CityLife

The Hallé: Brahms, Cherubini

Halle Orchestra
Bridgewater Hall
November 11, 2010

Signing Markus Stenz as principal guest conductor was one of the best things the Hallé have done recently, and any concert with him in charge is set to be both fun and fascinating.

So it proved this week, when he forged into the (relatively) unknown with a performance of Cherubini’s Requiem in C minor. It’s the composer’s 250th birthday this year, but there’s better reason to perform his work than just an anniversary. It’s a highly original piece, with no soloists but a succession of striking musical images for choir and orchestra.

The Dies Irae, for instance, is a brisk kaleidoscope of ideas, some seeming to look back to Mozart, others forward to Verdi, which the orchestra – sensibly reduced in size, particularly at the lower-pitch end – responded to with a will.

The Hallé Choir – presently under the care of associate choral conductor Frances Cooke – had its big moment in the lively, repeated fugue in the Offertorium, where they did themselves proud … though I did notice that at one point where Markus Stenz wanted a quick diminuendo and crescendo there were rather too many heads in books for the response to be effective.

But he whipped the music along at an effective pace, which (along with his awareness of the unorthodox tone colours in the score) was the main reason for the success of the performance.

The first part of the concert was more well-trodden musical territory: Brahms’s second piano concerto, with Elisabeth Leonskaja the soloist. Her mastery of its technical demands was apparent throughout, and she played the key-pounding passages with considerable power while bringing moments of lightness to it as well. 

The opening was beautiful, not just for Laurence Rogers’ solo horn playing (and working, continental style, without a ‘fifth horn’ safety net, too), but for her self-effacing first entry, and the first two movements were notable for the string playing, with Lyn Fletcher in the leader’s chair, and owing much to Markus Stenz’s close attention to the phrasing.

The cello solo in the third movement, too, was glorious in the hands of Nicholas Trygstad, leaving a memory of a concerto in which the orchestral role took at least equal honours with that of the soloist.

 

Tweet