Vaughan Williams (arr. Bryan) : The Lark Ascending
Suckling : The White Road (Katherine Bryan, flute)
Ravel : Daphnis et Chloé - Suites Nos. 1 & 2
Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Arild Remmereit
It's a rare evening that features a flautist as soloist, and this one had not one, but two 'concertos', even if one was (as Katherine Bryan put it) "stolen". By which she meant that she had appropriated it from the violin repertory, for The Lark Ascending was, of course, written for solo violin and orchestra. It's true that the trills and warbles of bird-song seem like the natural preserve of the flute - as, indeed, Ravel demonstrated in the music we were to hear later on in the evening - but there's something about the quality of duration of sound, or rather, the difference thereof, between flute and violin, that made the transposition of instrument less than wholly convincing, to my mind.
Time and again, I was finding the sound, the ends of phrases, not quite lingering in the air the way they do when the violin plays them, making the phrase seem abbreviated, or as if the player had run out of breath - which was ridiculous, because Bryan's control of breathing was beyond reproach. Yet she does, nevertheless, need to take breaths every so often, where a string instrument can spin out an endless line, and if it was just a vague feeling of unease in the Vaughan Williams, it became something of a liability in the generous encore she offered us, the "Meditation" from Thaïs. This is a piece I know in much more detail than the Lark, and the breaks in phrasing were very obvious; however much she tried, they were, to my mind, obtrusive. To come back to the Lark, it never really connected in the right way, for all that the playing was pristine and evocative.
Martin Suckling's The White Road (named after the book by ceramic artist Emund de Waal), on the other hand, was specifically written for Katherine Bryan. Of all the pieces by Suckling I've heard over the last few years, whether in concert or on the radio, this is probably the most readily approachable. It's fairly brief, a little over a quarter of an hour in length, it falls into clearly identifiable sections, which allows the listener to keep track of the structure, and there are obvious connections between the various melodic materials used, again, helpful in keeping a grasp on the whole. The end was a shade abrupt, but otherwise it was well-balanced, both in terms of sound, between the soloist and the orchestra or sections thereof, and in terms of contrasts of mood and tempo, and Bryan played with disarming ease and conviction.
The concert tonight (as well as last night, in Edinburgh) was meant to be conducted by the orchestra's Music Director, Peter Oundjian, but he is indisposed, with sufficient warning to be able to print the programmes correctly, but late enough that finding a replacement was a matter of some concern. All the more so, as Ms. Bryan noted, because of the unusual programme, including a world premiere, and that must have been a daunting matter for all concerned, to have to bring in a new, and vitally important participant for the creation of a new piece at such a late date. Yet Arild Remmereit felt confident enough with the second half of the programme to conduct the Daphnis Suites without a score, and he certainly seemed to be able to communicate clearly enough with the orchestra.
The first Suite was a little slow to get off the ground, but the opening tied tonight's three works together interestingly, each sharing a sort of haze of sound from the strings to evoke a pastoral landscape, though of very different types. By the Danse guerrière, though, things were coming together in all the right ways, and that last section in particular revealed something very striking, that I've rarely heard so clearly, the hints of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring (that would be completed the year after Daphnis) in the layered texturing of the movement, and the bouncing detail of the pizzicati. The second part, opening with a sumptuous Lever du jour, was opulent and expressive, culminating in its riotous Danse générale, and we were treated to another generous encore, the 'Nimrod' movement from Elgar's Enigma Variations, warm and solemn without being overly sentimental, finely judged.
[Next : 5th February]
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