New orchestra’s exciting debut in Plymouth

United KingdomUnited Kingdom Purcell/Britten, Bach, Bartók: Robert Taub (piano), Musica Viva Sinfonia / Mark Forkgen (conductor). Levinsky Hall, University of Plymouth, 1.2.2025. (PRB)

Pianist Robert Taub with Musica Viva Sinfonia © PRB

Purcell (arr. Britten) – Chacony in G minor
J. S. Bach – Concerto for Piano and Strings in D minor, BWV1052
Bartók – Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta

The 2024-2025 Musica Viva season at Levinsky Hall continued with a highly effective, potent mix of music for string orchestra. It also heralded the debut of a newly created ensemble comprised of top London musicians, many of whom had performed in previous Musica Viva concerts. The current season commemorates the musical life and achievement of Béla Bartók during the 80th anniversary of his death in 1945.

Since their inception, Musica Viva concerts have always started with a short, informal pre-concert talk about the programme. That proved especially valuable on this occasion. Pianist Robert Taub – Director of Music, The Bridge, University of Plymouth – and the evening’s conductor Mark Forkgen took the audience on a fascinating journey through the many complexities of Bartók’s 1936 Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, which occupied the whole of the second half. They also flagged up the main features of the two other works on the programme.

Purcell’s Chacony in G minor appeared around about 1680. It is essentially a set of variations on an eight-bar figure over a repeating bass line. Mark Forkgen had emphasised the importance of Benjamin Britten’s revisions to Purcell’s original conception, published in a new score in 1965. Whereas Purcell’s work was somewhat sparsely annotated in terms of dynamics, articulation and phrasing, Britten’s revision is literally bristling with intricate detail, virtually every bar or so.

There followed a combination of Forkgen’s well-studied reading and direction, and the players’ infallible ability to respond to and faithfully carry out his instructions. All that culminated in a performance which, despite the somewhat restrictive design of the medium itself, was an absolute tour de force of dynamic control, impeccable ensemble and spatial sonority. It was totally captivating from the very first note, and Matthew Scrivener’s assured leadership also made a telling contribution.

Robert Taub then joined the players in a performance of Bach’s First Piano Concerto, in D minor. Today, most of Bach’s piano concertos which he wrote after the earliest works in the genre see the modern concert-grand pitted against the might of a full, four-section symphony orchestra.

In Bach’s concerto, however, the soloist is not just the prima donna who gets the chance to elaborate the thematic material, usually in quite virtuosic and rapid fashion. The pianist also participates in the musical tutti. That is rather like having the lead tenor sing along with the chorus when he has got nothing else to do.

When the piano does reinforce the orchestra, quite often it supplements the bare octaves that the strings are playing, across various pitches. Here the musical empathy and understanding between Taub and Forkgen worked very well, whether the piano was in ripieno mode – part of the accompaniment – or solo mode. The delicate ornamentation and filigree passagework always stood out in relief; no ‘shouting’ at all was ever necessary merely to be heard.

The overall balance felt exactly right, whether in the motoric, driving rhythms of the outer two Allegros, or in the aria-like Adagio. In the slow movement, the piano virtually assumes the role of a simple solo voice, over the lightest and most delicate string support. There was well-considered contrapuntal and motivic inter-play between strings and the pianist’s individual hands; that ensured a truly invigorating and idiomatic performance of a work not so frequently heard in the concert hall.

The Musica Viva series has engendered some wonderful individual and ensemble performances over a number of years. Equally notable is each season’s overall musical content, which, while generally based on a single concept, has nevertheless managed to inject the maximum variety on every occasion.

The programme started out with the basic string sonority and timbre of the Purcell. The subsequent addition of the piano in the Bach emphasised the fact that, while a piano might consist of some 230 separate strings – taking into consideration all the two and three-note unisons – it is still ultimately a percussion instrument.

Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta synthesised everything that had been heard earlier. There was the greatly expanded soundstage and use of novel instrumental effects, and the ensuing musical style was highly individual and significantly persuasive.

A harp is included in the string line-up, as is a second double bass. Bartók divides all that into two ensembles, placed on opposite sides of the stage. This allows him to make use of antiphonal quasi-stereo effects. Actually, the practice was also widespread during the Baroque period, the time of Bach and Purcell, and it was especially successful in large, reverberant edifices.

Percussion in the work’s title means a number of pitched and unpitched instruments, and a celeste, effectively a piano keyboard where one strikes bells rather than strings. The celeste’s unique timbre is often heard together with the piano, here in its original capacity as a percussion instrument. That fact is appreciably underpinned by the composer’s challenging writing for the instrument, and pianist Anna Tilbrooke deserves a special mention.

The playing was absolutely riveting. Mark Forkgen and his eminently well-drilled band of players delivered a performance which was to the great credit of each player’s unfailing ability to count, while navigating some especially taxing rhythmic complexities – to say nothing of the angularity of some of the rapid passagework. The performance was very disciplined, yet refreshingly spontaneous. It was undoubtedly the icing on the cake to have the opportunity to observe all this playing-out a short distance in front.

Philip R Buttall

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