RSNO, 27/04/2013

Copland : Suite from Appalachian Spring
Barber : Piano Concerto (Xiayin Wang)
Copland : Piano Concerto (Xiayin Wang)
Adams : Doctor Atomic Symphony

Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Peter Oundjian

The second of the RSNO's two American music programmes this season was a much more exotic outing. Of the four pieces in the programme, Copland's Appalachian Spring Suite was by far the best known.  This was the concert version scored for large orchestra Copland made a year or so after the ballet's premiere.  On the whole I have to say I prefer the original chamber version for its more delicate texture, but this was well performed, the progression from dawn to dusk clear and cleanly drawn.

It's very rare to get two piano concertos in the same programme, and they were very different pieces.  Oundjian commented (at the start of the second half, after having heard the Barber) on the modernity of the Barber piece, but I have to take some issue with that, particularly given its date of composition.  Considering what was going on in contemporary music in 1962, the Barber Concerto is practically reactionary, and if the last movement is strikingly percussive, it's more Bartok, and even Barber himself, notably another Martha Graham commission, the ballet Medea, from 1945, that are evoked.  The first movement has a characteristically lyrical sweep, a bold statement forthrightly presented by the young Chinese pianist Xiayin Wang, while the central movement was a dreamy nocturnal poem.

The Copland, half the length, begins and ends with a very typical piece of Copland Americana, but the centre is a dislocated exploration of jazz, with hints of ragtime, stride, cakewalk, and even a nod to the Gershwin concerto, composed just a year earlier.  It's an enjoyable piece on the whole, but what didn't work was the balance between orchestra and piano, and I don't think that was Wang's fault.  She had no difficulty making herself heard during the Barber, save in the last movement, but there, as he did in the Violin Concerto, the soloist expressly becomes part of the overall texture, its fireworks part of the whole.  The Barber Concerto, however, is the work of a fifty-two year-old, whereas Copland was only 26 when he wrote his Piano Concerto, and although Copland was probably the more gifted composer, I think the métier shows.  The piano disappears in the powerful orchestral sound; it's possibly better appreciated in recording, where the balance can be rectified by the sound engineers.

The concert closed with the 'symphony' John Adams drew from his most recent opera Doctor Atomic. Oundjian and the RSNO gave this piece as strong and vibrant a reading as for Harmonielehre back in February; indeed, the final section is framed by music very like the 'rocket' music from that much earlier piece.  The overall mood, as in the opera, is oppressive and anxious, evoking storms both within and without, but the last part is a transcription (more or less) of Oppenheimer's monologue at the end of Act 1, "Batter my heart", with the vocal line given to a solo trumpet (Huw Morgan, excellent).  The effect is to recall a couple of other significant pieces of American music, Copland's Quiet City and, perhaps even more appropriately, in this context, Charles Ives's extraordinary The Unanswered Question.  A forceful conclusion to one of this season's most interesting concerts.

[Next : 30th April]