CITY OF BIRMINGHAM CHOIR & CBSO RBC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

SYMPHONY HALL HHHHI

The arresting opening fanfare of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony (1910) announces not only the vast ocean (“Behold, the sea itself”) but arguably the arrival of this much-loved of English composers onto the world’s stage, since this was the ‘late-to-bloom’ composer’s breakthrough work.

And the City of Birmingham Choir can claim a special connection given that Vaughan Williams himself conducted them in a performance of the symphony, again with the CBSO, at Birmingham Town Hall in 1955. This no doubt provided some additional motivation since the choir were on fine form here, with strongly projected diction in the opening movement’s joyous depiction of ships and sailors, appropriately ‘fleet of foot’ in the scherzo, but with a consistently sweet, blended tone in the more lyrical passages throughout.

Balance is often a problem in this extensive musical canvas, and the singers occasionally became submerged in the fuller tutti sections, but nonetheless they heroically made their mark, their commitment never in doubt.

Baritone Benson Wilson could perhaps have had more projection in passages where he sang alone, but his warm-toned voice was well matched with soprano Alexandra Lowe, both soloists effortlessly floating their intertwined lines with a luminosity that was spellbinding in the symphony’s expansive final movement, The Explorers.

The CBSO captured the full colour gamut of Vaughan Williams’ rich orchestration, from the tidal ebb and flow in the strings, the sailors’ spirited sea shanties in the woodwind, to the inky blackness of the

“Beach at Night, Alone” (second movement) in the lower brass.

The symphony was given an assured, expansive reading by conductor Adrian Lucas – never overblown, although I would have welcomed a slightly less reserved approach to some of the more climactic moments. Fittingly, in his speech from the podium, Lucas looked to the future, referencing “the city choir’s first century of music” in this, their centenary year, just as Walt Whitman’s poetry on which the symphony is based finishes with the voyage to come.

The RVW ‘hors d’oeuvres’ served up in the first half were the Benedicite (1929) and the evergreen Fantasia on Greensleeves (1934), the former suitably dignified, the latter delivered with warm viola tone and idiomatic flute and harp.

ANTHONY BRADBURY

ROYAL BIRMINGHAM CONSERVATOIRE HHHII

It was surely clumsy planning to include two new piano concertos not only in the same programme but, even worse, both in the first half of that programme. It was also somewhat unfair to make the work of a relative newcomer follow the world premiere of a long-awaited piano concerto by a well-established composer already twice decorated, and performed at the Proms.

Errolyn Wallen’s Piano

Concerto teems with ideas, nodding happily to many of the 20th century’s greatest composers, and with a particular affinity with Gershwin’s example. Like the Piano Concerto of that composer, Wallen’s begins with urban busy-ness, like the Gershwin the second movement is bluesy, with a smoky trumpet solo (later mirrored by a solo cello).

Unlike Gershwin, however, this movement builds up a raunchy head of steam, delivered by the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Symphony Orchestra under Michael Seal with vigour and colour, all the while soloist

Rebeca Omordia collaborating and prompting with power and energy.

A brief interlude of primordial stirrings follows, before a celebratory finale, almost equally brief, pays homage to the soloist’s part Romanian roots, with Omordia responding deftly to Wallen’s exuberant exploration of the piano.

Another world premiere followed, The Louder the Birds Sing, by Angela Elizabeth Slater, a composer concerned about the environment and climate-change, and whose music is often inspired by her own poetry. This piece is spectral, gestural, the orchestra imaginatively explored, and all authoritatively controlled by conductor Yannick Mayaud.

Then came the world premiere of Slater’s own Piano Concerto, a 30-minute work with no real apparent structure to dictate its length, and one in which the relationship between piano and orchestra is more concertante than solo/tutti collaboration.

Subtitled “Tautening Skies”, another environmental poem by Slater, the concerto was composed for Laura Farre

Rozada, a PhD student at the RBC exploring memorising techniques, and she as soloist achieved miracles of mind and muscle memory, playing without music through this taxing half hour. The piece is certainly a good exercise in orchestral counting, brilliantly achieved under Mayaud, but the often choppy piano textures, the seemingly disparate snatches of orchestral material, failed to cohere – and there was no innate reason why this display ever had to stop.

CHRISTOPHER MORLEY