CityLife

BBC Philharmonic: Weill, Gruber, Stravinsky

BBC Philharmonic
Bridgewater Hall
February 27, 2010

HK ‘Nali’ Gruber conducted his first full-length concert as the BBC Philharmonic’s Composer-Conductor on Saturday night – and it’s clear that, with him around, new music is going to be a lot of fun.

Manchester concert audiences, though, are conservative, despite all the talk about modernity and innovation being in the blood here. It’s taken us about 100 years to decide that we really like Mahler – so maybe in a century’s time people will look back on this occasion as one where another Viennese master was welcomed here … but not by many.

The trouble is that new ‘classical’ music has such a reputation for po-faced earnestness and fatuous pretentions. Gruber could hardly have done more to dispel that image in his programme, beginning with Kurt Weill’s Little Threepenny Music, a suite based on the music of The Threepenny Opera.

Mack The Knife is there, and some of the other tunes such as Polly’s Song and the Tango Ballad, and it’s written for an impressionistic version of a 1920s jazz band. Classically trained musicians often find it hard to loosen up for this sort of idiom, but with Gruber’s smiling encouragement things began to get going in the tango and the Charleston, and the finale was suitably stinging.

Gruber’s own second trumpet concerto, called Busking, followed – its UK premiere. Håkan Hardenberger led the ‘buskers’ (also including Claudia Buder on accordion and Steve Smith on banjo) in a jolly romp which has traditional shape behind it: a first movement in variation style, a mournfully melodic slow section and a lively finale. If it has a fault it’s that the slow bit goes on a bit too long – but at least Nali loves to be lyrical (and maybe there’s a debt to Weill there).

The concert’s second half was Stravinsky’s Symphony In Three Movements, given a performance of precision and bite under Gruber’s clear and economical control – he must be one of the most technically accomplished of composers who conduct. Jonathan Scott’s piano and Clifford Lantaff’s harp were distinctive in their semi-soloistic roles, and the charm and rhythmic snap of the Andante were a pleasure to linger in the memory.

On top of that there was a bonus: a sparkling account of Stravinsky’s Scherzo A La Russe. Yes, with Nali around music is plenty of fun.

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