Manchester Evening News review 21 September 2015

BBC PHILHARMONIC  Bridgewater Hall

 

THIS concert was in effect a re-run of one they gave in the BBC Proms in London in the summer, and well worth the second run at it for the Philharmonic’s home crowd (plus, I would estimate, quite a few visitors).

Olivier Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie was the big second-half work – all 10 movements and 80 minutes of it – but for me the revelation was before that, in John Foulds’ Three Mantras.

The Manchester-born modernist composer is only now becoming belatedly recognized, and the striking thing is how accessible and un-scary his music from the 1920s and 1930s is, even though it may have raised hackles at the time it was conceived.

And this three-part work (originally planned as instrumentals for an opera) is in part a marvellous orchestral showpiece which the BBC Philharmonic, under chief conductor Juanjo Mena, clearly relished.

There was magnificent playing in the first and last movements (the latter at one point almost reminiscent of Holst’s Mars from The Planets), and, with the high voices of the London Symphony Chorus making their contribution, the ethereal music of the middle one (Planets echoes, again) was marvellously evocative.

You don’t need to take on board the details of Foulds’ fascination with Indian culture and music to appreciate this – it speaks in its own right.

Perhaps with Messiaen, though, you do need to know the composer’s titles, which are (characteristically) really part of his concepts.

Some of our audience responded straightforwardly to each section of Turangalîla as they heard it, and while the dance-like fifth movement (‘Joy of the Blood of the Stars’) got a warm round of applause, not all the others did, if they got any.

No harm in that, and the playing was distinguished and determined, with a virtuoso piano role from Steven Osborne, and of course the weird electronic wail of the Ondes Martenot played by Valérie Hartmann-Claverie. It didn’t reach quite the ecstatic level I remember at some points in Yan Pascal Tortelier’s performance in the Free Trade Hall around 20 years ago – but this was a different acoustic, and perhaps a more laid-back maestro, too.

But I loved his touches of mystery and winsomeness in the third and fourth movements, and the careful gradations of power and intensity that gave shape to the whole sprawling edifice.

 

****