This Opus series concert saw Sir Mark Elder placing a low-fat account of Brahms’ Fourth Symphony alongside vivid stories from Rimsky-Korsakov and Ravel in a superbly well-conceived Hallé programme.
At the top of the agenda, Rimsky-Korsakov’s suite from his opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan uses the whole palette of orchestral sounds for the preludes to Acts 1, 2 and 4. In the first, The Tsar’s Farewell and Departure, intricately intertwining woodwind and string figures fizzed around the stage energetically. The second was strongly reminiscent of same composer’s Scheherazade in its rolling waves, depicting The Tsarina and her Son in a Barrel at Sea, and the finale’s Three Wonders took the suite to an ecstatic close with much rejoicing.
The contrast with Ravel’s Mother Goose ballet music could scarcely have been greater, Elder quipping that the French composer’s sound world perhaps demanded a “different pair of ears”. Programming the complete 30-minute ballet with surtitles explaining the story was a shrewd move, even if one wondered whether a tetanus shot might have saved a lot of trouble after Sleeping Beauty’s run-in with her spindle! The surtitles served to highlight the Straussian literality of Ravel’s writing, with spinning wheels and skipping princesses vividly depicted in the music. The reduced string section of 32 players allowed for a sense of intimacy in highlighting the celesta and keyed glockenspiel, and also gave room for woodwind soloists to shine. The best of these – a suitably beastly contrabassoon, sparkling flute and supremely delicate cor anglais – were as richly characterised as could be wished for, though the most magical moments came in interactions between harp and celesta.
After the interval, Elder gave a lean, unsentimental reading of Brahms’ well-loved Symphony no. 4 in E minor. With strings again reduced (here to 39 players), no excess of melodrama in the outer movements and crisp, clean textures throughout, this made for a refreshing take on a work which can often feel over-fed. There was no shortage of beauty (most of all in the slow movement’s wonderfully realised viola and cello writing), but there was also bustling swagger in the third movement and a compelling sense of ebb and flow in the narrative of the first. The journey from the sighing opening pages to anguished climax of the first movement was carefully mapped out, and the slow movement felt as light and spacious as ever. In the finale, it was the softly glowing, ultra-gentle warmth of the trombones which left the strongest impression. This was Brahms at his most economical and organic, being allowed to breathe without ever shouting.
