Sea Pictures: Oramo and the BBCSO in contrasting, yet linked, British works

This concert began with a posthumous premiere, the first London performance of Oliver Knussen’s Cleveland Pictures. Composed between 2003 and 2009, its short movements take inspiration from artworks in Cleveland’s Museum of Art. Seven movements were planned and four finished, plus two orchestrated fragments. A ten‐bar sketch for a sixth movement, was not included in the published score nor in this performance. It was difficult in the quarter-hour during which these graphic vignettes followed upon each other to get a sense of the whole, especially given the work’s incomplete state, but the effect was nonetheless quite often beguiling. The opening movement’s response to Rodin’s sculpture The Thinker began with soft rich string chords, cut across by loud and insistent brass gestures. Harps and bells soon joined the texture, here and often in subsequent movements, when the winds, flutes especially, added alluring detail to this palette of timbres. As befits a work based upon pictures, strands of instrumental colour seemed to be as much an organising principle as melody and harmony.

A far more delayed posthumous premiere was the fate of Britten’s Double Concerto for Violin, Viola and Orchestra, written in 1932 when he was 18. It is unclear why it was abandoned by Britten. It languished unperformed until long after Britten’s death, orchestrated by Colin Matthews for its 1997 premiere. The viola was Britten’s own stringed instrument; perhaps he abandoned his concerto because it was not in the same league as Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante, a work he revered and for which he had learned the viola part. In the Britten, the viola often leads to delightful effect, and Lawrence Power’s large instrument made a noble sound. Vilde Frang’s violin was no less eloquent and Britten’s youthful effort, no masterpiece maybe, was worth hearing for the skilled and committed performance it received. Had the composer heard these soloists’ duetting over the pizzicato passage in the slow movement, or the virtuosity they showed in the finale, he might even have returned to his work.

Ralph Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony completed this trio of English works with a troubled history. It too had a long gestation period (seven years) and uncertainty about its title – even its symphonic status, the composer at one time stating that any one of its four movements could be performed on its own! But it survives in the repertoire not least because big choirs love to sing it, and RVW was famously a singers’ man, often leading choral performances from Bach to his own pieces. And how the BBC Symphony Chorus relished their task. They sang with tight ensemble yet with great fervour, right from the mighty injunction to “Behold, the sea itself!”, as thrilling as ever (though one missed the organ part). The soloists again were an effective pair. Morgan Pearse has a well-focussed and articulate baritone, while Finnish soprano Silja Aalto’s “Token of all brave captains” was a particular highlight of her beautifully sung part.

The nocturnal slow movement On the Beach at Night, Alone was atmospherically performed, Pearse’s precise diction enabling Whitman’s verse to be heard clearly (for which not all British audiences give thanks). The Scherzo The Waves, a challenge for any choir, was expertly accomplished even at Oramo’s “flashing and frolicsome” tempo. The conductor was masterly in navigating the long, philosophical finale, steering a course for home – but not in this case a home key. A work launched with such mighty affirmation expires in ambiguity, as two chords oscillate alternating high violins, and deep cellos and basses; “O farther sail” indeed.