This was a truly absorbing concert, booked-ended by extracts from the Creatures of Prometheus ballet by Beethoven, a piece new to me for string orchestra by Sibelius – Rakstava – as well as two pieces by Ades – one a UK premiere – and Janacek’s Concertino
This is the sort of concert I probably wouldn’t have stirred myself to go to before lockdown, but a year and a quarter of being deprived of live orchestral music, and with further lockdowns being quite possible, makes a big difference in what you appreciate and are motivated to go to. And Ades is someone I’ve admired since I heard Asyla about 10 years ago and saw a cinema showing of the Exterminating Angel at Covent Garden – plus the first performance of ‘Dawn’ at the virtual Proms last year. I also have heard and enjoyed ‘Polaris’. As I have probably said somewhere before, ‘classical’ music in the UK seems to have gone off track for about 50 years. Composers born after Britten, and until those born in the mid-60’s, seem to have been obsessed by serialism and atonality to an extent that has made their works pretty difficult to understand and appreciate. I have repeatedly tried to find ways into Birtwhistle and Maxwell-Davies and not really succeeded very well (though Maxwell Davies Symphony No 5 maybe offers me a way in). Composers like Ades, MacMillan and Turnage seem not to feel bound by the orthodoxies of the 50’s and 60’s and are much more accessible, as well as having a much more eclectic approach to their sources of musical inspiration and assumed traditions. And, maybe, there’s more interest in some of the figures like Malcom Arnold and Robert Simpson from those ‘lost’ years who were sidelined at the time or not regarded as sufficiently on-message with contemporary developments. Anyway, the new Ades piece – ‘Shanty – over the sea’ – I will want to listen again to; it was an absorbing 10 minutes or so, a bit like Polaris in a sense, in that there was a repeated melody with all sorts of changes in texture and decorative background. The other Ades piece was Concerto Conciso – tougher music written when he was in his mid-20’s but very absorbing; one of the musicians described it as being constructed like a Swiss watch – small moving parts intricately inter-twined, and with two separate lots of beats in the bar happening simultaneously. It must be a nightmare to play!. I loved the bonkers Janacek Concertino, full of those repetitive phrases and rhythms you find in his late operas. Quite a lot of the music sounded like the Cunning Little Vixen! I was less struck with the Sibelius, which was pleasant enough but not very memorable, and seemed to meander somewhat. The Beethoven was performed very well by the Britten Sinfonia, who did some impressively fast and accurate-sounding string work in the overture; the final movement from the Beethoven, employing a theme that was reused in the last movement of the Eroica Symphony, bounced along very ….infectiousiy, if I may use that phrase…… And Ades also bounced on and off the stage for his various curtain calls very energetically, as though to show us 50 is the new 30. A really enjoyable concert!!
John's musical journey 