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

On Record – Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light – Original Television Soundtrack (Silva Screen)

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Reviewed by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

Debbie Wiseman reprises her role as composer for the eagerly awaited second instalment of the BBC dramatisation of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall.

Her approach is similarly economical, looking to work with a small band of musicians, while the style of music she seeks is once again free of pastiche.

What’s the music like?

Immediately memorable. If you’ve watched the drama unfold, you will know that the music is an integral part of proceedings – as indeed is silence. The director’s judicious use of silence means the tension builds to unexpected heights, momentarily relieved – or even enhanced – by the music.

This is because Wiseman catches Cromwell’s many predicaments with uncanny accuracy. From the haunting, pure sound of Grace Davidson‘s soprano in the refrains, there is an eerie and almost otherworldly countenance given to the music.

Using the titles assigned to the episodes, Salvage has an especially profound cello solo. Serious in tone, almost oppressive at times. The ominous drum strokes on The Image Of The King are striking and fateful, the cor anglais with an ominous tone as Cromwell’s thoughts are aired in musical form. Man of Sorrows is dramatically essayed by the viola, while Forgiveness and The Leper’s Spit end on high drama, in a frenzy of strings.

Does it all work?

Yes. Wiseman has an uncanny ability for scene setting and character profiling, and Wolf Hall as a drama is all the more effective for her contributions.

Is it recommended?

Very much so. This is dramatic music but written with remarkable restraint and clarity. Debbie Wiseman has built on the success of the first Wolf Hall with music of poise and no little power.

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Published post no.2,396 – Wednesday 18 December 2024

On Record – Orchestra New England, Orquesta Sinfónica de Navarra / James Sinclair – Ives: Orchestral Works (Naxos)

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Ives
Four Ragtime Dances (1902-04, rev. 1916)
Fugue in Four Keys on ‘The Shining Shore’ (c1903)
The Pond (c1906, rev, c1912-13)
The Rainbow (first version, 1914)
An Old Song Deranged (c1903)
Skit for Danbury Fair (c1909, real. Sinclair)
The Gong on the Hook and Ladder or Fireman’s Parade on Main Street (c1911, rev. 1934)
Chromâtimelôdtune (c1923, real. Singleton)
Tone Roads – no.1 (c1913-14); no.3 (c1911/13-14)
Set of Incomplete Works and Fragments (ed. Singleton/Sinclair, 1974)
March no.2, with ‘Son of a Gambolier’ (c1892)
March no.3, with ‘My Old Kentucky Home’ (c1893)
March ‘The Circus Band’ (c1898-99, rev. 1932-33)
Arrangements (1896-97) – Schubert: Marche militaire in D, D733 No. 1 (1818). Schumann: Valse noble, Op. 9 No. 4 (1834-35). Schubert: Impromptu in C minor, D899 No. 1 (1827)

Orchestra New England, Orquesta Sinfónica de Navarra (arrangements) / James Sinclair

Naxos American Classics 8.559954 [75’43”]
Editions John Kirkpatrick, Jacques-Louis Monod, James Sinclair, Kenneth Singleton and Richard Swift
Producers Neely Bruce, Jan Swafford Engineers Benjamin Schwarz with Jonathan Galle and Gonzalo Noqué

Recorded 24/25 October 2023 at Auditorio Barañaín, Pamplona-Navarra, Spain (arrangements), 12-14 March 2024 at Colony Hall/Choate Rosemary Hall, Wallingford CT, USA

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Naxos continues its long-term series devoted to the orchestral music of Charles Ives with this volume of shorter pieces and arrangements, several of them recorded for the first time and conducted by James Sinclair, whose involvement with the composer now stretches back across 50 years.

What’s the music like?

Miniatures for a variety of forces are found right across the four decades of Ives’s composing and range from unformed experiments to perfectly realized exemplars of his idiom. Many of these were collated in the dozen or so Sets that Ives assembled at various stages in his career (recorded on Naxos 8.559917) while there are various others which resist any such compiling, and these can mostly be found here – often in critical editions prepared by a formidable team of Ives scholars, hence rounding out the picture of his creativity in the most immediate terms.

Written at the outset of the genre’s golden age, the Four Ragtime Dances neatly complement each other as regards form and content; elements from each finding their way into the second movement (The Rockstrewn Hills) from the Second Orchestral Set, which builds upon their anarchic humour accordingly. Following the shimmering polytonal ambivalence of the Fugue on ‘The Shining Shore’, the unworldly evocations The Pond and The Rainbow find Ives at his most intimate and confessional – as does the admittedly more genial An Old Song Deranged. Not so Skit for Danbury Fair, its inherent iconoclasm finding greater focus in the graphically descriptive The Gong on the Hook and Ladder or contrasting Tone Roads Nos. 1 and 3 which embody Ives’s thinking on indivisibility of life and music in the most uncompromising terms.

It was once thought Chromâtimelôdtune might be the missing Tone Road No. 2, yet this late and possibly incomplete piece is likely an acerbic response to the Modernism emerging from post-war Europe which seemingly preoccupied Ives in those twilight years of his composing. The three song-based Marches date from an earlier and ostensibly more carefree phase, their debunking couched in humorous terms, while the Set of Incomplete Works and Fragments is a judiciously conceived entity that should not have had to wait 50 years for its first recording. The orchestrations are from Ives’s study with Horatio Parker at Yale: that of Schubert’s First Marche Militaire and Schumann’s Valse noble (from Carnaval) are expert but anonymous, that of Schubert’s First Impromptu results in a ‘theme and variations’ of striking prescience.

Does it all work?

Yes, inasmuch that the effectiveness of these pieces largely depends on the conviction of their performers and, with Sinclair at the helm, this can be taken for granted. As can the excellence of Orchestra New England in repertoire it has often been playing for decades, and if Orquesta Sinfónica de Navarra might appear an unlikely choice for Ives’s undergraduate arrangements, it acquits itself admirably. The sound throughout is unexceptionally fine, and Sinclair’s own annotations are succinctly informative as to the genesis and context of some intriguing music.

Is it recommended?

Indeed, this is a necessary addition to a valuable series – hopefully to be continued before too long with recordings of the Fourth Symphony and Universe Symphony as partially realized by David Porter, of which Sinclair gave a memorable account at the Aldeburgh Festival in 2012.

Listen & Buy

For buying options, you can visit the Naxos website – or listen to the recording on Tidal below:

Click on the names for more information on conductor James Sinclair, Orchestra New England, Orquesta Sinfónica de Navarra and the Charles Ives Society.

Published post no.2,382 – Wednesday 4 December 2024

In concert – Pocket Ellington @ The Vortex

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Alex Webb (piano, musical director), Tony Kofi (tenor saxophone), Alan Barnes (saxophones/clarinet), David Lalljee (trombone), Andy Davies (trumpet), Dave Green (double bass) and Winston Clifford (drums)

The Vortex, London, 14 December 2024

by John Earls. Photo credit (c) John Earls

One might think at first that the idea of a ‘Pocket Ellington’ – big band jazz played by a smaller ensemble – is something of a contradiction if not illogical. But then there’s the tunes and then there’s this particular group of musicians (under the musical direction of Alex Webb) and their love of the music.

Duke Ellington’s stature and influence as a pianist, composer and band leader is pretty much unsurpassed. Miles Davis is supposed to have said “At least one day out of the year all musicians should just put their instruments down, and give thanks to Duke Ellington”. So it was fascinating to see and hear this seven piece band interpret some of the best big band charts there are.

Three of the Ellington compositions played – Main Stem, What Am I Here For and Happy Go Lucky Local – feature on his Piano in the Background album which contains the following lines in Irving Townsend’s sleeve notes: “The piano used for this album has three more keys than regular pianos, allowing Duke to play ninety-one keys instead of eighty-eight. He wants you to know that he played them all madly”. I assume Alex Webb’s piano had the standard number of keys but I was reminded of this quote with some of his playing and the enthusiasm and respect for the music that was on display from the rest of the band.

Mood Indigo featured some raspy trumpet from Andy Davies and smoky tenor saxophone from Tony Kofi as well as Alan Barnes – “more reeds than you can shake a stick at” according to Webb – playing saxophone and clarinet.

As well as compositions by Ellington there was also a nod to other artists influenced by him. Thelonious Monk’s Ruby, My Dear and Monk’s Dream were combined in a fantastic Ruby, My Dream medley and Charles Mingus’ Boogie Stop Shuffle featured some terrific mute trombone by David Lalljee who also went full throttle on Gil Evans’ Las Vegas Tango. The rhythm section of Dave Green (double bass) and Winston Clifford (drums) were solid throughout.

It wasn’t just full-on swing either. Come Sunday (from Ellington’s Black, Brown and Beige suite) was smooth and gorgeous with the horns in lovely collective harmony and the ballad Day Dream enchanting.

Day Dream is a Billy Strayhorn composition and not surprisingly, given that Strayhorn was Ellington’s great songwriting collaborator and friend, there were a number of other Strayhorn tunes in the set. These included a moving Blood Count which was the last finished piece that Strayhorn wrote. It features on the terrific album of Strayhorn tunes by Ellington and his Orchestra …And His Mother Called Him Bill recorded in 1967 after Strayhorn’s death. On the album the saxophone is played by Johnny Hodges for whom Strayhorn often wrote – “We have our own Johnny Hodges” said Webb acknowledging Alan Barnes’ affecting rendition. (Apparently, Ellington never played the tune again after the recording session.)

The set finished with – what else? – the Ellington Orchestra’s signature tune Take the “A” Train (another Strayhorn composition). It was a great version of a great tune that has a great story (the title refers to the opening words with which Ellington gave Strayhorn directions to get his house by subway but there’s more to it than that). It was a fitting end to a wonderful night’s live music paying tribute to one of the greats.

John Earls is Director of Research at Unite the Union. He posts on Bluesky and tweets / updates his ‘X’ content at @john_earls

Published post no.2,395 – Monday 16 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