MUSIC REVIEWS
RSNO NAKED CLASSICS, JUST for a second on Thursday night, I wondered if Naked Classics presenter Paul Rissmann had taken one step too far into musical technicalities – the under-the-bonnet stuff – in his analysis of Stravinsky’s ballet, The Firebird. When he started rolling out some of the nuts and bolts of the music, about major and minor thirds, chromatic glissandi, tritones, harmonic glissandi, ghost notes and suchlike, I might have perceived a slight sense of disconnect behind me and to my left.
Still, there was plenty to engage the audience at the RSNO’s latest (and thought-provoking) Naked Classics project. The subject was the full Firebird, not the usual concert suite. The narrative was a dream, and the ballet connections revealed some of the tensions that surrounded the creation of the work.
The musical analysis section of the night was always engaging, though best when it was interactive (I made a total cod of clapping Stravinsky’s irregular and asymmetrical rhythms) and when comment and demonstration were offered by leader Bill Chandler, conductor Christian Kluxen and two of the horn players.
The second half, uninterrupted performance of the piece, enhanced by the narrative structural projections, was outstanding in its colour, its evocative atmosphere and the lavishness of the presentation, with the full complement of harps and augmenting brass all over the auditorium, and the RSNO playing it as the vibrant, glitteringlycoloured piece that it is. Clearly, it electrified its audience which roared approval. My own moment of the night was when a woman, exiting the hall, declared she loved the piece: “It had great beats.” I know precisely what you mean, madam.
BBC SSO/BBC SINGERS, I IMAGINE I must be a reasonably seasoned concert-goer; but every so often something comes along and gives me such a wallop I feel I’m experiencing the impact of the music for the first time. It happened on Thursday when the BBC SSO was joined by the BBC Singers for a brace of concerts in Glasgow and Ayr.
I know the legendary status of the BBC Singers. They are an elite, professional ensemble of singers and of course I’ve heard them before, live and on radio. But, hand on heart, none of this prepared me for the musical equivalent of a slap in the face at their astounding performance with the SSO, conductor Bernard Labardie, and a brilliant quartet of young soloists, of Haydn’s Mass In Time Of War, a performance which had me transfixed by the beauty, power, clarity, intensity, and the sheer sense of purpose and focus with which the BBC Singers and the young soloists brought the Mass so vividly to life.
It was a performance of absolute unity, with a flawlessly balanced and immaculately articulate choral sound; a sound, moreover, that not once generated the impression of an ensemble at full tilt: there was, in every movement, whether the music was fast, slow, loud or soft, a sense of understatement, of an ensemble with masses in reserve. And what emerged from that was an account of the Mass which reflected the conciseness and succinctness of Haydn’s great musical creation: it is a piece that is absolutely to the point.
Labardie’s Mozart 39, however, was a bit less to the point: too fussy, almost prissily so, in its over-polished expressivity.
SCO, WHY is every solo artist suddenly a music director as well? Is it ego ? Or an anti-conductor thing? They’re all at it: Leif Ove Andsnes has his first volume of Beethoven concertos out, where he directs the Mahler Chamber Orchestra as well as being soloist; Joshua Bell is now recording Beethoven symphonies, directing from the front seat of the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields. Gosh: the day might come when I have to write a piece defending the role of the conductor.
On Friday the SCO fielded one of its favourite pianists, Piotr Anderszewski, playing and directing the SCO in two of Mozart’s greatest piano concertos: K488 in A major, and K503 in C major. Something interesting emerged. You won’t like it, and nor will the adulatory crowd in the near-capacity house.
Anderszewski is a wonderful pianist. He’s been here many times, playing everything from Szymanowski to Mozart. He’s a real poet, quite the opposite of the barnstorming showman. But his swimming technique in directing the SCO, while playing the concerto, just didn’t do it for me. The audience went ga-ga; I went home, glum.
K488 is all about sunshine, while K503, big in gesture, big in scale, is meatily symphonic. Neither worked, in those senses. They came over merely as anodyne, featureless and practically perfectly-played pieces. Who cares? Give us a bit of character. Just play it, and get a conductor in to direct the orchestra. Or if it’s the SCO, let the leader direct. Soloists, please do what you do and just play the damn piano.
The SCO, with leader Alexander Janiczek, also played Schubert’s Italian Style Overture and Beethoven’s Great Fugue.