ASMF/Wigglesworth - Sibelius, Nielsen, Wagner, and Mozart, 5 December 2020

St Martin-in-the-Fields

Sibelius: Belshazzar’s Feast: ‘Nocturne’
Nielsen, arr. Hans Abrahamsen: Three Piano Pieces, op.59, recomposed for ten instruments
Wagner: Siegfried-Idyll
Mozart: Symphony no.34 in C major, KV 338

Academy of St Martin in the Fields

Ryan Wigglesworth (conductor)

‘Awakening’, aptly enough, was the theme of this post-lockdown concert from the Academy of St Martin in the Fields in the church where, for this orchestra, it all began. I only noticed that after the event and confess to having been thinking in different, if far from opposed, terms, related to the theatre. Music means many things at different times, to different people—and surely all the more so in times such as these. At any rate, a sign of musical light in London at the close of the first week of Advent was welcome indeed, not least given the typical accomplishment of the Academy’s playing, this time under Ryan Wigglesworth.


As a heretic who has always preferred Sibelius’s smaller pieces to his symphonies—perhaps one day they will ‘click’ with me—I was delighted to hear the ‘Nocturne’ from his incidental music to Belshazzar’s Feast in a spacious performance well judged for the church acoustic. One heard from the outset coolness and warmth in the Academy’s sound, both in timbre and harmony. Such balance was typical of the performance as a whole, Tchaikovskian inheritance apparent, yet neither overwhelming nor overwhelmed by Sibelian distinctiveness of voice. Scalar orientalism may have charmed, yet sounded rightly incidental (in the other sense). Here was a Nordic heart beating through out.


Hans Abrahamsen’s ‘recomposition’ of Carl Nielsen’s Three Piano Pieces had no intrinsic connection with the stage, yet sounded here very much as if it had. The first piece set the scene for quite a journey within only a few minutes. Quirky, colourful, yet with enough disorientation to retain a welcome enigmatic quality, it proved neither one thing (Nielsen) nor the other (Abrahamsen), albeit in a positive, alchemic sense: if not quite the magic of theatre, then certainly of performance, the latter here one of sensitivity and verve. The second proved similar yet different, a second act in miniature. Here a sense of kinship with Maskarade seemed stronger, but likewise tendencies in another, re-composer’s direction. Likewise, still more, in the third: whether that were a matter of work, performance, or my listening, I am not entirely sure. And does it matter? Some wind sounds, perhaps inevitably for such an ensemble, echoed Schoenberg’s First Chamber Symphony; by the same token, some emphatically did not. Music guards its mysteries.


Wagner’s Siegfried-Idyll is music with a complex relationship to the stage: it precedes the composition of the section of Siegfried from which it seems to ‘come’, written for a domestic stage—and a domestically staged event. To accord it its full title: ‘Tribschen Idyll with Fidi-Birdsong and Orange Sunrise as Symphonic Birthday Greeting Offered to his Cosima by her Richard, 1870.’ This lullaby of peace, joy, and world-inheritance, to employ the conventional leitmotif references from the opera yet ‘awakens’. It certainly did here, in a reading brisk and unsentimental which, at start, sounded a little as if Wigglesworth were trying to force Wagner’s melos into pre-conceived moulds. In truth, the opening is very difficult indeed to bring off; it takes the most experienced of Wagnerians, whether a Furtwängler or a Boulez, to do so with the ease it seems to demand. There was no denying, though, the excellence of the ASMF’s instrumental playing, nor later on of Wigglesworth’s shaping of Wagner’s climaxes, always more economical than one expects and all the more telling for that. There was, moreover, an almost Straussian after-glow to the final minutes; it would always have been welcome, but was all the more so set against the cold frigidity of the pandemical world outside.


Finally came Mozart: ever poised between concert hall, theatre, and indeed church. His Symphony no.34 opened with festal swagger that did not preclude relaxation. If anything, I felt Wigglesworth offered too much of the latter later in the first-movement exposition, somewhat losing momentum. It remained a joy, however, simply to hear this music once again. There was throughout a keenness to the woodwind that spoke, or better sang, of the opera house, leading to a coda to lift the darkest of spirits. Sometimes—often, with Mozart—C major can prove just the tonic. The Academy’s small forces reinforced the slow movement’s lineage in Salzburg serenades. Wweetness of string tone was especially welcome given the perversities we often suffer nowadays in this music. Polish and fire marked the finale: a Catherine wheel in the Salzburg night sky I missed so much this summer. There was, thank goodness, no fussiness to Wigglesworth’s direction, nor to the playing. And what playing it was!

Uchida/LSO/Davis - Haydn, Nielsen, and Beethoven, 4 October 2011

Barbican Hall

Haydn – Symphony no.92 in G major, ‘Oxford’
Nielsen – Symphony no.1 in G minor
Beethoven – Piano Concerto no.3 in C minor, op.37


This is the latest of an LSO series in which Sir Colin Davis and Dame Mitsuko Uchida present Beethoven piano concertos alongside symphonies by Haydn and Nielsen. Haydn must rank alongside Schoenberg and Webern as one of the most scandalously neglected of all the great composers of the past, so almost any opportunity is to be grabbed with both hands, especially one involving a master in this repertoire such as Davis. (If you have not heard his Concertgebouw recordings of the twelve London symphonies, you are in for a life-changing experience; if you have, you are still in for another when you listen again.) As for Nielsen: well, I tried…


The Oxford Symphony opened in the vein in which it would proceed, the first movement’s Adagio introduction pregnant with possibility. (Having come from a weekend of Boulez, the parallels were more than usually evident: in the days when he conducted more works from the ‘museum’, Haydn was a particular favourite, often including rarer symphonies, masses, even opera.) Its chromaticism told without exaggeration, a remark that could be applied with equal justice to every aspect of Davis’s reading. The Allegro spiritoso proved vigorous, straightforward in the best sense, Haydn’s music permitted to speak for itself. (What a change from some of the grotesque mannerisms I have encountered from conductors such as Harnoncourt and Rattle – though the latter’s Mozart tends to be worse still.) Haydn’s thematic rigour was lain bare, or rather truly lived. There was, moreover, a grandeur, despite the relatively small orchestra (ten first violins down to four double basses) that another age would have recognised as Handelian. The slow movement flowed nicely, with a central section whose muscular vigour – trumpets, drums, and all – looked forward to those ‘military’ interventions in later works, both symphonic and sacred. Haydn’s contrapuntal mastery was beautifully apparent too, likewise the woodwind magic of the transformed ‘A’ section. The minuet received a model performance: perfectly in command of rhythmic and harmonic motion, whilst the trio’s wrong-footed – or wrong-footing? – rusticism proved all the more amusing for the lack of underlining. Playing it straight is always the better option here, however tempting others may be. The finale was superbly articulated, sunny of disposition, and above all great fun, that fun enhanced by Haydn’s – and the players’ – display of ‘learned’ counterpoint. If Karl Böhm and Eugen Jochum remain my ultimate favourites in this symphony, I defy anybody to hear superior symphonic Haydn anywhere today.


Nielsen’s first symphony opened with astonishingly confident sound from a conductor apparently tackling this repertoire for the first time. If Sir Colin conducted Haydn with vigour but also with the wisdom of maturity, here he sounded like a young, if still wise, man. I cannot imagine the LSO has played it that much recently either, yet it sounded quite in its element. As rhythmically alert as the Haydn performance, the first movement also benefited from ravishing woodwind and resplendent brass. This is not music I find especially interesting, but as strong a case as I can imagine was made. Alas, the following movements, whilst very well performed, seem weaker still as music. The Andante sounds to me akin to a faceless watering down of aspects of Schumann and Dvořák, though Davis and the LSO gave a performance of such burning conviction that I could almost overlook its meandering. If that movement meanders, it does so pleasantly enough, but the scherzo, its debt to Dvořák still more glaring, really seems over-extended, not least on account of the lack of a melodic gift. I wondered whether Davis might have run through the trio a little faster, but that is doubtless not a reaction a Nielsen-devotee would have experienced. The finale emerged in performance with fire and as much direction as could be expected, but its C major conclusion sounded, as I think it must, bizarrely unmotivated: no fault of the performers, though.


Thank goodness, I thought, for the return to great music, in the guise of Beethoven’s C minor concerto. I was a little surprised that the size of the string section reverted to that employed for the Haydn symphony; I am sure Davis employed a good few more when he performed this same work with Yevgeny Kissin in 2007. In truth, this was a more Mozartian performance than that of four years ago: perhaps a matter of Davis’s skill as an ‘accompanist’, bringing out the best in his soloist. For Uchida, especially in the first movement, seemed utterly at home with Beethoven’s lyricism, but sometimes a little less so with the composer’s sterner moments, her first piano entry displaying an unexpected hardening of tone. However, by the time of the long cadenza, magnificently prepared by an orchestra sounding rich beyond its numbers, the soloist seemed fully at ease with all facets of Beethoven’s musical persona: whilst we did not hear, and should hardly have expected to hear, the full throttle of a Daniel Barenboim, there was muscle as well as delicacy, and how Uchida turned the composer’s more lyrical phrases throughout! The slow movement was beautifully poised, again clearly Mozartian in its derivation, yet suffused with a Beethovenian sensibility that peered some way into the world of the Romantic concerto. Firm control of line from conductor and soloist ensured that we heard the Largo as if in a single breath. The finale was equally impressive. From Uchida’s opening statement, one noticed her intelligent shaping of the rondo theme, especially the way she leaned into the A-flat (the second note). Unsurprisingly, Davis proved lovingly alert to the Mozartian tendencies of the Harmoniemusik episode, whilst Uchida played her part here as a true chamber musician.