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Mozart, Elgar and Vaughan Williams: Sarah Connolly (mezzo soprano), London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Colin Davis, Barbican Hall, London, 24.9.2008 (BBr)

Mozart: Symphony No.38 in D, Prague, K504 (1786)
Elgar: Sea Pictures, op.37 (1897/1899)
Vaughan Williams: Symphony No.4 in F minor (1934)


This is a perfect Colin Davis programme, for his sympathies with Mozart and English music are well known. He started as he meant to go on, with a robust, forthright and well thought out performance of Mozart’s 38^th Symphony. Sir Colin understood the music to be operatically dramatic and mysterious, and the first movement was full of the ebb and flow of the tensions created by the circumstance of plot. The slow introduction was dark and pregnant with possibilities and the ensuing allegro, starting in the manner of the Piano Concerto, K466 – quiet, unsure of where the music is going, almost hesitant – was powerful and direct. Sir Colin left nothing to chance and as the music unfolded we were left in no doubt as to the real passionate fire which propelled Mozart at this late stage (no pun intended) in his short career. The slow movement was given as a cavatina and the finale as a kind of wild danse macabre with an extra specially strong death wish – which is quite devastating if the second repeat is taken (it wasn’t tonight). This was a fine performance, the wind band especially good, classical yet obviously reaching forwards towards Beethoven and Schubert, the keepers of the symphonic flame in the next century.

I studied voice with a woman who trained at the RCM and started her career before the war. Therefore I was taught to believe in the purity of the voice, one where the production of the notes as clearly and precisely as possible was paramount. Vibrato was something special, to be used only as an expressive device and then only rarely. Listen to the recording of VW’s Serenade to Music with the original 16 solo voices and you’ll hear exactly what I mean. Sarah Connolly possesses a rich, vibrant voice, full of real contralto fruitiness in the lower reaches, but with a ringing top register. Unfortunately, for me at least, she has what I can only describe as a wobble which she employs on almost every note: this means that instead of, say, a perfectly toned A you get a slight oscillation round the note. After a time this becomes annoying and the vocal line sounds mangled. Tonight’s performance was spoiled for me by this, but it seems to have become the norm in contemporary singing. If Ms Connolly could just control this part of her vocal production she’d be one of the finest singers at work today. One other point. Twice during her performance she drank from a glass of water – are our concert halls so over heated that performers need to do this to help their performance and keep their palates moist? If this is so then something needs to be done about it. Her stooping for the glass looked most unprofessional.

After the interval Sir Colin unleashed a violent assault with the sound world of VW’s brutal 4^th Symphony. Whatever this music is meant to represent – the anger following the first world war, a premonition of the second war, a statement on the world situation – Sir Colin left me in no doubt that this was a revulsion at things militaristic. The vicious music of the first movement was grinding in its agony, the twisted harmonies screamed at us from every section of the orchestra and even the subdued coda was unsettling. The slow movement kept the tension and feeling of unrest well to the fore and the scherzo – complete with uncomfortable bucolic trio – and finale were almost too much to bear in their unthinking headlong advance. This was a performance given at white heat, the music searing into our consciousness with no respite. Sir Colin’s concept of the music was gargantuan and monolithic, he grabbed the music by the scruff of the neck and tightened his grip. It scared the pants off me! Magnificent.

Bob Briggs


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