Dvořák’s Brilliant Bohemian Rhapsody
CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★
We have all heard about love at first sight, that joyous epiphany which instantly transforms drab sepia life into glorious technicolour as in ‘The Wizard of Oz’. There is also love at first hearing when a piece of music has the same effect. In his programme notes the young Portuguese conductor Dinis Sousa admits that it wasn’t quite like that for him with Dvořák’s Symphony No.8: “I remember first thinking that it was a bit over the top,” he admits, “but when I eventually came to conduct it, I completely fell in love.” His affection was evident during every bar of this joyous performance, sometimes achingly beautiful, frenetically abandoned and brimming with boisterous good humour. Pace is essential here knowing when to relax into Dvořák’s idealized nostalgic vision of Bohemia, sun-kissed hills, sylvan breezes and twittering birds, but also to limn the dark shadows that occasionally threaten this prelapsarian paradise. Sousa got the balance absolutely right and the CBSO rose to the occasion. Dvořák wrote superbly for winds – think of his Op.44 Serenade – and the orchestra’s wind section met all its demands. Seldom has a section’s collective bow at the end of a performance been more merited. The symphony begins pensively, cellos and basses darkly ruminating, the low brass as threatening as thunderclouds. Enter the flute. Dvořák made it the symphony’s Pied Piper, leading the orchestra away from dour reality to a happier realm. Marie-Christine Zupancic revelled in the role, her playing lithe, nimble and graceful. Her first catchy whistle-along tune immediately changes the mood – the sun’s out and all’s right with the world. Sousa ensured that the symphony’s kaleidoscopic changes, a stately dance transforms into a riotous Bohemian knees-up, a gentle minuet into a foot-stamping rustic romp, slotted together perfectly. The sighing, swooning Allegretto grazioso was irresistible. The final runaway accelerando deserved its hearty audience cheer. In these dark times we cherish a fix of pure musical joy.
I did not find the orchestra’s role in Sibelius’s Violin Concerto as convincing. Perhaps, with limited rehearsal time, Sousa had concentrated his efforts on the symphony. Whatever the case, when Sibelius demanded vehemence, a mordant cutting edge or the ultimate in rhythmic exactitude it wasn’t quite met. The first violins sounded slightly below par, Sibelius’s opening tremolando not mysterious, from another realm, just faint. Not to worry though for the soloist Alina Ibragimova was in stellar form, from her hushed entrance to the succeeding volley of double and triple stopping and coruscating runs – she was in charge. The cadenza, which is far more than that, was played by her as if it were the concerto’s musical lodestone. In the finale, with its endearingly galumphing rhythm, Ibragimova led a merry dance, a true “polonaise for polar bears” as musicologist Donald Tovey memorably described it. The concerto ended triumphantly both musically and as a personal one for Ibragimova.
While symphony and concerto are old favourites the concert opener, Arvo Pärt’s ‘Our Garden’, a Cantata for Children’s Chorus and Orchestra, is a novelty. It’s a student work from 1959 and bears no resemblance to Pärt’s better known cryptic instrumental and religious choral works. In spirit it resembles the child’s vision of heaven in Mahler’s fourth symphony but with gardening instead of gastronomy as the focus – “In our lovely garden, In our wonderland,” as the piping voices of the CBSO Youth Chorus sang convincingly. They made it sound very inviting, a perfect work for their talents and another feather in the cap of Chorus Master Julian Wilkins. Pärt used his large orchestra with wit, adding dabs of colour from the percussion and humorous brass much like Shostakovich in his light-music mode.
Norman Stinchcombe