Ian Crisp asks if anyone was at the Prom which presented James MacMillan's
Cello Concerto.  Since I was reviewing it for _The Independent_, I have an
opinion ready-wrapped for him (it appeared in the paper last Tuesday, 3
August).

   [quote]
   James MacMillan's first turn under this year's Proms spotlight came
   last night, when his Cello Concerto was performed by Raphael Wallfisch
   and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under their Finnish chief
   conductor Osmo Vanska (the second comes on 5 September, when his new
   choral work Quickening is premiered).  The Concerto, written in 1996,
   is the middle part of an Easter trilogy:  MacMillan's Catholic faith
   is very important to him, and almost all his works, it seems, reflect
   his spiritual concerns.

   Thus the Cello Concerto's three movements portray aspects of
   the Crucifixion.  Unfortunately, MacMillan is so keen to load his
   narration with incident that he constantly interrupts its evolution
   with orchestral commentary, weakening its onward thrust.  He brings
   all sorts of musical material to his aid, not least figures derived
   from plainchant, and the central movement calls on the hymn "Dunblane",
   linking the pointless slaughter of those schoolchildren to the death
   of Christ.  But these associations are verbal, not musical, and no
   matter how much they mean to MacMillan (and his sincerity is not in
   doubt), they vitiate his structures.

   The writing is often very beautiful.  His unabashedly tonal language
   finds plenty of room for long, plangent melody.  And he has an alert
   ear for innovative instrumental combinations.  But there is simply
   not enough substance to sustain the Concerto for its forty-minute
   duration.  There's no real slow music, for example, and no real fast
   music; instead, there's so much detailed variety that large-scale
   contrast is lost.

   Raphael Wallfisch, who has already recorded the work with Vanska and
   his Scottish players, despatched the taxing solo part with ease and
   obvious commitment.  But the real treats of the evening came either
   side of the concerto.  Osmo Vanska is doing amazing things with the
   BBC Scottish, their lean and focussed sound an ideal vehicle for his
   refreshing habit of blowing the dust of apparently well-known scores:
   he simply ignores "tradition" and goes back to the notes, always with
   revelatory results.

   The two works that came up fresh last night were Sibelius'
   symphonic fantasy Pohjola's Daughter and Nielsen's Sixth Symphony,
   the Sinfonia semplice -- an ironic misnomer, since the music is more
   oblique than anything else Nielsen wrote.  Here he is, aware of his
   imminent death, embracing a new musical language and casting it in
   a lean, pared-to-the-bone orchestration -- developments which
   Shostakovich, shortly to sit down to his Fourth Symphony, obviously
   admired, and which Vaughan Williams, 24 years on, tried out in his
   Eighth.

   Vanska made Nielsen's dry, dark humour almost understandable,
   with superb playing from his Glasgow players:  breathtaking detail
   in the strings, clarity and purity from his wind and brass, and
   percussion-playing (an important consideration in this work) of
   considerable virtuosity.  I've never heard it better done.
   [unquote]

Cheers

Martin Anderson
Toccata Press
http://www.classical.net/music/books/toccata/