Joy triumphs as Kazuki Yamada enthuses Birmingham with Beethoven’s Ninth

Kazuki Yamada is a man prepared to take risks. Opening a new City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra season at Symphony Hall, he chose a programme that contrasted two rather obscure works by Stravinsky and Strauss in the first half against one of the most well-known pieces in the entire repertoire. There was a very real chance that he could fail to win over the audience with his opening selection, while anything other than no-holds-barred Beethoven could come across as lacklustre simply by virtue of familiarity. Yet there was logic to his idea. The first piece featured only brass and woodwinds, the second only strings. In Beethoven’s Ninth they come together with timpani, vocal soloists and a large choir. Thus the concert allowed the CBSO to showcase the brilliant musicianship of its various sections while the programme itself built progressively toward an emphatic finale.

Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments was orchestrated for 23 players – the same number as strings in Strauss' Metamorposen, although Yamada elected to co-opt twice as many string players as an occasion to showcase the CBSO's rich talent.

Alas, when taking risks, some outcomes succeed better than others. Stravinsky’s Symphonies left me cold and ultimately grateful that it was rather short, being less than ten minutes long. The idea of the Symphonies is that they are a coming together of sounds, or as the programme notes put it, a “sounding together”. As with Stravinsky’s work generally, these sounds are full of textures and colours, and the fine musicians of the brass and woodwind sections rose to the technical challenges with their usual aplomb. However, the sounds tended to come together in an abstract and often uneasy rub rather than a complementary blend. Stravinsky wrote the work shortly after the death of his friend Claude Debussy, and I was reminded of how the Frenchman created images in his soundscapes. The flutes, for example, conveyed a sense of flow that loosely carried the piece like a river with the other sounds coming together like random flotsam, bobbing along at intervals and occasionally bumping off one another. An interesting composition rather than a particularly enjoyable one.

This changed, if you excuse the pun, with Metamorphosen, an instantly likeable work that showcased the impressive CBSO strings. Yamada created a sensuous unity of warmth, and while the composition was serious and melancholic, he never allowed it to be self-indulgent or overly sentimental. He maintained an especially long pause at the end to allow the impact to settle and register. Rather than gloom, I sensed a feeling of dignified acceptance of fate blended with redeeming hope.

But the crowd-pleaser was, and was always going to be, Beethoven’s epic Symphony no. 9 in D minor. As usual with such well-known works, the music itself is a safe bet for a season’s opening concert. However, Yamada might just have heard the vernacular phrase, “Go big or go home”, because wow, did he go big! This was not an orchestra churning out an old favourite with mechanical but dispassionate professionalism as if on autopilot. This was an orchestra on fire with joy – just as Beethoven intended – and an orchestra united as one with its solo voice and choral ensemble. The joy was palpable and infectious. The faces, postures and gestures of the large, superb CBSO Chorus and soloists in the finale captivated with their gusto and enthusiasm. They gave their all, as did all the players, Yamada himself physically buckling with exhaustion at the triumphant end.