SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

 

John Foulds: April–England, op.48 no.1 (1926 orch 1932)

Beethoven: Piano Concerto No.3 in C minor, op.37 (1803)

Richard Strauss: Ein Heldenleben, op.40 (1897/1898)

 

John Foulds’s April–England is one of the best musical descriptions of the coming, and arrival, of spring – it is rivalled only by Frank Bridge’s magnificent Enter Spring of 1927. Conceived as a short piano piece, Foulds orchestrated and expanded the work to create a miniature of epic proportions. As with the Dynamic Triptych, heard in Prom 23, this piece has waited too long for a Proms performance. It’s immediately approachable, falling half way between his lighter and serious works. Imbued with the English music spirit of the age, it’s a smiling and joyous work, packed with two excellent tunes. After a short and sprightly opening it settles into a chaconne–like section where Foulds builds a big edifice over an eight note repeated ground bass. Here the music really comes into its own and there is the most beautiful, and sustained, climax. This piece really is a winner and Sir Mark and Foulds’s own orchestra – he was a cellist in the Hallé under Richter – did him proud, giving a marvellous performance, slightly understated, and allowing the music to speak clearly. Only at the end did Sir Mark let go and create a riot of sound at the apotheosis.

 

It was followed by Beethoven’s 3^rd Piano Concerto, given by Paul Lewis as part of his complete performance of the five Concerti. Here we can hear what Beethoven learned from Mozart in his use of the minor key and the heightened sense of drama and brooding intensity. With a pared down orchestra, Sir Mark directed a performance of classical sensibilities but I felt the overall impression was dull: the music never took off, it was all too earth bound and felt rather jaded. In every programme book, there is a section for each work listing notable earlier Proms performances of the various works played. For this work it told us that Solomon gave seven performances between 1914 and 1955, and I found myself wishing for that great pianist’s intelligence and aristocratic presence at the keyboard. Not that Paul Lewis isn’t a fine player, but I do wonder if giving him the responsibility for all five concertos isn’t too much, too soon? Having said this though… on my arrival home I listened to the performance on the BBC iPlayer – the archive in the BBC Radio 3 website – and found it to be a better performance than that experienced in the concert hall. So perhaps this was a performance given for the microphone and not one for public consumption in a large concert hall. The communication was too intimate for a big space and this explains my dissatisfaction earlier in the evening.

 

With Ein Heldenleben Sir Mark was in his element, for he has the ability to grasp a large scale structure and see the architecture of the music through from beginning to end; thus he has the ability to make large–scale, and complicated structures, such as the big tone poems of Strauss, seem like child’s play. This was a superb performance which contained the most beautiful and tender approach to the music concerning the Hero’s companion – usually accepted to be his wife – and unleashed a frightening vision of the Hero’s Battlefield, often said to signify his critics – but if so, are we really such a bad lot? – which culminates in the horns singing out the great tune from his earlier Don Juan. Strauss famously said, "I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer" which is patently untrue, but if it were even half accurate, a performance of this stature would still make us wonder at the comment’s validity.

 

I know I’ve said it before, but I’ll do so again. The Hallé is in the safest pair of hands since the great JB’s passing and it’s good to know that Sir Mark’s contract with the orchestra will extend to 2015 – by then he will have been at the helm for 15 years, over half of JB’s tenure. This can only be the best of news for the many audiences who regularly attend the Hallé concerts in the north of England. Would that we heard them more often in London.

 

A final note about concert etiquette. At the Mahler concert last night (Prom 27 with the World Orchestra for Peace under Gergiev) the young fellow sitting next to me, before the 5^th Symphony and between the first and second, and again between the second and third movements, seemed to be either sending text messages, or writing his twitter comments, on his mobile phone. Tonight, the young woman sitting next to me, having arrived during the applause which followed the Foulds, sat down and made two phone calls to her friends – who were in the gallery of the RAH! She was jumping up and down, waving and gesticulating wildly to them. She spent the rest of the concert looking at her mobile, which was in her lap, as if waiting for some message which never came. Towards the end of the Strauss she started sending text messages to someone, who, mercifully, didn’t reply. I am very happy to see young people attending concerts of classical music but do we now have to change the announcement made at the start of all concerts which reminds us to turn our mobile phones and alarm clocks off – I keep expecting them to tell us to do the same with our pacemakers! – to tell people not to use their mobiles during the show? Do people really have no idea of how disturbing this is to their fellow audience members? The mobile phone is a blight on our lives in the open air, so please let’s keep our concert halls the havens for people and beauty that they should be. What’s worrying is that if this is to become a regular occurrence – and I’ve now experienced it twice on consecutive nights – then it’s only a matter of time before there’s trouble when it happens again.

 

Bob Briggs