Schnelzer : A Freak in Burbank
Rachmaninoff : Piano Concerto No. 2 (Denis Kozhukhin, piano)
Nielsen : Symphony No. 4 "The Inextinguishable"
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Thomas Dausgaard
Albert Schnelzer is a contemporary Swedish composer, and the "Freak in Burbank" of the title of the short work that opened tonight's concert is supposedly the American film-maker Tim Burton, seen as a child growing up in that Californian suburb. The work was a commission from the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, apparently to celebrate the music of Haydn, but Schnelzer was reading a biography of Burton at the time and, to paraphrase tonight's announcer, the piece became "10% Haydn and 90% Burton". Schnelzer himself writes of it:
"In this piece I wanted to take a Haydn-size orchestra, preserve the essence of Haydn's music, but place it in a more modern environment. Will the spirit of Haydn survive in an American suburb?"
The end result is not disagreeable, but neither of its purported associations came through to me particularly. As far as Haydn was concerned, the orchestra seemed rather larger, and certainly louder than anything I know of Haydn. When it came to the Burton connection, there was a different problem; I know and like many of Burton's films, and to me, he's indissolubly linked with the composer Danny Elfman. Just as Burton's visual style persists from film to film, even when the subject matters are wildly different, so do his musical requirements, very frequently and ably given form by Elfman, and the one, as the other, clearly stem from early sources. I could find nothing of this in Schnelzer's score - which just leaves me wondering, not for the first time, just how important it is to know a composer's sources. Had the piece had a different title, and different origins, I might have had a completely different perception of it.
Denis Kozhukhin is a baby-faced young man with shoulder-length blond hair tied back in a queue, and strong, sure hands, particularly the left. Not so strong as to cause imbalance, but enough to be marked. I found this to be something of an asset in the Rachmaninoff, giving added resonance to the bass of the piano, anchoring the line while nimble fingers danced up and down the keyboard with reassuring accuracy, and no lack of emotional engagement. The second movement, so often an excuse to wallow in schmaltz, was given a freshness by playing up, rather than smoothing over, the constant rub of binary against ternary rhythms, an unsettling foundation for its soulful melody, so that the coda of that movement, when everything finally settles into a smooth groove, comes as a catharsis. Dausgaard ensured that the orchestra produced a full, warm sound, with rich lower strings providing an almost chocolatey sweetness to the texture.
After Rachmaninoff's bitter-sweet but unbridled lyricism, the astringent radiancy of Nielsen's 4th Symphony, the aptly named "Inextinguishable" was a good contrast, and given an enthusiastic (if not always precise) reading. If Beethoven had been born and worked a century later, this was what he might have sounded like, particularly in the first movement, and I've rarely heard that legacy as clearly as under Dausgaard's baton tonight. Here was that same sense of something very much of the earth and of nature, with all its triumphs and struggles, yet with an inescapable sense of something greater, more infinite behind it, a sense of cosmic space and a hint of the vastness of eternity. Its last-movement coda also is cathartic, a sunburst of harmony dispelling the stormy duelling of the two sets of timpani. My neighbour complained (mildly) of not being able to watch both percussionists simultaneously, due to their positioning, but I liked that they were well apart; too close, and you lose the stereo effect. More Nielsen, please, this music doesn't get nearly enough exposure.
[Next : 4th November]
No comments:
Post a Comment