Well you can\u2019t fault BPO for sailing into unfamiliar waters (and forests, fields, mountains and deserts) in its mission to attract new audiences. And as a strategy, it worked because the Dome was fuller than I\u2019ve seen it in a long time for this programme of Rolf Wallin, John Luther Adams, Philip Glass, Jonny Greenwood and Einojuhani Rautavaara with accompanying screened visuals by artist Kathy Hinde.<\/p>\n
It is very unusual for me to attend and review a concert in which almost every note is unfamiliar but, apart from Glassworks<\/em>, which occupied the prime spot immediately before the interval, and with which I have nodding acquaintance, that\u2019s how it was on this occasion.<\/p>\n Both the John Luther Adams (born 1953) works were hauntingly played. His four songbird songs<\/em> make haunting use of two piccolos and ambulant ocarinas with lots of evocative percussion \u2013 all front stage in half light. Later his Drums of Winter<\/em> for four drummers was beautifully played with percussionists almost dancing around their instruments. And how they manage those complex cross rhythms with such precision I shall never know.<\/p>\n Glassworks<\/em> is, of course, where you\u2019d start if you wanted to teach students what minimalism actually is. Scored for 12 players plus piano and harpsichord it comprises five quite colourful movements each in a different mood but all based on characteristic repeated motifs with minimal changes. It\u2019s either your thing or it isn\u2019t. The woman behind me who\u2019d clearly never heard it before muttered at the end \u201cWell that was relaxing\u201d, I suspect she meant boring. It was, however, very well played especially by the cellos in the fourth movement below the clarinet solo which conductor Sian Edwards really brought out. I wonder, irreverently, though how many audience members thought we were heading into the Downton Abbey theme music when they head Joanna MacGregor, BPO\u2019s artistic director, playing the opening section on piano?<\/p>\n Also in the programme was Wallin\u2019s Twine<\/em>, a marimba\/xylophone duet with some excitable glissandi played with panache towards the end and a suite of music from Johnny Greenwood\u2019s score for the 2007 film There Will Be Blood<\/em> in which there were some suitably chilling moments especially in the first movement Open Spaces<\/em>. And the evening ended with a concerto for birds<\/em> by Rautavaara \u2013 shades of The Pines of Rome as it might have been if written by Sibelius. The lyrical middle movement was warmly played. This final item was the only time in the whole concert that we saw and heard a full orchestra.<\/p>\n So what about Kathy Hinde\u2019s contribution to all this? Throughout the concert the audience watched a big screen at the back of the stage on which unfolded continuously changing images. Often it was birds because that\u2019s her speciality. We saw lots of vultures during the Greenwood and cranes and murmurations of starlings during the Rautavaara \u2013 for example. Now I\u2019m certain that Hinde is excellent at what she does but if I go to a concert I want to listen to the music and not be distracted by anything else. The trouble with visual accompaniment is that it dominates other senses as Walt Disney knew all too well when he made Fantasia. Moreover I like to see the players and, in order for the screen to shine, the lighting was such at this concert that instrumentalists were in shadow. No wonder we had to wait at the beginning of the second half while a back stage person checked that all the stand lights were working.<\/p>\n This concert was, moreover, not quite as long as the famous Beethoven marathon on 22 December 1808 in Vienna but it ran until 10.15 which is too long in my view. It would have been better with one, or even two, works fewer. I wasn\u2019t particularly surprised that the elderly couple in front of me left at the interval.<\/p>\n Susan Elkin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Well you can\u2019t fault BPO for sailing into unfamiliar waters (and forests, fields, mountains and deserts) in its mission to attract new audiences. And as a strategy, it worked because the Dome was fuller than I\u2019ve seen it in a … Continue reading