BBC SSO, 11/11/2021

Debussy : Prélude à l'Après-midi d'un Faune

Akutagawa : Triptyque

Beethoven : Symphony No. 6 "Pastoral"

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

Yutaka Sado

Whereas the RSNO appears to have returned, more or less, to a fairly standard on-stage disposition for their concerts, the SSO has not; strings are still on single desks rather than paired ones, and there's a lot more space between the players.  The result in the Debussy was that I felt that the strings were perhaps lacking a couple of desks, right across the board, for the plush, luxuriant sound of this piece (simply because there was no room for more), and the balance tipped rather markedly in favour of the winds.  That aside, Sado delivered a suitably dreamy reading, summer-warm and sun-dappled, not really bringing out the more mercurial aspects of the piece, the flickers into playfulness or melancholy, but a pleasing start to the evening nonetheless.

Yasushi Akutagawa was a completely unfamiliar element to me; I know (marginally) more about his father, the writer Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, whose short stories provided inspiration for Kurosawa, amongst many others.  This "Triptych" was premiered in 1953, and I had expected something rather different for a piece that comes right in the middle of the thirty years post-war which saw the thorniest and most experimental compositions emerge, as serialism was pushed to its extremes, and developing technology permitted the rapid evolution of electro-acoustic creation.  Akutagawa's idiom, however, is not remotely part of those schools, his music is lyrical and tuneful, but with an inclination towards rhythmic restlessness.  He was very drawn to contemporary Russian music, becoming friendly with the likes of Shostakovich or Khachaturian (although that was to come shortly after Triptyque was written), and there are hints of both Shostakovich and Prokofiev in his writing - there's a kind of arch to his string phrases that reminds me quite strongly of the latter.  In this piece, though, what really came to mind was Dág Wiren's 1932 Serenade for Strings.  It's partly the idiom, Triptyque also being written for string orchestra, and partly the chugging rhythms of the outer movements, of course, but there was also a similar sort of bracing, outdoors feel to the piece overall - even the central "Berceuse" (Lullaby) was not particularly peaceful.

That outdoors feeling remained for the Beethoven.  Sado adopted a fairly down-to-earth approach for this piece, always close to Nature, with a brook that ran along quite swiftly, vigorous hunting horns, and robust peasant dancing.  As I've said before, there is always that point in Beethoven's music where you can hear the universe breathing, but a conductor, or other interpreter, does not have to always reach for that kind of cosmic expression, but can choose to make it a terrestrial universe - it is the Earth you hear breathing, rather than the stars.  In this context the renewal of the final movement is not so much rebirth after a cataclysm as the natural cycle of life after death, of spring following winter, with the storm as a healthy and necessary purging of the excess of summer heat.  Playing from the orchestra was cleanly articulated and well defined, the horns satisfyingly secure and the winds enthusiastically evocative in their birdsong.  It was not, perhaps, the soul-stirring experience the "Pastoral" can be, but it was a very beautiful landscape.

[Next : 13/11/2021]