An 80th birthday always deserves celebration, and especially so when it’s the anniversary of a national musical treasure like the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Their new season duly launched at the Royal Albert Hall with hopes running high. Before the second half, charismatic Music Director Vasily Petrenko read out a message from their patron, King Charles, and declared too that a concert makes the world a better place.
Founded by Sir Thomas Beecham in 1946, the RPO is roughly contemporaneous with the post-Second World War creation of the National Health Service, the Arts Council and the United Nations, among other things. Over the years, those idealistic initiatives have taken a battering, the orchestra included. Despite all the cutbacks, culture wars and struggles for reinvention, the RPO is still – just about – fighting fit. But maybe there were telltale signs in this performance of the challenges it continues to face.
A world premiere from the Master of the King’s Music, Errollyn Wallen, kicked off the concert: Flare, a fanfare led by antiphonal trumpets positioned high above their colleagues. It enjoyed a sumptuous start with virtuoso brass, colourful harmonies, surging strings… and then it stopped. It flares and vanishes. Ideally, a great orchestra would have the appetite and wherewithal to commission for its anniversary not just a tantalising couple of minutes, but a half-hour symphony or concerto. We can only dream.
Instead, we had Strauss’ tone-poem Ein Heldenleben, as ever the perfect orchestral showpiece. In this gem of musical autofiction, Strauss immortalises his wife in the capricious violin solos (superbly played by leader Duncan Riddell), pops in motif ads for his other works, and lambasts his critics with contrapuntal laughter in the woodwind, plus that ultimate trigger for any composer’s insecurities: parallel fifths.
There was much to enjoy in this up-tempo account, the battle scene proving especially effective: Petrenko picked out details in the texture as a filmmaker might with well-targeted camera angles. Speed, though, does not always create scruff-of-the-neck excitement; at times the sound itself would perhaps have benefited from more inner intensity and focus.
Before the interval, however, the Beethoven Triple Concerto had a performance fit for the (absent) King. Violinist Julia Fischer, cellist Pablo Ferrández and pianist Jan Lisiecki are artists so assured that they can treat the Albert Hall stage almost as a playground.
Ferrández is a miracle of a cellist with a sound like a Spanish sunrise. If his expressively romantic style seemed momentarily at odds with Fischer’s poised perfectionism, that quickly changed: the pair made an outright love story of the concerto, gazing into one another’s eyes and meshing into impassioned duets, tactfully supported by Lisiecki’s suave, elegantly turned playing and, at a safe distance, the orchestra. It was entrancing, heartwarming and inspiring – and it brought hope.
Happy Birthday, Royal Philharmonic, and here’s to the next 80 years.
