SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Hoddinott, Varèse, Holt, Beethoven, Sibelius, Ravel:  Baiba Skride (violin), Llŷr Willams (piano), BBC National Chorus of Wales, BBC National Orchestra of Wales / Thierry Fischer (conductor), Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff, 22.1.2009 (GPu)

Hoddinott, Badger in the Bag
Varèse, Ionisation
Holt, St. Vitus in the Kettle
Beethoven, Choral Fantasy
Sibelius, Violin Concerto
Ravel, Daphnis and Chloë, Suite no. 2


For the opening of the Hoddinott Hall, an addition to the Millennium Centre complex in Cardiff, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales presented a rich and varied programme which, as well as being musically satisfying, displayed both the accomplishments of most sections of the orchestra (and those of the BBC National Chorus of Wales) and the impressive acoustics of the new hall.

The building has been added to – and well integrated with – one end of the main Millennium Centre building. Stylistically – and in its use of such materials as Welsh slate and brick, and timber cladding – it complements the main structure successfully. It is actually entered, so far as the audience are concerned, from within the main building, reducing any risk that it might have seemed like a mere adjunct or afterthought to the earlier building. The Hall is, primarily, a home for the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and will be used by them for rehearsal and recording. The Hall is the work of the young architect Tim Green of Capital Architects. Tim Green of architects Capital Architecture said the exterior of the building was designed to be in keeping with the existing Wales Millennium Centre while the interior had a theme all of its own. The hall has – I presume not accidentally – a slight feel of the Welsh Chapel about it, though its abundant use of hardwoods, including oak and beech, goes way beyond anything normally found in such places. The extensive use of these hardwood veneers contributes to what, it was soon obvious, is a fine acoustic. Adjustable drapes and panels ensure that reverberation times can be adjusted as desired for variations of repertoire and audience. It even finds room to let in some natural light – high up on one wall. There is plenty of space for a full orchestra and a raised choir gallery behind that space. The essentially rectangular shape of the hall is varied when the walls bulge outward in the middle of the long sides. There is room for an audience of 350, the front rows are at floor level, the rest tiered. The Hall has about it an air of elegant functionality. The BBC National Orchestra of Wales will, of course, continue its touring activities and its extensive programme of concerts in other venues around Wales. The concerts scheduled for the Hoddinott Hall will constitute an addition to the Orchestra’s already substantial commitments at St. David’s Hall in Cardiff.

The Hall carries, very fittingly, the name of one of Wales’s major composers of the twentieth century, Alan Hoddinott. Hoddinott, born at Bargoed in 1929, a violinist by training (and in that capacity a founder member of the national Youth Orchestra of Wales in 1946) fairly quickly established himself as a composer. From 1967 he was Professor and Head of the Department of Music at what was then Cardiff College of the University of Wales, and later Cardiff University. His compositional output included ten symphonies, several operas (including The Beach of Falesá, 1974, The Trumpet Major, 1981 and Tower, 1998), many vocal works, a substantial series of piano sonatas and arrange of chamber works. It was, of course, right and proper that  the first music to be publicly heard in the Hoddinott Hall should be by Hoddinott himself.

Even more fittingly, Badger in the Bag (Broch Ynghod) was commissioned by the BBC, and first performed at a St. David’s Day concert at St. David’s Hall in Cardiff,  in 2004. It is essentially a concert overture and, like many of the best works of that kind, it has literary origins – in an episode from the story of Pyll, Prince of Dyfed, in the Mabinogion. Hoddinott’s brief piece made a spectacular opening, an orchestral showpiece full of incisive rhythms and biting brass; there are some fine passages for the lower strings and for the harp and the extensive percussion section. The whole packs a substantial punch. Thierry Fischer, in a very brief speech of welcome had expressed the wish that the audience would “have fun”. Badger in the Bag was full of fun.

A kind of wry humour is part of the mixture that is Varèse’s Ionisation. Its take on (amongst other things) the street sounds of New York shocked at its premiere in 19333 (when amongst the 13 percussionists conducted by Nicolas Slonimsky were Henry Cowell, Carlos Salzedo, William Schuman and Paul Creston) but here, performed with evident affection, one was able to appreciate the outstanding clarity of sound which the new hall made audible, a clarity which enabled one both to enjoy for themselves the sounds of temple blocks, castanets and sirens and to hear more clearly than is usually the case the interplay of the rhythmic cells out of which the work is constructed.

Simon Holt was born in Bolton in 1958 and studied at the royal Northern College of Music and, in the summer of 1980, with Hans Werner Henze. His work has been played extensively by such ensembles as the London Sinfonietta, the Nash Ensemble and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. Most of his work seems to take its start from extra-musical materials – often literary or visual. His position as Composer-in-Association with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales was marked by the performance of Troubled Light at the 2008 proms. Here he was represented by the world premiere of St. Vitus in the Kettle, scored for wind, brass, percussion, harp and six double-basses. Holt himself has explained the origins of the piece as follows: “Walking round the Bode Museum in Berlin at the beginning of 2008, I came upon a medieval sculpture of the fourth century martyr St. Vitus depicted bubbling away in a cauldron of boiling lead. Looking rather serene and yet not a little comical, he seemed to be some way over the age of between 7 and 12 – the age that unreliable legend tells us he was at the time of his martyrdom. He is reputed to have performed many miracles including curing the Roman Emperor Diocletian’s son of an evil spirit. However, as he was a devout Christian, he refused to sacrifice to the Roman gods and so his miraculous cure was put down to sorcery. He was consequently tortured in numerous ways, including being dipped into a cauldron of boiling lead from which he leapt unscathed”. Holt’s piece, some five minutes long, begins arrestingly with some percussive writing for the double basses and leads into a range of intriguing, complex and often surprising orchestral textures. Repetitions and silences, some juxtapositions of real wit, all hold the attention in a fine, well-structured piece.

Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy doesn’t come one’s way in concert all that often, though there is much to be enjoyed in its individuality (some might say eccentricity) of conception and construction. Llŷr Willams was both forceful and lyrical in the opening piano solo, played with an attractive sense of space and some beautifully phrased runs. Thierry Fischer’s judgement was impressive in the pacing and dynamics of orchestral entrance and in the variations played by solo woodwinds, string quartet and full orchestra, the whole given an attractively terpsichorean quality. The balance of forces was well handled by Fischer, not least in the use of the excellent BBC National Chorus of Wales and there was a winningly joyful radiance to the performance of Christoph Kuffner’s poetically uninspired text, however worthy its sentiments. Still, in a work so full of echoes and anticipations of other compositions by Beethoven, there is something apt in its closing celebration of the arts:

    

Wenn der Töne Zauber walten          When music’s          enchantment         reigns
Und der Wortes weihe spricht            and poetry’s consecration speaks,
Muss sich Herrliches gestalten          wondrous things will take shape,
Nacht und Stürme werden Licht.          Night and storms turn to light.

Äuss’re ruhe, inn’re Wonne           Outer peace, inner bliss
Herrschen für den Glücklichen.          are the rulers of the happy man.
Doch der Künste Frühlingssonne        But the arts, like the spring sun,
Lässt aus beiden Licht entstehn.          cause light to flow from both.

What better sentiments for the opening of a new arts venue, especially when voices and instruments came together with such conviction and well-directed enthusiasm.

It is no denigration of the other pieces hear in this opening concert if one suggests that the musical high spot came with the performance of the Violin Concerto in D minor by Sibelius which opened the second half of the concert. The playing of the young soloist Baiba Skride was mesmerically compelling in the opening allegro moderato; Thierry Fischer’s control of the opening moments, the strings deliciously hazy, the muted violins beautifully preparing the way for the entry of the soloist, very much dolce ed espressivo in the case of Skride. It was a real pleasure, in such intimate surroundings, to hear the beautiful sounds she drew from her Srradivarius ‘Wilhelmj’ violin of 1725. The broken chords of the first cadenza were as joy in themselves, and in the movement’s central cadenza her lines were lovingly (but not over-indulgently) phrased. Throughout the interplay of soloist and orchestra was well judged and purposeful. Elsewhere Skride showed herself very able to handle the considerable technical difficulties of the piece, as in the two-part counterpoint in the passage which follows the first climax of the slow movement. Even Skride didn’t quite convince me that there aren’t some rather banal elements in the later stages of that adagio – but she can hardly be held responsible for that! She and, indeed, Fischer and the orchestra were wholly convincing in the high energy closing allegro, full of a sense of burgeoning life, of storms which  are life-giving more than destructive. This was a top-class performance.

The evening had begun with an evocation of Celtic mythology; it closed with ravel’s version of the late-classical world of the Daphnis and Chloë of Longus, one of the most influential (and beautiful) of the Ancient Greek romances. The three movements of the Second Suite taken from Ravel’s 1912 ballet begin with ‘Lever du jour’, and the orchestral sound, not least in the twitterings of flute and piccolo flute (very attractively played) and the ecstatic melody which dominates this movement, spoke with conviction not only of the beginning of the day but also of the awakening adolescent sexuality of the two young lovers. What can sometimes seem merely an attractive wash of sound was exemplary in the clarity with which one could hear the intertwining of instrumental (and later, choral) voices. The flute solo in ‘Pantomime’ was exquisite. In the closing ‘Danse général’ that peculiarly Ravelian simultaneity of the orderly and the rowdy, the wild and the neoclassical, was persuasively articulated and the whole built to a resonant climax – another chance to enjoy the excellent acoustics!

This was a fine, ‘fun’ opening, which set demanding standards for later nights in Hoddinott Hall.

Glyn Pursglove

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