SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Martinů: Barry Douglas (piano) BBC Symphony Orchestra/Jiří Bělohlávek, Barbican Hall, London, 17.4.2010 (J-PJ)

Stravinsky: Symphony in Three Movements

Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 2

Martinů: Symphony No. 3


The BBC Symphony Orchestra and their chief conductor Jiří Bělohlávek continued their exploration of Martinů’s symphonic output, challenging the composer’s relative neglect when compared to his contemporaries and Czech compatriots.

Completed in 1944, three years after Martinů’s arrival in the United States from war-torn Europe, the third symphony is full of bright promise, but also stalked by an uneasy sense of foreboding. Bělohlávek clearly knows his Martinů well, and the performance was marked by precision and an assured sense of direction. The urgency of the symphony’s opening movement sometimes recalled Stravinsky and Bartók – also recent exiles to the US – in its restless uncertainty. The central Largo was beautifully played, with the BBC SO responding to Bělohlávek’s peeling away of orchestral layers. Sioned William’s shimmering harp playing was deservedly applauded at the end, as was Elizabeth Burley’s work on piano, which managed to question the optimism of the whole finale with the simple use of bleak, repeated chords.

Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements was also written a few years after the composer’s arrival in the US from France. But whereas Martinů’s third symphony was consciously planned and written within a few weeks, Stravinsky’s work is essentially three separate orchestral pieces built around fragments of music he wrote during his brief and unsuccessful stint as a film composer. The problem with the symphony, therefore, is that it lacks a coherent identity and doesn’t really lead anywhere. The BBC SO and Bělohlávek did their best to forge together its disparate elements, but their playing was more academic than passionate, and at times the symphony came across as an odd pastiche of Stravinsky – the passages for flute and harp in the central Andante, for example, strongly suggest his ballet Orpheus.

In contrast, the Prokofiev’s second piano concerto was sheer dazzle. Barry Douglas’s frenetic but assured performance was almost dizzying to watch. Despite Prokofiev’s admission that the concerto was ‘more interesting for the soloist, less for the orchestra’, Bělohlávek made the most of what opportunities there were, particularly in the comic touches during the third movement. Conductor and soloist also displayed a strong partnership, with the shifts in tempo clearly guided by mutual consent.

John-Pierre Joyce