RSNO, 20/04/2024
Ireland : The Forgotten Rite
Elgar : Sea Pictures (Alice Coote, mezzo-soprano)
Holst : The Planets
Ladies of the RSNO Chorus
Royal Scottish National Orchestra
John Wilson
John Ireland's music is best represented by his piano works and, perhaps above all, an outstanding body of songs. In short, he was more of a miniaturist than anything else, and his larger-scale orchestral works do not tend to get much of an outing. It's not too hard to understand why, compared to near-contemporaries like Holst and Bax, the orchestral writing, while subtly and skilfully crafted, does not have the same allure. The Forgotten Rite, a short symphonic poem, has the swell of the sea about it, but as an evocation of that pagan England which was such a popular fancy in the early 20th Century, amongst artists of all types, it falls somewhat short of the mark, or, at least, Nelson and the RSNO had not quite found the means by which to make it speak clearly.
Wilson and soloist Alice Coote brought a lot of restraint to Elgar's Sea Pictures too. This was very nice in one aspect, because it's easy to tip the songs of this cycle into sentimentality, but it also deprived us of the grander gestures, notably in the very theatrical last song, "The Swimmer". Nelson brought out some lovely coloration in the orchestra, and Coote's voice has a beautiful quality to it. The intimacy of the "Sea Slumber Song" was enthralling, you were drawn right into the almost whispered confidentiality of Coote's delivery. However, it made her voice seem small - which I know it is not - and she never seemed to really expand into the bigger songs like the last, or "Sabbath Morning at Sea".
The restraint, unfortunately, turned out to be the dominant aspect of the whole evening, because The Planets suffered from it too, to some extent. "Mars" was good, strong without being hysterical; "Venus" lacked poetry, however, and its drifting waves were quite bland. "Mercury" danced by well, but that extra degree of radiance was not quite present in "Jupiter". "Saturn" was suitably portentous, "Uranus" was too slow, not sufficiently quixotic. "Neptune" was good, but I wished Wilson - who has quite a following and usually performs to full and enthusiastic houses - had discouraged the applause between the movements, because both "Venus" and "Neptune" were disrupted by early applause at their ends, which was a pity. Overall, though, like the Ireland, there was a small but crucial degree of conviction lacking from the performance, and The Planets was an interesting, well-performed exercise, but not the extraordinary voyage it is meant to be.
[Next : 3rd May]