SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

 

Wagner: Forest Murmurs [Siegfried] (1853/1857 – 1864/1865 – 1869/1871)

Sibelius: Tapiola, op.112 (1925)

Arnold: Larch Trees, op.3 (1943)

Nielsen: Symphony No.4, Det Uudslukkelige, op.29 (1914/1916)

The best, they say, is usually kept for last, and the final concert in the Kensington Symphony Orchestra’s season proved just that. Here was a look, and a listen, to and at nature and human nature. Oddly the simplest piece here was Wagner’s Forest Murmurs – a seemingly beautiful depiction of peace and the coming of morning. Forget the real plot, just revel in the gorgeous sounds he conjures up. A very nice way to start this concert.

 

Things changed rapidly with Tapiola, Sibelius’s description of the Great God of the Forest, as the temperature dropped to the equivalent of the inside of my freezer. Tapiola is unique in Sibelius’s output, due to its being, in a sense, static, the music goes nowhere, has no heroics, it ends more or less where it started, yet by the finish we know we have lived a full lifetime. Keable had the measure of this work and was as single minded in his interpretation as the composer was in his concept. Alert to the desolation of the music, Keable kept a tight rein on proceedings never allowing for the intrusion of emotion, simply telling the tale, showing us the vast, bleak, landscape which stretches out forever. Screaming trumpets, wild woodwind, whooping horns and huge monolithic string lines all blended together in a performance of awesome power and strength.

 

Larch Trees was Malcolm Arnold’s first orchestral work. It’s a short tone poem which contains much that came to be known as Arnold fingerprints. It’s scored for a small orchestra – woodwinds, horns and strings – and contains many moods, sometimes savage, sometimes calm. This is no easy listen nor is it a pretty picture of trees. There’s something nasty there if you go into this wood today. This performance was nicely understated and this allowed the ever changing music to register fully with the audience, most of whom, I am sure, were new to the piece. Keable’s interpretation proved that the natural world isn’t necessarily a good and safe place to be!

 

To end we turned to human nature. Nielsen said, “…music is life whereas the other arts only depict life. Life is unquenchable and inextinguishable; yesterday, today and tomorrow, life was, is and will be in struggle, conflict, procreation and destruction; and everything returns. Music is life, and as such, inextinguishable.” All this he poured into his 4^th Symphony, named The Inextinguishable, and all the turmoil of life and living pass before our ears in a kaleidoscope of musical ideas. Into the mix he throws a disruptive element – a second set of timpani – which tries to bring about a conclusion to life. At the end its power is swallowed up in the victory of right over might, or perhaps life over death. Keable and his players gave their all, performing as if the life force had a firm grip on them and they were keeping it going. This was a magnificent performance, the strings were resplendent, the winds, in their second movement conversation, gorgeous, the brass superb and the timpani as menacing and frightening as you could want. This was a magnificent performance in every way, and even though the apotheosis was slightly rushed, the sheer joy of victory could not be denied.

 

Bob Briggs