L. Boulanger, D’un matin de printemps; Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor; Walton, Symphony No. 1 in B flat minor. Alim Beisembayev, piano; Sinfonia of London, John Wilson conductor
I don’t think – I need to check – that I’ve ever heard the Sinfonia of London live before. I was very struck by the quality of their playing. Possibly it is partly me getting used to the very peculiar RAH acoustics, but I found the difference between the BBCSO on Friday and the SoL last night very striking. Theirs is not a plush European sound, like one of the German orchestras, but what I can perhaps describe as ‘muscular’ – very forthright; clear energetic playing, tight, the confident full sound of an orchestra that knows exactly what it’s doing. That’s not very clear, but the best I can do. There was some beautiful horn/oboe/trombone playing, the strings bloomed when they needed to (as in the Rachmaninov), there was a very energetic and effective timpani player (Walton) – all contributing to a full-bodied exciting sound.
So I want to make that clear, and also point to the effectiveness of John Wilson’s conducting, before writing that this concert was not as satisfying as I hoped it would be – which may be a question again of the RAH acoustics as much as anything else (but not entirely). The programme was a slightly odd one – none of the pieces really had much to do with each other, and seemed to have been positioned arbitrarily together (‘we’d better do Rachmaninov because it’s his anniversary, Lili Boulanger is a forgotten composer worth reviving , and the SoL/Wilson combination would be great for Walton 1’.)
The first piece was, frankly, a bit inconsequential – sort of sub-Debussy, sub-Ravel – though clearly written by someone very gifted. It would have been better to do a curtain-opener by Ireland, Britten, Vaughan Williams or similar. The Rachmaninov was, as you would expect, not less than very good. But somehow my heart in this very familiar music only seemed to lift when the orchestra was playing (the sound of them in the final reprise of the finale’s big tune was quite something, when they were let off the leash). The pianist (possibly again acoustics) seemed to have quite a small voice, and Wilson as far as I could see was quite focused on holding the orchestra back to enable him to be heard. Of course it was technically very well played (to the extent that I can tell) and there were some nice touches of phrasing, but (standing in the same spot as for the Yuja Wang concert, handily near to a railing to hold on to should my legs get tired) there didn’t seem to be enough projection, enough of a narrative arc, a sense of where the piece was going. I recalled that I’d heard Yuja Wang play this piece in May 2021 as lockdown lifted, and I remember that as a much more characterful reading). Alim Beisembayev of course is a young man in his early 20’s, with lots of time before him, but even so, given his background, you would have thought he would have had this piece as a central part of his repertoire and would have more ideas about it. Maybe he was just nervous, as a last minute replacement. Interestingly his encore was a transcription of the Infernal Dance from the Firebird, which sounded spectacular. It was an oddly contrasting performance – so much more confident.
The Walton was superbly played by the orchestra. Wilson was particularly good at carefully grading the dynamics which adds, for instance, to the impact of the grinding unresolved chords in the first movements so that its end was overwhelming. The crispness of the scherzo was superlative. My problems with this symphony come really with the last movement. Until that point, you can feel a fairly clear emotional trajectory in this work – an angry first movement, a vicious dissatisfied scherzo that continues that anger, and a heart-searching slow movement that seems to hint at an unresolved inner coldness, almost a sort of existential despair. It’s a cliché of programme notes, but nonetheless true, to say that the finale doesn’t really provide any sort of resolution to these issues, that Walton struggled with it, and finished it quite a bit after the composition of the other three movements. It’s exciting, certainly – those huge gong crashes, the second timpanist coming in before the end – and maybe in those old 1970’s performances Previn and the LSO made it work, but in this performance (and no fault of Wilson/SoL – who obviously realised the problem, and set off at quite a gallop so as not to linger), too much sounded like note-spinning, a triumphant blast that resolves nothing. That may, of course, be the point, but it doesn’t make for a very satisfying concert experience. Oh well……I shall look forward to SoL playing other works I enjoy more in the future (I remember being hugely impressed by their performance of the Korngold Symphony listening to a Prom at home a year or so ago).
John's musical journey 