Conductor: Mark Elder
A concert presenting three quite different works starts with Ravel’s Mother Goose (1911), which is, of course, full of orchestral colour, most of it pastel and very French in tone. Conductor Mark Elder creates a pleasing balance between double basses and wind, and there’s strong work from contrabassoon player Simon Estell, whose instrument represents the Beast in conversation with Beauty in this medley of fairy tales. The “pecking” strings are effective, too, with the woodwind bird calls.
Next up is James Ehnes with Bruch’s second violin concerto (1877). Unlike the composer’s earlier first concerto, an instant success which has remained popular for over 150 years, this one gets very few outings. And that is a pity because it’s full of melodic interest and is, at this concert, given pleasing treatment by Ehnes and Elder who are clearly happy working together.
Ehnes makes the melodies sing out with warmth in the opening adagio and gives us a lovely last note. The middle movement is, unusually, entitled “Recitative”, in which Elder provides incisive, measured orchestral sound in dialogue with the soloist. The finale combines lyricism with well-managed musical fireworks delivered at virtuosic high speed by Ehnes. His encore – Sonata Number 3 by Eugene Ysaye – enables Enhes to demonstrate his considerable skill at double stopping, of which there isn’t a great deal in the Bruch.
After the interval comes the work by Richard Strauss, which gives this concert its title: Ein Heldenleben (1898). It’s an almost outrageously huge and flamboyant piece requiring, among other things, eight horns, five percussionists, two harps, five trumpets, three bassoons and batteries of strings. It’s a loosely autobiographical piece expressing, in six sections, the 34-year-old composer’s views about his own life and life in general.
Highlights in this performance include the sumptuous, almost sensual lower string sound in the second section and the frisson of the three off-stage trumpets (they slip off a few minutes before), which herald the dramatic Des Helben Friedenswerke part. There is a lot of work for solo violin in Ein Heldenleben delivered here with verve by LPO leader Pieter Schoeman, whose “voice” evokes Strauss’s mercurial wife Pauline. Also noteworthy is the fine cor anglais playing (Max Spiers) in the final peaceful resolution and the glorious ending, which Elder tapers away perfectly.
Travelling from wafty French impressionism to Strauss-ian grandiloquence via late German romanticism doesn’t make much narrative sense, but each item in this concert is enjoyably played in its own way.
Reviewed on 25 October 2024
THIS REVIEW WAS FIRST PUBLISHED BY THE REVIEWS HUB https://www.thereviewshub.com/london-philharmonic-orchestra-a-heros-life-southbank-centre-london/
