United Kingdom Bacewicz, Dvořák, Bartók: Inmo Yang (violin), BBC Symphony Orchestra / Sakari Oramo (conductor). Barbican Hall, London, 15.4.2023. (CS)
Bacewicz – Concerto for Large Symphony Orchestra (1962)
Dvořák – Violin Concerto for A Minor, Op.53
Bartók – Concerto for Orchestra
Often over-shadowed by his profound, innermost Cello Concerto in B Minor, Dvořák’s Violin Concerto has long been a favourite of mine, and it’s been good to see the work finding a more frequent place in recording catalogues and on the concert platform in recent years. A new release by Hilary Hahn last autumn – a disc which features an astonishing performance of Ginastera’s Violin Concerto, recorded live with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony in June 2021 – sent me back to my CD racks and past performance reviews to undertake a sort of home-grown Record Review, Radio 4-style. I won’t bore readers with the minutiae of my musings; just to say that I decided an amalgam of the readings by Isabelle Faust and Augustin Hadelich would be perfect for my desert island.
So, I was delighted that this BBC Symphony Orchestra programme at the Barbican offered me the opportunity not only to hear the young Korean violinist, Inmo Yang, make his UK debut, but also to enjoy another interpretation of Dvořák’s Bohemian-fuelled concerto, framed by two works which showcase orchestral colour, invention and virtuosity.
In 2022, the 26-year-old Korean won First Prize at the Sibelius International Violin Competition. Alongside the financial reward an instrument loan of a 1772 Giovanni Battista Guadagnini violin, his rewards included personal mentoring sessions with jury chair and BBC SO Chief Conductor Sakari Oramo. He previously won, at the age of just 20, the 54th International Violin Competition ’Premio Paganini’ in Genoa and has already recorded two albums for Deutsche Gramophone, including the complete 24 Caprices for Solo Violin by Paganini.
His interpretation of Dvořák’s Concerto prioritised silvery lyricism and rhapsodic colours over Slavic stamp and folkloric heart-tugging, but it was a performance of beautiful grace and easeful virtuosity. The exchanges between orchestra and soloist at the start of the Allegro, ma non troppo seemed less overtly rhetorical and gestural than usual, but Yang sang gloriously in those soaring, melancholy responses to the tutti declarations – songful rather than soulful, but wonderfully expressive nonetheless, the peaks really ‘glowing’. Oramo ensured that the BBC SO were sensitive supporters throughout, Yang’s sound projecting clear and true above the orchestral arguments, and the movement, which can sometimes feel very pressing and urgent, seemed here to have more spaciousness and breadth.
Oramo’s pacing and crafting felt ‘just right’, and the transition to the Adagio, ma non troppo was utterly convincing. Yang’s G-string melody was full of gentility and grace but movingly present, the tone plump and polished, and the movement’s contrasts were skilfully evoked by Oramo, helped by some fine horn-playing. A wonderful peacefulness embraced the close. And, if the Finale didn’t quite chuckle with giocoso mischief then it danced along with silky sprightliness, the pianissimo orchestral support to the statement of the theme a collage of pizzicato spots and splashes, and brilliant timpani flashes, the timbres well-defined, the textures transparent. Indeed, here and throughout the concert I was minded that this was some of the best pizzicato playing from a string section that I’ve heard for some time.
This season Oramo is championing the work of the Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz. In February, the BBC SO presented Bacewicz’s Symphony No.4 which alludes to Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra. On this occasion, the latter formed the second half of the concert and Oramo opened the evening with Bacewicz’s own Concerto for Large Orchestra.
Both works gave the BBC SO the opportunity to show us what we will lose, and miss so terribly, if the current attacks on the jewels of our cultural life continue uncontested. Bacewicz’s sonic experimentation threatens to overload the listener’s capacity to negotiate and absorb its kaleidoscopic hyperactivity at times, but again Oramo’s pacing and structuring provided welcome clarity and a pathway through the almost aggressive dynamism of the work. Somehow, he wove the relentless cascade of short motifs, sequences and sounds – splashes of colour and texture – into a persuasive whole.
The opening Allegro, springing into life with spattering pizzicatos and almost jazzy elasticity, was a vibrant conversation between the different instrumental groups and combinations, at once tetchy and excited. The pointillistic Largo looked ahead to Bartók’s ‘night music’, sustained chords and repetitive figures for piano and celeste providing the ground for meandering dialogues between the flutes and clarinets. The movement seemed to be increasingly shadowed by darkness, with strong surges in the strings and a forceful piano ostinato, before the delicate clarity of the opening returned.
The third movement (Vivo) was more playful and light, though the polyrhythmic complexity probably felt anything but carefree to the instrumentalists negotiating its trickeries! Here – and in the final Allegro non troppo – the two harps (Anna-Sophie Bertrand and Tamara Young) glittered and dazzled, initiating coloristic conversations which were developed by fervent strings and busy percussion, until the skirmishes were suddenly silenced. The last movement initially brought a sense of calm, with expressive solos for violin and viola, but the dramas weren’t quelled for long, and colour, brightness and vivacity nudged aside the hush, explosive harps and an irruption from the bongo triggering asymmetrical rhythmic arguments that made for a feisty close to Bacewicz’s fizzing narrative.
Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra – so evidently a ‘model’ for Bacewicz – was a fitting ‘response’ to its successor: brilliantly shaped by Oramo and thrillingly performed by the BBCSO musicians. It was difficult to know what to admire most: the meaty, punchy horn-playing; the dynamism that bristled through the strings’ surges; the dramatic darkness of the brass incursions; the unsettling mists of the Elegia and the sudden unleashing of the swelling strings; the beauty of the violas’ lyricism in the Intermezzo; the scurrying wizardry of the Finale given some beef by the boisterous trombones. For all the attention to detail, it was the cohesiveness of the whole that most impressed: the sense that the musicians held the ‘core’ of the music collectively in their hearts.
Claire Seymour