Viennese Classics - Feb 2010
An old fashioned programme from the SSO – main stream classics all the way – is Darrell losing his grip on the committee?!
A Mozart overture, The Magic Flute, to open, and what a testing start particularly for the second violins! This was really nicely done, such hard music for comparatively large orchestras to enunciate clearly – choice of tempo is everything and the right choices were made. Clean, rhythmically tight playing was evident both in the fugal sections and in the punctuating ‘Masonic’ wind chords. By the end I was really hoping for the rest of act one.
I’ve always thought of Brahms’ B flat concerto as a bonus symphony from him – its more than a Romantic piano concerto, the integration of soloist and orchestra puts it in a different league. Of course that makes it a different proposition to perform both as soloist and orchestral player. Soloist Masa Tayama gave his performance plenty of presence and intellectual weight. From the start it was assured, confident playing demonstrating a clear understanding of the task in hand. Orchestrally Brahms is sometimes criticised as having over-dense textures, but the SSO are good at listening to each other and the wind particularly produced lucid, telling effects without the intonation problems that are sometimes evident in less accomplished performances. Balance within the orchestra and (more difficult) against a more distant soloist is the responsibility of the conductor – this was managed with clear direction from the rostrum, the magical hushed moments silencing even the least considerate members of a rather noisy audience [perhaps I was unlucky with my neighbours]. I thoroughly enjoyed the interpretation, but just occasionally I wanted Masa Tayama to be a more overtly virtuosic showman – even in this highly integrated piece a little star quality is appropriate.
Schubert 9 is one of those pieces that suffers from its nickname - everyone has their own mangled version of it as Gill reminded us in the programme. Actually it really is a great symphony – astounding from someone whose short composing life was almost entirely taken up with miniature forms. The SSO had a lot ahead of them as the noble horn solo started things off. The playing was alert and really nicely phrased – they took the lyrical side of Schubert’s nature but kept the essential rhythmic tautness and vitality that’s essential to maintaining the musical argument. There were a couple of moments in the first movement where scrappy ensemble or dodgy string intonation unsettled briefly, but in the slow movement the strings’ accompaniment textures were really beautifully controlled. The Scherzo and Finale both had the energy needed to carry the day – that’s a lot of energy in a movement over a thousand bars long. Of course the mainstream classics are hard for community orchestras, they need to be at peak form to successfully bring off works that the audience know so very well. It was undoubtedly a good programme to do - a very full STAG acknowledged their efforts enthusiastically.
John Hendry
