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 THE CBSO BENEVOLENT FUND CONCERT: GREAT CAUSE, GREAT MUSIC!


CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★★
Who is the greatest storyteller of all time? Homer, Shakespeare or Dickens perhaps? None of the above. It's a young girl of immense pluck and ingenuity called Scheherazade who captivated King Shahryar, murderously disgruntled at the infidelity of his first wife, with her ability to tell him a captivating tale every evening for 1,001 nights. She employed the two great rules of entertainment; the cliff-hanger ending, and "always leave your audience wanting more", spinning out the yarns of Aladdin and Sinbad the Sailor. She saved her life, got her man and became the inspiration for Rimsky-Korsakov's wonderfully colourful and gloriously romantic orchestral suite 'Scheherazade'. The composer gave the four sections titles, Sinbad is named in the first, but there's no strict programme, and he wrote, "All I desired was that the hearer, if he liked my piece as symphonic music, should carry away the impression that it is beyond a doubt an Oriental narrative of some numerous and varied fairy-tale wonders". He succeeded and we're free to be dazzled, intrigued, seduced and amazed by one of classical music's great orchestrators with a rich and vivid musical palette. The score is a perfect fit for conductor Kazuki Yamada's extrovert style and he coaxed, cajoled and sometimes paused to admire this warm-hearted and scintillating performance from the CBSO. Noting down ear-catching contributions I found I'd listed every section and its leader, so take a collective bow CBSO. Rimsky-Korsakov seizes our attention immediately with a stentorian outburst from brass and basses telling us all we need to know of the King's anger. Then comes his inspired touch, enter Scheherazade embodied in music by the orchestra's first violin, supported by the harp. It's a great tune, immediately memorable and a leitmotif we will follow through the work. It's a gift for every first fiddle and guest leader Nathaniel Anderson-Frank's achievement was to make a musical theme into a character. Old-style performances have Scheherazade swathed in vibrato and portamento, like a harem girl with too much lipstick and mascara, but here she was persuasive and beautiful but with modestly downcast eyes. Later she gets carried away with the excitement of the tale, some nifty spiccato from Anderson-Frank, and at her apotheosis at the close the theme spins heavenwards, and love has conquered the King, providing the perfect ending. 'The Festival at Bagdad' finale saw the CBSO go into overdrive, with trumpet fanfares, thrashing timpani and sections battling with each other, presided over by Yamada as whirling dervish. The packed audience, a fine turnout, loved this deservedly celebratory end to the CBSO's Benevolent Fund Concert. The Fund was set up to provide financial help and support for the orchestra's active and honorary members in times of need. It contributes towards treatments and therapies, bereavement relief and support for those on long-term sick leave. Georgia Hannant, Chair of the Committee, CBSO Benevolent Fund, and a member of the second violins, told us of the Fund's important work and that everyone on and off the stage at the concert had given their services for free.
The concert was off to a rip-roaring start with Berlioz's 'Le Carnaval Romain' overture, of often breath-taking action and a high-energy workout for every section of the orchestra. Yamada is an exceptional Berlioz conductor, his 2024 CBSO performances of the 'Symphonie Fantastiqe' and 'The Damnation of Faust', a tour-de-force from the CBSO Choruses, are the best I've heard at Symphony Hall, and that includes top-level competition. The overture has some tricky gear changes, it's a failed operatic score salvaged and compressed into ten minutes, with bustling chaotic opening switching into winsome romantic mode with a sinuous cor anglais theme winningly played by Rachael Pankhurst. The climax was judiciously delivered just on the right side of hysteria.
In between, our musical palettes were cleansed by Mozart's Piano Concerto No.23 in A major, a lesson into how to achieve the maximum of musical beauty and emotional depth with the minimum of fuss, the art that disguises art. Steven Osborne, a brilliant pianist with an acute ear for nuance and subtlety and without an ounce of virtuoso flash and self-regard, was the ideal interpreter. The amiable opening Allegro bustled along nicely with Mozart's piano line getting filigree decoration from the wind players, the orchestra, without the trumpets and timpani, stays within a deliberately limited emotional range. The Allegro assai finale is a genial and energetically sunny conclusion with Osborne and the orchestra bowling along happily together. The concerto's power and essence is the central Adagio, a wonder in Mozart's extensive compendium of musical wonders. It is his only movement in F sharp minor and as bleak an evocation of emotional desolation as any in music. Osborne's notes, some hanging in the air as if wondering where to go next, the spaces between them made articulate, were chilling. Not even Mozart's  'Zauberflöte' aria for Pamina, 'Ach, ich fühl's, es ist verschwunden' touches such depths. Magnificent.
Norman Stinchcombe
Further details on how to donate to the CBSO Benevolent Fund can be found at www.cbsobenfund.org.uk

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