar’s slow movement, this is arguably his most perfectly achieved.

The finale was, for the most part, equally successful – this being hardly the first performance setting off at a suitably incisive tempo, only to lose impetus once the poised second theme has entered the frame. Not that there was insufficient energy to make the emergence of its lengthy accompanied cadenza other than startling – this latter proceeding with a suffused mystery and poignancy, not least in recalling previous themes, as finds Elgar as his most confessional; the movement then resuming its earlier course as it surged on to a decisive and affirmative close.

Although his later orchestral works have never quite fallen into obscurity, Walton’s tended to fare better in the US than in the UK. Not least the coronation march Orb and Sceptre – all too easily denigrated next to the opulent grandeur of predecessor Crown Imperial, but evincing a jazzy lack of uninhibition and, in its trio, a suavity Yamada clearly relished in the company of an orchestra that made benchmark recordings with Louis Frémaux almost half a century ago. Even the latter could not summon the pizzaz conveyed here with that trio’s infectious return.

Walton’s Second Symphony has been equivocally regarded ever since its Liverpool premiere, but Yamada clearly harboured few doubts as to its conviction. The opening Allegro unfolded methodically if remorselessly, its main themes subtly yet meaningfully differentiated not least in bringing out the compositional mastery of sizable orchestral forces. Nor was there any lack of pathos in the ensuing Lento, its ominous tones denoting music shot through with intensely ambivalent emotion. Much the most difficult movement to sustain, the final Passacaglia was no less successful – Yamada binding its successive variations into a tensile if never inflexible whole, while making a virtue of Walton’s premise that a 12-note theme can resolve effortlessly in tonal terms at the peroration: a journey as fascinating as its destination proved exhilarating.

Interesting to note this concert was ‘being recorded for future release;, given the Walton was undoubtedly an account to savour. Yamada is back with the CBSO next week in a programme which pairs Mozart’s penultimate piano concerto and Bruckner’s (unfinished) final symphony.

For details on the 2024-25 season A Season of Joy, head to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra website. Click on the names to read more about CBSO leader, violinist Eugene Tzikindelean – and the orchestra’s principal conductor Kazuki Yamada

Published post no.2,386 – Saturday 7 December 2024

In concert – Alexander Roslavets, Gidon Kremer, LPO / Andrey Boreyko @ Royal Festival Hall: A Dark Century

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Alexander Roslavets (narrator / bass), Gidon Kremer (violin), London Philharmonic Choir (men’s voices), London Philharmonic Orchestra / Andrey Boreyko

Schoenberg A Survivor from Warsaw Op.46 (1947)
Weinberg Violin Concerto in G minor Op.67 (1959)
Shostakovich Symphony no.13 in B flat minor Op.113 ‘Babi Yar’ (1962)

Royal Festival Hall, London
Wednesday 27 November 2024

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Pictures (c) Richard de Stoutz (Andrey Boreyko), Angie Kremer (Gidon Kremer)

Anyone who heard one or other of these works for the first time at this concert by the London Philharmonic Orchestra could be forgiven for thinking that the twentieth century, if not a ‘dark century’ per se, was at the very least a troubled one for all that the quality of its music was undeniable.

With its elements of melodrama and cantata, Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw is one of his most original conceptions and necessarily so, given the unnerving immediacy of its text in which a speaker has to take on the roles of survivor and officer in just six minutes. Alexander Roslavets rose to this challenge, bringing out emotional contrasts as surely as he instilled his words with that ominous dread whose culmination in the prayer Shema Yisrael was intoned by the London Philharmonic Choir with the right balance between desperation and defiance.

One composer who witnessed something of such atrocities was Mieczysław Weinberg, and if his Violin Concerto demonstrably continues the ‘Romantic’ tradition, this is still an inherently personal statement. Gidon Kremer has championed the composer extensively in recent years and, while technical issues seemingly inhibited the respectively incisive and impetuous outer movements, the restless searching of its intermezzo-like Allegretto then confiding eloquence of its Adagio were abundantly in evidence. For all its outward virtuosity, the music’s essential inwardness is what prevails as the soloist remains musing when the orchestra fell silent at the close of the finale. Kremer was in his element here, as in a touching rendition of Silvestrov’s Serenade which made for an apposite encore and was dedicated to all the people of Ukraine.

Best known for giving the posthumous premiere of Gorecki’s Fourth Symphony with the LPO 10 years back, Andrey Boreyko is well established as an exponent of Shostakovich so that his take on the Thirteenth Symphony did not disappoint. At a distance of over six decades, it can be hard to recapture the provocation of that most eminent Soviet composer using verse by the most populist younger poet, as Yevgeny Yevtushenko then was, but this setting of Babi Yar retains all its expressive force through the immediacy and resourcefulness in which it relates official indifference to the Jewish massacre as that ravine outside Kyiv was transformed into landfill. Broodingly restrained, Roslavets emerged into his own with Humour – its scabrous send-up of bone-headed officialdom inspiring one of Shostakovich’s most scurrilous scherzos.

Fashioning the last three movements into a cohesive if cumulative unity, Boreyko underlined the potency of Shostakovich’s creative vision as he takes the Soviet establishment to task for various failings economic as In the Store, political as in Fears and cultural as in A Career. Implacable then volatile, these first two are rounded off by Yevtushenko’s considering of the relationship between society and the individual; framed by an undulating melody, for flutes then strings, which is one of its composer’s most evocative as well as affecting inspirations.

It duly brought this work, and this performance, to its subdued yet spellbinding close. As the relationship between East and West becomes ever more confrontational, Shostakovich’s 13th remains a testament to rationality and compassion whose denigration is to everybody’s cost.

For details on the 2024-25 season, head to the London Philharmonic Orchestra website. Click on the names to read more about soloists Alexander Roslavets and Gidon Kremer

Published post no.2,373 – Monday 25 November 2024

In concert – Matthew Taylor 60th birthday concert @ Smith Square Hall

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Poppy Beddoe (clarinet), Mira Marton, Viviane Plekhotkine (violins), Sinfonia Perdita / Daniel Hogan

Arnold Serenade Op.26 (1950)
Taylor Clarinet Concertino Op.63 (2021)
Taylor Violin Concertino Op.52 (2016)
Arnold Double Violin Concerto Op.77 (1962)
Arnold Clarinet Concerto no.2 Op.115 (1974)
Taylor Symphony No. 6 Op.62 (2021)

Smith Square Hall, London
Friday 22 November 2024

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

It was good to see that not a few of those in the audience for Matthew Taylor’s 60th Birthday Concert had been at such events 10, 20 and even 30 years before – deserved recognition, if such were needed, of this composer’s contribution to new music across recent decades.

Malcolm Arnold has been a notable influence on Taylor’s latter-day work, so that hearing his music in this context seemed more than apposite – not least with a sparkling account of Arnold’s airily ambivalent Serenade to set proceedings in motion.

The first half featured two of Taylor’s recent concertante pieces, a genre where he is always at home. As was Poppy Beddoe in the Clarinet Concertino written for her – whether its pensive but not necessarily serene Andante, its unsettling intermezzo, or its genial Allegretto that rounds off a work demonstrably more than the sum of its parts. Mira Marton then took the stage for the Violin Concertino, less unpredictable while always engaging – whether in the not undue deliberation of its opening Hornpipe, the poetic delicacy of its central Aria or the heady syncopation of its energetic Finale. Once again, there could be no mistaking Taylor’s identity with the instrument at hand, nor that judicious marshalling of his ideas into a format the more communicative for its brevity and understatement.

Arnold came into focus with two comparable works either side of the interval. Marton was partnered by Viviane Plekhotkine for the Double Violin Concerto from his more settled years which finds due outlet in the methodical incisiveness of its opening movement and unbridled panache of its finale: the central Andantino yet leaves the most enduring impression, a ‘duet without words’ whose melting pathos never feels overly emotive. This could hardly be said of the Second Clarinet Concerto, a product of Arnold’s troubled Dublin period, though Beddoe found cohesion in its Allegro through the ingenuity of her cadenza, while its ominously unsettled Lento had soloist and conductor in enviable accord, before she threw caution to the wind with a Pre-Goodman Rag finale that enthused her admirers even more second-time around.

Astute in support, Daniel Hogan (above), came into his own with Taylor’s Sixth Symphony that ended this concert. Commissioned by the Malcolm Arnold Trust and dedicated to Arnold’s daughter Katherine, it complements its celebratory and fatalistic predecessors via an affirmation kept in check until the very last. Premiered by Martyn Brabbins then recorded by the composer, this was arguably its finest performance yet – Hogan unfolding the first movement’s introduction as a cumulative arc of intensity, before infusing the main Allegro with an impetus abetted by its translucency of scoring. This is even more apparent in the Andante, its writing for harp and piano just the most arresting aspect of its calmly fugal textures, before the final Vivo evoked an authentic Arnoldian spirit with its capricious humour and its deftly sardonic payoff.

Music that provokes as surely as it pleases is an ability shared by few composers of Taylor’s generation, and Sinfonia Perdita did it proud as the climax of an evening that reaffirmed this composer at its forefront. One looks forward to further symphonies…and future anniversaries.

For details on the 2024-25 season, head to the Sinfonia Smith Square website. Click on the names to read more about composers Matthew Taylor and Malcolm Arnold, conductor Daniel Hogan and soloists Poppy Bedoe, Mira Marton and Viviane Plekhotkine

Published post no.2,373 – Monday 25 November 2024