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              BAVARIAN RADIO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

                                           Symphony Hall (11.11.25) *****

Just under 35 years ago I was here in this auditorium to review Simon Rattle conducting the CBSO playing their very first work in the opening concert of the hall he had inspired and which had been built thanks to the EEC, the vision of Birmingham City Council, and a few astute manoeuvrings by some influential local figures. We were all immediately bowled over by the clarity of the acoustic (indeed, the Gemini cartoon on the front page of next morning’s Birmingham Post showed a woman berating her husband for the hourly bleeping of his digital watch), and the opportunities offered by manipulation of the acoustic chambers and panels.

Now Sir Simon, Rattle brought his new orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony, back to Symphony Hall last Tuesday (perhaps an appropriate event on Armistice Day), playing that very first work, Stravinsky’s Firebird ballet score. The ovation which greeted his homecoming to a packed hall was such an expression of gratitude and recognition for all he had achieved for this city, and then we settled in silence (even more than necessary in this bat-eared hall) to listen to the music.

We in fact began with the Second Symphony of Robert Schumann (who had not been a frequent presence on Rattle’s CBSO programmes)., supple, flowing, its lines well-assimilated and judiciously balanced; chamber music writ large, in fact.

And then the Firebird, its macabre opening, basses, half pizzicato, half bowed, over an ominous bass drum roll taking us right back to that heady night on April 15 1991. What followed here was a feast of colour and articulation, strings now warmly nostalgic, now spiky with venom, and with an augmented brass section which snarled and arrested, Rattle dotting his trumpets around strategic places in this hall he knows so well.

After a terrifying Infernal Dance, shimmering near-silence from these remarkable strings ushered in a finale blazing with triumph. Acclaim was unquenchable, until Rattle spoke to us all, unmiked (how he knows this acoustic!), and simply said., “It’s so good to be back. Now we’ll all calm down with Faure’s La Fileuse”.

And that movement from Faure’s incidental music to Maeterlinck’s play Pelleas et Melisande, did just the trick, As they left the stage, desk-partners from this remarkable orchestra embraced each other, just as Rattle had embraced the concertmaster. I think complete strangers felt like doing the same after such a joyous evening.

Christopher Morley

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