At the conclusion of Anton Webern’s ethereal orchestration of Schubert’s Du bist die Ruh, a pair of cornets sounded, as though from the band in an Austrian town square of long-ago; the kind of place where Schubert had travelled, drunk wine and hawked his music in the salons of friends. There was, particularly in this piece, a sense of direct connection between artist and composer, and of the environment and milieu in which he had worked. Sir Bryn Terfel told of his own travels in Schubert’s footsteps, the better to understand him. Like a vintage Rolls Royce, still mighty and capable of 150 mph, he floated the songs’ sublime melodic lines over the orchestra, with power enough in reserve.
Perfect control and restraint were evident in all his varied interpretations in this nearly all-Schubert programme from the Royal Northern Sinfonia at the Glasshouse, especially the raw power in Erlkönig, thrilling and terrifying. In Die Forelle he conjured up from the front rows of the audience a river, lively with fish, and an inept fisherman whose rod almost ended up in Dinis Sousa’s nose. Less successful, though masterfully delivered, were Max Reger’s dense, gloopy orchestrations which at times verged on the simply weird, as at the opening of Nacht und Träume where a solo clarinet doubles the singer’s part to disconcerting effect. Sir Bryn clearly enjoyed himself and has lost nothing of the magic, charisma and consummate stagecraft which have marked his career.
The late, shamefully under-represented and deeply religious Sofia Gubaidulina spent a lifetime in music in pursuit of connection. As she put it: “I understand 'religion' in the literal meaning of the word, as 're-ligio,' that is to say the restoration of connections, the restoration of the 'legato' of life. There is no more serious task for music than this.” Her Impromtu of 1997 was, by turns, a meditation on Schubert and his world, a tightly organised set of variations and a respectful homage to Schubert’s invention. Snatches of the A flat major Impromptu, Op. 90 no.4, introduced the piece, succeeded by passages for divided strings and commentary from a solo flute and violin. There were birds over the tundra, loud and complex machines in busy factories, with the ghost of Schubert always in the background, the musicians reaching again and again to touch him but failing, beautifully.
If the “Great C major” Symphony after the interval seemed almost ordinary by comparison, this was not the fault of the RNS who gave an energetic and note-perfect account. The tempo in the Andante con moto was particularly well judged with plenty of room allowed for the woodwinds to sing their snatches of folksong, but never the overawed reverence which sometimes slows this movement almost to a stop. In fact, notwithstanding Schumann’s later unhelpful remark citing the “heavenly length” of the symphony, the whole thing was dispatched in a much more approachable 50 minutes.
