Category Archives: Orchestral

In Concert – Soloists, City of London Choir, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra – Hilary Davan Wetton: Vaughan Williams & Ravel

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Anita Watson (soprano), Maya Colwell (mezzo-soprano), John Cuthbert (tenor), Ashley Riches (bass-baritone), City of London Choir, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra / Hilary Davan Wetton

Ravel Menuet antique (1895, orch. 1929)
Vaughan Williams Serenade to Music (1938)
Ravel Le Tombeau de Couperin (1914-17, orch. 1919)
Vaughan Williams Dona nobis pacem (1936)

Cadogan Hall, London
Thursday 10 November 2022

Reviewed by Ben Hogwood

This concert deftly assembled a number of threads to bring the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s celebration of RWV150 – the handy abbreviation for Vaughan Williams‘ birth anniversary year – to a close.

Vaughan Williams studied with Ravel in Paris in 1908. Just over a decade later, the lives of both men had been altered forever by the First World War. It affected both of them deeply – Ravel in a brief stint as a lorry driver and Vaughan Williams as an ambulance driver and artillery officer in France.

Both Le Tombeau de Couperin and Donna nobis pacem are affected by their experiences, but first we heard another act of musical remembrance in Ravel’s charming Menuet antique. Written in memory of Chabrier, this bittersweet work presents a winsome smile while it dances, but darker thoughts lurk in the middle ground, expressed through the gruff voices of lower woodwind. Hilary Davan Wetton conducted a sprightly reading, though it took a little while for the RPO to settle. After a soft-centred middle section, the second reading of the Menuet itself was on much firmer ground.

Le Tombeau de Couperin is both a commemoration and celebration of French baroque music, but its deeply personal connections mark the passing of Ravel’s mother in 1917 as well as close friends lost to the First World War. Originally written for piano, the suite comprises six movements, four of which the composer arranged for orchestra, his painterly touch evident at every turn.

This was a touching performance, led by a fine contribution from RPO oboist Timothy Watts, who led off the Prélude with beautifully flowing phrases. The orchestra responded with silvery strings and harp, the music shimmering but shivering too. The personal reverberations were close to hand in the underlying sadness of the Forlane, which nonetheless danced with poise and grace. The Menuet, taken relatively quickly, found time to express its innermost feelings in the thoughtful trio section, while the Rigaudon gained a spring in its step, bouncing along but soon checked by the sparse textures of its central section. This was a fine performance, earning the RPO woodwind a deserved curtain call of their own.

Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music is a softly voiced tribute to Sir Henry Wood’s Golden Jubilee as a conductor. In recognition, the composer sets the scene between Lorenzo and Jessica from Act Five of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. It is a versatile piece, written initially for 16 selected soloists but performed here by four singers and the sensitively controlled voices of the City of London Choir, who revelled in the cushioned carpet of sound Vaughan Williams creates. This was established by an affectionate solo from orchestra leader Duncan Riddell, establishing the serenity of D major under Davan Wetton’s watchful eye.

The balance between choir and orchestra, tricky to achieve in the Cadogan Hall, felt just right – as did the poise of soprano Anita Watson (above), floating up to the high ‘A’s with impressive control. She was aided by fine contributions from Maya Colwell, John Cuthbert and Ashley Riches, whose bass-baritone had a particularly attractive, rounded quality.

Two years prior to the Serenade, Vaughan Williams completed Dona nobis pacem, whose very different outlook reflects the worrisome mood in Britain and Europe in the mid-1930s. The composer’s dread of war, heightened by his experiences 20 years hence, was palpable in the central setting of Dirge For Two Veterans, using part of Walt Whitman’s poem Drum Taps in music that ironically dates from 1911.

Dona nobis pacem brings together texts from both sacred and secular sources, anticipating Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem some 26 years later, which used a similar tactic to startling effect. Here Vaughan Williams’ ‘catharsis’ – as Hilary Davan Wetton eloquently referred to it – received a heartfelt performance, anchored by Anita Watson’s recurring pleas for peace as the soprano soloist. The choir echoed these sentiments, but in a more fretful manner as they reflected on previous losses through Whitman’s poetry.

The music was remarkably prescient for our times, and the cautionary snare drum strokes bringing in the Dirge held a Mahlerian tension that stayed long in the memory. So, too, did the setting of Beat! Beat! Drums! (from the same Whitman poem), which was reached through a dramatic turn of the page from the full Agnus Dei plea. There was exultation from the choir, but also a constant ache beneath the surface.

Watson and Ashley Riches (above) were surefooted and expressive soloists, while Davan Wetton ensured the combination of choir and orchestra captured that wonderful sheen that Vaughan Williams can achieve when writing for the combined forces. The percussion, awkwardly hidden beneath the Cadogan Hall balcony with the organ, made a telling contribution as the dreaded ammunition, which was finally silenced as the peace for which we all surely strive came to pass at the end. The rapt closing bars were pure in their sincerity, soprano and acapella choir achieving an ideal balance and fade.

Before the Dona nobis pacem, Hilary Davan Wetton spoke briefly to the audience on the importance of the arts in the wake of a slew of funding cuts and falling attendances. As he so subtly reminded us, how lucky we are that in times of war in Europe and further afield we can still attend and enjoy concerts in person. It is a privilege never to be taken for granted, particularly on nights of Remembrance such as this.

In concert – Alexandra Lowe, Benson Wilson, City of Birmingham Choir, CBSO / Adrian Lucas: Vaughan Williams at 150: A Sea Symphony

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Vaughan Williams
Benedicite (1929); Fantasia on Greensleeves (arr. Ralph Greeves) (1934); A Sea Symphony (Symphony No. 1) (1903-09)

Alexandra Lowe (soprano), Benson Wilson (baritone), City of Birmingham Choir, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Adrian Lucas

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Sunday 6 November 2022 [3pm]

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

It may have been celebrated a year late, but this concert marking the centenary of the City of Birmingham Choir tied in with the 150th anniversary of the birth of Vaughan Williams and saw this choir joining forces with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in appropriate fashion.

Even when it had all but fallen out of the concert repertoire, A Sea Symphony yet remained a favourite of choral societies around the country such that the CBC has given its fair share of performances over the decades. On this occasion Adrian Lucas (musical director of the choir these past two decades) presided over an account whose shortcomings (notably an occasional misbalance between choir and orchestra in those more densely scored passages) were more than outweighed by the conviction with which the composer’s essential vision was realized.

Certainly, the surging choral paragraph which launches A Song for all Seas, all Ships was powerfully conveyed with its subsequent sections introducing the soloists – Benson Wilson’s baritone ardent and mellifluous while just a little strained in its upper register, and Alexandra Lowe’s soprano such as rang out imperiously towards the centre of this opening movement. Momentum can easily falter in the latter stages, but Lucas (below) ensured its apotheosis provided an emotional counterweight to the beginning and never risked outweighing its rapt conclusion. Wilson came into his own with On the Beach at Night, Alone, its ruminative if often uneasy calm notably in evidence and with the more animated central section paced unerringly up to its fervent choral climax – after which, those brooding final pages yielded an evocative poise.

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As the symphony’s scherzo The Waves can feel overly contrived in context, but Lucas duly made the most of its rousing outer sections – the CBC in command of its textural intricacies – and convincingly integrated the Parry-like nobility of its ‘big tune’ into its evolving structure. Everything then came together in The Explorers, a finale which is also this work’s longest movement and features its finest music. By turns serene and speculative, the initial sections built assuredly to a rousing peroration from where the soloists’ impulsive re-emergence was the more telling. Lucas again ensured the culmination had the requisite grandeur without pre-empting the epilogue; at one with some of Walt Whitman’s most affecting lines in conveying that all-encompassing vastness as was a hallmark of Vaughan Williams’s endings henceforth.

The relatively short first half brought a welcome revival for Benedicite – its origins as a test-piece for competition likely telling against the qualities of a piece that, while it may break no new ground in its composer’s output, denotes his maturity in its vigorously wrought opening section, before a limpid setting of the 17th-century poet John Austin that brought an eloquent response from Lowe that itself preceded an energetic close. The once ubiquitous Fantasia on Greensleeves made for an appealing and by no means cloying interlude prior to the interval. All in all, this was a worthy commemoration of the respective anniversaries. The CBC can be heard in Handel’s Messiah early next month, and the CBSO continues its Vaughan Williams at 150 series next week with programmes conducted by Michael Seal and Martyn Brabbins.

You can read all about the 2022/23 season and book tickets at the CBSO website. For more information on the artists, click on the names of Adrian Lucas, Alexandra Lowe, Benson Wilson and the City of Birmingham Choir

In concert – Oliver Janes, CBSO / Ryan Bancroft: Adams, Mozart & Rachmaninoff

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Adams The Chairman Dances (1985)
Mozart Clarinet Concerto in A major K622 (1791)
Rachmaninoff Symphonic Dances Op.45 (1940)

Oliver Janes (clarinet), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Ryan Bancroft

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Wednesday 2 November 2022 [2.15pm]

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

Back from its successful US tour (the first such in almost a quarter of a century), the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra this afternoon returned to Symphony Hall for what was a programme of contrasts in which an element of dance seldom lurked far beneath the surface.

Although it is often considered emblematic of his opera Nixon in China, John Adams wrote The Chairman Dances well before completing the larger work – this ‘Foxtrot for Orchestra’ encapsulating much of its atmosphere without being intrinsic to its content. Capricious while shot through with a tellingly distanced nostalgia, this remains among Adams’s most effective concert pieces and Ryan Bancroft secured a fine account whose meticulous attention to detail was not without corresponding panache – down to its percussive ‘winding down’ at the close.

It is (nearly) always welcome when an orchestra’s section leader takes the platform as soloist, as was proven with Oliver Janes in Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto – easily the most popular such piece in its repertoire yet one that can easily seem bland or even characterless in performance. There was little chance of that here – not least with a swift and purposeful take on the opening Allegro that left relatively little room for lingering over incidental detail, even if something of its underlying elegance was sacrificed with Janes’s powers of articulation pressed to the limit.

This approach paid dividends in the remaining movements, not least an Adagio whose limpid eloquence was conveyed without trace of indulgence or wanton sentiment. The final Allegro, too, had a winning buoyancy – Janes evincing a deftness and spontaneity to which the CBSO responded in kind, and with a surge of energy towards the closing chords. It set the seal on an appealing rendition which, perhaps surprisingly, Janes will not repeat at tomorrow evening’s concert from Warwick Arts Centre – when that by Gerald Finzi will be the concerto on offer.

Soon to take the reins at the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Bancroft is evidently a conductor on a roll as was confirmed by his take on Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances. A triptych that abounds in felicitous detail (as is often belied, if not actually concealed, by the score’s lack of expression markings), it needs flexible direction for each movement to cohere, and Bancroft had their measure. The first exuded a suspenseful energy that, in its central section, took on a winsome pathos embodied by its alto saxophone melody (affectingly played by Kyle Horch).

Even more persuasive was the sardonic central dance, its waltz motion underpinning some of the composer’s most astringent harmonies as were pointedly emphasized here. If the charged outer sections of the final dance lacked the ultimate in exhilaration, the quality of the CBSO’s response was never in doubt. In the slower middle episode, moreover, Bancroft’s deliberation ideally clarified those frequently dense textures whose expressive poise is achieved, uniquely for Rachmaninoff, without recourse to an actual melody. A sign of things to come, perhaps?

Bancroft will hopefully be returning next season, but the present one continues with events to mark the 150th anniversary of Vaughan Williams’s birth – including two of his symphonies and the film Scott of the Antarctic, for which the CBSO is contributing live accompaniment.

You can read all about the 2022/23 season and book tickets at the CBSO website. For more information on the artists, click on the names of Ryan Bancroft and Oliver Janes

Olli Mustonen plays Prokofiev

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This week, Arcana will be visiting the Wigmore Hall to hear the complete piano sonatas of Prokofiev, played over two nights by Olli Mustonen.

The Finnish pianist is a specialist in the Ukrainian-born composer’s music, and it looks set to be a fascinating pair of concerts, offering a rare chance to appraise the complete works in this area of Prokofiev’s output. As a taster to illustrate his natural rapport with Prokofiev’s writing for the keyboard, here is Mustonen performing the Piano Concerto no.2 in G minor with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and Hannu Lintu:

Olli Mustonen plays the complete sonatas at the Wigmore Hall, over two nights – for information click on the links for Monday 31 October and Tuesday 1 November:

Mustonen has also recorded the five piano concertos for Ondine, with Lintu and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. You can hear these dynamic accounts below:

In concert – Daniel Pioro, London Philharmonic Orchestra / Andrew Manze – Vaughan Williams: Symphony no.9, Lark Ascending & Tallis Fantasia; Tom Coult Violin Concerto

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Vaughan Williams Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910)
Tom Coult Pleasure Garden: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (2020) (London premiere)
Vaughan Williams The Lark Ascending (1914-20); Symphony no.9 in E minor (1956-57)

Daniel Pioro (violin), London Philharmonic Orchestra / Andrew Manze

Royal Festival Hall, London
Wednesday 26 October 2022

Reviewed by Ben Hogwood. Concert pictures with thanks to the London Philharmonic Orchestra; picture of Andrew Manze (c) Benjamin Ealovega

Subtitled Visions of England, this concert from the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Andrew Manze was a celebration of Vaughan Williams, marking 150 years since the composer’s birth. As part of an extremely full conducting CV, Manze has a recently recorded cycle of the composer’s nine symphonies under his belt with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, and clearly holds a special affection for his music.

Two of RVW’s most popular pieces began each half of the concert, but the main act was a relatively rare encounter with composer’s final symphony, completed a year before his death. The Ninth Symphony is a work needing repeated listening before its treasures can be fully revealed, but more recently it has started to get the performances it needs to make an impact. As Manze himself told us from the platform, it also has a deep resonance for the London Philharmonic Orchestra themselves. On the morning of 26 August 1958 they were rehearsing with the composer’s friend and advocate, Sir Adrian Boult, when news came through that Vaughan Williams had died.

This performance delved into the spidery textures that seem to provide a link to the afterlife itself, rather like one of Holst’s later Planets. Also evident were a series of cloudy, watery vistas, such as those found in Debussy’s Nocturnes. Manze probed deeply into the first movement, helped by the baleful colouring of three saxophones, beautifully managed by Martin Robertson, Tim Holmes and Shaun Thompson to enhance the unusual orchestral textures. The tension between the ‘home’ note of E and its immediate neighbour F was ideally weighted, the thoughtful mood tinged with a sense of foreboding.

These emotions underpinned a convincing performance, with references to earlier, angrier music from the Sixth symphony sharply noted and delivered. There were also moments of calm acceptance, as though the composer was reappraising his life with some satisfaction, the darkness held at bay by silvery strings and consoling woodwind.

The second movement, with its curious rhythmic profile, had nicely balanced syncopations, while the scherzo danced as though in an empty room, the music never quite leaving the leash on which it was held. Segueing directly to the finale, Manze’s control and passion could be felt in equal measure, a sense of resolution hard to come by but ultimately found as the music headed for its final three chords, the ‘E’ and ‘F’ finally resolving their dispute. This beautiful symphonic ending offered genuine light in the darkness, a similar sensation to Shostakovich’s final symphonic statement if seen through very different eyes.

The concert opened with the ubiquitous Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, less elusive music perhaps but equally profound when casting its eyes back over time. This ideal concert opener speaks as loudly as it surely did in 1910, providing consolation for the fevered brow through subtle but far-reaching statements. On this occasion the performance did not quite have the ‘tingle’ factor, but it did feature beautiful string playing and finely wrought balance between the ‘choir’ of ten instruments, elevated a little at the back of the stage. Meanwhile the main orchestra could boast excellent contributions from four section principals, Pieter Schoeman and Tania Mazzetti (violins), Richard Waters (viola) and Pei-Jee Ng (cello).

The Lark Ascending holds a similarly treasured status among lovers of Vaughan Williams, remaining one of the calling cards of 20th century English music. In the right performance it creates a magical evocation of George Meredith’s lark, as it ‘drops the silver chain of sound’. Daniel Pioro played the solo part with great sensitivity and more than a little panache, choosing not to overindulge in a relatively straightforward opening sequence, but appearing to add a few extra ‘blue’ notes as the violin warmed to its characterisation, ‘lost on his aerial wings’. Manze’s pacing, initially quite fast, settled to a satisfying pace, with ideal balance between soloist and orchestra. The hall responded with commendable silence to the absolute quiet at the end.

A busy evening for Pioro included a role as soloist in the first London performance of Tom Coult’s Pleasure Garden. A four-movement concerto for violin and carefully chosen orchestra, it is effectively a compilation of four very distinct tableaus, taking its lead from constructed ‘natural spaces’ in and around congested living areas.

The first movement, Starting to rain – Zennyo Ryuo appears, found as vivid a portrayal of rain as you could wish to hear – in my mind I was checking the roof for a leak! Throughout the concerto Coult’s keen ear for orchestral colour was evident at every turn, as was his assured writing for violin, brilliantly played by Pioro. The coloristic effects were enjoyable and easy on the ear, harmonies largely consonant but never over-simplified, and the description of events in Dyeing the lake blue for Queen Victoria, Francesco Landini serenades the birds and The art of setting stones was easy to follow. The birds in particular were vividly portrayed by the soloist.

There was however a fragmented feel to the green spaces, as though they had not fully germinated, and this was exaggerated by the stopping of each movement to pause the descriptive process. When the piece did finally finish there was still an element of unfinished business, in spite of its 27-minute length. Repeated hearing would be welcome to give a more thorough appraisal and understanding, as the warm reception would suggest Coult hit the mark for the vast majority of listeners. His music has many attractive traits and he is a gifted orchestrator, so his is most definitely a space to keep under watch.