10th August 2016
Royal Albert Hall, London, United Kingdom
DUTILLEUX Timbres, espace, mouvement
HK GRUBER Busking
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 5
Håkan Hardenberger (trumpet)
Mats Bergström (banjo)
Claudia Buder (accordion)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Sakari Oramo (conductor)
What an extraordinary programme. Dutilleux's "Timbres, espace, mouvement" is a sonic interpretation of Van Gogh's famous painting "The Starry Night". It is not only remarkable for its colourful harmonies and sparkling depictions of shiny stars, but also for these hallucinatory long solos representing the swirling effect of the painting. This performance by the BBC SO under Sakari Oramo was intoxicatingly beautiful, if the overall sound was slightly on the light side. The ethereal 12-cello interlude was sublime. It was followed by the London premiere of HK Gruber's second concerto, "Busking", for the Swedish trumpet legend Håkan Hardenberger. It might just be me, but HK Gruber's music is completely unclassifiable. Taken at surface level, this is an utterly insane concerto which starts with the main theme being played by the trumpet mouth piece, and the soloist is required to battle through the score using three different trumpets against a solo accordion, a solo banjo and the orchestra. It goes from fast and furious exchanges of themes, to the mischievous reevaluation, to the contemplative. It uses a plethora of mutes and seeing the soloist in action was itself very entertaining. The first half was a bit like completing 50 minutes of mental HIIT routines, so we were cooled down with a dose of Beethoven 5 in the second half. As performance goes, it was actually a bit lacklustre. There was no Viennese grace whatsoever, the scherzo was controversially slow, and the finale could do with more punch, but this immortal music never fails to bring smiles on people's faces, and that, I'd argue, is way more important.
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