BBCSSO, 10/11/2022

Janáček : Lachian Dances

Dohnányi : Variations on a Nursery Song (Isata Kanneh-Mason, piano)

Dvořák : 4 Slavonic Dances

Janáček : Sinfonietta

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

Ryan Wigglesworth

The programme notes for this concert put 1924 as the date for Janáček's Lachian Dances, but that's rather misleading, implying that it's a late work.  In fact, Janáček began compiling these folksongs and dances in the 1880s, with the first version of a set of the dances being performed in 1889.  He would revise them periodically for the remainder of his career, with the final version appearing in 1924, and which is the one usually heard in performance these days.  There's a lot of charm in this music, and the interest in folk-music never left Janáček, he would consistently use it as inspiration, if not quote outright, so we're hearing the prototype, so to speak, for much of his later, more mature style.  It was also an interesting contrast to the Dvořák dances, which appeared in the 1860s and 70s, and were immediately and hugely popular.  Janáček's orchestral palette is leaner than Dvořák's, no less colourful, but less opulent.  I also have to say that I prefer the Slavonic Dances in their original piano four-hands version, and I find the orchestrations blur the texture slightly, though their charm, too, was plentifully apparent in this selection of four, two from the first book, two from the second.

The gem of this concert, however, was the Dohnányi.  The Nursery Rhyme Variations are probably his best-known work, but even at that, do not get much of an outing.  I don't recall the last time I heard them played live, and what a shame that is, because the piece is a complete delight from start to finish.  The orchestral introduction was delivered with great panache and positively Wagnerian portentousness, so that even though the audience knew what to expect, when Isata Kanneh-Mason came in with her demure "Twinkle, twinkle, little star", it still got a laugh, as it did when it returns at the end, after all the pyrotechnics of the variations.  Kanneh-Mason's overall sound was perhaps a little softer than I would have liked, but the playing was clear, crisp and apparently effortless, exactly what you want to see and hear, and she and the orchestra were having fun with this deliciously witty joke.  

Finally, and light-years away from the Lachian Dances heard at the start, Janéček's blazing, glorious Sinfonietta, with its bright fanfares that immediately conjure up open spaces, and the distillation of those folk influences into Janáček's very personal language of short, repeated cells wound into a close weave of unmistakeable origin.  This is some of the most uplifting music I know, whether in the exhilaration of the framing fanfares, or in the more meditative central movement, and Wigglesworth and the orchestra ensured that its light shone forth at all times.

[Next : 12th November]