Barbican Hall, Friday 1 March 2013

With the anniversaries of Britten, Verdi and Wagner upon us it is a tribute to the BBC that we are getting a chance to evaluate Michael Tippett’s symphonies in the first half of this year. This series of concerts will run until May which will include all of the symphonies and the Piano Concerto. None of these are easy works and the lack of regular public performance means that few of us will have had a chance to get to know them well as live events.

I am old enough to have encountered their original performances but admit I have hardly encountered them since, so it was refreshing to be immersed in the torrent of sound which is the Third Symphony. The opening movement launches itself with astonishing energy, and this is maintained throughout the hour or so of the performance. There are echoes of A Midsummer Marriage in the string writing for the opening movement and the brass fanfares of King Priam are hinted at in the ecstatic brass writing. But it is the blues songs of the final movement which set the work apart. Over the years there have been numerous criticisms of Tippett’s texts but surely these are among his finest and most sensitive. Originally the songs were amplified, and, while that was not true on this occasion, Marie Arnet had the lyrical intensity to carry over the large orchestra even if not all the works were entirely clear. Her passion and beauty of phrase were never in doubt.

David Robertson conducted with deep understanding of the score and its rapid changes of tone and texture.

Tippett  quotes from the Choral Symphony in his own Third and it seemed fitting that the opening part of the concert should have been Beethoven’s Triple Concerto. BBC Young Artists Igor Levit, Alexandra Soumm and Nicolas Altstaedt brought vigour and a subtlety to their playing which was entirely convincing. If the programming looked unbalanced on paper it was anything but in performance. The next concert in the series is again from the Barbican Hall on Friday 22 March when we will hear the Piano Concerto together with Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony. BH