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| Joanna MacGregor & the BPO strings © Frances Marshall |
Mark Padmore (tenor)
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| Ruth Rogers leading the BPO strings © Frances Marshall |
Britten, Benjamin (1913-1976): Young Apollo, Op. 16
The Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra continued their successful season with a programme that allowed their string section to shine, and shine they did. With some of the richest string playing I’ve heard from them, they relished the warm Corn Exchange acoustic, and also showed their tight ensemble in some of the more complex rhythmic music this evening. And what a great programme, with the music of three English composers – Britten, Purcell and Downland – joining the great Scottish composer, James MacMillan.
So they began with Britten’s Young Apollo, with Music Director Joanna MacGregor at the keyboard. It’s a vibrant, energetic piece, composed in 1939 when the 26-year-old Britten was in New York, yet he withdrew it soon after its premiere, without saying why, and it wasn’t performed again until 1979, after his death. It’s hard to know why, as its bright, radiant energy certainly captures images of ‘the new dazzling Sun-god’, as Britten described Apollo, inspired by Keats’ Hyperion. MacGregor launched in with an incisive start, and the glassy string slides and scales against the virtuosic piano scales were full of vitality. The vibrant solo string quartet contrasted well with the full, luscious string sound, and the ensemble of the accelerating chords at the finish was spot on.
Mark Padmore, Alexei Watkins and the BPO
© Frances Marshal
Next up the strings were left to their own devices, with leader Ruth Rogers directing from the front desk in Britten’s arrangement of Purcell’s Chacony. Here their lush sound came to the fore, but also their ability to keep their precision alive when playing quietly. Just when the repeated variations that form the chaconne felt like they were becoming borderline aggressive, they dropped back to produce a more sensitive, quieter sound, and the slowing up of the quiet ending was well timed.
They were then joined by their Principal Horn player, Alexei Watkins and tenor Mark Padmore for Britten’s masterpiece, the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings. A cycle of eight short songs setting varied texts including Tennyson, Blake and Keats, it is bookended by a Prologue and Epilogue for the solo horn. Watkins’ opening Prologue, which exploits hand-stopping to produce natural, other-worldly harmonics, was secure and controlled, with an earthy rasp to the sound in places, and the off-stage Epilogue at the end was atmospherically eery. Padmore’s expressive communication of the texts was faultless, so no need to consult the texts in the programme here. His tone was equally expressive, with moments of tender fragility , such as in Pastoral, as well as evocative word-painting, as in Nocturne’s repeated ‘dying’, and the playfully decorative ‘excellently’ in Hymn to Diana. Occasionally, expressive projection was favoured over centring of intonation, such as on the repeated ‘lulling’ or at the highest end of the range, but communication of the dark moods and evocative texts had undeniable clarity throughout. Watkins’ fanfares in Nocturne, and shifts in and out of mute in the mournful Elegy were impressive, and he demonstrated considerable power in Dirge. MacGregor directed the strings with clarity and energy, with a gleaming, glassy sound in Nocturne, and strong articulation in Dirge.
Joanna MacGregor’s arrangements of three short Dowland pieces provided a delightful opening to the concert’s second half, with solo violins and viola joining the double bass and cello pizzicato line in Forlorn Hope Fancy, soon to be joined by running lines from the piano, the arrangement cleverly building to a richly textured conclusion. In Mr Dowland’s Midnight, MacGregor uses the pizzicato double basses again, this time layered with jazzy piano chords and then string surges. A muted quartet of two cellos, viola and violin features, with noodling from the piano on top. The final Can She Excuse for strings alone provided a lively rhythmic contrast to end the set.
Joanna MacGregor (snare drum and piano)
© Frances Marshall
James McMillan’s Piano Concerto No. 2, which ended the evening’s concert, was a revelation to me, an exciting piece full of humour and playfulness but also complexity and diversity of moods. There’s the McMillan trademark use of Scottish tunes, and the Ceilidh that always seems to go off the rails. When MacGregor has conducted the full orchestra from the piano in the past, it hasn’t always proved totally successful, particularly in larger scale concerto works. However, here, the smaller forces of just strings needed less controlling, especially with Rogers’ strong leadership. Joanna still managed some left hand conducting whilst playing the solo part in the right hand, however, and everything felt extremely tight and energetic throughout. The opening movement, Cumnock Fair, is full of cartoon-like, playful renditions of various 18th century tunes, and there is plenty of opportunity for the strings to have fun. At one point, the violins’ drunken melody gets louder and slightly out of hand, and the BPO violins judged and controlled this well. Melodies collided as the piano tried to pick out the quote of music from Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor’s famous Mad Scene, which repeatedly went off the rails (in a good, Ravel’s La Valse kind of way), before the sliding strings came over all atmospherically Celtic. As the chaos develops into full on Ceilidh in the final movement, there was enthusiastic foot stamping and whoops from the players, with slaps and slides, and the solo piano ringing out on top. Joanna even switched to beating rhythm on the snare drum before sliding down into the depths of the keyboard, and then still trying to assert the Lucia music. Rising piano flourishes built with a stomping string reel, bringing everything to a sudden raucous conclusion.
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