CBSO, 26/11/2011

Dukas : The Sorceror's Apprentice
Mozart : Clarinet Concerto (Martin Fröst)
Berlioz : Symphonie fantastique

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Edward Gardner

First of all, may I say, Symphony Hall, Birmingham?  Wow!  It's huge, the acoustics are excellent, my sight lines were excellent, it's attractive, and if the seats were half-an-inch wider, it'd be perfect.

Of course I've known the CBSO through recordings and broadcasts for ever, but I've only seen it live once or twice.  Curiously enough, the first time, in Glasgow maybe forty years ago, they were also playing the Symphonie fantastique, under Louis Frémeaux.  I don't recall the rest of the programme, but the Berlioz was a blinder, and I was hoping for a repeat, because it's not as if the orchestra has gone downhill since those days.

First up, however, was Dukas's fiendish orchestral scherzo The Sorceror's Apprentice.  Reading back, you may note that this piece came up in an RSNO programme earlier this year, and I said that Denève had failed to bring out its darker side, particularly as he had expressed the intention of doing so.  I don't think Gardner got any nearer to genuinely creepy, but he achieved something just as effective, a kind of sardonic smirk in the music when the broom "resuscitates", a little flip of the turn of phrase, as if to say, "Ha, you don't get rid of me that easily!"  If I had one criticism to make, it's that the brass was a bit too well-behaved.  The trombones got it right, but the others were a little polite for this lively and rumbustious score, and added nothing constructive to Dukas's brilliantly orchestrated pandemonium.

Refinement and elegance, not surprisingly, were at the heart of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto, with the young Swedish clarinettist Martin Fröst.  Again, I've heard plenty from this highly talented artist via recordings and broadcasts; in person, he's a snappy dresser who holds his clarinet like a jazzman, but plays Mozart like a prince.  On the other hand, just to show that looks were not entirely deceptive, he gave us an encore which he introduced as having been written (for him, I presume) by his younger brother, and which uses a couple of klezmer-based melodies, and then proceeded to deliver something like a version of Hora Staccato played by Taraf da Haiduks on speed.

The Berlioz, however, was a bit of a letdown.  Given that Gardner's the current MD of English National Opera, I was expecting him to play up to all the theatrical elements in Berlioz, but instead, he seemed to be trying to exercise too much control.  Occasionally, it worked; the heartbeats of the first movement, the very end of the third movement, and the fugal passage in the Sabbath were all very telling.  Most of the time, however, it just hampered Berlioz's extravagant, eccentric musical vision.  Like the brass in the Dukas earlier (and they did it again here, save in the last movement), it was too polite.  Polite's the last thing you want from Berlioz!

Again, I had a direct comparison with Denève and the RSNO from a concert last year, before I opened this blog; technically rather messier, but emotionally electrifying.  Gardner didn't quite seem to get Berlioz - or maybe he has difficulty letting go enough to let one of the most maverick of composers speak in his own voice.  A pity.  I'm sure the CBSO has a brilliant Symphonie fantastique in them still, but not under this conductor.