This season highlight BBC Philharmonic concert, taking place in the wake of announced cuts to the BBC’s English orchestras, put forward as strong an argument as possible against the new strategy. The strategy, proposed by the erstwhile Chief Executive of this very orchestra, makes some fanfare about the need to prioritise “quality, agility and impact”. With a gripping world premiere prefacing Lieder by Alban Berg and Strauss’ gargantuan Alpine Symphony, this programme demonstrated all three of these scarcely tangible goals in spades, while also highlighting precisely what would be lost under the proposals.
The headline news of the evening was an astoundingly beautiful day’s walking the meadows and peaks of the Alpine Symphony. With the Bridgewater Hall packed with just about every brass and percussion player in the city, the latter manning a deliciously decadent trio of wind machines and pair of thunder sheets and with strings stretching out across an extended stage, the richness of sounds produced was thrilling to behold.
Nicholas Collon contextualised the symphony’s many chapters with admirable pacing, maintaining a clear sense of direction while allowing his players to paint individual scenes in high definition. All were realised vividly, from the trombones’ hushed sunrise chorale via splashy waterfalls to a frantic scramble through the thicket, but it was the richest, most indulgently Romantic music which fared best. Jennifer Galloway’s oboe solo at the summit combined breathless wonder with astonishing tenderness, and the descent, neatly balancing orchestra and organ, was movingly elegiac. Elsewhere the climaxes blazed as brightly as ever, heralded by rasping bass trombones and legato horns on the summit and roaring timpani elsewhere. The peak of the storm was floor-shakingly cataclysmic.
Alban Berg’s Seven Early Songs were treated with similar attention to beauty of sound both by the orchestra and soprano Francesca Chiejina, whose attractively rounded tone made for some magical moments in Traumgekrönt and Im Zimmer. The autumnal warmth of the latter was celebrated with a sense of innocent simplicity, while her exquisitely controlled high pianissimos elsewhere blended superbly with strings and celesta. It was a pity that in some of the more fully scored passages, such as in the opening Nacht, the balance between orchestra and soloist-was awry, leading to Chiejina’s words being lost amid orchestral textures, but overall the set proved a superb accompaniment to the rest of the programme.
At the top of the bill was the world premiere of Three Pieces that Disappear by the orchestra’s Composer-in-Association, Tom Coult. The 21-minute suite, Coult’s notes tell us, is inspired variously by the disappearance of music during the height of the pandemic, the birth of a child during the same period, subsequent neurological symptoms, and a malfunctioning dictaphone. It made for a memorable and striking piece, tinged with wistful melancholy in the soft warmth of the opening movement’s woodwind chords and glaring dissonances in the second movement. The dysfunctional dictaphone, represented by a looped electronic recording over the hall’s sound system, emerged insidiously in the finale, combining effectively with an ever dwindling number of strings until just one violinist remained.
Above all, this was a superbly well-conceived programme delivered with panache and passion, and the radio broadcast on 11th April should not be missed.
