Three superbly responsive performances were given on Wednesday evening by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra under the young British conductor Alpesh Chauhan, each work within this popular Romantic programme showcasing the players’ strengths and drawing outstanding music-making, both corporately and individually.
The evening began with a no-nonsense account of Elgar’s concert overture In the South, a work inspired by a holiday the composer and his wife took to Alassio in southern Italy in 1904, and long associated with the BSO following a memorable 1968 recording under the legendary Constantin Silvestri. As a sort of English Heldenleben, striding forth with manly vigour, In the South is arguably Elgar’s most viscerally uninhibited work. And from its imperious opening bars, bravura and grandeur were vividly presented here with a fierce intensity, incisive brass and plush string tone adding to Chauhan’s richly conceived and detailed performance. There was no shortage of nostalgia either which arrived in a beautifully shaped Canto popolare passage, solo viola utterly captivating. Altogether, an involving and superbly compelling account with belligerent and elegiac elements perfectly reconciled.
There followed an illuminating partnership with the Russian-born pianist Pavel Kolesnikov in Liszt’s Piano Concerto no. 2 in A major. This work may not be quite so familiar as his first concerto, but this exceptional account prompted me to ask why the work is not heard more often. Some may point to potential problems of integrating the concerto’s formal ingenuity, its kaleidoscopic mood changes, or the frequent octave piano writing early on, factors that may deter all but the most devoted admirers. But from out of the work’s bombast, poetry and scintillation, conductor and soloist achieved a persuasive integrity. Casually dressed in a DJ, white shirt and trainers, Kolesnikov walked towards the piano like a schoolboy sauntering from Geography to Double Chemistry and then proceeded to deliver a perfectly calibrated performance, virtuosity always placed at the service of the music. Variously thunderous, though never harsh, tender in the dreamy nocturne and glittering in the final pages, he brought character to the work’s episodic structure, equally alive to brilliance and introspection. What particularly impressed was his integration with the orchestra, not least the woodwind players and Jesper Svedberg’s soulful cello. Further evidence of Kolesnikov’s artistry was demonstrated in a Chopin waltz, an encore of drawing room intimacy.
Brahms' Symphony no. 2 in D major is generally considered to be his “Pastoral”, its relaxed melodic outpouring immediately recognised by its first audiences in the late 1870s. This account underlined the work’s sweeping lyricism, yet was not without muscular unrest, as if Liszt and even Elgar were looking over Chauhan’s shoulder. The opening movement was a clear-sighted conception, climaxes nicely integrated within a satisfying emotional trajectory. Cellos caught the ear in the noble Adagio, the movement’s fresh-air quality neatly etched, while the third movement was imbued with elfin gaiety and Viennese charm. From here it was headlong into a spirited Finale that was both light on its feet and authoritative. And with an intuitive grip on its cumulative momentum, Chauhan propelled the movement towards a grandstand finish, those pealing trombones ringing out magnificently.
