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Strauss, Mathias, Brahms: Peter Donohoe (piano), BBC National Orchestra of Wales, National Youth Orchestra of Wales, Jac van Steen (conductor), St. David’s Hall, Cardiff, 22.10.2010 (GPu)

Strauss, Don Juan
Mathias, Piano Concerto No.3
Brahms, Symphony No.1

This was one of those evenings when the occasion mattered at least as much as the music-making (though that was certainly not to be sniffed at).

The National Youth Orchestra of Wales (Cerddorfa Genedlaethol Ieuenctid Cymru) was founded in 1945 (and gave its first concert in 1946). So, by one style of reckoning, at any rate, 2010 marks its arrival at pensionable age – though, please God, it isn’t pensioned off in the latest round of government cuts in the arts (and, one has to add, pensionable age is in the process of rising too!). 2010 marked another significant anniversary, too: ten years of collaborative projects between Wales’ premier professional orchestra and the National Youth Orchestra. Those collaborations have taken a variety of forms – members of the Youth Orchestra have recorded performances for Radio 3 in the studios of BBC Wales; some members of the orchestra have featured as concert soloists with the BBC Orchestra; and there have been collaborative concerts. The 2010 version combined members of the Youth Orchestra with members of the BBC Orchestra (it was hard to be sure of the exact proportions in the mixture – but there were certainly at least 45-50% youth musicians on stage) to play the two side-panels, as it were, of this programme, the works by Strauss and Brahms. In between Peter Donohoe joined the BBC National Orchestra of Wales to give one of the relatively rare performances of the Third Piano Concerto by William Mathias.

The National Youth Orchestra of Wales – the first national youth orchestra in the world – sets (and maintains) high standards. Over the years the orchestra has played in such venues as the Bridgewater Hall, the Beethovensaal in Stuttgart and Berlin’s Konzerthaus am Gendarmenmarkt; it has made a goodly number of accomplished recordings; it has played some richly varied repertoire, from Bernstein to Wagner, from Beethoven to Lustoslawski and Ligeti; it has commissioned work from Grace Williams, Daniel Jones, Alun Hoddinott (a founder member), Gareth Wood and Karl Jenkins (these last two once members of the orchestra). Many of those who have passed through its ranks have gone on to professional careers in music. Given the high standard of the orchestra’s contribution to this particular concert, it seems likely that more of the present members of the orchestra will be following the path of their predecessors.

Don Juan got a subtle and (where appropriate) powerful performance. There were one or two moments of uncertainty in the brass early on, but after such initial nervousness the orchestra settled into a convincing and enjoyable reading of a piece which is not, of course, anybody’s idea of an easy play. That the young musicians sitting amongst the professionals of the BBC National Orchestra were far from letting anybody down says much for both their present level of technical competence and musicality and for their potential to reach even higher standards. The experience of a section leader such as Lesley Hadfield – who was impressive in her solo contributions here – doubtless helped. It was good to see the evident spirit of camaraderie amongst the members of what was essentially an ad hoc orchestra – giving the concert after three days of preparation – and that the professionals seemed to be enjoying the experience as much as the young musicians were.

I think it was Val Wilmer who described the jazz pianist Cecil Taylor’s work as that of a man who regarded the piano as a set of eighty-eight tuned drums. The phrase came to mind more than once in listening to Peter Donohoe’s intense and forceful performance of William Mathias’s Third Piano Concerto. The work was commissioned for the Swansea festival of 1968, and Mathias himself was the soloist in the first performance, the BBC Symphony Orchestra being conducted by Moshe Atzmon. The score requires an orchestra with a double woodwind section, a full brass section, additional percussion including Latin American drums, and a celesta. The first movement (allegro energico) begins with an orchestral introduction which has a confident, almost breezy, quality; soon the piano begins to contribute some Latin rhythms and in the second subject there is some intriguing writing, in which the piano is echoed (and sometimes pre-echoed) by the celesta (the contribution of Chris Williams on celesta playing an important role in the success of this performance). Much of the piano writing is rapid, intense and percussive and Peter Donohoe (making use of a score in this far from canonical work) gave a performance of tremendous energy and concentration, some of his driving runs being overwhelming in their rhythmic insistence. The conclusion of the movement was thrilling in its power.

The second movement opens with some lovely, mysterious and nocturnal passages, the interplay of the now-gentler piano, with vibraphone and woodwinds very evocative; a central section marked vivace involved a return to intensely percussive passages at the piano, before a return of the opening materials, via an attractively lyrical melody, played by Donohoe with a grace that contrasted very effectively with so much of the hammering keyboard work he was called on to produce elsewhere in the concerto. A heavily accented explosion opened the third movement (allegro con brio) and Donohoe (this is the kind of concerto of which it is traditionally said that the soloist needs strong fingers, and he certainly supplied them!) handled its jazz-like inflections and syncopations with authority and flexibility; at times this concerto feels almost as much like a toccata for piano with orchestral accompaniment as it does like an orthodox concerto, and it speaks well of both soloist and conductor that the movement’s abundance of rhythm and colour was blended into a persuasive unity.

After the interval, the members of the Youth Orchestra rejoined a selection of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales for a performance of Brahms’ First Symphony. Perhaps, by the very highest standards, this was the weakest of the three works in the concert; but such things are relative, this was still a performance one was happy to hear and which certainly supported the concert’s subtitle – since it too gave plentiful evidence of ‘Youthful Promise’. The first movement will bear – and perhaps requires – a little more grimness, rather more sense of struggle than it got on this occasion, though the closing pages were well played. Things got more completely convincing thereafter. In the andante sostenuto the string playing was delightful and the blend of the woodwinds was itself a thing of beauty (to a degree remarkable in an orchestra whose members had had remarkably little experience of playing together). Jac van Steen shaped many of the phrases with lyrical persuasiveness, the orchestra responding admirably to his direction. Most of the allegretto was exquisite, played with a beguiling delicacy. The opening of the last movement was a trifle under-powered, but the ‘alpine’ horn theme carried real weight, the string tremolandi beneath it ravishingly played. The quasi-chorale theme on the trombones was pretty well articulated and the rest of the movement had the kind of rhythmic drive the music demands and the note of affirmation rang out with particular force. Perhaps the freshness of youth had something to with the forcefulness with which the sense of triumph was sounded at the close of the work.

In both Strauss and Brahms the young musician of the National Youth Orchestra of Wales demonstrated, beyond doubt, their maturity as orchestral musicians; the professionals of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales had clearly welcomed and encouraged these young musicians, and had integrated with them to a remarkable degree in so short a period; both sets of musicians (though by the end of the evening one wasn’t really thinking in terms of two groups) had clearly benefited from the attentive direction of Jac van Steen. The whole made for an enjoyable and encouraging evening; and how nice it was to see far more young people in the audience than is normally the case nowadays.

Glyn Pursglove