CBSO throws caution to the wind
CBSO Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Overture, concerto, symphony. The opening concert of the CBSO’s new season could not have been more safely traditional in form. But in terms of content it was decidedly risky. If you start with Beethoven’s Egmont overture and follow it with his first piano concerto, the second half better have something that measures up to those two tremendous masterworks. Here, we were offered a combination of English nostalgia and English empty bluster.
Still the first half was so good one almost forgave the CBSO for its lopsided and unsatisfying programming. The conductor was Ed Gardner, who has a way of bringing out the best in the players. The opening chords of
Egmont were brusque, and the answering phrases in the woodwind were beautifully shaped. One had the sense of the music labouring under a massive weight, eventually thrown off in the joyous final minutes.
Steven Osborne gave a similar sense of throwing caution to the wind. He can be the most fastidious and careful of pianists, and what made this performance so thrilling was that these qualities lived side-by-side with reckless derring-do. The cadenza of the first movement (where the soloist gets a chance to spin some virtuoso solo fantasies on the melodies) was especially telling. With ostentatious cleverness, it combined things we’d already heard, then seemed to invite the orchestra to join in, and then unexpectedly went back to the first melody but in the wrong key. It was gruffly humorous in a properly Beethovenian way, but who composed it? I suspect it was Osborne himself.
After all that, the gentle nostalgia of George Butterworth’s Rhapsody on his own A Shropshire Lad might have seemed a terrible come-down. In fact, the performance was so beautifully shaped one didn’t mind the lowering of the emotional temperature.
As for the 2nd Symphony by William Walton, words almost fail me. Walton’s brilliant orchestration, rich to the point of being slightly nauseous, and the orchestra’s full-blooded, hectically energised performance only served to prove that cheap ideas dressed in showy gowns are still cheap.