Orchestral concert planners know where they are with Beethoven’s odd-numbered symphonies (and the Pastoral): no. 1 is the perennial curtain-raiser, while the others command pride of place as the big works that conclude concerts. But nos. 2, 4 and 8 find their niche rather less secure – too substantial for the opening slot, not ‘heroic’ enough to stand as a finale. However, one of the great merits of Anja Bihlmaier’s very impressive concert with the Hallé was that the Fourth was given pride of place in the second half of her programme, proving a joyful way to end a vibrant evening.
If one were looking for an appropriate adjective to summarise Bihlmaier’s approach to Beethoven, one might settle on ‘brisk’. In the Fourth, there was no hanging around. That slow introduction, often without form and void, was here made to seem intently focused on reaching that point when the first movement’s main Allegro vivace revs its engine and takes off into the distance. Likewise the ticking clock that underpins the slow movement had clearly had its mechanism wound to the full, though with no loss of its almost liquid, song-like fluency. Orchestra and conductor had played this same programme on two evenings immediately prior to this in Manchester, so there’s no doubt that the performance was well bedded in, but the whole work sparkled: crisp, taut string playing, animated horns and winds, underpinned by trumpets and timps in the smallest orchestra of any of Beethoven’s symphonies.
Beethoven – or his influence – featured elsewhere. The Leonore Overture no. 3 was approached briskly, though perhaps the players were still a little cold here in a performance that didn’t quite catch fire until the blazing exhilaration of its coda. Acting as curtain-raiser to the Fourth Symphony, there was Unsuk Chin’s subito con forza, a very short orchestral piece that shreds fragments of Beethoven, from the opening chord of the Coriolan to the familiar four-note motto that occurs in both the Fifth Symphony and the Fourth Piano Concerto, not to mention the scurrying strings from the Leonore we’d just heard, and reassembles them in a kind of post-modern collage. The piece provided an exemplary workout for the Hallé’s percussionists, rushing to and fro among the ironmongery arrayed across the back of the stage, but whether this all had a serious motive or whether Unsuk Chin’s tongue remained firmly stuck in her cheek was rather less clear.
Bartók’s Viola Concerto was given an exemplary performance in the hands of the superb Maxim Rysanov. The work was left incomplete at the time of the composer's death, and one might feel that, had Bartók been fit and well, the latter two movements might not have remained quite so brief. Nevertheless, Rysanov played with gusto and passion, his forceful playing (never let anyone tell you the viola is a shy, retiring instrument!) backed by excellent support from the Hallé’s winds. Movingly, Rysanov gave us an encore, alongside the Hallé’s string players: Myroslav Skoryk’s Melody (from his score to the Soviet-era war film Vysokyy pereval), which has been much performed in the past 18 months in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As Rysanov said in introducing it, given very recent horrific events, the time is sadly right for its eloquent articulation of the pity of war to be heard again.
