United Kingdom Ravel, Debussy, Gershwin, Walton: Martin James Bartlett (piano), Sinfonia of London / John Wilson (conductor). St David’s Hall, Cardiff, 28.11.2022. (PCG)
Walton – Scapino
Ravel – Valse nobles et sentimentales; Boléro
Gershwin – Rhapsody in Blue
Debussy – La mer
Those of us who stay in South Wales and have an extended reminiscence will recall the times within the Seventies when Cardiff City Council successfully torpedoed a proposal to transform the previous Capitol Cinema within the centre of the town right into a devoted live performance venue; it had already seen use for that goal. That was as a result of that they had already dedicated themselves to constructing a brand-new corridor as a part of their new St David’s improvement on the different finish of Queen Street. (The Capitol Cinema web site has develop into a considerably down-at-heel shopping center.) The current council are actually contemplating a proposal to dump St David’s Hall to a developer. The developer’s vaguely outlined plans don’t seem to incorporate the upkeep of the constructing in its position as the one large-scale live performance venue in Wales’s capital metropolis. One of the explanations for this act of cultural vandalism is the allegation that classical live performance audiences in Cardiff are falling, however even when that have been true – the figures are disputed – a lot of the blame lies with the council’s insurance policies. I say extra on the finish of this evaluation. In the meantime, one needs that the council members had been current at this live performance. It was performed for a big and enthusiastic crowd who greeted the visiting orchestra with not one however two standing ovations.
The Sinfonia of London, as readers might be conscious, is a newish orchestra primarily based in London since 2018. It has been hand-picked from freelance and different gamers for the principal goal of recording underneath the baton of John Wilson. He has lengthy been identified for his espousal and promotion of compositions from the golden ages of Hollywood and American Broadway musicals. He had additionally already established a agency foundation as interpreter of British music. The final live performance he performed in Cardiff had included probably the most superlatively balanced and paced performances of Vaughan Williams’s problematic Sea Symphony, all of the extra exceptional for the way through which the enjoying of the Philharmonia Orchestra had been mixed with an nearly haphazard assortment of choirs from varied sources. Since the institution of the Sinfonia of London, Wilson has launched into a collection of rapturously obtained Chandos recordings, giving SACD performances of varied orchestral showpieces by early twentieth century composers. Three of the objects on this programme in Cardiff had already been included in these earlier releases on disc, however the two new objects have been no much less exceptional.
It ought to be famous that reactions to the Chandos recordings haven’t been universally beneficial. Some American sources haven’t hesitated to accuse British reviewers of over-enthusiastic hyperbole. The dissenters appear to say that – though they grant that Wilson’s performances are beautifully technically crafted and performed – the enjoying lacks depth of engagement and emotion. One needs the doubters may have been current at this live performance. Even within the opening merchandise, the fizzing Scapino overture which William Walton wrote as an orchestral showpiece for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, there have been moments of sheer delicacy and nuance, particularly from the violins, with their occasional wisps of melancholy rising from the hubbub round them. This exuberant opening quantity made it instantly obvious that the passion of the orchestral enjoying was one thing fairly exceptionally engaged.
By means of distinction, it was a splendid thought to allow us to hear an equally revelatory account of Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales. In a spoken introduction, the conductor described it because the composer’s most exquisitely orchestrated rating of all. That was a giant declare in regards to the author of the near-contemporary Daphnis et Chloë, not to mention the apocalyptic imaginative and prescient of the dance in La Valse which was to comply with half a decade later. But Wilson got here near justifying his assertion with a efficiency of delicacy and poise, which charmed and enchanted by turns. The enjoying was as soon as once more beautiful, particularly from the woodwinds and excessive violins with their chains of ethereal harmonics.
In yet one more change of temper, Wilson returned nearly to house base, because it have been, with a efficiency of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue within the full orchestral model by Ferde Grofé. The ‘home base’ means Wilson in his unique territory as an interpreter of the music of the American jazz age within the Twenties and Thirties; even so, the efficiency had some surprises. Gershwin’s rating is remarkably freed from any indications of tempo – he clearly, because the pianist at early performances, tended to improvise as he noticed match – and even those who do determine within the rating are singularly imprecise. The solely file now we have of Gershwin’s personal intentions are the well-known piano roll that he set down within the Twenties. They have been the premise for a recording of the jazz-band orchestration by Michael Tilson Thomas, and it was clear that Wilson had studied this undeniably genuine custom with care.
The huge orchestral interruption after the primary piano solo, marked ambiguously Tempo giusto within the rating, took off at an unimaginable quick tempo – as in Gershwin’s piano roll – with a ferocity that steered Tom and Jerry in one in all their extra frenetic cartoons. Then the large rhapsodic solo tune in direction of the top luxuriated with a heat and fervour that went far past Gershwin’s laconic indication Andantino moderato. By comparability, Martin James Bartlett confirmed an nearly classical restraint of contact, which served to set the jazz inflections into nonetheless higher aid. I would like hardly add that the rating was given full, with not one of the ‘traditional’ cuts which might be nonetheless often inflicted on it. This was one of many works on the programme which has but to look on a recording from the Sinfonia of London; I can’t wait.
The live performance resumed after the interval with an equally scintillating efficiency of Debussy’s La mer. When I final heard the work on this corridor in 2018, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales had made a conscientious try to adjust to Debussy’s strict injunction: the passage for divided cellos within the central part of the opening motion ought to be performed by no fewer than sixteen gamers. Here we have been confined to the same old eight, with a consequent diminution within the breadth of sound. But this was a sole level of concern in a efficiency the place practically every thing else went proper. Wilson even restored the excessive trumpet passages within the finale (Debussy at one stage expunged them as a result of he thought they have been harking back to a once-popular melody). Without this totally justified inclusion the orchestral textures could be dangerously naked. One solely needs that Wilson had realised that Debussy’s injunctions on the finish of the primary motion Très lent… Retenu don’t imply the identical as accelerando. The impact was vulgarly excitable reasonably than the grand apotheosis of midday on the water. But the sound he conjured from the orchestra was superlative all through.
As certainly it was within the closing merchandise on the programme, Ravel’s Boléro. In one other spoken introduction, the conductor identified {that a} new version of the rating revealed in 2018 had reverted to Ravel’s unique orchestral directions. They embody the addition of castanets and triangle within the closing bars, and the division of the side-drum rhythm (which underlies the entire size of the work) between two gamers located to the acute left and proper of the stage. The latter amendmen is all achieve; its vestige stays within the 1928 revealed rating the place the side-drum half is instantly marked a2 (two gamers in unison) shortly earlier than the top. The insistent tapping rhythm can develop into maddening in repetition and sometimes results in errors from naturally fatigued gamers. Here it instantly turns into an actual dramatic ingredient in the entire because it switches from left to proper and again once more to match the adjustments of instrumental timbre because the music slowly gathers power.
The entry of the castanets, too, serves to hide a second of actual awkwardness in Ravel’s scoring: the decrease strings are instantly requested to alter to pizzicato chords strummed throughout the strings within the method of a guitar (after which return to regular bowing eighteen bars later) with out even a second’s respite to alter the way of enjoying. The solos from the saxophones and the trombones, too, had an actual jazz swing to them which some extra fastidious conductors search to minimise; not right here, the place the music attained an actual odour of elevated sleaze. The enthusiasm of the gamers, leaning eagerly ahead and digging into their rhythms, turned an actual histrionic ingredient within the supply of the music. One wonders what these American critics, complaining of crisp effectivity on the expense of engagement, would have thought. The viewers have been in little question, rising to their ft for a standing ovation.
And, regardless of the nay-sayers from Cardiff County Council, there was an viewers, and a really respectably sized one at that. If certainly there has not too long ago been a discount within the measurement of audiences for classical concert events at this corridor – and I take go away to doubt that, having frequently attended concert events right here for over ten years – over and above that which may clearly be attributed to the pandemic rules since 2020, the duty should relaxation certainly with the council themselves. The nearest automotive parks are some ten minutes’ stroll away, so lots of the viewers – wishing to keep away from Cardiff’s infamous site visitors congestion – are compelled to rely on public transport to get into the closely-packed metropolis centre. Cardiff has persistently did not make any provision for tram or metro programs to permit easy accessibility (proposed schemes have risen and fallen like ninepins over a interval of forty years and extra), so his means complete reliance on a bus system. Some ten years in the past, Cardiff responded to this contingency by demolishing their present bus station completely. Buses from outlying suburbs and rural areas now arrive at totally different factors all around the metropolis. And because the pandemic the state of affairs has worsened, even connecting companies which enabled passengers from the South Wales Valleys to entry venues in Cardiff Bay have merely evaporated. That was initially described as a brief measure however is now clearly supposed to develop into everlasting. This can be an issue for all the opposite native authorities within the neighborhood.
An on-line petition has been set as much as register complaints with Cardiff County Council and with the Welsh Assembly. I’d urgently counsel that every one these involved in regards to the proposals signal these petitions earlier than plans turns into too far superior. Fuller particulars might be discovered right here.
Paul Corfield Godfrey