MARTINŮ  Nonet; VITKAUSKAITÉ Nanga (world premiere); DVOŘÁK  Piano Quintet No.2 in A Op.81: Ensemble 360

This was an enjoyable concert that involved most of the members of what I guess you might call a chamber music collective, Ensemble 360 (declaration of an interest: one of them is a near neighbour of mine).

The Martinu work was very easy on the ear and clearly for the musicians huge fun to play. It is scored for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, viola, cello, and double bass. These nine distinct instrumental voices interact with one another in a very conversational sort of way – words like neo-classical, optimistic, and expressive come to mind. I am not sure I found it very memorable but the andante was particularly attractive – the programme note suggests it’s a lament for Martinu’s Czech homeland that he never went back to after emigrating to America before the war

I liked the new piece by Ruta Vitkauskaité, a (I think) Lithuanian composer now resident in the UK. It combined strange very high harmonics on the violin and cello, odd slapping sounds from both (and occasionally the piano as well) together with motor rhythms and at the same time some lyrical passages, sequences seeming to follow a similar pattern like waves. I am not entirely sure I understood the trajectory, but I never lost interest (in fact I was more gripped by it than by the Martinu). There was a particularly effective lament/cadenza for cello near the end , which Gemma Rsoefield played very well. If I hadn’t had a train to catch and dinner to eat, I would have stayed for the Q and A with the composer afterwards (she was in the audience).

The Dvorak piece was obviously more approachable than the other two. It was extremely well played. Although very attractive, I found the second movement, the Dumka (a Ukrainian dance) rather over-stayed its welcome. However the energy of and players’ commitment to the finale made for a very rousing end to the concert

All of these works were new to me – in many ways, the best sort of concert!

Halle Orchestra – Lera Auerbach, Icarus; Walton, Cello Concerto; Copland, Symphony No.3 Gemma New conductor • Laura van der Heijden cello

I hadn’t come across the name of Lera Auerbach before. She’s a prolific Russian/American artist, not only a composer but also a conductor, pianist, a published poet and an exhibited visual artist. Her short piece, ‘Icarus’, which started the concert, I found very attractive – there were understandable melodic fragments depicting Icarus, the earth he leaves, his ascent and descent, and the emotional journey  – as in the story – was vividly portrayed with lots of shimmering colour (including, in the splendid sounds of the very large orchestra, the remarkable theremin, the first time I think I have heard this live, which captured some of the unearthly elements of Icarus’ story). The huge orchestra was handled by Auerbach with delicacy and imagination. I’ll look out for her name in future.

Jumping to the last work, the Copland Symphony No 3 is a work I think I’ve heard once but never live. To my mind it is frankly not very good. Its melodic content is uninteresting, it relies on excessive noise to make its not very understandable points and meanders between arbitrary climaxes. There’s little sense of either an emotional journey as with the Icarus piece or the sort of logical concision of a Beethoven or Schoenberg. The only memorable theme, the Fanfare for the Common Man, is bolted on to the symphony from an earlier work. When you compare this work with contemporary symphonies of the mid 1940’s – Shostakovich 8, Prokofiev 5, Vaughan Williams 6,, it is a pretty paltry specimen of a symphony, in my view. Looking at it say alongside Malcom Arnold’s 5th Symphony of a few years later, the latter seems a positively blazing masterpiece! The Halle made the best possible case for the Copland – some spectacular trumpet and flute playing. Gemma New made the best of a bad job…..I think I shall ignore this work in future. I should add that the RNCM and Cheetham students in the audience were very impressed by the sheer earth-trembling conclusion…..

And what a contrast there is between the bludgeoning, meandering Copland and the Walton Cello concerto, which I was hearing for the second time in 3 months. The Walton piece by contrast is complex emotionally, melodically much more memorable (eg those stealthy steps at the beginning, concise – a bitter-sweet journey that constantly holds your attention. I thought this was a lovely performance – less showy than the one by Stephen Isserlis which I’d heard in August, but Laura van der Heijden brought out the subtleties of the cello part.

Altogether good to hear relatively unfamiliar music and the Halle played extremely well throughout

Thomas Ades / composer and conductor; Wayne McGregor/choreography; designs/Tacita Dean;  lighting designer/ Lucy Carter; dramaturg/ Uzma Hameed

I am not a balletomane, and I have never been to the ballet at Covent Garden before. My reason for going to this performance was mainly to hear the music for The Dante Project, composed, and, on this occasion, conducted by Thomas Ades (he’s conducting for the first 5 performances of its run) – and receiving only its 3^rd ever performance. It is one of his most substantial pieces, running for nearly 2 hours of music, and the orchestra is huge – what looked quadruple woodwind, lots of percussion and brass.

I really enjoyed Ades’ music, and the visuals for the ballet for the most part were stunning. I’m afraid – and I am sure the fault is mine, so that should be borne in mind in all that follows – I still find, as I always have done, that the actual dancing and choreography is quite confusing, in terms of what’s going on. There is clearly a code of signifying movements I have yet to crack, but I could make little of what was happening in terms of working out what the dancers were thinking and feeling, and what their movements were designed to be expressing. Part of this in Act 1 may have been the difficulty of conveying some of the Hellish cameos in dance-form, possibly….

The Dante Project is – as one might expect – split into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso. Inferno is much the longest – about 50 minutes – and Purgatorio and Paradiso are each about 30 minutes. Each ‘act’ has a very different visual feel – Act 1 is dark and lowering, Act 2 is green, bright and penitential, while Act 3 is a blaze of colour and whirring rings and globes

I found the music gripping and absorbing. Inferno has lots of pastiche – Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky and others; it has marvellously strong rhythms, whooping horns, sliding trombones, stomping drums and is immensely – one can feel – danceable; there are lots of downwards glissandi at various points, appropriate to Hell, I guess. At times it is frightening in its dramatic energy. Act 2, Purgatorio, starts with extraordinary recorded synagogue chanting, and the orchestra then builds on the tunes the cantors sing – this fits well with the penitential feel. I thought the Act 3 music was wonderful – I had assumed Paradiso would involve high soft strings, but in fact the music reflects the film of rolling spheres that is central to the visual imaging of the act – a lovely spiralling upwards sort of music that is neither quiet nor minimalistic but in its way quite hypnotic and utterly suited to the subject matter. The act ends in a blazing light, signifying, I suppose, the pure light of the divine gaze (there’s also contribution of female voices from the London Symphony chorus near the end too!) .

My only real criticism was that the first Act was I thought just too dark, and it was sometimes difficult to see what was happening

I am sure Ades will make an orchestra suite from the ballet – I shall look forward to hearing it. I see the Artsdesk critic is stating that the work has “ a serious claim to being the greatest music composed this century”. We shall see, but I wouldn’t immediately disagree after today’s performance

Bach – Mass in B Minor, played by the Feinstein Ensemble with the London Bach Singers: Martin Feinstein , conductor

Bach’s B Minor Mass is a piece I have never heard in the concert hall before now….. except, that is, on an occasion when I sung in it (almost 50 years ago). I was recruited by a friend to join a large College choral society at Cambridge (St Johns) who sung a major work in the choral repertory in their Chapel once every term. I remember my introduction to singing with them (I don’t read music and I have a very nondescript voice) was growling away in the Brahms Requiem, a piece I knew fairly well, in the Autumn term, and then came the Bach in the Spring term., which was a piece I didn’t know at all (at the time I knew little about Bach’s works). The chorus was – given the Cambridge of the time – heavily weighted towards men; there must have been something like 150 basses, 30 tenors, 20 sopranos and the same number of contraltos. I followed 149 basses in roaring out the part when I knew what I was doing and mouthing it in the runs and more complex singing. Goodness knows who the conductor was – quite possibly now he’s a senior luminary of the conducting world, but he must have had his work cut out to control us basses. My abiding memory though is of the day the orchestra came to rehearse with us for the first time, and I was suddenly transfixed by the glory of the swirling trumpets and the drums in the Gloria, Sanctus and Dona Nobis Pacem.

So the B Minor Mass has always been a favourite since then, but the recordings I have owned over the years have tended to be old-fashioned – Richter and Klemperer. The Feinstein performance was a very different beast. There were 21 period instrumentalists and just 10 singers, who doubled as the chorus and soloists. 10 singers were quite possibly what Bach might had had at his disposal at St Thomas’ Leipzig, but that’s not really so relevant, given that there is no certainty it was ever performed in Leipzig (though – something I didn’t know – the programme notes said that the Kyrie and Gloria could be sung in the Lutheran Church for certain thanksgiving services) and, given that he may have conceived it as a monument to his art, Bach might have envisaged much larger forces. The size didn’t really matter that much, though, given the excellence and power of the singers and the relatively small size of the venue. The star singer for me was Matthew Brook in Et in Spiritum Sanctum (I realised I’d heard him in Errolyn Wallen’s Dido’s Ghost as Aeneas in July) but all were good. The main issue I had with the performance – a usual one with me – is the tendency of period instrument conductors to go as fast as possible wherever they get the chance. Here the Sanctus in particular raced along, and lost some dignity thereby – the Quoniam too was rushed, making life even more difficult for the woman playing (very well) the fiendish natural horn part. The Et Resurrexit went at an undignified gallop. But I wouldn’t want to make too much of this….there was a lot of beautiful woodwind playing, particularly from the flutes, and some of the tempi – the Gratias Agimus and final Dona Nobis Pacem – were just right, to my ears. So, not a perfect performance perhaps, but great to be able to hear this great work live after all these years…….

Bruch Eight Pieces for Clarinet, Viola and Piano Nos 2, 4, 5 & 6; Jörg Widmann Fantasie; György Kurtág Hommage à Robert Schumann; Mozart Trio for Clarinet, Viola and Piano in E-flat major, ‘Kegelstatt’: Antoine Tamestit viola; Jörg Widmann clarinet; Frank Braley piano

This was a really lovely chamber music concert, at lunchtime in LSO St Lukes. It was memorable for several reasons:

1. Though ambience isn’t everything. LSO St Lukes is an impressive building, brilliantly conceived and lit (and of course the church is interesting in itself – partly designed by Hawksmoor who created the strange obelisk spire [a most unusual feature for an Anglican church}, which is topped by a strange weather vane depicting the head of a dragon with a fiery comet-like tail). It had been derelict for 40 years before the LSO decided to redesign it as a music centre

2. The players were all obviously old friends and knew each other’s playing personalities very well – there was a lot of eye contact and smiling which conveyed itself to the listeners. They were clearly enjoying themselves hugely

3. An interesting range of pieces – the Brahmsian and rather lovely and lyrical Bruch pieces; the completely bonkers and very virtuosic Widmann piece for solo calrinet (Widmann is apparently the third most performed contemporary composer); the fascinating Kurtag piece with wisps of Hungarian melody, reflections on Schumann’s bi-polar disorder, and some haunting harmonies – and a bass drum stroke at the end; and finally, the sunny Mozart piece, with a beautiful middle-period-Mozart final movement (contemporary with the Marriage of Figaro)

The violist Antoine Tamestit was a sensitive and thoughtful player – and given that I’ve primarily heard of Widmann as a composer, I was amazed at the quality of his clarinet playing. The pianist was maybe at a less exalted level. Listening to my old recording of the Kegelstatt trio afterwards, with Jack Brymer, Stephen Bishop and Patrick Ireland, I wondered whether the balance of the players at LSO St Lukes could have been better – sometimes the viola seemed a little submerged. But this is a minor point…this was a wonderful concert, and to be broadcast by the BBC on 14/12/21

Sean Panikkar (M.K. Gandhi), Musa Ngqungwana (Lord Krishna), William Thomas (Parsi Rustomji), Felicity Buckland (Kasturbai), James Cleverton (Mr Kallenbach), Sarah Pring (Mrs Alexander), Ross Ramgobin (Prince Arjuna), Gabriella Cassidy (Miss Schlesen). Conductor: Carolyn Kuan, Director: Phelim McDermott, Revival Director: Peter Relton, Set Designer/Associate Director: Julian Crouch

Unwittingly – sort of – I had booked myself in not only to the first performance this year of Philip Glasss’ Satyagraha at the ENO, but the first time they had performed back in the London Coliseum since March 2020. It’s the first time I’ve been in the Coliseum since November 2019 (oddly, to see another Glass opera – Orphee). After 5 visits to Covent Garden over the past three months, the Coliseum felt an enormous, cavernous building, not particularly welcoming, but I was reminded that it was a venue where the voices and orchestra sound much warmer and more vibrant than they do in the drier Covent Garden acoustic. Though the performance was – as above – a rather special one, and with speeches beforehand by the ENO management team, the auditorium wasn’t by any means full. That doesn’t bode well for (an-already-beleaguered-before-the-pandemic) ENO. I wonder if the old idea of Georg Solti’s – put ENO and ROHCG Opera into Covent Garden, and the Royal and Sadlers’ Well Ballet Companies into the Coliseum – hasn’t finally come to seem rather sensible.  Or even – given that the ENO is only giving 67 performances this season, put both opera companies into Covent Garden and keep the ballet. There does seem to be overlap in the current season between the two houses – eg both offering Cosi Fan Tutte, two Rings being planned, two La Boheme’s happening this season etc; this is hard to justify.

This production has been on the ENO’s books since 2007, and is well known and appreciated, although I’ve not seen it before. Phelim McDermott was the original director, and I was first introduced to his work watching the Tao of Glass in June 2019 at the Manchester International Festival – it has many of the same approaches to staging, writ large, including puppets, the use of paper shapes, and imaginative lighting. It does everything it could for the work. Rather stupidly I hadn’t worked out who the dominating figures were at the back or side of the stage in each of the three acts – Tolstoy, Tagore and Martin Luther King – until I talked to the friend I was with, who’d seen it before.

Listening to Satyagraha made me realise what it must be for non-Wagner enthusiasts sitting through the more slowly-paced parts of the Ring. Some of it was very beautiful, some of it was dramatic, but there were times when it was just mind-numbingly, tediously, repetitive. Yes, I know that Satyagraha is not a work that’s meant to be conventionally dramatic, I know it’s contemplative and meditative in form and meaning, but still…..I thought I’d scream after the 20^th repetition in the final scene of the 8 note melody Gandhi sings (rather lovely though that tune is). The problem I think is that Glass rather contradicts himself in his approach – the 2^nd Act is in fact quite dramatic, with lots of action on the stage and reasonably contrasted successive scenes. The final act by contrast is unvaryingly slow-moving, and relatively little happens (apart from arrests of course). So maybe I am just not in tune with the nature of Glass’ art…….

As far as I could tell, the solo singing was uniformly good (with Sean Pannikar as a particularly strong voiced and clear Gandhi) , the ENO Chorus fantastic, and the orchestra deserves a collective medal for getting through the score – with so many repetitive figures, it must be a nightmare to count the bars for the next entry or to know when to stop, but they seemed to manage without any glitches. The production is great – but……probably seeing it once is enough for me

Conductor, Richard Hetherington. Cast – Tamino, Bernard Richter; Pamina, Christina Gansch; Papageno, Peter Kellner; Queen of the Night, Aleksandra Olczyk; Sarastro, Krzysztof Baczyk; Monostatos, Peter Hoare; Papagena, Alexandra Lowe. Director, David McVicar (Revival Director, Daniel Dooner); Designer. John Macfarlane

Both Jenufa the previous evening and this performance of the Magic Flute were extremely well attended. It was great to see the ROHCG at near or absolute capacity, and there was a real buzz in the house (though interestingly, and perhaps ominously, and despite repeated loudspeaker injunctions, maybe only 40% of the audience was wearing face masks. This may not end well………)

The last Magic Flute I saw was at ENO in April 2019 with the excellent Lucy Crowe as Pamina. I’m not sure this performance at Covent Garden was as good, but it was thoroughly enjoyable and more than competent

For anyone seeing this work for the first time, or with little experience of this form of music theatre, what would they have made of this performance?

• They would probably have admired the sets and the special effects: the dark heavy pillars of the temple, the wonderful moon, sun and night effects, the use of puppets, the Three Boys’ flying machine (though they might have wondered whether this work could be produced by ROHCG with equal impact at considerably less cost – whereas Jenufa needed the sort of design and sets that were offered, sometimes the Magic Flute sets seemed to say – hey, we’ve lots of money, we’re grand….!)
• I’m sure they would have loved Papageno and all the usual but never-failing gags- Monostatos and his men charmed by music; Papageno / Papagena etc
• They would have loved the music

I’m sure that quite a lot of the story they would have found baffling, from a number of perspectives:

• The muddled libretto with all sorts of loose ends – like why Pamina isn’t, and then is, allowed to undertake the trials
• Sorastro’s misogyny
• The general implication that women have to be ‘led’ / guided into enlightenment by men

What to do about the Magic Flute? This production did what it could, but all the usual embarrassments were there. My recipe for a production of this opera is as follows:

• Make absolutely clear that the Queen of the Night and her crew, and Sorastro and his merry men, are not to be seen as ‘ordinary’ human beings but rather as archetypes – the Queen of the Night standing for religion / superstition (and maybe the darker aspects of human nature – Mozart must have heard about what was happening in France by 1791 when he wrote this, however he might have approved of the initial stages of the Revolution); Sorastro for 18^th century enlightenment. If necessary have the Queen of the Night looking like the Pope!
• The ensuing production would then show that both aspects of being – religion and rationality – have a part to play in a whole and balanced human life. It would emphasise the severe trials of initiation that Pamina has to face, and make absolutely explicit that Sorastro has things to learn too and that Pamina’s initiation is not his wish
• To emphasise all the above, it would be OK to mess about with the text mercilessly. It’s already accepted in more modern productions (though this was not the case back in the 1970’s productions I saw of this) that they bowlderise the whole business of Monostatos being black – so why not go further?

The singers were good, but only one was outstanding. Bernard Richter, the Tamino, had a  heavier voice than a normal “Mozart” tenor. He was rather stolid in movement and at times his voice stood out when it should blend with Pamina or Papageno. In his big Act 1 aria he seemed to force his voice and it sounded a bit frayed at the top. Christina Gansch, the Pamina, was recently one of the finalists of the Cardiff Singer of the World contest, where I thought she had a lovely voice. Here, her Pamina was not an especially good performance, I’m afriad, though it was never less than adequate. Her voice seemed unfocused and slightly wobbly at points. The Papageno, Peter Kellner, was the best of the four main performer roles – his was an introspective and sometimes almost wistful reading of the part, with a warm rich voice. It was a very likeable portrayal. The Sorastro had a perfectly enjoyable  voice but nothing special or distinctive. The Queen of the Night, Aleksandra Olczyk, however, though not on the stage for very long, was in a different league, and gave a spectacularly good performance of her two high coloratura arias. The conductor was an ROHCG staff member, Richard Hetherington, doing one performance (presumably having helped to prepared the run for Helmut Haenchen, the conductor for the other performances). His conducting was too fast on the whole,  though the excellence of the orchestra meant that articulation was still crisp and clear despite the speed. But a lot was missed through cramped room for expression.

Everyone in the audience seemed to be very happy with the performance, and warmly cheered everyone!

Mr Antipov graduated from the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, BMus (Hons) Performance, in 2017. He has performed widely in the UK since then with local music societies and events. This was a lunch hour concert I caught sight of on the internet, as I was in London for Jenufa and the Magic Flute.

St Olave’s church is one that’s worth a visit for its own merits as well – near Aldgate tube station, there’s a memorial to Samuel Pepys there

Mr Antipov played Liszt (two pieces from the Annees de pelerinage, (Troisieme annee), a display piece by Chopin (variations on Mozart’s ‘La ci darem la mano’) and Ravel’s ‘Gaspard de la nuit’. And he did so from memory, which was little short of astonishing in the Chopin piece, which is quite substantial – 20 minutes or so – and with sprays of notes in every direction. Indeed for me the Chopin piece was the most enjoyable. Somehow I never warm to any of Liszt’s music, and the piano pieces here seemed very much going-through-the-Romantic-notions. The Ravel was more interesting but I got lost at points…..

Still, not a bad way to spend a lunchtime, and I thought Mr Antipov was a very interesting player

Conductor-Henrik Nánási: cast – Jenufa: Asmik Grigorian; Kostelnicka: Karita Mattila; Laca: Nicky Spence; Števa: Saimir Pirgu. Director: Claus Guth; Set designer, Michael Levine

This was exactly the sort of performance and production which should give opera a good name among those who expect from it standards of acting, production and design similar to those you’d anticipate from a play at the National Theatre or RSC.  

The basic set was a huge box enclosing the stage, made of white narrow horizontally placed wooden-like beams. Colours were black and white, with the only colour provided by peasant women’s costumes for the wedding in Act 3. The Kostelnicka’s house in Act 2 is made of angular metal rods. Beginning each act, a grid at the front of the box is raised. The overall effect is of  imprisonment and oppression, and is obviously intended to mirror the restrictions and conventions of life in the Czech village at the centre of the drama. The wall at the back of the stage in Act showed in silhouette women in desperate poses of attempted. In the first act, there are a number of beds placed against the outer walls, with male chorus members on them, moving in robotic fashion at points. It wasn’t clear what the point of this was – one review said it was a workhouse, another that it represented how lazy the villagers were! The mattresses from the beds seem to be strewn around outside the Kostelnicka’s house in Act 2 (one review said this was intended to look like snow……). In Act 3, very effectively, flowers for the wedding were strewn on the floor. So…not all of it made immediate sense (on the other hand, the vision of the dead husband of the Kostelnicka with a bloodied head was effective). At least from my vantage point (a good Lower Slips seat) the wandering large crow which reviews spoke of seemed to have been ‘disappeared’. escape. But – it was a fundamentally serious and thought-provoking production. It also had a coup de theatre at the end when the front grid is lowered but Laca and Jenufa position themselves in front of it – they have escaped imprisonment!

The production was thus an effective and credible frame for two remarkable performances. Karita Mattila was mesmerising as the Kostelnicka. She is one of those very few performers  – I can think of Boris Christoff and Janet Baker as two other examples – who simply by being on stage command attention. It is impossible to say how they do this – but you know it when you see it! What was remarkable about Mattila’s performance was not just her stage presence, but the power and nuancing of her singing – in a role that is usually given to distinguished singers who are just a little superannuated she sounded absolutely at her prime. Deservedly she received the biggest ovation at the end, and as the curtain came down Jenufa did a little curtsey to her.

Asmik Gregorian had all that it takes to be a very effective Jenufa indeed – she looks very credible, she acts well, and she has a powerful voice. I didn’t get much sense of nuance for the most part in how she used her voice, though her song to the new-born baby in Act 2 was beautiful. Nicky Spence sounded a bit underpowered as Laca – slightly worrying for his Siegmund at the ENO less than 8 weeks away – maybe it was just where I was sitting. All the other roles were never less than well-sung and acted.

The other thing to be said is that – although I have been to several other Janacek operas, and have known Katya Kabanova for 50 years, I have never listened at home to Jenufa or seen it live, so it was a first for me. What a stunning work it! So many moments of beauty and grandeur……I will want to go back to listen to my download of the Mackerras recording from WNO (which I bought 5 years ago but have never got round to listening to). It’s wonderful to come to such a work for the first tine! It seems to me more dramatically credible than Katya Kabanova which simply moves at too fast a pace to make the story seem real.

Sir Mark Elder conductor | Baiba Skride violin: Wagner, Lohengrin: Prelude to Act I; Sofia Gubaidulina, Offertorium; Elgar, Symphony No.1

This time at the Bridgewater Hall the Halle orchestra seemed to have a ‘normal’ full orchestra on stage – 10 cellos. 8 double basses. The Halle made a glorious sound in the Elgar, and the Gubaidulina piece was very well played – though admittedly I was sitting in what was probably the best seat in the house (M20 Stalls, for future self-reference!)

The Wagner was slow and the climax well crafted – maybe the strings were a bit too loud at the beginning? The Gubaidulina piece, played in honour of her 90th birthday, was tough but rewarding – a violin concerto that portrayed a sort of darkness-into-light journey, based around the theme Bach worked on In the Musical Offering and variations on that theme. It was difficult to disentangle (and maybe that is the point) the logical progress of the variations from a sense of mounting violence and a portrait of relentlessly dark forces. After the last of various huge climaxes there is a beautiful 5 minutes or so that sounds like an Orthodox hymn near the end, or something out of Arvo Part. Maybe  – given that this was written when the Soviet system still had 10 years to go, and religious expression was still regarded with suspicion –  the violin is something like an individual struggling against orchestra-as-system?. Anyway the work, though spikey, was always absorbing. The soloist, Baiba Skrida, was excellent. Maybe the work still is slightly in need of further cutting (I believe its current length is itself a reduction on the first version) in the earlier variations?

Elgar 1 followed after the interval. I have heard the Halle and Elder do this at least two times before, and it was as good as I’ve ever heard live. Elder, who tends to favour quite broad speeds in Elgar, produced a 2nd movement which was quite driven and fast – maybe a bit too fast for that theme representing ‘something you hear by the river’, as Elgar said almost to himself at one rehearsal. The finale was exciting too – sometimes I’ve felt listening to performances of this work that at points Elgar is going through the motions in the final movement, developing themes a bit mechanically but here everything was taut and gripping.  The late Michael Kennedy in his programme notes mentioned something I remember reading but had forgotten – the main theme of the slow movement was that of the second at a greatly reduced speed; likewise, the main theme of the second movement is the motto March theme reversed. Elder’s conducting emphasised the underlying musical logic of this symphony, and the dynamics were finely tuned. And what a complex work its is , wonderfully orchestrated – how could anyone ever have thought of Elgar as a representative of a complacent and self-satisfied age? I’ve just read W.H (Billy) Reed’s book about Elgar, which reminds me what a very complicated person he was.

As I’ve said, the Halle sounded wonderful – the split of the first and second violins on either side of the conductor really adds something in a work like this and gives an amplitude to the sound which really enhances the textures. The ending of the slow movement featured the best clarinet playing here I’ve ever heard, better than Jack Brymer in 1969, and there were appropriately soaring strings in the slow movement

I hope the concert covered its costs – when I looked at the booking page they hadn’t sold a massive number of tickets, though at the actual events there seemed to be masses of students, presumably there at little or no expense. It was great to hear the enthusiasm for the Elgar after the concert from all the young people around me. The concert was also filmed for streaming