Essential Early Romantics from the English Chamber Orchestra at Cadogan Hall

The three leading Early Romantics featured in this English Chamber Orchestra matinee programme, Mendelssohn, Chopin and Schumann, were close contemporaries (b.1809 and 1810), dying in 1847, 1849 and 1856, friends and colleagues, yet rarely combine to fill an orchestral concert. Chopin wrote little for orchestra, but their scarcity is more because the High and Late Romantics now dominate the repertoire and have made the essential spirit of their predecessors elusive. We cannot now easily hear that they too were trailblazers, Romantics who spoke seriously of romance as if they invented it which, in European music, they did. A pity there were numerous empty seats, Londoners staying away from Cadogan Hall to enjoy the afternoon sunshine, or perhaps regretting the absence of Brahms or Bruckner.

The romance of place framed the programme, opening with Mendelssohn’s souvenir of his visit to Scotland, the Hebrides Overture. Though he also wrote five symphonies, Mendelssohn left us no better piece for orchestra, or one so deftly scored, and with such an evocative atmosphere. The ECO played with rhythmic definition, and there were splendid contributions from flutes and clarinets, even if the most stirring passages lacked urgency. The otherwise excellent direction by Roberto Forés Veses, recently appointed the ECO’s Principal Guest Conductor, might have been inhibited by lack of preparation opportunity, for this item was a late addition to the programme, the attractive coherence of which thus emerged by accident.

Chopin’s First Piano Concerto is actually his second, but often rated below no. 2. It is long, this account taking twenty minutes for its first movement, and ten each for the next two. The orchestra is rather a support act in this work, which thus contains half a recital’s worth of solo Chopin. A soloist needs a range of skills to hold, let alone compel, the attention throughout. Israeli pianist Alon Kariv certainly has the required technique, with some glittering scale passages, well-turned arabesques and trills, thunderous chords when the music calls to arms. In the lyrical moments he tended towards the plain-spoken, celebrating Chopin’s structural strength above sentiment. The finale fared best, Kariv infectiously high-stepping in its krakowiak – a Polish dance, another spirit of place element.

Schumann’s Symphony no. 3 in E flat major , the “Rhenish”, is a five-movement celebration of the of the Rhineland he so loved. He was City Music Director of Düsseldorf, whence he travelled to see Cologne Cathedral, which he depicts in the fourth movement, and is buried in Bonn. He found the area inspiring, and few symphonies have such an inspiring opening, its syncopated first theme surging like a river in full spate. When it returned in the development, the horn section rang out with their exuberant augmented version. This can go for little in some concert halls, but in the smaller, high-ceilinged Cadogan Hall, especially for those with experience of its lively acoustic and who thus head for the central gallery, it was a thrilling moment. The strings too benefited from being in the right space for their chamber orchestra numbers (8.6.4.4.2), especially in the gentle third movement, when divided to play their rippling watery semiquavers. 

The brass opened the fourth movement, marked Feierlich (solemn) with all the grandeur of Cologne Cathedral itself, the three trombones hitherto held back for just this weighty annunciation. The jaunty swagger of the finale closed a very good Schumann 3, Forés Veses, using a baton only for this work, injecting energy and expression into its varied moods. The ECO were on fine form, and one hopes the orchestra's manager had organised a glass of Rhenish for each and every player.