BBCSSO, 07/11/2013

Tippett : Divertimento on "Sellinger's Round"
Mozart : Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466 (Shai Wosner, piano)
Vaughan Williams : Symphony No. 7, "Sinfonia Antartica" (Katherine Broderick, soprano)

Ladies of the Glasgow Chamber Choir
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Andrew Manze

The neo-Renaissance cultural trend which swept through Europe around the turn of the century should have been well and truly over by the advent of WWII, and indeed, in most of Europe it was, but it managed to linger on a while in Britain, given a new lease of life by the accession of Elizabeth II to the throne, and the inevitable penchant for making comparisons between the new Elizabethan era, and the old one.  So you get pieces like this Tippett Divertimento, variations on an old dance tune, "Sellinger's Round", that found its way into the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book via a version by William Byrd.  Alongside the Round, Tippett used a variety of other themes from British composers, Gibbons, Purcell, Arne, Field and Sullivan.  It's a witty piece, and the first movement in particular is appealing, with Tippett's characteristic displaced rhythms, but by the end it seemed curiously inconsequential, as if the orchestra had lost interest in it somewhere along the line.

Mozart's D minor piano concerto is his most operatic; it was a key he used rarely, and always to great dramatic effect, and there's a harmonic boldness in this work that strongly suggests a musical future Mozart was never to see.  Beethoven was an admirer of this concerto in particular, and indeed his own music is hinted at more than a little in these pages.  That came across well enough in tonight's performance, but despite nicely articulated playing from Shai Wosner, the drama never quite came through.  In particular in the central section of the slow movement, where the left hand sings out a quarrel between "soprano" and "bass", over an agitated triplet accompaniment, the melodic line simply wasn't vocal enough, and there were other times when he showed a tendency to let the scales and arpeggios slip ahead of the measure.  A little disappointing, therefore.

The "Sinfonia Antartica" had its origins in arguably the finest score ever written for a British film, that of "Scott of the Antarctic".  Justifiably proud of his work, and inspired by it, Vaughan Williams re-cast the music four years after the release of the film into his 7th Symphony, and it remains one of his most striking works.  His gift for the evocation of the pastoral English landscape is turned here in remarkable fashion to a very different type of landscape, the icy wastes of the Antarctic, and his "big tune", although typically noble in outline, is clearly, chillingly an exercise in futility, a striving for an impossible goal, inexorably swept aside by the glacial chiming of celesta, glockenspiel and other metallic percussion, the hiss of brushed cymbals, and the eerie, wordless wailing of the soprano soloist and female chorus.  This was a very fine reading, evocative and stirring, touching in the Intermezzo (4th movement) when the harmonies warm into nostalgic remembrance of home, magnificently and desolately hollow in the central Landscape, and the final coda of the last movement, before fading into mournful silence.

[Next: 16th November]