For their appearance at this year's Aldeburgh Festival, the Britten-Pears Orchestra put in several days work with the young Italian guest conductor Antonella Manacorda (including a Sunday morning open rehearsal) and then played a stunning concert in a packed Snape Maltings on the Monday night.
The carefully chosen programme was all about the assimilation of earlier styles into orchestral showpieces – the exception perhaps being a sparkling performance of Haydn's C major symphony no. 90, which fairly fizzed along and owed all its effect to Haydn alone! Manacorda divided his strings left and right and made much of the wit and energy that abounds in this symphony, as orchestral lines are picked up section by section in the orchestra and then handed back – conductor and players were in total rapport, and fine playing abounded.
The evening started with Webern's 1935 orchestration of Bach's Fuga ricercare from A Musical Offering – a fascinating exercise in Klangfarbenmelodie. Webern spreads Bach's musical line across instruments as diverse as trombone, horn with harp, violin and trumpet: Bach's melodic invention takes on a heavy tread that makes total structural sense but sounds almost overpowering for the material being developed. But played as sensitively and responsively as it was here, there were no complaints, and section leaders in the orchestra were given the chance to shine, which they duly did.
The second half opened with Bartok's 1939 Divertimento for strings, given in a full-blooded, passionate performance that reached a wonderfully anguished climax in the haunting second movement Molto Adagio. And as the Bartok unfolded, with stabbing strings entering a tone apart, we suddenly re-heard the very techniques that Haydn had used in his symphony nearly two centuries earlier – the Austro-Hungarian tradition clearly living on into the twentieth century.
The final work was the Mother Goose suite by Ravel, an exercise in orchestral lightness and sheen which saw the BPO produce the most beautiful sound of the evening. By this stage – the players clearly loved Manacorda and he them – the fun element of making fine music was much in evidence, and Ravel's 'feet off the ground' orchestration was heard in all its subtle glory.
Manacorda is a founder member of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and his skill at bringing out the various elements in an ensemble of the size and quality of the BPO was much in evidence. But their response to him was heart-warming: there is perhaps an emerging collaboration here which I for one will follow with great interest. A fabulous concert.
Photo: Antonello Manacorda
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CD Review: Simon Rattle conducts Haydn's Symphony No. 90