HALLE
ORCHESTRA Bridgewater Hall
SPRINGTIME
is coming early for the Hallé this week.
The first
of this year’s Opus One concerts – each programme is done three times over at
the Bridgewater Hall, with an aggregate audience of arena dimensions – featured
Schumann’s ‘Spring’ symphony (no. 1) in a joyful and charming performance
conducted by Cristian Mandeal.
The
Romanian Mandeal is the orchestra’s former principal guest conductor (from 2005
to 2010), and the old hand has lost none of its cunning.
He began with
Brahms’s Variations On A Theme By Haydn, a glorious favourite (never mind that
Haydn probably didn’t write the theme in the first place). But there’s always
stimulation in a Mandeal performance, and he was not afraid to build a tonal
spectrum from the outset that had moments of deep, rasping sound from the
contrabassoon and spectacular contrasts.
There was
emotional power, nervous energy, even a touch of comedy, and a resonant
highpoint in variation six before the melancholy and nostalgia that follow – and
a bright, fresh-minted finale from the Hallé, led by Lyn Fletcher.
Sophia
Jaffé was the sweet-toned, poetic violin soloist in Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy,
with Hallé harpist Marie Leenhardt partnering her (rightly) in centre stage.
It’s not the profoundest music of the 19th century, but the Scottish
tunes are pleasant and were splendidly played.
The
Schumann symphony had a slightly shaky start in terms of articulation, but once
its fast tempo arrived that was redeemed with surging life, and followed by a
beautifully poised slow movement – tranquil without slackness, and mellow
without turgidity – and a swaying, striding Scherzo.
The finale
movement sets some conductors problems: it has to be fast, gracious and make a
big enough impact to round off the whole. Mandeal’s solution was wide variation
of pace and flexibility of rhythm, which of course has its risks in the matter
of keeping everyone together. But rather that than a thousand merely metronomic
exercises, and the risks were well worth it for the sense of freedom and,
ultimately, exultation they created.
Spring
feelings indeed.
Repeated
Jan 21 and 24.
****
Robert
Beale
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