RSNO, 05/03/2022

Bacewicz : Divertimento

Shostakovich : Cello Concerto No. 2

Fauré : Requiem

Sheku Kanneh-Mason, cello

Katy Anna Hill, soprano

Marcus Farnsworth, baritone

RSNO Junior Chorus

Royal Scottish National Orchestra

Elim Chan

The term "divertimento" in music suggests something fairly amusing - diverting, as the name suggests - and when it first became a regular occurrence in composition, that was, more or less, its function.  As the centuries rolled on, as with many another genre, the concept became more obscure, and more complex.  Grażyna Bacewicz wrote her Divertimento for string orchestra in 1965, and it is brief and edgy, perhaps more about sound than content.  The strings are exploited in every manner imaginable, creating layers of texture, in which the effects become the musical content, rather than the notes played.  The 60s were a period of very considerable musical experimentation, and although Bacewicz's music cannot really be called avant-garde, despite living behind the Iron Curtain, where such experiments were frowned upon, she was evidently not afraid to dabble in forbidden territory.

Bacewicz had a successful career, as musician, teacher and composer, in Poland, which means that she managed to stay on the right side of the Communist regime in general, and perhaps in Poland they were a little more forward-thinking than their Russian overseers, when it came to the arts.  Shostakovich had a considerably harder time of it, after a dazzling debut, and for most of his life lived on a knife-edge in his relationships with the establishment.  The Second Cello Concerto was written in 1966, for Mstislav Rostropovich, and marks the start of the last phase of Shostakovich's compositional activity, in a life which was now dogged by ill-health, and where mortality, not to say morbidity, shadows every page of his music, more than the cat-and-mouse game of approval he had had to play with the authorities for so many years previously.  

For all that the 1st Cello Concerto is riddled through and through with his DSCH musical signature, the 2nd feels rather more personal.  It is curiously scored, without brass save for two horns, and a prominent part for contrabassoon, with which the soloist has grumbling conversations in the last movement.  The mood is dark and humour, when there is any, is on the grim side, yet there is lyricism in the last movement, as that strangely antique cadence that appears twice, at the start and near the end of the movement, like the end of some courtly minuet, that is quite startling.  Sheku Kanneh-Mason gave an absorbing performance, very concentrated, his bow shedding hairs like a dog shedding its winter coat, so intense was his playing, and Chan and the orchestra provided a fine setting for him, crisply supportive, with that coda of percussion while the soloist holds a long pedal note, an unsettling piece of clockwork coming to a sudden, disturbing halt.

Fauré's Requiem certainly exists in several versions, with varying orchestration and types of choral forces involved.  However, the editorial choices made for tonight's performance bothered me quite a bit.  The orchestra was full - all string sections, winds, and brass, as well as harp, organ and timps - but chamber-sized, only one trumpet and one trombone, for example.  Soprano and baritone soloist, as usual, but the chorus was the RSNO Junior Chorus, therefore no adult male voices in the mix, and that made an enormous difference to the overall effect.  It's no reflection on the performance of the Junior Chorus, which was generally excellent, and visibly very responsive to Chan's direction, but the overall sound lacked both warmth and depth of colour.  This was neither fish nor fowl.  Fauré's original version, performed in church at a time where women were not allowed in the chorus, was for boy trebles in the upper parts, adult tenors and basses, and a treble soloist for the "Pie Jesu".  He preferred his later, concert-hall versions, with standard mixed chorus and soprano soloist.  

There were times when the Junior Chorus sounded absolutely perfect - the commencement of the "Lux aeterna" section was beautifully done - but when Marcus Farnsworth began the "Hostias", you suddenly had an actual baritone, with all the natural vibrato of an adult voice, and the carrying power that vibrato imparts to the voice, and Farnsworth's pleasing quality of timbre just underlined what was missing from the choral part.  This was perhaps especially conspicuous in the "Sanctus", where the lower part pushed the young voices down into the weakest part of their range, and you lost the real contrast between the higher and lower voices, and any resonance at the low end of the scale.  As for the soprano soloist, I prefer not to say anything at all rather than what I actually thought, because I don't like being rude in print.  Overall, a performance with its heart in the right place, but not deploying the right means to give it full expression,

[Next : 10th March]