BBCSO / Belohlavek, Barbican Hall, London
Take the Risk, Purcell Room, London
We could have held a party for the composer's friends, but we just had a bag of M&M's
Sunday 11 October 2009
The long, wry face of Bohuslav Martinu gives little away. Posed for a studio portrait, cigarette clamped between his fingers, standing to the side of a concert poster in Boston or strolling through Central Park, here is a quiet man from a small, distant country.
Neither a forgotten genius nor an also-ran, he is a hard sell: fluent in several musical languages, yet somehow voiceless. Forgivable then, if regrettable, that instead of using their six-concert cycle of Martinu's symphonies to provide a context for this Czech chameleon – programming works by Pavel Haas, Erwin Schulhoff, Viktor Ullmann, Hans Krasa or Martinu's pupil and lover, Vitezslava Kapralova – Jiri Belohlavek and the BBC Symphony Orchestra launched their Barbican series with three other composers whose names begin with M.
Are there hints of Mozart, Mahler or Mussorgsky in Martinu's First Symphony? No. Premiered in Boston in 1942, the symphony sounds exactly as it is: a work by an experienced Czech composer writing for a large American orchestra. Rarely is there a phrase without some "added value", be it the skittering of a harp in high register, or the sparkle of a cymbal, like the nervous flourish of a chef who cannot serve a salad without garnishing it with a slice of orange and a snipping of chives. Yet the writing is undeniably polished and attractive. Moravian dance rhythms jostle with the melancholy flutterings of water and wood nymphs, ancient subjects distorted through the crazy-mirror sonorities of Expressionism and the smart syncopations of Broadway.
Big-bosomed, vampish melodies for horn and long-legged oboe solos cede to hazy, pastoral string writing, while snare drums signal Czech resolve under Nazi occupation. There's sorrow here – most evident in Belohlavek's meticulous sculpting of the Largo – and nostalgia too. But tempting as the parallels are between this and Dvorak's Ninth Symphony, Martinu, who had left Prague back in 1923, was suffering from something more complex than the homesickness that dogged his forebear in America. By the time his symphony was premiered, Kapralova, who had conducted the BBC Orchestra in 1938, and Schulhoff were dead, while Haas, Krasa and Ullmann had been interned in Theresienstadt. By the end of the war, Martinu would be the only leading Czech composer of his generation left alive.
Those anxious to hear the music of Martinu's contemporaries will have to search elsewhere. In the meantime, one has to hope that the insurance policy pieces in the BBCSO's performances of his Third, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Symphonies (the Second was given this Friday) are better rehearsed than those here. Gerald Finley sang four songs from Mahler's Des Knaben Wunderhorn with unusual delicacy and restraint, saving himself for the tar-boiling malevolence of Shostakovich's orchestration of Mussorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death. Michael Cox's sensitively shaded flute playing was a welcome distraction from the diffident strings, whose lacklustre sound and scruffy entries of Mozart's Symphony No 29 indicated they might need m-m-more than two weeks' holiday after the Proms.
Renamed Take the Risk and curated by lutenist Paula Chateauneuf, this year's Early Music weekend at the Southbank Centre saw a convocation of chitarrones, cornetts, viols, harps and hurdy-gurdys explore historically informed improvisation from several centuries. At one end were the first parallel fourths of organum plainsong, from the Orlando Consort, and at the other the the bowed accompaniment of dramatic laments from 17th-century Rome, from Atalante. In-between we were acquainted by Crawford Young and Friends with the oral traditions of Sephardic song, and witnessed The Division Lobby's on-the-spot creation of an aria over a passacaglia.
As passionate as the Wagner Society, though more polite, the audience was as international as the performers. And for those who quibbled over what improvisation means in the context of figured bass, historical treatises and music stands, there was a chance to try it for themselves in Chateau-neuf's workshop.
If my hard-nosed self would have liked to have heard some improvisations in the style of Mozart, Liszt or Rachmaninov (the tradition lasted past the conventional Early Music cut-off point), Chateauneuf's gentle shepherding of 10 amateur instrumentalists through their first collective bergamasca was very nearly the highlight of this provocative, fascinating weekend. For extravagant, exotic beauty, however, it has to be the funerary soundworld of Atalante's lirones, viols, lutes, harp and organ playing Rossi and Marazzoli's opulent "vanitas" laments.
Watch the new House of Cards series three trailerTV
Oscars 2015It was the first time Barney has compered the Academy Awards
Oscars 2015 From Meryl Streep whooping Patricia Arquette's equality speech to Chris Pine in tears
Oscars 2015 Mexican filmmaker uses speech to urge 'respect' for immigrants
TV ReviewThe intrigue deepens as we delve further but don't expect any answers just yet
Razzies 2015 Golden Raspberry Awards 'honours' Cameron Diaz and Kirk Cameron
Arts & Ents blogs
- 1 What happens to your body when you give up sugar?
- 2 Japanese island overrun with cats after population explodes
- 3 Delhi bus rapist blames dead victim for attack because 'girls are responsible for rape'
- 4 Have sex with your iPad thanks to the new sex toy no-one asked for
- 5 Average penis size revealed: Scientists attempt to find what is 'normal' to reassure concerned men
Kurt Cobain's life and death: Montage of Heck film uses unseen footage to tell Nirvana frontman's story
Fifty Shades of Grey movie shows first sex scene 'after 40 minutes'
Drugs Live: Twitter responds to Jon Snow and Jennie Bond smoking cannabis
Jimmy McGovern's new TV series 'Banished': Why Australia's past has such resonance today
The Walking Dead, Remember, review: The discovery of a new community leads Rick to a dark decision
'Jihadi John': CAGE representative storms off Sky News accusing Kay Burley of Islamophobia
Durham Free School: 'Creationism taught at' free school facing closure
Nearly 100,000 of Britain's poorest children go hungry after parents' benefits are cut
Ukip would cut billions from Scottish budget to fund English tax cuts
End of the licence fee: BBC to back radical overhaul of how it is funded
Ukraine crisis: Top Chinese diplomat backs Putin and says West should 'abandon zero-sum mentality'