40th Birthday Concert
Suckling : Six Speechless Songs
Chopin : Piano Concerto No. 2 (Maria João Pires, piano)
Beethoven : Symphony No. 5
Scottish Chamber Orchestra
Robin Ticciati
Martin Suckling's Six Speechless Songs was a commission specifically for the 40th anniversary of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Suckling is the Associate Composer for the orchestra, this is just the latest of many works for them, and tonight was only the second performance. The only other work of Suckling's that I've heard, also from this source, was rose, storm, tiger, and that twice (which is rare enough with a new piece). I have to say that I doubt I could have identified these Songs as Suckling's work, based on that; we were in a very different place, I felt. I wasn't hearing the influence of Britten so much; on the other hand, there was at least one passage which had the "open-air" feel that I usually associate with Copland. However, I found the sheer volume of the opening section more than a little rebarbative. While, as a celebratory piece, I appreciated the need for a certain level of energy, this was pushing it, in my opinion. There were a couple of places where I'd like to have heard some ideas developed more; the bells of "Resonant", the shimmer of "Flowing", and especially an all too-brief moment in "Playful", where from underneath a curious, grunting and squealing dialogue of bassoons with the other winds, the cellos slowly emerge with a rich, lyrical, but very fleeting theme.
The Chopin piano concertos were written as calling-cards, the work of a very young composer and artist still with something to prove to the people who could pave his way forwards. They are therefore more overtly virtuosic, even exhibitionistic, than much of the solo piano music that followed, and while Maria João Pires has recorded plenty of Chopin, I don't especially associate this most discreet of stars in the piano firmament with the concertos. The first movement of the 2nd Concerto was grander than I expected - although this may partly be because the last two times I've heard this concerto, it was in the chamber version, for piano and string quartet, and I've simply forgotten what it sounded like the way it was written. Pires's left hand, in particular, came through, rich and sonorous, drawing attention to lines and phrases often obscured by overlying decorative material.
The acid test in this concerto for me, however, comes with the entry of the piano in the Larghetto. The soloist needs to make an statement, and yet be as delicate and ethereal as an apparition in Romantic ballet. It's far more difficult to pull off than the notes on the page suggest. Pires has a wonderful dynamic range, creating a real sense of intimacy, but the best part of it was the central section, where the mood changes suddenly, from Bellini-esque belcanto, to a much more dramatic mode. Over tremolo strings, the piano launches into a soul-searching soliloquy, not so much Shakespearean as one of the great monologues of French classical theatre, with the protagonist torn between love and duty. Pires managed this beautifully, almost too much so; the return to the opening material seemed almost more like a retreat than a resolution. The rondo Finale danced along, lightly, almost happily, though a faint aura of melancholy is never far away in Chopin's music, and Pires never neglected that aspect in her playing.
That Chopin was not (and would never be) a master of the orchestra, in the way he was of the piano, was made abundantly clear by the contrast offered by the Beethoven symphony that followed. While the SCO did its job, admirably, for the concerto, the orchestra is really there mostly as a frame designed to showcase the soloist, the focus is entirely on the pianist. Beethoven had only died three years before; his 5th Symphony was written just over 20 years earlier, but the use of instrumentation, the range and variety of colour in the forces deployed (never mind the musical structure) is infinitely beyond anything Chopin could conceive for very similar forces.
Here, finally, we got to hear just what the orchestra can really do on a good day, and in the right hands, in this most famous of symphonies. Ticciati chose crisp pacing without pushing it, and paid keen attention to inner forces, as well as the overall structure, so that we were reminded of things that can get overlooked in other performances, such as that the opening four-note theme is a binding factor throughout the work, emphasising in turn the passage from darkness to light, but also that the one cannot exist without the other. The woodwinds played particularly beautifully throughout, while the natural horns blazed out exhilaratingly in the last movement. The 5th is a work I avoid in concert, simply because I've heard it so often, but here was a bright, refreshingly unhackneyed reading that sent us off home with uplifted spirits.
Happy 40th Birthday, SCO, and may there be many more.
[Next : 8th February]
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