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 CBSO DELIVERS ANOTHER ELGAR TRIUMPH

CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★★

Great times for Elgarians. Last week we had his choral masterpiece ‘Gerontius’ .This week we were treated to a tremendously dramatic and virile performance of his greatest orchestral work the Symphony No. 1. While life has sped up considerably since its premiere in 1908 performances of the symphony have become considerably slower. It’s a fate also inflicted on ‘Nimrod’ from the ‘Enigma Variations’ which conductors Bernstein and Levine transformed from noble paean into a lugubrious dirge. Elgar’s 1931 recording of the symphony is a vigorously bracing 46-and-a-half minutes. By the 21st century Sir Colin Davis’s, just under 55 minutes, rendering the dynamic work torpid and flabby. Having seen Nicholas Collon conduct before I expected an Elgar with passion and drive – he did not disappoint. The symphony’s opening, basses and cellos, intoning the motto theme was like a giant’s footsteps ominously approaching, Collon building up the tension until it passes by fading into the distance, with Elgar’s “Nobilmente” direction always observed. The second movement, a scherzo in all but name, had immense swagger, with fine brass playing, with the quieter interludes hushed and tender. All great symphonies have a “deal breaker” moment – if the conductor and players get it wrong then the rest goes for nought. Here it’s the transition from the Allegro molto to the Adagio third movement, the passionate romantic heart of the symphony. Here it was (as it should be) magical, we are in a different realm – one of almost Mahlerian so-lovely-it-hurts beauty – without noticing the move. The rousing finale, unbuttoned energy, driving momentum rounded off an impressive orchestral display.

The old adage of using a sledgehammer to crack a nut came to mind when seeing that two of the world’s leading virtuosi were going to play Britten’s Double Concerto for Violin and Viola. Britten wrote it when a teenager in 1932 and couldn’t be bothered to finish it so little did he esteem the work. It waited until 1997 for a performance orchestrated by composer Colin Matthews. Could even the combined brilliance of violinist Vilde Frang and violist Lawrence Power make a case for this piece of neglected juvenilia? No, not really. I doubt if anyone could play it better and conductor Collon extracted every iota of drama and incident in the score but the thought remained that take away Britten’s name and it would have remained in a dusty drawer. There were passages of interest with an attention-grabbing opening from the horn (Elspeth Dutch) and the third movement started powerfully with timpani driving the orchestra on and exciting flurries from the soloists but it all ended anticlimactically. Frang and Power are regular musical partners and their dazzling encore was a far more rewarding discovery. The Norwegian composer Johan Halvorsen’s Passacaglia and Sarabande in G Minor with Variations on a Theme by Handel, from 1897, packs an enormous amount into just under nine minutes of fiery passion, gentle lyricism and scintillating interplay between the two players. A real joy to hear.

The CBSO launched the concert with an orchestral showpiece from Thomas Adès – a Collon favourite – with the ‘Hotel Suite’ of five dances from his opera ‘Powder Her Face’ a notorious succès de scandale from 1995. Adès has enormous facility as an orchestrator and revels in what in pop terms would be called a mash-up, a collision of styles depicting episodes from the debauched life of Margaret, the Duchess of Argyle. It’s fun spotting the originals: Gershwin’s jazzy woodwind glissandi, 1920s flappers doing the Charleston, Latin tango and a touch of Viennese violin schmaltz from leader Jonathan Martindale. Sections of the orchestra barracked and heckled each other and there was a sardonic ending, part whimper, part raspberry. The players seemed to enjoy it as much as we did.

Norman Stinchcombe

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