SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

SEEN AND HEARD UK CONCERT REVIEW
 

Prom72 - Wagner, Tansy Davies and Bruckner: BBC Symphony Orchestra, Jirí Belohlávek. Royal Albert Hall, London, 8.9.2010 (BBr)

 

Wagner: Lohengrin – Prelude to Act 3 (1845/1848)

Tansy Davies: Wild Card (2010) (BBC commission: world première)

Bruckner: Symphony No. 7 in E major (1881/1883)

 

“Thank goodness that’s over!” the woman sitting in front of me said, at the end of Tansy Davies’s luminous new work Wild Card. Ms Davies has written that the work is , “…a musical adventure…” and “a metaphor for the journey through life, as depicted by the images and archetypes found in a Tarot pack.” She also gave us, in the programme book, a detailed explanation of the various musics she was to employ. For a first hearing this was a lot of information to take in, so I decided to let my ears do the understanding and I wasn’t disappointed. Ms Davies’s work could be considered to be a kind of rondo, with the various musical images she describes in her note passing by, returning, coming and going. It’s also full of dance rhythms. She has said that “The human tension in my music is often a sexual tension,” but here there was no tension, just a contemporary work which spoke directly the audience, in an easy going language, complete with jokes and a smile on its face. What was most admirable was that although Ms Davies asked for a very large percussion department, it was used with real restraint and its employment was never, as all too often in contemporary works, allowed to take the place of real musical invention. There was only one reason for saying “Thank goodness that’s over!” at the end of the work, and that is because one could then hear this marvellous, and inventive, piece all over again. And it should be repeated at the earliest opportunity. The performance of the BBC Symphony – long term pioneers in the dissemination of new works – was exemplary, their joy in the music evident in every bar.

For the rest, the Prelude to Act 3 of Lohengrin was given a bright and breezy performance, just the stuff to get a concert off to a good start. Bruckner’s commanding 7^th Symphony was another matter. Although I felt that Belohlávek had a good grasp of the architecture of the music, his tempi were wayward, and on the fast side, thus robbing the music of its time to breathe and grow. The slow movement, in particular, was lacking in emotional urgency and the big climax was fudged by a too slight build up. Likewise the end of the Symphony where Bruckner brings back the opening theme of the work and we realise that the main theme of the finale is made from exactly the same notes, wasn’t the blazing peroration it should have been.

Throughout, the playing of the BBC Symphony was a joy to hear, and if it didn’t quite have the rich sound of the Vienna Philharmonic in the Bruckner that cannot be called a criticism; it’s simply that the orchestra doesn’t have this music in its blood as do its Viennese cohorts. But it wasn’t far off and what is most important about this concert is that it gave a new work a great baptism and that is to be applauded by everyone.

Bob Briggs

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