CBSO’s Pre-Proms ‘Pictures’ a huge hit
CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★
There’s no getting around the fact that Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ is unbeatable. So powerful is its spell that on returning to the piano original it can seem pallid and details from Ravel – like the insistent whining trumpet to mimic the downtrodden Schmuÿle – become superimposed by our inner ear. Other arrangements by everyone from Ashkenazy, who conducted his own version at Symphony Hall in the 1990s, to Stokowski can seem drab, garish or bombastic. In May the CBSO under Kazuki Yamada performed Sir Henry Wood’s 1915 orchestration which preceded Ravel by seven years. I enjoyed it immensely and although it won’t supersede Ravel – when Wood heard that version he withdrew his own from performance – there’s surely room for an alternative version. It was immensely popular at Wood’s own Promenade Concerts and it’s fitting that the CBSO will be playing it the night after this concert at Prom 43. Sir Henry’s highlights are numerous, including the screeching ‘Hammer Horror’ strings in ‘Baba Yaga’, an irresistible ‘Les Tuileries’ with twittering clarinets and leader Eugene Tzikindelean's playful solo, and a phenomenal ‘Great Gate of Kiev’ where offstage bells, quietly tolling at first summoning people to prayer, the religious solemnity increased by added organ, eventually blaze into a tremendous climax. The audience, pleasingly large for a holiday period concert, loved it – a standing ovation and enthusiastic participation in Kazuki’s signature synchronized waving followed.
Yamada compensated Ravel by playing an exquisite orchestration of the composer’s piano work, the ‘Mother Goose’ Suite. I believe Yamada’s greatest strength as a conductor is his feeling for colour – his Ravel in 2018 and Respighi in 2020 revealed that – and I expected Ravel’s fairytale work to shimmer, scintillate and sparkle which it did, in parts. The CBSO’s percussion section shone in the ‘ Empress of the Pagodas’ and the growling gallantry of Margaret Cookhorn’s transformed prince in ‘Beauty and the Beast’ was very effective. The ‘The Fairy Garden’ didn’t result in Ravel’s intended romantic apotheosis, feeling reined in as if conductor and orchestra were saving themselves for the next day’s Prom. The dream-like atmospheric miniature tone poem ‘La Nuit et L’Amour’ by the French composer Augusta Holmès was pleasant if reminiscent of César Franck, of whom she was a pupil.
The myths about Mozart change with the ages, from the Victorian’s infantilizing of him as a musical Peter Pan, the wunderkind who never grew up, to the post-Freudian vision of Peter Shaffer’s ‘Amadeus’. Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.27, his last and premiered by him in 1791 the year of his death, has seen the central Larghetto played, in recordings by Ashkenazy and Gilels for example, as a lugubrious Adagio – as if it were a chronicle of a death foretold. How refreshing to hear Paul Lewis, always a sharply perceptive soloist, play the piece without such preconceptions. In his hands the movement was alternately pensive and passionate, floating on the sighing descending waves of strings, but never maudlin. Lewis exploited Mozart’s sly humour – the solo passages we think will be cadenzas but really aren’t – and the concluding Allegro was as a joy. Who does gravity-defying gaiety better than Mozart? Yamada used a big string section but used it judiciously allowing the wind players to be heard with Lucie Sprague’s oboe delightful throughout. It was heartening to hear such a fervent audience response for this masterly performance.
Norman Stinchcombe