SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Leonard Bernstein: Symphonic Dances from West Side Story (1957 – 1961)

Szymanowski: Violin Concerto No.1, op.35 (1916)
Malcolm Arnold: Symphony No.5, op.74 (1961)

 

The fifth instalment of the Ealing Symphony’s survey of Malcolm Arnold’s symphonies brought us the first work where the dark forces start to take hold. Written in memory of three musical friends who died young – Frederick Thurston, Gerard Hoffnung and Denis Brain – as well as his older brother Aubrey, one might expect an elegiac work but not so. Certainly there is a pall which hangs over the whole work, and the piece is in no way celebratory, but the music is positive. What’s more, Arnold seems to want to “have a go” to prove a point and incorporates serial ideas which, as one would expect with this most approachable of composers, sound perfectly tonal and “right”! He could beat the serialists at their own game when he wanted to. A success with the public at its first performance the work was less well treated by the critics. I appreciate that at the time it probably wasn’t understood that here was one of this country’s leading symphonists working at full throttle, but quite how they could have got it wrong, especially in the face of public opinion, is beyond me. Tonight there was no possible way that a critic could misunderstand the message of the music, nor the way it affected the listening public. This performance was quite outstanding in every way. Gibbons got to the heart of the music, never allowing the lyrical sections – here I am particularly thinking of the big tune which makes up the slow movement – to dominate, and pointing the grotesquery of the final movement’s march. The end, with its clangour of bells over a static bass, simply stopped, as in a Kafka novel, leaving one with the impression that the music was continuing unheard, for we had only experienced half the story. This performance was a triumph for all concerned. Special stop press news: at next year’s Malcolm Arnold Festival, in Northampton, all nine of his Symphonies will be performed. This is not to be missed. Book early to hear one of the great English symphonic cycles.

 

The first half was no less impressive. Perhaps a church wasn’t the best place to hear Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances for the large acoustic obliterated much of the Mambo and the dodecaphonic double fugue in Cool. I had no such reservations about the sound for Szymanowski’s spectacular 1^st Violin Concerto. Victoria Goldsmith is an 18-year-old, Russian-born violinist of quite spectacular ability. She stepped in at two weeks notice to replace an indisposed Priya Mitchell, flying in from Russia on Thursday, and, Gibbons told me, re–learned the work for tonight’s performance. Re–learned? To have the work under your fingers at 18 is astonishing enough but to have to re–learn it at 18 is almost beyond belief. What he meant, of course, was that she knew it and simply had to re–acquaint herself with the notes. And there was no doubting her understanding of the music for she played it with a passion and fire which can only come from a deep understanding, and much study, of the music. Szymanowski’s scoring is so transparent that the soloist can be heard throughout, a major achievement for a Violin Concerto, and thus we heard, and could fully appreciate, Goldsmith’s command of technique, which was quite staggering – her playing of harmonics was especially compelling. She is a major talent.

 

This was the opening concert of the Ealing Symphony Orchestra’s 2010/2011 season and there is much to look forward to, not to mention a deal of British music, which is always appreciated.

 

Bob Briggs