Impassioned playing holds the irony in check in a trio of concerts
Of three absorbing orchestral concerts, the second, by the BBC SO at the Barbican, did its unintentional best to throw the expressive certainties of the other two into doubt. It could have been devised to illustrate musical irony, placing three of the most formally subversive composers side by side.
First came Haydn’s Symphony No 103, a work that deflects well-trained expectations from bar one: the drum roll that gives the piece its nickname, blasted out here by Marney O’Sullivan. It is often played quietly, so the uncertainty as to what dynamic will be chosen makes a double surprise of the adagio introduction, and a treble is provided when the whole thing, drum roll and all, returns near the first movement’s end. The introduction turns ironically into a coda, and a comparable ambiguity is the allegro finale — a rondo, but with essentially only a single theme: a rondo varied by itself.
This performance — somehow all the more involving because the conductor, Alexander Vedernikov, stood level with the players — was followed by two Soviet-era pieces, Alfred Schnittke’s Viola Concerto (1985) and Shostakovich’s Symphony No 6 (1939), in both of which the intensity of the initial largo seems programmatically undermined by the two movements coming after. Schnittke’s language becomes increasingly unstable as an assortment of parodies fills the musical space, leaving no sense of an expressive centre; while the ardour of Shostakovich’s opening span is mocked by the unlikely gambit of a pair of scherzos that turn frankly humorous. Of course, ironic undermining is itself undone to the extent that the performances are captivating. These assuredly were: Lawrence Power a soloist of aptly searing seductiveness in the Schnittke, and Vedernikov’s Shostakovich unobtrusively masterly.
At the RFH, the Philharmonia’s concert with the young Finnish conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali included a work by the Swede Rolf Martinsson (b1956) — his Trumpet Concerto No 1, whose astonishingly charged and sustained tuttis took expressivity to a bracing pitch, but never toppled into irony or even expressionism. At the crest of his textural waves, he prefers to swell into a kind of film music, and a tonal good-humouredness prevails. It is a far cry from the two Russians, and perhaps difficult to believe in altogether, though Hakan Hardenberger’s solo trumpet, like Power’s viola, could make you accept anything.
Rouvali conducted like a whirling dervish, his legs, never mind his hands, never still; arms incessantly in a mad, shamanistic semaphore. But he is the real thing: music unmistakably flows from him. His accounts of Sibelius’s tone poem Lemminkainen’s Return and Symphony No 2 were as cogent as you could want, yet full of fire.
Source.
Of three absorbing orchestral concerts, the second, by the BBC SO at the Barbican, did its unintentional best to throw the expressive certainties of the other two into doubt. It could have been devised to illustrate musical irony, placing three of the most formally subversive composers side by side.
First came Haydn’s Symphony No 103, a work that deflects well-trained expectations from bar one: the drum roll that gives the piece its nickname, blasted out here by Marney O’Sullivan. It is often played quietly, so the uncertainty as to what dynamic will be chosen makes a double surprise of the adagio introduction, and a treble is provided when the whole thing, drum roll and all, returns near the first movement’s end. The introduction turns ironically into a coda, and a comparable ambiguity is the allegro finale — a rondo, but with essentially only a single theme: a rondo varied by itself.
This performance — somehow all the more involving because the conductor, Alexander Vedernikov, stood level with the players — was followed by two Soviet-era pieces, Alfred Schnittke’s Viola Concerto (1985) and Shostakovich’s Symphony No 6 (1939), in both of which the intensity of the initial largo seems programmatically undermined by the two movements coming after. Schnittke’s language becomes increasingly unstable as an assortment of parodies fills the musical space, leaving no sense of an expressive centre; while the ardour of Shostakovich’s opening span is mocked by the unlikely gambit of a pair of scherzos that turn frankly humorous. Of course, ironic undermining is itself undone to the extent that the performances are captivating. These assuredly were: Lawrence Power a soloist of aptly searing seductiveness in the Schnittke, and Vedernikov’s Shostakovich unobtrusively masterly.
At the RFH, the Philharmonia’s concert with the young Finnish conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali included a work by the Swede Rolf Martinsson (b1956) — his Trumpet Concerto No 1, whose astonishingly charged and sustained tuttis took expressivity to a bracing pitch, but never toppled into irony or even expressionism. At the crest of his textural waves, he prefers to swell into a kind of film music, and a tonal good-humouredness prevails. It is a far cry from the two Russians, and perhaps difficult to believe in altogether, though Hakan Hardenberger’s solo trumpet, like Power’s viola, could make you accept anything.
Rouvali conducted like a whirling dervish, his legs, never mind his hands, never still; arms incessantly in a mad, shamanistic semaphore. But he is the real thing: music unmistakably flows from him. His accounts of Sibelius’s tone poem Lemminkainen’s Return and Symphony No 2 were as cogent as you could want, yet full of fire.
Source.
Some people cannot be serious
Paul DRIVER, The Sunday Times, February 7, 2016
