In concert – CBSO Youth Orchestra Academy: A Fist Full of Fives

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cbso-youth

Sutton A Fist Full of Fives (2016)
Mozart Violin Concerto no.5 in A major K219 ‘Turkish’ (1775)
Skalkottas Five Greek Dances (1931-6, arr. 1936)
Beethoven Symphony no.5 in C minor Op.67 (1804-8)

Irène Duval (violin), CBSO Youth Orchestra / Michael Seal

Royal Birmingham Conservatoire
Saturday 23 July 2022

Written by Richard Whitehouse

It may be the end of the main season, but that is no reason why the CBSO Youth Orchestra should not have had a concert scheduled for mid-July, with this judiciously contrasted and well-balanced programme assuredly playing to the collective strengths of its present line-up.

Although three of the works had a numerical connection with ‘five’, only the opening piece featured that number in its title. Written for an event featuring Beethoven’s Fifth and scored for similar forces, A Fist Full of Fives finds Adrian Sutton essaying a concert-opener whose interplay of vigorous (even a little martial) and more lyrical ideas evokes a mid-20th century American music evoking Piston or early Carter. Fluent and appealing if far from memorable, it duly put the orchestra through its paces to a degree which the CBSOYO met with alacrity.

Rather more memorable was the Five Greek Dances by Skalkottas which opened the second half. Admittedly the programme note led one to expect a selection from the overall 36 in the versions for full orchestra, rather than the present selection – from a set of seven – for strings. Yet the distinctive character of each dance is hardly diminished in these arrangements by the composer (a proficient violinist), and Michael Seal secured notably characterful playing in a sequence that proceeded from the swaggering Epirotikos, through the stealthy interplay of Kretikos and the bracingly astringent Tsamikos, to the gentle pathos of Arkadikos then the dashing Kleftikos. Fifty years after the CBSO’s world premiere of his First Symphonic Suite, it was good to hear these likely successors tackling Skalkottas with evident enjoyment.

In between those two pieces, Irène Duval gave Mozart’s Fifth Violin Concerto – not exactly underplayed these days, but worth hearing when rendered with such commitment. Not least an opening Allegro whose aperto marking (rightly) encouraged a deftness of phrasing that carried through to the closing bars. The Adagio was ingratiating without any hint of cloying, then the outer sections of the Rondeau an insouciance for which the lively Turkish music at its centre provided a bracing foil. The cadenzas (Duval’s own?) proved unfailingly apposite.

Closing the concert, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony made a suitably unequivocal impression – not least an opening movement whose rhythmic trenchancy and purposeful rhetoric carried through to a forceful if never hectoring coda. Neither was there any hint of false grandeur in the Andante, its ruminative theme yielding subtlety and not a little humour as it wended its methodical yet never predictable course. Ensemble was a little ragged near the outset of the scherzo, but the transition into the finale had a simmering expectancy that made the latter’s blazing onset more visceral. This music’s familiarity tends to detract from its innovation of form and orchestration, but Seal pointed up such aspects in a reading that never risked losing focus as it headed to a coda whose reiterations of the home key made for a triumphal QED.

A worthwhile programme, then, with performances to match and exactly the sort of concert needed to inject needed impetus into the indolence of summer. The CBSOYO makes its first appearance next season with a programme of Verdi, Bruch and Lutosławski on October 30th.

For more information on the CBSO Youth Orchestra and their next concert, visit the dedicated page on their website. Click on the names for more information on Irène Duval and Michael Seal

BBC Proms #7 – Soloists, La Nuova Musica / David Bates: Purcell Dido and Aeneas

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Purcell Dido and Aeneas (c1689)

Dido – Alice Coote (mezzo-soprano)
Aeneas – James Newby (baritone)
Belinda – Gemma Summerfield (soprano)
Sorceress – Madeleine Shaw (mezzo-soprano)
Second Woman – Nardus Williams (soprano)
Sailor – Nicky Spence (tenor)
Spirit – Tim Mead (countertenor)
First Witch – Helen Charleston (mezzo-soprano)
Second Witch – Martha McLorinan (mezzo-soprano)

La Nuova Musica / David Bates (harpsichord)

Royal Albert Hall, London
Tuesday 19 July 2022 (late night)

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Photo (c) Chris Christodoulou

After the existential confrontations of Vaughan Williams and Tippett earlier this evening, the more restrained yet no less acute expression of Dido and Aeneas came as a necessary tonic – with Purcell’s only through-composed work for the stage leaving a memorable impression.

The nature of its conception might remain as conjectural as the circumstances of its premiere, but there can be no doubt that this opera’s blazed a trail over the centuries that followed. Not the least of its attributes is a formal economy and a tensile dramatic trajectory whose ‘less is more’ aspect could scarcely be more evident. Neither is there any lack of expressive diversity in a score where elements of levity, even slapstick are aligned with a dramatic acuity which draws the three short but judiciously balanced acts into a cohesive and inevitable continuity.

Tonight’s concert performance manifestly played to these strengths. For the title-roles, Alice Coote brought gravitas and nobility of spirit to that of Dido, with James Newby an impulsive while knowingly fickle Aeneas. It was, however, Gemma Summerfield who stole the show as Belinda in rendering this most dramatically fluid of the opera’s parts with an emotional force, latterly foreboding, that was never less than captivating. Madeleine Shaw was larger than life if never overly parodic as the Sorceress, with Tim Mead a plangent Spirit whose intervention (from the organ console) seals the fate of the main protagonists. Credit, too, to Nicky Spence for an uproarious yet winning cameo as the Sailor in a scene whose Village People campery seemed entirely apposite in context and hence made this opera’s outcome the more affecting.

Directing La Nova Musica from the harpsichord, David Bates never lost sight of the dramatic continuity while ensuring an exemplary balance between chorus and ensemble. The former responded with a judicious combination of eloquence and discipline, whereas the emphasis on a continuo section of theorbos, harps and even guitar opened out but never obliterated the bracing string sonorities. Tempos were almost invariably well chosen, and though the final chorus was undeniably drawn out, this reinforced its postludial function to the work overall.

The past 58 seasons have since Dido and Aeneas given complete on four previous occasions, each time reflecting on how the opera was perceived at the time. Tonight’s performance was such a statement, and one as reaffirmed its greatness some 333 years after the first staging.

For more information on the 2022 BBC Proms season, you can visit the festival website. For more on the artists, click on the names for La Nuova Musica and David Bates.

BBC Proms #6 – BBC Philharmonic Orchestra / Sir Andrew Davis: Vaughan Williams & Tippett Fourth Symphonies

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Prom 6 – BBC Philharmonic Orchestra / Sir Andrew Davis

Vaughan Williams Symphony no.4 in F minor (1931-4)
Tippett Symphony no.4 (1976-7)

Royal Albert Hall, London
Tuesday 19 July 2022

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Photo (c) Chris Christodoulou

Whether or not the Fourth Symphonies by Vaughan Williams and Tippett had previously been scheduled together, they made for a striking and provocative programme such as was its own justification. Omer Meir Wellber clearly thought so when this concert was planned and, even though indisposition had led to withdrawing from this year’s Proms, the presence of Sir Andrew Davis on the podium could hardly have been more conducive to the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra giving performances of the interpretive insight and technical conviction as were evident this evening.

Admittedly the Albert Hall’s opulent acoustic is never the best setting for VW4, the visceral impact of whose opening was inevitably diluted. Allowing for rather more expressive leeway than he might otherwise have done, Davis paced this explosive movement securely with just a slightly listless take on its coda detracting from the whole. The Andante was the highlight here – its fatalistic course exuding gravitas but never dragging, with the tritonal plangency of its main climaxes palpably in evidence and pathos of its final bars enhanced by an affecting contribution from flautist Alex Jakeman. This acoustic may have obscured something of the Scherzo’s contrapuntal ingenuity but not its sardonic humour or, in the trio, didactic coyness. The stealthy transition into the Finale could have had even greater cumulative focus, but what followed had all the requisite impetus – its central interlude raptly delineated, then the drama of its ‘epilogo fugato’ conveying increasing velocity through to the starkly inevitable return of the opening gesture and what is the most unequivocal four-letter ending of any symphony.

Interesting to recall the temporal distance between these pieces is now less than that between the Tippett and the present. Enthusiastically received at its Chicago premiere and one among a handful of his works still revived following his death, Tippett’s Fourth Symphony evinces  a ‘birth to death’ trajectory that differs – crucially so – from its assumed model of Sibelius’s Seventh in not being a cumulative design; its climax being rather the kinetic developmental paragraph at its centre and from where the piece fans out, in a sequence of evolving episodes, back to the launching of its introduction and onward to the passing of its coda. Although he may have directed performances of greater tautness, Davis here secured a persuasive balance between unity and diversity – bringing a metaphysical poise to its ‘slow movement’ then a deft whimsicality to its ‘scherzo’, whose respective qualities underlined the confrontational drama elsewhere. Lavish writing for brass and percussion helps makes this Tippett’s most virtuosic such statement, in which the BBC Philharmonic was rarely to be found wanting.

A less successful component of this reading was the latest attempt to represent the ‘breathing effect’ specified by the score, in which the real-time voice of CJ Neale seemed hardly more successful than those attempts of wind machine, sampler et al to realize Tippett’s speculative imagery. No matter – any such overreaching was part and parcel of this composer’s inherent ambition; an ambition, moreover, which his present-day successors would do well to emulate. Almost a century and half-century on, both these works pose challenges constantly to be met.

Summer heat – Josef Suk’s A Summer’s Tale

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by Ben Hogwood

As you will no doubt be aware, this week has seen record breaking temperatures in the UK, which has inspired something of a hot weather classical music sequence.

After works from Debussy and the Danish composer Poul Ruders, I have been reminded of this substantial orchestral piece A Summer’s Tale, by the Czech composer Josef Suk.

Suk, the son-in-law of Antonin Dvořák, has been given greater appreciation in the last few decades for an orchestral output notable for its descriptive and emotional powers. Perhaps his best known work is the tragic symphony Asrael, mourning the loss of both his wife and father-in-law. Operating on a very large scale (lasting 70 minutes in most performances) it is an incredibly powerful work of Mahlerian dimensions. A Summer’s Tale is the work that builds on the hope offered by the end of Asrael, becoming a positive celebration of our sunniest season.

Certainly the first movement, Voices of life and consolation, becomes a heady exultation with full orchestra, a true celebration of nature. The small scale third movement, Blind Musicians, is an account of the composer’s encounter with a small-scale band, playing repetitive folk music – and he sets it for smaller orchestral forces here. Meanwhile the fourth movement, In the Power of Phantoms, is a joyous and almost riotous affirmation. For the fifth movement, Night, Suk employs a sultry nocturne, the music finding rest from the sun but also exploring the richness of the lower strings in a surging chorale episode.

You cab listen to A Summer’s Tale below in a particularly fine version from the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras:

New music – Mark Peters feat. Dot Allison: Switch On The Sky

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Some more good news from Sonic Cathedral. If you are a regular visitor to Arcana you will have seen our praise for the new Pye Corner Audio album Let’s Emerge, released on the label last Friday. Now we can bring confirmation of new music from Mark Peters, whose rather wonderful Innerland album provided a geographical record of his move back to Wigan in 2018.

The new album, Red Sunset Dreams, looks much further afield for its inspiration, casting longing eyes across the Atlantic in fact. It features contributions from pedal steel guitar legend B J Cole and vocalist Dot Allison, who sings on two tracks including the single released today, Switch on the Sky. They both appear as part of Peters’ fascination with the ambient side of country music, with Cole’s legendary steel guitar work becoming something of a healthy obsession.

The press release takes up the story, talking of ‘an incredibly evocative trip through the landscapes of old Western movies, exploring their links with the North West of England while touching on wider themes such as isolation, freedom and dementia. Sonically, it builds on the palette of the previous record with instrumentation equally inspired by the ascendant ambient Americana movement and classic country-rock. As a result it ends up somewhere between Acetone’s peerless I Guess I Would, Diamond Head-era Phil Manzanera and the dusty instrumentals on the second disc of David Sylvian’s 1986 classic Gone To Earth.