LSO & Ladies of the chorus…. Barbican 29th April 2012

London Symphnoy Orchestra and Ladies of the Chorus.

Debussy: Three Nocturnes

Szymanowski: Violin Concerto No I  soloist  Christian Tetzlaff

Scriabin: Poem of Ecstasy (Symphony No 4)

Audiences differ from nmusical occasion to mucsical occasion. It’s a commonplace observation but as I rarely travel to purely orchestral occasions last Sunday’s audience seemed rather different to me….no worse or better for being so…different nevertheless.

The Barbican Hall for those of you who have never been is one of London’s finest. It was built for what Americans often refer to as ‘the Symphony’. Given that it was I’m uncertain as to why when ever there is an orchestra playing they now insist upon adding an apron to bring the players forward into the auditorium. I cannot believe it much affects the acoustic but it does create weird sight lines of bottoms backs and feet should you have the misfortune of choosing the wrong seat.

I didn’t know the two latter pieces but I do know Debussy\’s Nocturnes. They’re elusive, impressionist pieces: the first dreamily belongs to that half-world between sleeping and waking where realities are blurred into languid sweeps of melodic waves that break and trail off in distant dissonances. Somehow they make me think of Freud….which may itself be a Freudian slip. The Second is a racy, familiar structure of noisy rhythms and sounds  that echoes from fairs and circuses. It sounds much later than its date of composition in 1899…belonging in voice to the twentieth rather than nineteenth century. The third with its chorus of mysterious sirens, evoked cliff roads and a black Buick twisting and turning along them…film noire… black and white movies…cars full of cigarette smoke and ladies in shimmering Lamé evening dresses…racing along the wild coastlines with wilder seas crashing over rocks…..

Szymanowski was born in the Ukraine in 1882. The violin concerto composed in 1916 belongs to the twentieth century repertoire of classical music…full of Stravinsky-like rhythms and vivid orchestral colours and loud crescendos full of echoing percussion. And it includes some extraordinarily imaginative and demanding writing for violin.  Christian Tetzlaff played with a compelling energy and was entirely one with the musical score. He is absolutely fantastic virtuoso. He set the hall alight with his wonderful playing. That said the concerto itself did not light my fire…. it is not a piece I could not imagine listening to at home.

Finally after the interval came the short Symphony by Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin. It opens with a voluptuous flute motif that is finally picked up by the entire woodwind. The development of this phrase is halted by imperious trupmets that lead to the second motif. These two play back and forth, swirling and striving to be heard over one another until the entire orchestra builds into rivals plucking away at the tonalities of two different themes. Only occasionally does the entire orchestra come together in a shockingly loud crescendo which double repeats before it too fades away and back to the haunting opening phrases in an entirely minor key. Alexander Scriabin was born into an aristocratic family in Moscow. Sasha was shy and unsociable the programme notes say. He writes outside the aristocratic box but has the assurance of composition of a true aristocrat of music. The Scriabin was brilliantly played but honesty the piece over-plyed its cleverness. And how one sometimes just longed for the oomph of a fabulous tune….

I enjoyed the night….I was glad…as Perry might say…improved undoubtedly but….there you have it…but…the three letter word that marks the boundary between Purgatory and Heaven.

 

 

 

ansn

o

This entry was posted in Reviews. Bookmark the permalink.

Comments are closed.