My first concert back in the Bridgewater Hall since Feb 27 2020! I also went to the rehearsal, open to patrons of the Halle, on Wed 2 June, where the focus was on the Glinka and the Elgar.
The Halle sounded wonderful for the most part, despite, like the LSO (see a previous blog entry) having a reduced number of strings. The stage had been extended and the orchestral brass were placed in the Choir area. Again, I was struck by the sheer power of such an orchestra, even though not at full strength, after not hearing one close-up for such a long time. Sir Mark Elder explained in an aside to the invited audience during the rehearsal how the orchestra needed extra ‘courage’ in emotive moments like ‘Nimrod’ in the Enigma Variations – the strings, in particularly, because they have to sit separately and distanced from each other, and they’re not two to a desk, hear themselves play in a way they haven’t been able to before. They need extra courage to have the confidence to play out at big emotional moments and not be self-conscious
The Ruslan and Ludmilla overture was taken at quite a speed, and the violins’ quick-fire runs at the beginning were tremendously exciting. The Petrushka ballet music was next – and this I thought was a wonderful performance, a little slower than I have sometimes heard it which made it at times a lot closer to the Rite of Spring than some performances and accentuated the rhythmic drive. Woodwind and brass were all in great form – a world-class performance.
The ‘Enigma’ Variations is a Halle/Elder speciality, and I have heard them perform this piece several times over the past 20 years. It had been fascinating during the rehearsal seeing Sir Mark work with the strings on details of phrasing earlier in the piece, which made them wonderfully together and effective – and with some real portamenti coming in at the beginning. This whole performance was beautifully phrased – a really whispered start to ‘Nimrod’ and a crescendo at the end of that variation which was not brass-heavy and overbearing. The performance had tremendous bite in the fast variations….until the last movement, the Elgar self-portrait (though arguably the whole work is a self-portrait of a complex man). Here I felt Sir Mark took things a bit slowly at times, and this gave rise to one or two slight wobbles in the orchestra – they seemed to want to go faster at points, or some of them did (and it’s interesting that Elgar himself, in his Royal Albert Hall Orchestra recording of 1926, takes that last movement quite fast – though that could be because of the constraints of fitting music to the requirements of 78RPM discs. Against that, the nervous energy and intensity of the man you can see in those You-Tube’d 1920’s videos of Elgar with his dogs suggests that sort of faster speed)……. But this is to cavil – it was a great performance and a moving occasion – speeches, a standing ovation from the audience and the orchestra clapped the audience for their support during the pandemic. Memorable….Someone said that the real underlying ‘Enigma’ that Elgar spoke of as being the underpinning of the variations was perhaps the enigma of Elgar’s own personality. I think that makes sense.
John's musical journey 