Review of BBC Philharmonic 'centennial' concert

Eva Ollikainen conducting the BBC Philharmonic

Calculating the age of an orchestra is a funny business. You might think that continuous existence as a group who played together under the same name, with slow membership changes over time, would be definitive.

By that standard the BBC Philharmonic is still quite young. Even allowing for changes of name (via the BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra and the preceding BBC Northern Orchestra), but looking for its existence as a body of players on full-time contracts, you can’t go before 1942, or, allowing for almost universal freelance orchestra membership in earlier times, only back to 1934, when its players were basically those of the Hallé anyway (and also appeared as the Liverpool Philharmonic). Before that there was a BBC Nonette – the “Northern Studio Orchestra” – although attempts had been made in 1930 to establish something bigger.

So how do we get the idea that the orchestra’s lifetime stems from the 2ZY radio station in Manchester of May 1922, which started even before the BBC existed? (It’s not too long since Margaret Wyatt wrote a little book for the BBC called BBC Philharmonic: A celebration 1934-1994, so even by that count the Phil is 88 years old now).

Only on the basis that a body that employs musicians can “own” an orchestra, even if it’s simply paying for one-off concerts, and using various names from time to time (“2ZY Orchestra” and “Northern Wireless Orchestra”, from 1926).

It’s been considered thus before – Charles Hallé employed his band from 1857 to 1895 either from gig to gig or on six-month contracts (though for many years he paid some a weekly wage for that winter season), and it was most often known as “the Manchester Orchestra” then.

Never mind: the BBC in the North West is celebrating 100 years of paying musicians to perform for it, which is a good thing whether you call that having an orchestra or not. The Philharmonic marked this with a great performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in the Bridgewater Hall, conducted by Eva Ollikainen. It was full-bodied Beethoven, with 60 strings and effectively triple woodwind, and the vocal line-up of Tuuli Takala, Kitty Whately, Steve Davislim and Simon Shibambu, abetted by the CBSO Chorus, made a strong body indeed.

Big bodies can still be light on their toes. Ollikainen brought energetic tempi to the first two movements, resulting in playing of incisiveness, vehemence even, and the timps pounded by Paul Turner were emphatically prominent in both. The Adagio was all suavity and songfulness, and the finale eloquent, full of gloriously realized counterpoint and surging and bounding in rhythmic energy to its climax.

Before it there were just two short orchestral pieces; the first the overture, Chanticleer, by Ruth Gipps, which the orchestra has recently recorded. Written in 1944, it’s a bit of a stop-start piece, but with plenty of instrumental colour. Oddly enough, its fairly conventional mid-century harmonies end on a strange cadence – as if it was meant to lead straight into the opera it was originally written for.

Present-day composer Erland Cooper wrote his Window over Rackwick to a BBC commission, and it had its world premiere in this concert. It’s a kind of tribute to Peter Maxwell Davies, the son of Salford who was associated with the Philharmonic for many years, inspired by the Orkney spot where he had his home, and setting a poem by his friend and collaborator, George Mackay Brown. The soprano soloist was pure-toned Héloïse Werner.

It’s like a simple, oft-repeated song refrain, beautiful to hear in its string chamber ensemble garb, and, like Max himself, very pleasant to encounter, but leaving you in no doubt of his being amply content with his own company.