Sunday 12th May 2013
Review of the concert by Philip Worth:
The distinguishing feature of this concert was a new piece by Chris Crawley entitled Celebratory Dances. Chris is, of course, a long serving member of DSO and as such has an intimate knowledge of its structure, its capabilities and its general direction under the baton of conductor Tom Loten. The result here was testing music which nonetheless the orchestra tackled with its customary enthusiasm and determination to give it the best possible outing. For the audience this was a performance well worth its close attention. There was much to enjoy in this extraordinary piece: a richness and mastery in orchestration; a restless playing with changes in mood, rhythm and melodic line, a boldness in the presentation of unusual musical ideas; and, above all, a sensitive awareness of the influence of dance. At this point one might mention the impact which Stravinsky has had on Chris, and the rapport with that composer excited by his knowledge of the riot which broke out at the first performance in Paris of the Rite of Spring. On that occasion the audience was shocked by the strangeness of the music but also by the choreography and sets. One suspects that if Chris had been present then he would have been firmly on the side of Stravinsky; for him creativity is the result of integrating sound, vision and movement – a concept not at all to the taste of the classical musical elite of 19th century Paris!
But that classical elite had, by the 1870s’ taken Saint-Saens to its heart, after having regarded him as a dangerous radical in his young manhood. There were, perhaps, two reasons for this: to begin with he was a noted critic of the new generation of composers, such as Debussy, who were engaged in disturbing experiments with sound; then again, for all his exciting melodic creation, as in, for example, Samson and Delilah, Carnival of the Animals, the mighty Organ Symphony, and so on, Saint- Saens was at bottom a respecter of classical form (this view of him was possibly cemented by his twenty year tenure as organist at the Madeleine – a guarantee of musical respectability!) In his Cello Concerto in A Minor Saint-Saens was at his most accessible. Technically demanding our young soloist, Clare O’Connell, performed with style and assurance, following proudly in the footsteps of Casals, du Pre, Rostropovitch, Fournier, Tortelier and others. Unusually, the concerto is composed in one movement, but has three distinctive sections, gently contrasting to create a pleasing musical whole.
An impressive programme was, appropriately, concluded with a performance of Brahms’ towering Symphony No. 4 – ‘appropriately’ because this was the composer’s final salute to symphonic form: one wonders whether, as he put the finishing touches to this mighty work, his mind went back some dozen or so years when he diffidently released on the world his first symphony, wondering whether it was at all possible to follow Beethoven’s Ninth. Brahms’ public had no such doubts; ‘Beethoven’s Tenth’ was a wide response, testimony to the architectural splendours of the later master’s music. The awesome power of the final passacaglia drove the Symphony No 4 and this memorable concert to a close.
The distinguishing feature of this concert was a new piece by Chris Crawley entitled Celebratory Dances. Chris is, of course, a long serving member of DSO and as such has an intimate knowledge of its structure, its capabilities and its general direction under the baton of conductor Tom Loten. The result here was testing music which nonetheless the orchestra tackled with its customary enthusiasm and determination to give it the best possible outing. For the audience this was a performance well worth its close attention. There was much to enjoy in this extraordinary piece: a richness and mastery in orchestration; a restless playing with changes in mood, rhythm and melodic line, a boldness in the presentation of unusual musical ideas; and, above all, a sensitive awareness of the influence of dance. At this point one might mention the impact which Stravinsky has had on Chris, and the rapport with that composer excited by his knowledge of the riot which broke out at the first performance in Paris of the Rite of Spring. On that occasion the audience was shocked by the strangeness of the music but also by the choreography and sets. One suspects that if Chris had been present then he would have been firmly on the side of Stravinsky; for him creativity is the result of integrating sound, vision and movement – a concept not at all to the taste of the classical musical elite of 19th century Paris!
But that classical elite had, by the 1870s’ taken Saint-Saens to its heart, after having regarded him as a dangerous radical in his young manhood. There were, perhaps, two reasons for this: to begin with he was a noted critic of the new generation of composers, such as Debussy, who were engaged in disturbing experiments with sound; then again, for all his exciting melodic creation, as in, for example, Samson and Delilah, Carnival of the Animals, the mighty Organ Symphony, and so on, Saint- Saens was at bottom a respecter of classical form (this view of him was possibly cemented by his twenty year tenure as organist at the Madeleine – a guarantee of musical respectability!) In his Cello Concerto in A Minor Saint-Saens was at his most accessible. Technically demanding our young soloist, Clare O’Connell, performed with style and assurance, following proudly in the footsteps of Casals, du Pre, Rostropovitch, Fournier, Tortelier and others. Unusually, the concerto is composed in one movement, but has three distinctive sections, gently contrasting to create a pleasing musical whole.
An impressive programme was, appropriately, concluded with a performance of Brahms’ towering Symphony No. 4 – ‘appropriately’ because this was the composer’s final salute to symphonic form: one wonders whether, as he put the finishing touches to this mighty work, his mind went back some dozen or so years when he diffidently released on the world his first symphony, wondering whether it was at all possible to follow Beethoven’s Ninth. Brahms’ public had no such doubts; ‘Beethoven’s Tenth’ was a wide response, testimony to the architectural splendours of the later master’s music. The awesome power of the final passacaglia drove the Symphony No 4 and this memorable concert to a close.