Barbican Hall
Strauss – Festmusik der Stadt Wien
Berlioz – Overture: Le corsaire, op.21
Mozart – Violin Concerto no.3
in G major, KV 216
Beethoven – Symphony no.8 in
F major, op.93
Brahms – Nänie, op.82
Students from the Royal Academy of Music and Guildhall School
London Symphony Chorus
London Symphony Orchestra
Patrick Harrild, Joseph Wolfe (conductors)
Nikolaj Znaider (violin/director/conductor)
Gordan Nikolitch (director)
And so, the
London Symphony Orchestra gathered tribute to the late Sir Colin Davis.
Arguably it was with this orchestra, still more so than with the Royal Opera,
that Sir Colin was most at home; certainly the greater number of his
appearances in recent years were here at the Barbican. But until the very end,
he remained committed to music-making with the young, so it was meet and right
that the concert should open with student musicians from the Royal Academy
(where, as recently as 2011, I heard him conduct Béatrice et Bénédict) and the
Guildhall. As Jonathan Freeman-Attwood, Principal of the RAM put it in one of a
host of programme tributes, ‘Of the many distinguished conductors in British
music over the last century, I cannot believe there has been anyone more
committed to nurturing young musicians than Sir Colin. (I hope that these
wonderful tributes will be made available online for all to read, if indeed
they are not already.) Strauss’s 1943 Festmusik
der Stadt Wien might then have seemed on paper an odd choice with which to
open, but it allowed a goodly number of young musicians to assemble, and to
offer a decidedly superior, eminently musical, fanfare to what was a celebration as much as a
memorial.
Joseph
Wolfe, Sir Colin’s son, then conducted Le
Corsaire. It is doubtless unnecessary to remind anyone that Sir Colin did
more than anyone for Berlioz either during or after the composer’s life. To ‘review’
these performance as if this were a ‘normal’ concert would be not so much to do
something wrong as completely to miss the point. Wolfe may have taken the
opening more hurriedly, and the following section more leisurely, than his father
might have been expected to do – though, who knows, for this was not a musician
to rest on his laurels? – but the last thing Sir Colin was was a megalomaniac,
insisting that there was one ‘correct’ way to perform anything. (His courtesy
and humanity proved far more lethal weapons against the monstrous regiments of ‘authenticity’
than any number of angry Adornian attacks from the likes of me.) Berlioz was
honoured, as he was in Sir Colin’s final performance with the LSO and the
London Symphony Chorus, a truly unforgettable performance of the Requiem. Palpable throughout was the electricity of
commitment from an orchestra that had clearly loved a father-figure and above
all a fellow musician.
Nikolaj
Znaider, author of another moving programme tribute, joined the orchestra for
Mozart’s Third Violin Concerto. He and Sir Colin had various concerts planned
together; indeed, this evening was due to have offered a performance of the
Mendelssohn Concerto and Schubert’s ‘Great’ C major Symphony. Amongst those
plans had been exploration of Mozart. There were a few occasions when one might
have sighed longingly, knowing that a tricky corner would have been deftly
negotiated by the greatest Mozartian since at least Karl Böhm. But again, the
point here was to rejoice in fresh musicianship. Znaider drew from the LSO a
crisp and often affectionate response to Mozart’s vernal score, especially
during an adorably sweet account of the slow movement, and his sensitivity as
soloist was beyond reproach. The performance, however, was not without
melancholy, at least in terms of response, for if we shall miss Sir Colin in
Berlioz, we shall miss him even more in Mozart. Who, after all, now is left,
fit to perform that most difficult and yet most crucial of musical tasks? Not
many. To quote Znaider, ‘I am with one stroke without my mentor, musical father
and best friend.’
In some
ways the most astonishing performance of all came after the interval. The LSO,
without conductor, led by Gordan Nikolitch, performed Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony,
another work beloved by Sir Colin. The players were not so foolish as to
attempt to replicate a Davis reading; his spirit, however, seemed present.
Occasionally there might have been a moment of brusqueness unlikely to have
occurred under his watch, but then a conductor-less performance can hardly be
expected to yield as it might if someone – at least, someone who knew what he
was doing – were on the podium. Charm, humour, strength, formal command: all of
these were virtues of Sir Colin’s performances, and all were present here. As a
tribute to what he accomplished with this orchestra, it would be difficult to
think of anything more moving.
At least,
that was, until we came to Brahms’s Nänie.
Znaider led the LSO, now joined by the LSC, for a performance that was moving
indeed. Its consolations, not easy but realistic, put one in mind of the German Requiem, apposite for an agnostic
who was spiritual in the best, rather than the debased contemporary, sense.
Brahms’s harmonies told of something numinous, and their organisation told of
what we on earth might be able to accomplish. This is music we should hear far
more often than we do, especially when performed with such distinction.
As an
addition to the programme, Wolfe returned to conduct a tender account of Elgar’s
Sospiri. It was a work Sir Colin had
come to know shortly before his death. He had expressed the wish to conduct it,
but had told his son that, should that not be possible, he should do so
instead. The sweetness of the LSO’s vibrato, the passion and very English
nobility of its performance more broadly, said all there was to say. After
which, the LSO kindly invited us all to drink a wee dram of whisky – Sir Colin’s
post-concert preference – to his memory. Not the least achievement of this
tribute was to engender a true sense of community following the concert, as
opposed to the usual sloping off into the concrete wilderness of the Barbican.
In the words of Sally Matthews, ‘Colin will live on and continue to inspire.’
