Potent mix of Americana, served up by Sir Simon Rattle and the LSO

United Kingdom Gershwin, Harris, Adams: Kirill Gerstein (piano), London Symphony Orchestra / Sir Simon Rattle (conductor). Barbican Hall, London, 3.3.2024. (CK)

Gershwin (arr. Don Rose) – Overture: Let ’em Eat Cake; Overture: Strike Up the Band
Gershwin (ed. Timothy Freeze) – Piano Concerto in F
Roy Harris – Symphony No.3
John Adams – Frenzy (world premiere)

The Barbican Hall was a warmer place on Sunday evening than it had been three days earlier, when these same forces had deposited us in the frozen waste that ends Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony. Sir Simon Rattle had devised a stimulating programme of American music, including a world premiere, and the London Symphony Orchestra delivered it in style.

It was good to hear a platform width of strings tucking into Gershwin’s melodies in the snappy Overture Let ’em Eat Cake and doing so with relish. We stayed with Gershwin for his Piano Concerto, given a scintillating performance by the ubiquitous and brilliant Kirill Gerstein – exhilarating, yes, though to my ears rather soulless and mechanical: not Gershwin at his most convincing. There were marvellous moments: the end of the first movement was dazzlingly done, James Fountain’s idiomatic trumpet solo in the slow movement was a joy (lovely oboe too), and the string tune we had all been waiting for was as gorgeous as Rachmaninov. Gerstein did his powerful and percussive best in the finale, though for me his encore – I Got Rhythm – was the highlight of the concert’s first half. Sir Simon, sitting by the harp and beaming, may possibly have agreed.

After the interval, two substantial pieces of Americana: first, Roy Harris’s Third Symphony. It is a piece I have loved since hearing two London performances a month apart – by André Previn and this orchestra, and by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic – back in 1976. Clear, plain-spoken, open-hearted without a trace of sentimentality, it envelops the listener (me, anyway) from the wonderfully sonorous cellos that usher us into the wide-open spaces to the ominous tolling of the ending. We may think of Copland, but Harris has his own rhetoric, his own kind of instrumental speech: perhaps this is why he has been dubbed the American Janáček – though, unlike the Czech composer, Harris’s international reputation rests on this piece alone. Rattle’s forthright performance took the symphony at face value, its transformations passing before us with measured inevitability; its incidental beauties (who can forget the pastoral section where woodwind calls hover over quietly shimmering strings?) making their full effect without being dwelt on. The energy compressed into the taut fugue subject – especially when the brass have it – drove the performance inexorably to its stern conclusion. Why does this less than 20-minute piece – especially when performed like this – leave me as wrung out as a Mahler symphony does?

A John Adams world premiere is an event. Frenzy is dedicated to Sir Simon, and we have their long and creative friendship to thank for that. They are both pioneers: as Adams explores new horizons in his music, he does not always take us with him – we all love Harmonielehre, written half Adams’s lifetime ago, but some of his subsequent music makes a lesser impact: on hearing Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes? for piano and orchestra in the Royal Festival Hall 18 months ago I found myself thinking of those famous words from Amadeus: ‘Too many notes’. On first hearing, Frenzy proves to be a serious and substantial piece, a work of restless energy, of strong accents, of motor rhythms passed between different sections of the orchestra, of contrasting sonic landscapes succeeding each other over a continuous pulse. Tension and momentum are constant – a reminder of A Short Ride in a Fast Machine flies by, and perhaps the third movement of Harmonielehre as the strings enter a calm galaxy while the pulse continues in quiet timpani and harps. A gamelan-like ensemble of harps, celesta, tuned gongs, glockenspiel and bells gains prominence: as so often with Adams, it is easy to be seduced by the sheer range of orchestral colour as the music intensifies towards a powerful conclusion with pealing horns. The man himself was there; I was not sure whether the rousing ovation was mostly for the music or mostly for him – I suspect the latter. A man I was talking to on the way out found the work shapeless: I didn’t think so – I found it cogent and exciting. Time will tell.

We weren’t quite done, though: Sir Simon and the orchestra sent us home with another slice of prime Gershwin – the Overture Strike Up the Band. After Harris and Adams, the gorgeous melody for strings sounded almost shameless – as did the crooning (and standing) trombones.

The virtuoso spot for clarinet (Sergio Pires) had more pizzazz than the opening of Rhapsody in Blue. I may have been cautious about the concert’s first-half Gershwin, but here I was won over. Sir Simon and the orchestra were clearly loving every moment; so were we.

Chris Kettle