Big-boned and barnstorming sums up these accounts by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. It was a double act of Brahms and Vaughan Williams, two composers linked by a Romantic sensibility if separated by a generational difference. Under guest conductor Karl-Heinz Steffens, power and weight were the chief characteristics of Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto, while an Edwardian grandeur, both sepia tinted and roistering, surged through a gripping performance of Vaughan Williams’ London Symphony.
First up was the Brahms with Russian-Israeli pianist Boris Giltburg, a soloist who has attracted much favourable attention in recent months. His muscular delivery here seemed both to contradict his slight figure, hunched over the keyboard, and heighten the irony of Brahms’ wry claim for his “tiny, tiny piano concerto”. Nonetheless, Giltburg sashayed with complete authority from crisply articulated passage work to powerful climaxes, his playing grounded on a solid technique and an honesty of expression. There were glimpses too of intimacy and playfulness, the latter emerging in the final pages of the opening Allegro, the whole launched by an expressive solo horn. The succeeding movement was forthright, but despite some intimacy from the strings, the sheer weight of sound felt unyielding.
Tenderness arrived in the Andante with Jasper Svedberg’s eloquent cello solo, the change of pace and autumnal colouring welcome, as was the private, dream-like world of the coda, its catharsis hall-stilling. Brahms surely has a twinkle in his eye for the finale, its relaxed sunny vistas coming into view periodically here, but its gaiety was just a little buttoned up. There was ample refinement in Rachmaninov’s Prelude in G major, served up as a poetic encore.
There followed a revelatory performance of the London Symphony, a work premiered in March 1914 and packed with ideas as colourful and evocative as any in the composer’s output. Rarely have I heard this richly varied panoramic conception played with such demonstrable affection, with Steffens bringing all his experience and compassion to an uplifting account. On this showing, the work should be heard more often. Plenty of recordings exist, including one by the BSO themselves (under Kees Bakels, 1993), but a live performance is the best way of appreciating a work the composer contemplated entitling “A Symphony by a Londoner”.
Immediately obvious was the close relationship between conductor and orchestra, a meeting of minds that brought gravitas and spaciousness to the opening Lento, its atmosphere finely drawn, its dawn mists giving way to the “street-life” bustle of the main Allegro where grandeur, rambunctiousness (trumpets and cornets scorching the air) and wistfulness in turn made a striking presence, as did impactful climaxes. The ensuing Lento unfolded as a tone poem, its twilight mood fully realised, aided and abetted by cor anglais, viola and horn solos, all searchingly expressive, the whole profoundly beautiful. And on to a spectral Scherzo – variously nimble, jaunty and punchy, and not lacking in humour, Vaughan Williams scoring shown to advantage, as too the abrupt mood swings all brilliantly outlined, and a pianissimo close that was magical. Earlier pageantry and serenity all but disappear in the finale, its slow processional, a reminder of the composer’s grimy and impoverished London. After a searing climax (percussion not holding back), Steffens drew haunting sonorities from harp and solo strings, muted brass and solo violin to conjure London and the Thames in all its quiet mystery. A life affirming performance, demonstrating, once again, that the BSO is often in a class of its own.
