Sunday 13th November 2011
Review of this concert by Philip Worth
This DSO concert featured youth in two different capacities, as performer and composer. The combined result was a musical experience fizzing with vitality – enough to make one feel young again!
The composer was seventeen-year old Tom Durrant, and his Three Reflections were, for me, the high point of the concert. A gloriously restless piece, full of rapid changes of mood and tempo, possibly its most impressive feature was the rich texture of its orchestration. When questioned by the writer on this point Tom immediately acknowledged the invaluable guidance he had received from Maestro Tom Loten, but also stressed the hours spent poring over the scores of works by great composers (reminiscent of the activities of the young Edward Elgar). He also acknowledged the influence on him of the works of the giants of classical music mentioning, among others, Stravinsky, Bartok and Elgar (look out for echoes of Elgar in the second Reflection). This said, there is clearly a powerful creative impulse at work in Tom Durrant. He is his own artist and he will, we can be sure, leave his own imprint on anything he writes in future. Meanwhile he can, at leisure, dwell on the examples of Mendelssohn and Bizet, who both, at age seventeen, produced musical masterpieces, proving that the combination of creative imagination and youthful vitality can produce joyful, life enhancing melody.
Louis Dowdeswell, a student in the sixth form at the Purcell School of Music, was the soloist in Haydn’s universally popular Trumpet Concerto. His virtuoso playing sustained the youthful pizzazz which Tom Durrant’s composition exuded later on, this quality suiting the piece to perfection. To say that when Haydn composed the concerto he was at the height of his powers is misleading, because he was at the height of his powers throughout his long life. In fact this work was composed when he was well advanced in years and, perhaps, beginning to experience the frailty which old age brings. But high spirits shine through every note that Haydn ever penned (he loved practical jokes) and this is true of the trumpet concerto. How appropriate that a brilliantly gifted eighteen-year-old should be the means of giving it renewed expression.
To restore some sort of chronological order to this review mention should be made of the opening item – the overture to Mozart’s opera Il Seraglio. The overtures to most of Mozart’s operas can be prized away from the parent body and played as concert pieces, so popular are they. The Seraglio overture scurries along like a young dog let off the lead on the common and, apart from a gently meditative middle section, takes one breathlessly into the rest of the programme.
To dismiss Beethoven’s Symphony No. Seven as the last work to be reviewed may seem to border on disrespect, but the reputation of this fiery masterpiece can easily survive this, so many eulogies have been written and said since its first performance in 1813. Indeed it was spectacularly successful from day one and had to be repeated immediately such was its popularity. The furious, onward thrusting rhythms of the last movement (Wagner described it as ‘the apotheosis of the dance’) make an impact on players and audience alike: on players the effect, at the end, is often exhaustion; on an audience the effect is an exhilaration calculated to make it jump from its collective seat. Not least was the composer, who conducted the first performance, affected in this way; the contemporary critic Spohr wrote: ‘as a sforzando occurred he tore his arms with a great vehemence asunder; at the entrance of a forte he jumped in the air.’ One can appreciate how Beethoven felt!
This was a memorable concert in every way; how appropriate that it should have been dedicated to the memory of Erica Glasser, a long standing and popular member of the DSO.
This DSO concert featured youth in two different capacities, as performer and composer. The combined result was a musical experience fizzing with vitality – enough to make one feel young again!
The composer was seventeen-year old Tom Durrant, and his Three Reflections were, for me, the high point of the concert. A gloriously restless piece, full of rapid changes of mood and tempo, possibly its most impressive feature was the rich texture of its orchestration. When questioned by the writer on this point Tom immediately acknowledged the invaluable guidance he had received from Maestro Tom Loten, but also stressed the hours spent poring over the scores of works by great composers (reminiscent of the activities of the young Edward Elgar). He also acknowledged the influence on him of the works of the giants of classical music mentioning, among others, Stravinsky, Bartok and Elgar (look out for echoes of Elgar in the second Reflection). This said, there is clearly a powerful creative impulse at work in Tom Durrant. He is his own artist and he will, we can be sure, leave his own imprint on anything he writes in future. Meanwhile he can, at leisure, dwell on the examples of Mendelssohn and Bizet, who both, at age seventeen, produced musical masterpieces, proving that the combination of creative imagination and youthful vitality can produce joyful, life enhancing melody.
Louis Dowdeswell, a student in the sixth form at the Purcell School of Music, was the soloist in Haydn’s universally popular Trumpet Concerto. His virtuoso playing sustained the youthful pizzazz which Tom Durrant’s composition exuded later on, this quality suiting the piece to perfection. To say that when Haydn composed the concerto he was at the height of his powers is misleading, because he was at the height of his powers throughout his long life. In fact this work was composed when he was well advanced in years and, perhaps, beginning to experience the frailty which old age brings. But high spirits shine through every note that Haydn ever penned (he loved practical jokes) and this is true of the trumpet concerto. How appropriate that a brilliantly gifted eighteen-year-old should be the means of giving it renewed expression.
To restore some sort of chronological order to this review mention should be made of the opening item – the overture to Mozart’s opera Il Seraglio. The overtures to most of Mozart’s operas can be prized away from the parent body and played as concert pieces, so popular are they. The Seraglio overture scurries along like a young dog let off the lead on the common and, apart from a gently meditative middle section, takes one breathlessly into the rest of the programme.
To dismiss Beethoven’s Symphony No. Seven as the last work to be reviewed may seem to border on disrespect, but the reputation of this fiery masterpiece can easily survive this, so many eulogies have been written and said since its first performance in 1813. Indeed it was spectacularly successful from day one and had to be repeated immediately such was its popularity. The furious, onward thrusting rhythms of the last movement (Wagner described it as ‘the apotheosis of the dance’) make an impact on players and audience alike: on players the effect, at the end, is often exhaustion; on an audience the effect is an exhilaration calculated to make it jump from its collective seat. Not least was the composer, who conducted the first performance, affected in this way; the contemporary critic Spohr wrote: ‘as a sforzando occurred he tore his arms with a great vehemence asunder; at the entrance of a forte he jumped in the air.’ One can appreciate how Beethoven felt!
This was a memorable concert in every way; how appropriate that it should have been dedicated to the memory of Erica Glasser, a long standing and popular member of the DSO.