Kahchun Wong, conductor; Wu Wei, sheng; Nardus Williams, soprano; Susan Bickley, mezzo-soprano; Nicky Spence, tenor; William Thomas, bass; Hallé Choir, Matthew Hamilton choral director. Unsuk Chin, Su. Beethoven Symphony No.9, ‘Choral’
David Butcher, the Halle CEO, said before the beginning of this concert that Halle ticket sales were 33% up this season compared to the previous one and that’s a very good piece of news. Obviously Kahchun Wong is only one of a range of conductors working with the Halle but it is definitely a public endorsement of the new regime.
Unsuk Chin is a prolific South Korean composer, now based in Berlin. She was a self-taught pianist from a young age and studied composition at Seoul National University as well as with György Ligeti in Hamburg. I have not heard a great deal of her music – most recently I heard her cello concerto in Aldeburgh. Hers is not an easy compositional style to get your head around – I was interested to hear what this piece, based around an instrument called the sheng, would sound like…..Su was composed especially for this concert’s sheng performer, Wu Wei. A sheng is a Chinese mouth-blown polyphonic free reed instrument consisting of vertical pipes. It is one of the oldest Chinese instruments, with images depicting its kind dating back to 1100 BCE, according to Wikipedia. The nearest European equivalent to the sheng would be the mouth organ with some extra pipes .
The Unsuk Chin did not do much for me as a piece – I couldn’t get a sense of clear structure or progression. ‘Su’ means Air in ancient Egyptian (relevance??) and there was a sort of ethereal sense to the beginning and end, I guess, which I did like, while the polyrhythmic middle section was fun. But its main point, I guess, was to foreground the sounds of the sheng and the marvellous playing of Wu Wei, which was hugely enjoyable. Even better was a substantial encore by Wu Wei , which sounded contemporary, was more accessible and which obviously and wonderfully showed off his virtuosity. This was a real treat!
The Beethoven 9 which followed was very fine – one of the best I’ve heard live. There were several reasons for this. One was the careful lyrical sculpting of line in exchanges between particularly the woodwind and strings; the splitting of 1st and 2nd violins also helped with that sense of exchange. Second, although the overall approach was not slow the sense of lyrical line took precedence over an approach (adopted by some) of jagged nervous constant energy and surface excitement. The energy was there but seemed to come, as it were, from within rather than externally imposed – it seemed ‘natural’ I guess. The orchestral sound was very clear, with Wong encouraging the woodwind to sing out to balance other parts of the orchestra, particularly after the first big orchestral tutti with the Ode to Joy theme. I am pleased to report. after my comments about the recent LSO performance, that the slow movement did indeed start more slowly, with the knock-on effect of allowing the faster, later variations to sing, and not scamper. Tempi generally sounded ‘right’, not forced or self-conscious, and allowed both the first and last movements to be very exciting, with subtle rallentando emphasising key climactic moments. The timpani playing was of a piece with this approach – thrilling where needed but not with very hard sticks. The only criticism I would make was that perhaps the beginning of the first movement could have been more mysterious.
The Halle played very well indeed – a really stylish sound from the strings, including a very impressive double bass section. and an incredibly agile woodwind choir. The horns, with many tricky exposed passages, also did very well, with some beautiful soft playing at points. The choir, singing without scores (unlike the soloists – black mark) were very impressive, with all the difficult high passages sounding very strong. At some points the sopranos just soared – a wonderful sound. The soloists were at the back of the orchestra, sounding therefore a bit recessed, but were on paper and in reality a distinguished bunch, with Nicky Spence and Williams Roberts particularly notable – the latter is clearly making a great career for himself, and produced one of the best opening orations I’ve ever heard.
John's musical journey 