SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

‘Two Sopranos and a Symphony’ - Wagner, Reger, Strauss and Brahms: Orion Symphony Orchestra, Alwyn Mellor and Susan Gritton (sopranos), Toby Purser (conductor). Cadogan Hall, London 10.11.2009 (JPr)


The introduction to the orchestra in the printed programme read ‘Selected from the cream of UK talent, the Orion Symphony Orchestra aims to give the best young musicians the experience of working under professional concert pressure, and to promote the rediscovery of forgotten masterpieces, focusing especially on British repertoire (albeit not this evening)’. Indeed none of the music was by British composers and only two short items were not familiar concert repertoire fare but nevertheless I was pleased to experience this concert which otherwise ‘did what it said on the tin’.

The Orion ensemble is a mixture of recent music college graduates and students and is supported by Grange Park Opera. The concert featured two British sopranos who will soon be appearing in summer opera seasons there, as well as, introducing music from one opera that they apparently have ambitions to stage soon, Tristan und Isolde. The conductor Toby Purser is the founder and artistic director of the Orion Symphony and has worked at Grange Park for the last three seasons; one assumes that there will be also work for the orchestra there sometime in the future.

Toby Purser led his equally young musicians assuredly through the potential minefield of this mainly Romantic music. The Tristan Prelude had an apposite yearning quality to it but there was also a youthful eagerness to press on with the chromatic melodies. The sensual frenzy that should build up here only to be fulfilled at the end of the Liebestod (or ‘Transfiguration’ as Wagner preferred to call it) meant that the aria never quite had the emotional force it can have. This was despite Purser letting his musicians off a tightly controlled leash and being in danger of swamping their soprano, Alwyn Mellor. She sang well with a controlled power able to cut through the developing tumult, had excellent diction and gave close attention to those all-important German consonants. On this evidence, Ms Mellor seems vocally ready for the challenge of her planned performances of Brünnhilde at Longborough next year and as Isolde for Grange Park Opera sometime in the future.

The 'Two Movements' from Eine Ballettsuite, op.130 by Max Reger were selected ‘because of the Wagnerian chromaticism of Columbine and the Straussian brilliance of Valse d’Amour’. Columbine had something of a languorous sensuality about it but the orchestra seemed to me to be struggling to get inside the music as can happen sometimes if there has been a lack of rehearsal time. Similarly the Valse was rather leaden footed and need more schmaltz.

Plenty of schmaltz is also required for Strauss’s valedictory ‘Four Last Songs’ which we know now were not the composer’s farewell to existence but were written specifically for Kirsten Flagstad. Across the four songs the mood darkens as life slowly ebbs away: yet despite some virtuoso musicianship from some members of the Orion Symphony, most notably an elegiac violin solo from concertmaster Pedro Meireles in Beim Schlafengehen, it was all a bit too loud: in Im Abendrot the larks had difficulty being heard. Susan Gritton, who will sing in Capriccio at Grange Park next summer, was at her best in this final song to which she conveyed quietly controlled resignation and serenity. Elsewhere, the long-spun phrases did not have quite the vocal ease and beauty to soar in the way some of the best performances of these songs - described everywhere as ‘achingly beautiful’ – can do.

The lyrical beauty of Brahms’ Second Symphony has made it the most popular of the four he composed. For me there is clearly more to it than its supposed impressionistic sunniness and I agree with an early critic (Hermann Kretzschmar) of this 1877 work, that the Second ‘is stylistically one of the author’s most Romantic creations, in which pastoral motifs and anacreontic ideas occur in close proximity with ghostly strains’. In the opening by cellos, basses and horn an air of melancholia is established that never completely leaves this work. It can seem heavy going and - particularly here in this concert - never has the Austrian countryside seemed so far away; until Spring blossoms in plucked strings near the end of the first movement. A brooding quality continues during the Adagio and then a skipping ethereal impulse underpins the third movement that hints at country dances like Ländler without being imbued with any real bucolic charm. The rumbustious finale is full of typical Brahmsian rhythmical effects; he builds up a great head of steam before the glorious euphoria of the D minor resolution, even if the composer’s invention does seem to peter out somewhat and the end is upon us all too soon. In general the performance lacked ambient Austrian warmth a lttle, despite the efforts of the conductor and his valiant string section. They seemed to be working very hard whilst fighting a losing battle with the dryish Cadogan Hall acoustic.

Jim Pritchard