SIR MARK ELDER’S TRIUMPHANT CBSO RETURN
CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★★
The star attraction was Sir Stephen Hough as soloist in Brahms’ first piano concerto but the evening belonged to another musical knight. Sir Mark Elder joked that he’s had a strange experience at Euston station when remembering that, for the first time in 25 years, he would be getting off at Birmingham rather than Manchester. That’s how long since Elder had conducted the CBSO when he was its principal guest conductor. He left to become the Hallé Orchestra’s music director overseeing their move to Bridgewater Hall and rejuvenating them in the way Simon Rattle did with the CBSO. At 77 Sir Mark is now the elder statesman (pun intended) of British music and was given a hugely warm and enthusiastic welcome back by both players and audience. Age may have stiffened the joints but his qualities of drive, precision, clarity and a refreshing absence of look-at-me platform antics were all evident.
He made his presence felt before a note was played by getting the orchestra in the right formation with first and second fiddles divided antiphonally left and right. Other conductors please take note. It paid dividends in all three works on the programme. In the Rondo finale of the concerto the second episode has a fugal passage for strings which Brahms, beginning quietly, moves deftly from section to section and then, humorously, dissolves it. I’ve heard this played many times but never realized with such transparency and lucidity. In Shostakovich’s Symphony No.6, a quirky choice but which gave a joyously whacky end to the concert, there’s a passage dominated by the first violins but then comes a shriek from the second opposite, the musical equivalent of “Oi, we’re here you know!” Details like this, often overlooked, add piquancy to a performance. Elder clearly loves Janáček’s supernatural folk-story tone poem ‘The Fiddler's Child’, as his illuminating platform introduction showed. The CBSO leader Eugene Tzikindelean weaved a magical spell as the Fiddler and there was a beautifully mellow passage for a quartet of violas. Janáček was inspired by Dvorak’s late tone poems like ‘The Golden Spinning Wheel’ – Elder conducted a thrilling CBSO performance of it in the 1980s – but Janáček’s combination of lyricism with a biting edge is totally individual.
Hough’s performance of the concerto was, as expected, a magisterial one, never overawed or overpowered when confronted by the full power of the orchestra in the Maestoso first movement when Brahms, in full throttle Beethoven mode, hurls fusillades of brass and timpani at the soloist. The cadenzas were never empty show passages in Hough’s hands, the Adagio (daringly slow) was a haven of peace before the high jinks of the finale. Sparkling stuff. As was Shostakovich’s symphony which is like a concerto for orchestra in that it provides showpiece opportunities for every section. Wonderful wind playing, full of character and colour, and a riotous contribution from the battery of percussion. The Presto finale begins with a William Tell gallop and then gets increasingly zanier – light music gone haywire. Imagine Eric Coates on amphetamines and magic mushrooms.
Norman Stinchcombe