One of the key points underlying Southbank Centre’s epic festival The Rest is Noise is to place 20th-century music in its historical context, to show that this music – which might otherwise be considered intimidating – is more than just abstract sounds. This concert with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and their principal conductor Vladimir Jurowski drifted away a little from this tenet, placing its gaze firmly on anniversary composer Benjamin Britten with four substantial but similar pieces by him, and not a lot in the way of context.
Britten may have cut something of a solitary figure – Ross calls him “a lonely, troubled man” – but he wasn’t totally on his own, compositionally speaking, and perhaps a swift glance at some of his contemporaries in this concert (British or otherwise) would have aided the balance. As it was, this concert seemed like something of a wistful hiatus, before the festival moved on to the tough stuff – Boulez, Stockhausen, Nono (who, Ross reminds us in his book, once refused to shake Britten’s hand) – next weekend.
Regardless, the LPO are an orchestra on fire at the moment, and at times this programme gave them the chance to shine. The Prelude and Dances from The Prince of the Pagodas (1957) is a riot for the orchestra, its percussion section swollen thanks to the composer’s exposure to the Balinese gamelan, and his imagination sparked by this ballet’s delightfully ridiculous plot. Particularly in the liveliest sections – those either side of the set of variations near the end – the LPO played with an almost cartoonish twang of precision.
The rest of the concert, though just as well played, turned sharply towards the sombre. The Suite on English Folk Tunes (A time there was…) dates from 1974, just two years before Britten’s death, and has a rueful air to it, epitomised by the plangent cor anglais solo in the final movement, “Lord Melbourne”. The folk tunes are fragmented, treated almost ironically, though moments of affection linger, as in the surprisingly sweet ending to the otherwise dark “Hankin Bobby”. There is an aloofness about this composition which Jurowski perhaps didn’t fully connect with: though sonically rich, this was a performance hard to identify with.
A reshuffle meant that the two most substantial pieces on the programme, the Nocturne and the Cello Symphony, both followed the interval, and they picked up the sombre mood of A time there was. The Nocturne has an austere, serious tone perfectly suited to tenor Mark Padmore, and in its dry, neat procession through its seven obbligato instruments (various winds, harp and timpani, all of which play with a string orchestra) it perhaps points forward to Harrison Birtwistle. Also like this later composer’s music, Nocturne pulls few punches emotionally, and Britten is occasionally quite unremitting in his grimness: soft, deathly chords interject during the bright flute and clarinet duet of the penultimate movement, a Keats setting. While this isn’t a particularly late work – it’s from 1958 – it sounds like one. Padmore delivered a typically impeccable performance, and connected well with the orchestra.