Review
Review of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
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25/04/2009
Yorkshire Post review of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra at Leeds Town Hall on the 25th April 2009 as part of Leeds International Concert Season.
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Leeds Town Hall, 25 April 2009
We forget that by the onset of the 20th century most of Bach's music had sunk into oblivion, composers doing what they could to preserve interest by rescoring works in modern orchestral garb.
Elgar went all the way, using a large brass and percussion section in his modernisation of the organ score, Fantasia and Fugue in C minor, the work coming to a grandiose conclusion.
That theme ran through the whole concert, with Isabelle van Keulen an impressive soloist in Berg's Violin Concerto, nicely understating the work's use of Bach chorale, her precise intonation taking her through the technically demanding passages.
Arvo Part brought a different connection in the Concerto Piccolo on B.A.C.H, those letters spelling out the notes that provide the thematic melody of a highly attractive trumpet concerto. It was stunningly played by the Birmingham orchestras principal, Jonathan Holland.
Brahms borrowed from Bach in the finale of his Fourth Symphony, though in such lush textures it had travelled a long way from its Baroque origin. He is presently suffering from the fashionable top heavy balanced orchestras, the Birmingham violins twice the number of the combined cellos and basses, and it robbed the work of that underlying warm sonorities.
Their highly demonstrative new music director, Andres Nelsons, didn't get to grips with the Town Hall acoustic, many moments of inner detail passing by unnoticed, but he created some thrilling climaxes.
Book for the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra performing as part of Leeds International Concert Season on Saturday 30 January 2010
Author : David Denton
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