Welsh Roundup
Rian Evans: new year, new music...

In South Wales, it was a question of New Year, new music. Perhaps not brand new, but new to most people and it made a very gratifying change from the usual fare. Given that Cardiff for so long had such a reputation for twentieth century music, it is good to think that it might once again claw something of that reputation back.

It would be an exaggeration to say that audiences are flocking to contemporary concerts, but there is a discernible revival of interest. The BBC National Orchestra of Wales, whose corporate musicianship and expertise is this field is too easily taken for granted, is key in all this and the commitment of their principal guest conductor, Dutchman Jac van Steen, is certainly helping fuel the process.

Van Steen's concert with the BBC NOW at St David's Hall on 24 January was an example of the authority and enthusiasm he brings to new repertoire. David Sawer's Byrnan Wood, in which the constant movement created in the orchestra is a musical equivalent of Malcolm's army under their canopy of green advancing on Macbeth's Dunsinane, was brilliantly delivered.

Arlene Sierra's Aquilo, which was awarded the 2001 Takemitsu Prize, had a similarly elemental force. Inspired by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius' theories on wind — Aquilo being the Latin name for the north wind — Sierra's depictions of rushing thermal currents were vividly realised and, while a slower moving central section seemed more selfconscious, the overall impression of a mass of seething energy remained most striking. Between these two orchestral works came the Piano Concerto of 2002 by Huw Watkins, in which the composer himself was the soloist. The work may be conventional in form, but is so well crafted by Watkins that its lyrical flow always had a natural momentum.

But perhaps Jac van Steen's biggest service in this concert was to have introduced the German composer Christian Jost to a new audience. Having conducted the premiere of his Cocoon-Symphonie in Weimar, van Steen was clearly convinced of its worth and it proved an absolutely compelling work here. Conceived in five interlinked sections and subtitled Five Gateways of a Journey into the Interior, the symphony had a natural theatricality which came in part from the antiphonal use of two trios of hornplayers standing high on eithet side of the orchestra.

Jost also deployed two sets of timpani and their fearsome engagement both with the horns and the rest of the orchestra was totally involving. That the name of Jost is quite unfamiliar is typical of the insularity of the British music scene and to have the BBC NOW tapping the mould, even if not succeeding in breaking it asunder, is to be loudly applauded.

Individual members of the orchestra, performing as the BBC NOW Cham­ber Players underlined their own commitment to new repertoire in a concert given at the School of Music of Cardiff University on 29 January. Two works stood out. The first of these was A Purcell Garland, a sequence of three pieces by George Benjamin, Oliver Knussen and Colin Matthews, honouring the 1995 tercentenary of Purcell's death. Using Purcell Fantazias as their starting point, each composer artfully refashioned the music to create an utterly new sound yet retaining ghostly vestiges of the original.

Gyorgy Ligeti's Six Bagatelles dating from 1953 were also elegantly executed, with the more haunting Hungarian inflections of the second and fifth bagatelles most expressively played and the witty exuberance of the faster bagatelles contrasting well with them Finally to the concert, albeit more conventional, given by the Philharmonia under conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy as part of St David's Hall's 2007/08 Orchestral conceit series on 15 January.

Ashkenazy's very first concert with the Philharmonia was in Wales and his return visits are eagerly awaited. This occasion was notable for the evident sympathy with which Ashkenazy accompanied the excellent Lars Vogt in Grieg's Piano Concerto, but most particularly for the passion with which Ashkenazy conducted his own orchestration of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition.

Having been one of the most authoritative exponents of original work, it is perhaps not surprising that Ashkenazy should have brought to his orchestration a darker and more intrinsically Russian sound.

But what was fascinating too was the way Ashkenazy translated characteristically pianistic phtases at the top of the keyboard into glittering percussion passages, altogether different from Ravel. While this arrangement is never likely to displace it in the public's affections, it made riveting listening. 

MARCH - APRIL 2008 MUSICAL OPINION