United Kingdom Beethoven, John Adams: James Ehnes (violin), London Philharmonic Choir (refrain director: Madeleine Venner), BBC Symphony Refrain (refrain director: Neil Ferris), London Philharmonic Orchestra / Edward Gardner (conductor). Royal Competition Corridor, London, 8.11.2025. (CK)
Beethoven – Violin Concerto
Adams – Harmonium
What can I usefully write concerning the best of all violin concertos performed by a prince amongst violinists? It appears churlish to say that I admired and loved the lengthy first motion as if from a distance: that James Ehnes’s taking part in was virtually too refined, to a level that I at occasions mistook for blandness. It was definitely refreshing after the earlier efficiency of the work I had heard, some time in the past, through which the soloist had performed Beethoven virtually as if he was Tchaikovsky: however I feared initially that it is perhaps a non-event, like Isabelle Faust’s efficiency of the Brahms Violin Concerto with Simon Rattle within the Barbican nigh on two years in the past. It by no means actually took off.
Edward Gardner obtained some vividly pointed taking part in from the orchestra; and Ehnes’s cadenza had energetic persona, with a lightweight contact and a few eloquent double-stopping. When the orchestra rejoined him one sensed a real depth of feeling (partly right down to some expressive taking part in from Jonathan Davies’s bassoon). The Larghetto was lovely, Ehnes’s taking part in candy and light-weight, his tone fined down generally virtually to nothing; he launched the finale as probably the most light-footed of dances – fairy music, virtually – and delighted us together with his filigree taking part in all the best way to the dance’s finish. There was extra ethereal, Apollonian grace in his encore, the Prelude from Bach’s Partita for Solo Violin No.3.
After the interval John Adams’s breakthrough work Harmonium was given a viscerally thrilling efficiency, Gardner driving his choral and orchestral forces with a fiercely propulsive readability in Adams’s setting of Donne’s knottily opaque poem Destructive Love. It put me in thoughts of Adams’s rationalization of his methodology in an extended interview with Thomas Might: ‘The formal thought with my music is that one thing seems on the occasion horizon, after which it will increase in significance because it begins to dominate the display, after which it passes you and it’s gone. In the meantime, a number of different occasions have arisen and are at varied levels of transferring in direction of you. I feel that’s the essence of how I compose and it’s the best way I expertise my very own music.’
Watching a film? Enjoying a online game? No matter. We’re coping with the person whose Chamber Symphony is impressed equally by Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony Op.9 and the music of Bugs Bunny cartoons: a person who organises his musical influences not hierarchically however democratically. It’s concerning the course of journey: in Destructive Love we’re flying out from a pre-verbal starting looking for a Love past human kinds, a Love that can’t be constrained by definition. Adams once more, in his e book Hallelujah Junction: ‘I noticed within the poem the suggestion of a hovering arrow, a vector pointing upward, its ascent impelled by ever-increasing rhythmic and sonic power’. That’s precisely what we obtained in Gardner and the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s efficiency.
The tempo slows hypnotically for Emily Dickinson’s well-known As a result of I couldn’t cease for Demise, the music intentionally monotonous because the poet observes her life from the horse-drawn hearse because it passes in leisurely parade. It reaches a degree of relaxation – an idyllic place, a mild murmur of cowbells – earlier than the following nice crescendo sweeps us up and sends us hurtling into Wild Nights: ecstasy adopted by fulfilment and calm.
Gardner calls Harmonium a secular cantata; on the threat of pretentiousness, I’d name it a Hymn to Eros and Thanatos. It calls for a big and fearless refrain: the London Philharmonic Choir, augmented by fifty voices from the BBC Symphony Refrain, have been very good, the ladies’s voices blazing tirelessly of their taxing ecstasies and bringing a mushy lambency to the calmer sections. Gardner has described Adams’s word-setting as ‘virtually Brittenesque’: I’m starting to see that, however we recognise additionally his Minimalist pleasure in utilizing phrases as sounds to be modified subtly over lengthy spans with irresistibly sensuous impact. His orchestral writing is kaleidoscopic, whether or not it’s 4 flutes and a harp over a glowing chord on the strings, a trumpet solo rising from the haze over quietly chugging pizzicatos on cellos and double basses, or an oceanic crescendo cresting in gong crashes and pitching us into the dazzling, bell-filled brightness of Wild Nights.
Orchestra and Refrain surpassed themselves, however Gardner was the hero of the night time. He absolutely deserved the solo bow the orchestra insisted on him taking.
Chris Kettle
