Conjuring up the franciscan spirit of Maxwell Davies
The years following a composer’s death can be tricky ones for their reputation. Britten suffered a little, Tippett more than a little. Shostakovich, by contrast, boomed, but thanks as much to a scandalous and contested “memoir” as to his music. It remains to be seen how Boulez and Maxwell Davies – the most notable composers to pass away in 2016 – will fare.
The best of Maxwell Davies’s music-theatrical works, such as
Eight Songs for a Mad King and The Lighthouse, seem safe. But there is a problem with his numerous symphonies, concertos and string quartets, in that there is simply so much high-quality material, and yet so little that clamours for attention above the rest.
The Trumpet Concerto is as good a place as any to start. The three movements were composed in preparation for a chamber opera on the story of St Francis, which in the end never came to fruition, and Maxwell Davies conceived the trumpet as the voice of Francis, transposed from sunny Umbria to windswept Orkney.
The Orcadian environment is the other story. At times it registers onomatopoeically, as when glissandos in the strings suggest seagulls harking to St Francis’s sermon; but it is also more subtly and pervasively present, as bleak, glowering textures evoke the landscape every bit as tellingly as Britten does his beloved East Anglia or Sibelius his Finnish forests.
A soloist of the stature of Håkan Hardenberger, who can get beyond the surface abrasiveness and make his lines sing, is a massive bonus, as is a conductor such as John Storgårds, who can balance the accompaniment with tact and authority. The BBC Philharmonic, partners in Hardenberger’s recording of the work some 15 years ago, and familiar with the idiom from Max’s years with them as conductor- in-residence, sounded completely at home. Before this, Storgårds gave a genial account of Nielsen’s Overture to Maskarade. True, there are those who take it a notch faster and make it fizz as though just uncorked. But this is music that is virtually guaranteed to lift the spirits, as it did here. It was in Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony that Storgårds showed his finest qualities. The long first movement was patiently unfolded: a little too patiently, perhaps, in the central phase, where Shostakovich’s own piano duet recording shows how effective it can be to loosen the reins. Sorrow rather than anger was the keynote here, and even the famously vitriolic scherzo was kept on a leash. After momentary uncertainty in the ensemble at the opening of the third movement, the central accumulation was impressive in its inevitability, and the finale drove home its message of self-assertion, defiance and survival. Amid much distinction from the BBC Philharmonic, the bassoon solos were outstanding – as characterful as I have ever heard them.