Aquifer, a new work from Thomas Adès, opened this first of two programmes from the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. It was commissioned by the BRSO to mark the inaugural season of their new Chief Conductor, Sir Simon Rattle, who conducted this UK premiere. An aquifer, the hydrogeologists among Bachtrack’s followers will know, is an underground seam of permeable rock that can hold and transfer water, and a handy metaphor for the musical procedures of a work in one movement in seven sections, where one layer flows into the next. There was a very large orchestra, the timpanist joined by five percussionists.
Subterranean gurglings launched a rich vein of materials which soon began to surge forward then ebb back, with recognisable but never exact repeats. The turbulence became considerable in later sections, with low-pitched chromaticism bringing much slithering, and harmonic disorientation as strings and brass slowly slid between pitches. It was rather scary this far down below secure harmonic ground. The coda was to have featured, according to the programme note, the conductor punning on his own name by playing a large rattle. The rattle was there, but played by an orchestral member. Sir Simon had both hands full with such a dense, swiftly evolving score. Or perhaps he has suffered too many puns on his name, or shared Dr Johnson’s view that a “man who would make a pun would pick a pocket”.
The conductor returned with the composer, to a very big cheer. Rattle then made a touching speech in praise of the man whose music he had championed since Adès was a teenager, and presented him with the gold medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society, noting that previous recipients included Brahms, Elgar, and – looking up over his shoulder – Sir Henry Wood. Adès offered a muted “Thank you”. Rattle quipped that “some composers have made longer speeches” and gave him the mic again. The “thank you” was clearer than before, but that was all. No specific thanks to Rattle, the RPS, the admiring audience or the magnificent BRSO – though perhaps all were embraced by those two syllables.
Great horn calls litter Austro-German Romantic music, from the opening of the finale of Beethoven’s Pastoral (thanksgiving mode) via Wagner’s Siegfried (heroic mode), to Richard Strauss’ Don Juan (eros rampant). Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony opens with a horn call from some primeval forest perhaps, an urthema from the dawn of time, the underlying soft string tremolando the rustle of emergent life. Well perhaps it is, more prosaically, just the first subject in E flat. But the title “Romantic” was Bruckner’s own, and the BRSO played it with attention-grabbing beauty. The whole first movement teemed with deeply cultured playing, and closed with an electrifying coda.
The Andante’s minor key funereal tread was in an ideal tempo, the cortège a restrained procession, the orchestra’s high calibre resting on the foundation of its magnificent string section. The hunting horns of the marvellous Scherzo were buoyant in rhythm, one could see a few promenaders bobbing up and down in time. The finale is hardly the sole example in Bruckner of one which does not quite match the quality of the earlier movements. Perhaps there is little to be done about it. Except that is to hold it together by attending with precision to the tempo relations of its constituent parts, articulating its narrative trajectory with varied phrasing, and building impetus to a satisfying coda. Rattle and his magnificent players did all that, and more.
