Roger Norrington brought the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra to the Albert Hall for Prom 7, in a concert that showed just how powerful and revitalised the central repertoire can become when performance practice is taken beyond normal convention.
Here the conductor brought to bear on the music of Rossini, Haydn and Elgar his famous approach of combining historical performance practice with the instruments and resources of a modern symphony orchestra. The results were astonishing. The William Tell Overture, for example, has never sounded so fresh.
The opening section for five solo cellos brought forth a lovely liquid sound that immediately indicated something beyond the norm. Following this, the brass showed themselves to be in blistering form, with the trombones especially sounding glorious, booming coalition in the storm section that followed the opening. The easy virtuosity with which the cor anglais and flute players dispatched the gentle Alpine music was typical of the orchestra tonight; this high level of collective music making-always individually strong and expressive, with a graceful synchronicity displayed throughout the ensemble-was maintained for the whole program. Norrington brought the opening piece to a close with a light dash through the famous gallop music, where he shaped each little climax with a facility for detail that was remarkable. He brought flexibility to phrasing and a lightness of purpose to the overture that, somehow, made the work sound like the most exciting thing in the world.
In addition to the limited and very subtle use of vibrato and portamento shown by the ensemble, the performance benefited from the enviable ease with which Norrington communicated with the players. The rapport so clearly enjoyed between the orchestra and their principal conductor meant that the music making benefited from an ease of communication that led to the performers being able to display a degree of subtlety and nuance to their interpretations that could only come through hard won experience.
The Haydn Cello Concerto in C major that followed the Rossini showed once again an ensemble and leader in nimble and clever form. The light Moderato opening to the work was given with a real sprightly touch, and the dotted profile of much of the material brought forth a buoyant and mobile performance from the ensemble. Soloist was Jean-Guihen Queyras. He showed himself to be in tune with the form of his accompanists, always measuring his own phrasing and projection in line with that of the orchestra, yet never showing himself too meek to drive the performance forth with swelling gestures, and precipitous arabesques. Queyras played cadenzas of his own devising, and his work in the first movement, though perhaps occasionally a little too stormy, a little too reminiscent of Sturm und Drang force, was generally idiomatic, humorous, and effective (as shown by the applause he received, led by Norrington, at the end of the first movement). He excelled in the aria-like slow movement, where his repeated messe di voce always encouraged a reciprocal delicacy and warmth in the ensemble. Soloist and group were by now in sync, and the finale-with its recurring pattern of tension and sprightly release ushered onward by the fluid contrast of piano and forte dynamics- brought the performance to a spry and snug conclusion.
Concluding Prom 7 was a mighty performance of Elgar's great symphonic masterpiece, his First Symphony. Norrington and his ensemble maintained the collective purpose of their earlier performances, but now added a sense of symphonic proportion, of grand motion, to their fluid sound. The opening motto theme was stately and majestic in its first two appearances at the start. From there, the performers dashed into the opening Allegro section of the first movement with a great thrusting feel to their working through of the first subject group. The development was a masterclass in building up of tension through intelligent articulation of thematic reminiscences and expansion, and the heavily rhapsodic element to the performance drove it on inexorably and expressively towards the second and third movements. These two sections-creatively organised by Elgar into one panel of gradually decelerating music-were realised with on the one hand with great martial force and fervour, and on the other an almost unbearable poignancy that brought forth the luxuriant harmonies with great expressiveness, that compelled throughout.
The finale, with its hard won, grandiloquent and almighty arrival at a tutti version of the overarching motto theme, provided a hopeful, communal conclusion to this performance. Though Norrington's inimitable style meant that some of the tempos had veered far away from the composer's directions, his interpretation stayed just on the right side of good taste. It made for a riveting evening overall- one wonders indeed if the admiring applause that came after every movement of the Elgar was issued with respect to the conductors emphasis on authenticity in historical performance- and the encore of the encore of the 'March' from Benjamin Britten's Matinees Musicales brought proceedings to a suitably nimble and frothy end.
Following Norrington and his Stuttgart players in an enthralling late night Prom was Peter Phillips leading The Tallis Scholars in a programme of Early Music that took as its subject the anonymous 15th century chanson Malheur me bat. As was common-practice at the time, many contemporary church composers used this short, three-part secular song as the basis for large sacred works. Varying techniques were employed in the development of these cantus firmi Masses out of their source material, with composers utilising everything from strict mensuration schemes, to loosely organised segmented development, to florid contrapuntal extrapolation (and so forth) in their musical expansions.
Tonight's concert included two Masses that follow this practice, with Jacob Obrecht's Missa 'Maleur me bat' being followed by Josquin's own Mass under the same title, which was written around the same time. In an effective piece of programming, the chanson upon which both works are based was sung in the middle of the concert. This meant that the chanson was both fresh in our minds for the Josquin, and also that the dramatic conceit Obrecht chose for his Mass of waiting until the 'Agnus Dei' to fully reveal his source melody, was made more potent. Both composers used ingenious methods of development in their works; Obrecht's gradual mensural contractions (within each section of his Mass) of nine different segments of the chanson melody perhaps impressed the ear the most. Obrecht's work added great musical tension and cumulative momentum to the integrated plotting of the Josquin. The varied strategies (Obrecht favours strict algorhythmic patterning, Josquin a freer approach where segmentation- this time of the three voice parts of the chanson and not just the superius- sits beside extended counterpoint in a web of unbounded enlargement) of both men would provide much to ponder for the eye.
The performances of both Masses were precise, measured, sensitive to the material, and highly expressive when they needed to be. Phillips showed great subtlety in his management of the dynamic flow of the material, as he did with the tempi; very often he would create moments of great intensity out of the slightest increase in intensity or pace. The Credoof the Obrecht, for instance, benefited greatly from the conductor's detailed sense of drive and climax. His gentle dynamic ornaments, most welcome in music such as this that is often realised with a cold, austere heart, added much to the force of the music making. The collective sense of purpose and cohesion that he instilled into the ensemble was astonishing to witness. His delicate touch often produced supple and faint tones of ringing sonorities, particularly at final cadence points, that left the inner ear supine in awe.
Each of the singers displayed full, rounded tones, and a clear and clean manner of intonation that was entirely appropriate to the material. The alto Clare Wilkinson's slightly looser approach to line in the chanson, where she sung with a hint of vibrato, created a nice sense of contrast with the interpretative style employed in the Masses. Particularly impressive amongst the singers were the alto Patrick Craig, whose bright voice soared lithely above the group in the Obrecht, and the bass Robert Rice, whose stentorian low notes powerfully anchored some of the more transcendent moments in the Josquin. This was an absorbing, mesmerising performance that demonstrated, like Norrington and the SWR had earlier in the evening, the sort of unity, nuance and interpretative grace that comes from years of close musical collaboration. The slight slippages of ensemble that occurred in the Josquin could be forgiven the Tallis Scholars, and they brought an effortless accuracy and power to the intricate climactic counterpoint of the final 'Agnus Dei'.