To boldly go: spectacular celestial sounds from the Guildhall Symphony Orchestra

United Kingdom Adès, Saariaho, Holst, Colin Matthews: Guildhall Symphony Orchestra / Alpesh Chauhan (conductor). Barbican Hall, London, 20.11.2024. (CK)

Adès – Polaris: Voyage for Orchestra
Saariaho – Orion
Holst – The Planets
Colin Matthews – Pluto, the Renewer

There is every reason to perform Holst’s The Planets during the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth (though the piece needs no such excuse): but it was the rest of this enterprising programme that had attracted me. I was rewarded with a marvellous concert, superbly played and conducted (and one of the loudest I can remember).

Having heard Asyla and Tevot in concert (both of them conducted by Sir Simon Rattle) I was eager to hear the third and final part of Adès’s trilogy (if three pieces composed over 14 years can be called that). Developing from a beguiling phrase on piano, with flutes, harps and other woodwind creating a floating texture amid glistening curtains of sound from tuned percussion, Polaris appeared entirely benign: with the brass sounding from the round earth’s imagined corners – actually four stations in the hall’s upper levels – there was a sense of something large and unthreatening making its way through the vastness of space. It reminded me of the serenity of the third movement of Adams’s Harmonielehre, and the opening of the finale of Henze’s Seventh Symphony: though this piece’s trajectory is unlike either, and its complex language is Adès’s own. Alpesh Chauhan’s conducting style is lithe, expressive and bold: his piloting of his young players through deep space was impressively strong and clear.

Back in February I enjoyed a performance of Winter Sky, the central movement of Kaija Saariaho’s Orion, performed by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra under the young Finnish conductor Emilia Hoving: so I was glad of this opportunity to hear the whole work. Saariaho, who died last year, was a member of the Finnish avant-garde who lived and worked in Paris, developing music from instrumental sounds by the use of computers: so it was a surprise to me to hear music of a traditionally orchestral cast – a Planets-sized orchestra, mind, capable of making a racket as great as Holst’s Mars.

The first section, Memento Mori, began with a miasma of chill sounds with some insect-like activity in the tuned percussion, building to a thunderous din of drums and gong. In Winter Sky a piccolo over a deep drone in cellos and basses caught the ear, as did a weird clarinet solo with flutter-tonguing, later a trumpet. A tiny cello solo brought a flicker of warmth. The sense of space and strangeness is perhaps suggested by instruments playing at the top or bottom of their registers: and whereas Adès music creates a sense of movement, Saariaho’s seems to embody stasis.

The fast and frenzied finale, Hunter, was launched by a skittering and marvellously played xylophone solo; also notable were a baleful tuba, whooping horns and a furious wooden-sticked tattoo by the two timpanists. Still the music seemed static, generating frightening intensity rather than speed, like some cosmic spinning top. Hats off to all the players for a bravura (and deafening) performance.

Holst’s suite The Planets was given a performance of startling immediacy, panoramic beauty and blistering force, driven by a powerful and palpable synergy between conductor, music and players. Mars was implacable, terrifying and incredibly loud: so much so that when the final chord was cut off there was an audible vibration left in the air. Venus brought some lovely solo playing; Mercury was fleet and finely detailed. Jupiter was flamboyantly done. I could only marvel at the understanding between conductor and players, their skill and their quicksilver responses to Chauhan’s every gesture: he really did get the best out of them. The strings played the big tune as if their lives depended on it.

Saturn trudged remorselessly towards its eruption of existential panic at the spectre of mortality; Uranus brought no relief, sounding lurid rather than comically flashy, with fluttering piccolos and rampant horns, timpani and tuba. Neptune faded as mysteriously as it should, the voices (an unnamed choir) superbly coordinated.

As an admirer of the music of both Matthews brothers – Colin and David – I was looking forward to hearing Colin’s pendant to Holst’s Suite, Pluto, the Renewer: in keeping with its dubious planetary status, the music sounded mysterious, ambiguous, its nearest family resemblance (in its louder outbursts) to the emptily impressive Uranus. At the end of this performance, the music seemed to elicit a yelp from Neptune’s singers, trailing off to nothing: if this touch of comedy is intentional, it seems to me a most attractive way of extending Holst’s music without subverting it.

Not all concerts that look cleverly themed on paper work in practice: this one most emphatically did. Hard to believe that the players were students: no tell-tale signs – undernourished string tone is a common one – that they were tyros rather than seasoned professionals. Many a well-known orchestra would be hard put to it to emulate the energy, freshness and force of their playing. With Chauhan directing them they achieved glory individually and collectively, with an entirely appropriate sense of discovery: in their hands The Planets sounded not like a familiar old warhorse, but as if it had been written yesterday.

Where next on their collective journey, I wonder? Perhaps they could revive George Crumb’s Star-Child or that quintessentially Seventies piece, David Bedford’s wonderfully named Star Clusters, Nebulae & Places in Devon.

Chris Kettle