Cheltenham Festival 2008 (6)  : Music by Maurice Ravel, Max Bruch and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Alina Ibragimova (violin); Rachel Nicholls (soprano); Robert Hardy (speaker); Ladies of the London Symphony Chorus;Philharmonia Orchestra; Richard Hickox, Tewkesbury Abbey 11. 7.2008 (JQ)

Ravel: Suite: Le Tombeau de Couperin

Bruch: Violin Concerto in G minor Op. 20

Vaughan Williams: Sinfonia Antarctica


This was the last concert in this year’s Festival to be given in Tewkesbury Abbey and all the stops were pulled out for a gala event in aid of the Abbey restoration appeal. The chosen programme celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Vaughan Williams through the inclusion of one of his less frequently heard symphonies. And the presence on the programme of works by Ravel and Bruch was a nice touch given that RVW studied briefly with both of them.

That said, I’m not entirely convinced that the choice of works was entirely appropriate to the venue. Tewkesbury Abbey has a resonant acoustic and this tended to militate against both the Ravel and Bruch pieces – the Vaughan Williams fared somewhat better because his orchestration in Sinfonia Antarctica is much richer and inclined to blocks of sound. In particular, though the cello and bass sections of the orchestra seemed to have been thinned down, there was almost inevitably a bias towards the bass end of the sonic spectrum in the Ravel and Bruch pieces. Also, despite the best efforts of the conductor and players, to judge from comments that I overheard in the interval I’m not sure that all the filigree detail of Ravel’s scoring would have registered with those seated further down the nave than I was.

But from my seat ten rows from the front I could hear detail pretty well. Hickox obtained a supple performance of the first movement of the Ravel and he achieved a nice bounce to the rhythms in the second movement, which in itself was important in a resonant acoustic. He set a quite challenging tempo in the last of the four movements, respecting the marking Assez vif. This worked well, generating some energetic music-making in the outer sections of the movement, while in the more relaxed central section there was some admirable woodwind playing.

For the concerto the orchestra was joined by the twenty-three year old Russian violinist, Alina Ibragimova. I can’t recall coming across her before but her biography shows her to have a good pedigree and she was, if I may say so, an attractive soloist in every way. I thought I detected a small slip of the fingers at the top of the second of her opening flourishes at the start of the work but once the first movement was launched she soon showed herself to be in command. She displayed a lovely singing tone in the more lyrical stretches but her tone, though very winning, is not the biggest one has heard and I did wonder whether her playing was projected right down the long nave of the abbey. In particular, when Bruch fully engages the orchestra even where I was sitting her playing was sometimes rather submerged.

Miss Ibragimova had much to offer in the first movement but it was in the slow movement that she really came into her own. She delivered the main theme of this movement with a lovely, singing tone. Her account of this poetic movement was poised and lyrical. Above all it was the gentleness of her playing that impressed and I liked her performance a lot. In the finale she played with drive and commitment and her performance of the whole concerto was clearly appreciated by the audience, who responded warmly.

I suppose I’d better get out of the way immediately my big grumble about the performance of Sinfonia Antarctica, which occupied the second half. In the score each of the five movements is headed by a brief superscription, the sources of which are various, including lines by Shelley, by John Donne and the last entry made by Captain Scott in his journal. In some early performances of the work an actor was engaged to read these superscriptions before the relevant movements and, indeed, Sir John Gielgud performed this function on the very first recording of the work (Boult, 1953). I thought the practice had died out long ago, though Sir Ralph Richardson read the lines on André Previn’s 1970s recording. I was very surprised to find Robert Hardy in attendance to read the superscription during this performance, the more so since when Hickox conducted the same work in Gloucester Cathedral at the Three Choirs Festival a few years back that performance was sans speaker.

I’m sorry to say that I think the use of a speaker was a serious misjudgement. The readings broke up the flow of the performance, making it seem more like a suite, and as such they were a distraction. Worse still, Mr. Hardy has a marked tendency towards the histrionic, which was in evidence again here. If one has to have these readings it’s surely better that they’re delivered just with simple authority. As it was, I felt he over-interpreted them seriously.

As to the music itself, well though I’m an unrepentant admirer of Vaughan Williams I must confess to some ambivalence about Sinfonia Antarctica. The music was originally composed for the very British 1948 film, Scott of the Antarctic. Subsequently RVW used large stretches of that score to construct a five-movement symphony. In many ways he was right to do so for the film score contains far too much good music for it not to have a new lease of life in the concert hall: furthermore, the music shows time and again what a superbly imaginative and resourceful orchestrator Vaughan Williams was. That said, is the work a symphony? There’s not a great deal of obvious symphonic development in it though the noble theme with which the first movement begins does reappear in the finale.

The first movement opens with music that suggests the noble endeavours of Scott and his team. This is music in RVW’s majestic vein. The sound was brass- and bass-heavy but that’s really down to the scoring. Later the tinkling percussion in particular suggested the Antarctic cold but it was the intervention of the wordless female singers that really emphasised the icy wildernesses. The singers were positioned out of sight in the south transept (i.e. behind the orchestra and to the conductor’s right.) This gave their sounds an appropriately otherworldly quality. Soloist Rachel Nicholls, a late substitute for the indisposed Susan Gritton, made a strong impression. As Richard Hickox unfolded the movement with a strong sense of purpose the skill of the orchestration impressed time and again, both in the loud music and in the softer sections.

I was not quite so convinced by the second movement, a seascape with hints of some of the musical ideas heard over three decades previously in A Sea Symphony. Though he called it a Scherzo, RVW’s tempo marking is only moderato. However, I thought that Mr Hickox erred a little too much on the slow side of moderato, perhaps in deference to the acoustic. One casualty of this approach, however, was that the penguins that RVW so famously depicts sounded decidedly portly on this occasion.

The wind, brass and percussion distilled a menacing atmosphere at the start of the third movement. As the music progresses the scoring is almost frightening and the organ pedal that RVW eventually adds was a quiet yet potent presence in this performance. In this movement Vaughan Williams is in visionary mode and his orchestration is extremely imaginative. It isn’t just the sheer power and menace of the scoring that impress; it’s little details like the passage where short, plaintive flute solos occur as tiny interludes within the overall context of balefully powerful music. The climax of the movement is attained on the glacier, where the organ thunders, adding immeasurably to the orchestra at full tilt (one thinks here of the moment in Job where Satan ascends the throne of God.) With the Milton organ of Tewkesbury Abbey in full cry this was a shattering moment.

In the Intermezzo that followed the fine oboe and cor anglais solos made a strong impression. The brazen brass playing at the start of the finale (shades of the volcanic finale of the Fourth Symphony) was equally impressive and this movement featured strong, vigorous playing from the Philharmonia.  Eventually the return of the wind machine and the female singers, both unheard since the first movement, reminded us of the bleak power and inhospitable nature of the Antarctic wastes. The last sound that we heard – uniquely in a symphony? – was the wind machine. Despite Scott’s heroics and that of his men nature was not to be conquered, at least not by their ill-fated expedition. As the sound of the wind died away into nothingness Hickox managed to sustain the silence for a very long time, allowing the atmosphere to resonate.

It was good to hear this symphony as part of the celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of this great composer’s death. His last three symphonies are still far too infrequently heard in our concert halls and while I think that the Eight and the scandalously underrated Ninth have even stronger claims on the public’s attentions there is a great deal to admire in Sinfonia Antarctica, as this understanding performance made clear.

John Quinn


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