Review 20 April 2015

MANCHESTER CAMERATA  Manchester Cathedral

 

GABOR Takács-Nagy has transformed Manchester Camerata in the four seasons since he became its music director, and nowhere else is that more marked than in its playing as a string ensemble. 

This concert at Manchester Cathedral, led by Katie Stillman, saw the predominantly young players making music of extraordinary quality.  

 The Camerata strings were joined by pianist Dejan Lazić for Britten’s lively brief starter, Young Apollo. It sounds wonderful with a small but eloquent main group balancing the string quartet and piano, and the cathedral acoustic is remarkably good for such forces. But what made it really magical was the way Takács-Nagy handled the music, with a real sense of mystery in the hushed middle section and finely shaped phrasing throughout. 

In Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2 (performed in strings-only garb) the partnership between pianist and conductor was in both sympathy and style, with Lazić seemingly re-creating in our presence the gentle, mystic Chopin who so bewitched his contemporaries, and Takács-Nagy responding, with the orchestra, in tender and poetic playing. 

I’ve heard this piece so often as a competition item, where correctness seemed to be the only factor in the first movement: what a joy to hear it made into a thing of beauty, with a romantic approach and effective varying of the pulse (Chopin was a master of that). The slow movement – played very slow – was quite beautiful, the string playing superb to match the piano’s dreamy soliloquies, and the finale not a speed test either, but pearly clear and still brilliant in effect.  

After the interval the Camerata entranced their hearers with Barber’s Adagio For Strings (incidentally, I don’t believe the story that Toscanini ‘suggested’ making it an orchestral piece to Barber – a letter in the Barbirolli US archive once kept by the Hallé shows that Barber himself touted the idea to the conductor of the New York Philharmonic as well as the Italian maestro, and Barbirolli wanted the premiere but missed out). 

Finally came another transcription of string quartet music for string orchestra, in Mahler’s version of Beethoven’s ‘Serioso’ quartet (opus 95). There are few as expert as string quartet genius Gábor Takács-Nagy in the nuances of this music, and the playing was passionate and powerful, the third movement imbued with sheer ardour and near-anger, too.  

It’s a very personal expression of emotion and grief and brought this remarkable concert to a marvellous high point. 

***** 

Robert Beale