BACK ROW BOYS STEAL THE LIMELIGHT IN GLASS CONCERTO

CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★
In rock music drummers are the butt of endless jokes, with internet sites listing hundreds of them. Not so in classical music where viola players are the designated target for banter. In orchestras timpani players suffer the lesser indignity of being tucked away in the back ranks and often taken for granted. What a delightful change to see Matthew Hardy and Toby Kearney, usually providing the orchestra's bedrock beat, as soloists in Philip Glass's Double Timpani Concerto. "The front of the stage is a very unfamiliar place for timpanists; indeed, timpani are probably the last instrument you’d expect to hear in a concerto," said Hardy. But courtesy of the master of minimalism's 2000 work - originally titled 'Concerto Fantasy for Two Timpanists and Orchestra' - they demonstrated versatility, vigour and imagination. In  the three-movement work Glass reinforces the standard orchestra with four percussionists employing sixteen instruments, freeing up the soloists to weave Glass's hypnotic lines, and occasional dynamic outbursts, while taking centre stage. The first movement is a scene-setter with Glass, as always, getting the maximum effect from the minimum of material, in this case a motif for strings and the timpanists gradually building to include the orchestra, the two soloists always in the action. The second movement is in total contrast with the soloists hushed, a distant trumpet sounding mournful, percussion supplying a throbbing nocturnal hum. In the concluding movement
Glass lets his soloists off the leash with Hardy and Kearney revelling in the demands of the cadenza which soared from hushed perpetual motion to deafening outbursts as Glass demanded constant pitch changes so that the soloists' feet on the pedals were as busy as their hands. Conductor Alpesh Chauhan maintained tight control of the subterranean rhythms and the pounding chorus of wood blocks to ensure Glass's musical climax had maximum impact. But the night belonged to the soloists who thoroughly deserved the enthusiastic audience applause.
The American composer Carlos Simon is the CBSO's man of the moment. In January we heard his 'Hellfighters’ Blues', celebrating the pioneering band of the 369th Infantry Regiment (known as the Harlem Hellfighters) tasked with boosting morale, they introduced jazz for the first time to British and French audiences. Next month Simon's  'Amen', evoking the exuberant experience of worship in African American Pentecostal churches, will feature in a concert at the CBSO Centre.  Here we had his 'Four Black American Dances' which also shows Simon's music bearing fruit from its roots in gospel music which he calls, "the exuberant outward expressions of worship". It's rich musical soil too, nurturing not only gospel but jazz, blues and soul music, from Aretha Franklin to Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus. The four short movements are vividly contrasted, the raucous 'Ring Shout' with its off-beat rhythms and ad hoc orchestral clapping; the elegiac 'Waltz', more 'Blue Mississippi' than 'Blue Danube' from the days when black people were not allowed entry to formal dances; the snare drum stars in the vigorous 'Tap'; climaxing in the exuberant celebratory 'Holy Dance' where Chauhan encouraged the CBSO to let loose in a bell-ringing bountiful bash. An important reminder that contemporary music can be fun rather than just angst.
The dance theme reached the empyrean in Rachmaninoff's farewell to music, his wonderful 'Symphonic Dances'. Much as I love his three symphonies this is surely his finest symphonic work, a distillation of an exile's love for his lost homeland, a lament for times past, with familiar themes and musical motifs woven into the fabric, the sinister ‘Dies Irae’, the composer's calling card, vying with the uplifting ‘Alleluia' from his choral 'Vespers'. The CBSO has a fine tradition of performing this work, it was one of Simon Rattle's crowning achievements with the orchestra - their 1984 recording shamefully deleted from the catalogue. If Chauhan's conducting never reached that exalted level it was still a very fine performance, and Kyle Horch's alto saxophone playing was delicious, a sinuous flow of pure melancholy. The central waltz, a ghostly dance of shades, was most effective and Rachmaninoff's close, as the soaring music triumphs over dark thoughts was as uplifting as one could wish.
Norman Stinchcombe