SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

 

 

John Foulds: Dynamic Triptych, op.88 (1927/1929)

Vaughan Williams: Serenade to Music (1938)

The Lark Ascending (1914 rev 1920)

Elgar: Symphony No.1 in A♭, op.55 (1907/1908)

 

The story of John Foulds is quite well known nowadays. Cellist in the Hallé, under Richter, where his father was bassoonist, composer of radical tendencies – he had a great interest in things eastern, and was employing quarter tones before the turn of the 19^th century – as well as of light music. He was Elizabeth Lutyens’s first teacher, wrote a fascinating book called Music Today and, ultimately, went to India to be the Director of European Music for All India Radio in Delhi, dying there, of cholera, aged only 58. Like Havergal Brian, Foulds has gained the reputation of being a difficult, oddball, character, with music to match, but, as with Brian, this is only because we haven’t had the chance to hear his music. And what chances have there been with regard to performance? I looked at the complete Proms listing, which is now available on the BBC Proms website and is invaluable for research purposes, to see how many performances Foulds has received at the Proms. Henry Wood himself premièred Epithalamium, op 10 and Music–Pictures, Group III, op 33, at Queen’s Hall, on 9 October 1906 and 5 September 1912 respectively, as well as the Keltic Suite – once a stalwart of the light music scene – on 22 September 1917 and the middle movement of it, the Keltic Lament, on 12 September 1918. Foulds himself conducted the Keltic Lament on 17 October 1923 and the Suite from his incidental music for the première of Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan on 13 August 1925. Then it was silence until 6 August 1998 when Barry Wordsworth conducted the Three Mantras, op 61b. A poor showing indeed, especially for someone who is so obviously an important figure in British music. It must be said that Havergal Brian, who is now well known, if not well performed, over the same period only received eight performances of seven works. Isn’t it time the Proms gave us some Brian? This season’s focus on English music will hopefully be the first of many trips into the wealth of home grown composition. This is one of the most important things that the Proms can give us.

 

So here we are, 12 years after Wordsworth’s success and 85 years after Foulds himself conducted at the Proms. The big question is: was the enforced wait worth it? The answer is a most emphatic yes. What we heard tonight was well worth waiting for and we were amply rewarded in performance. In three big movements, Dynamic Triptych is a Concerto in many ways, with piano and orchestra as equal partners. Although there are big solos for the piano they don’t feel like cadenzas, so well are they woven into the flow of the music. Wass has obviously immersed himself in the work and played it as if it were a regular repertoire piece. There felt to be some confusion at the outset but, having listened to the archived recording on the BBC website, I realise that this was an acoustic phenomenon, which briefly clouded the sound. After this there was an admirable clarity to much of the performance. That both music and performance packed a real punch can be attested to by the fact that the audience applauded for nearly three minutes at the end. How often does one have to make the point that the concert going public wants, what Henry Wood called, “novelties”? An intelligent audience thrives on the new, and unusual, as much as the old. It’s about time many of our concert giving organisations realises this and starts to vary their rather staid and prosaic programming.

 

Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music is a gem, to quote John McCabe, and tonight we were given a beautifully understated and restrained performance. The sixteen young singers, all Proms debutantes, worked well together when acting as a chorus but in the solo passages the men were superior to the women, singing with a perfection of line, without embellishment, whilst the women relied, too heavily for my taste, on wide and fast vibrato. The orchestra was perfection, seldom raising its collective voice above a conversational level and allowing Shakespeare’s meditation on music and listening to fully register.

 

Nicola Benedetti’s was an equally serene voice in the part of the lark, and, with the most unbelievable calmness from the orchestra, this interpretation was a brief moment of perfection too, a feeling of peaceful grandeur pervading the hall.

 

That Elgar’s 1^st Symphony didn’t quite reach the heights of what had gone before is not a criticism, merely a comment on the fact that Runnicles hasn’t yet won his spurs as an Elgarian. He has the measure of the music and understands its architecture, but he has yet to really get to grips with the ebb and flow of Elgar’s elusive muse. The outer movements were, perhaps, a trifle rushed, but the slow introductions were perfectly handled. The scherzo was fiery, the trio, really like something you hear by the river, as Elgar had it, and the transition into the slow movement were all quite magical. The great slow movement was never allowed to sag and become sentimental, and the coda, with its muted trombones was exquisite. This wasn’t a great performance but it was a very fine one and one which bodes well for Runnicles as an Elgarian. I can hardly wait to hear what he will make of this work in two of three years when his interpretation has matured and settled down. It is obvious that conductor and orchestra have a strong rapport and this promises much for their future together.

 

The Albert Hall was packed to the rafters for this programme of English music and the audience went wild at the end, as it should for such strong and important works. Come on, BBC. You are the British Broadcasting Corporation. Let’s have more of this. We want it and we need it. What’s more, we deserve it!

 

Bob Briggs