John Wilson was clearly delighted to be back in his hometown (with his beloved mother in the audience) and gave a warm, witty and informative introduction to this concert; a serious talk delivered like a chat – a difficult thing to pull off, but Wilson made it look easy.
Wilson's Sinfonia of London is a hand-picked band and there is something almost blissfully relaxing about being in the presence of an orchestra like this; after a few minutes you realise that there aren’t going to be any dodgy moments – at all, ever – freeing the ear to concentrate and appreciate the music afresh. Wilson is a superb conductor and musicologist bringing intellect and passion in equal measure to every performance. Every necessary detail is precisely cued, every broad emotional sweep is allowed to breathe in its own space.
Patter Songs by Kenneth Hesketh is an orchestral elaboration on material from his earlier Gogol-inspired opera, The Overcoat. The composer speaks of his “lifelong fascination with colour, vibrancy (and) harmonic pungency” and this is what we got, an orchestral showcase that perhaps only a band of this ability could attempt. It was entertaining but ultimately I felt without direction or form – although perhaps this is the idea – and surely by now it’s a bit of a tired cliché to give the “jokes” to the bassoons? But the orchestra visibly enjoyed it.
In 1966 even an artist of such stature and standing as Dimitri Shostakovich had to ask for permission to do such quotidian things as get on an international flight or write to a foreign newspaper, so he didn’t do it much. Internalising the conflicts and despair engendered by the cruel and monolithic system, he wrote music instead. In his later years he had largely abandoned the pretence of “Soviet Realism” and was evolving his own highly personal musical language containing elements of his former style but with much that was new, or had previously been suppressed.
This is the language we heard from Sheku Kanneh-Mason and the orchestra in the Cello Concerto no. 2 in G major. Complex, brooding and intellectually challenging, this is a significant work; Kanneh-Mason and Wilson approached it reverently and with fierce concentration. If I felt at times the cello could have projected more, then this is a minor caveat in such a deeply considered reading, and the end was greeted by a moment’s silence followed by vigorous, enthusiastic applause. As an encore Sheku Kanneh-Mason gave us the third of Edmund Finnis’ Preludes for Solo Cello, a brief and haunting meditation.
Wilson spoke earlier of his abiding love for Rachmaninov’s First Symphony and of its disastrous first performance by inept musicians under the (reportedly) drunken conductor Glazunov, which plunged Rachmaninov into a mental breakdown. Over the course of a year, Wilson and the Sinfonia have painstakingly prepared a new performing edition of the symphony. It was explosive, lush, tender (and yes, at times still rambling) but sonically visceral and above all, in this version at least, a work necessary to the understanding of the Russian canon. There were many moments to treasure but if one contribution stood out, it was that of the pair of velvety clarinets who held us all breathless in the slow movement and were the first to be called by Wilson at the end.
