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Teechamista Theatre, Royal Bay High School
October 28, 2017
On October 27, 1919, Sir Edward Elgar conducted the premiere of his last major work, the Cello Concerto, at the London Symphony Orchestra's inaugural concert of its first post-war season.
The performance was a disaster.
The cause was not the soloist, Felix Salmond, whose reaction to being given the honour of performing the premiere left him, as he told Lady Elgar, "thrilled with the thought of playing the Concerto for the 1st time & wildly excited about it, did not sleep all night thinking about it".
Nor was the cause the conductor, Sir Edward himself.
The problems can safely be attributed to the other conductor involved, Albert Coates, who was in charge of the rest of the programme, consisting of music by Wagner, Scriabin and Borodin. Coates — or, as Lady Elgar referred to him, "that brutal, selfish, ill mannered bounder A. Coates" — went more than an hour-and-a-half over his allotted rehearsal times (despite remonstrations) leaving Elgar with far too little time to work on music which the orchestra had never seen before.
One might, therefore, be a little wary of performing the work on the anniversary of that disastrous premiere.
Sunday's performance of the concerto came the day after the anniversary (the Sooke performance was on the day itself). Its soloist, Sophie van der Sloot, winner of this year's Don Chrysler Concerto Competition, is just sixteen years old and it was perhaps a little surprising for one of such tender years to choose a work which is full of nostalgia and a deep abiding sense of loss: Elgar wrote it in the aftermath of the "War to End War" and that tragedy casts its shadow over every bar.
Nonetheless, van der Sloot proved an excellent soloist, certainly a worthy competition winner. Her tone was excellent, her intonation superb and her feeling for the music well in evidence.
Whether the unusually slow tempo for the opening movement was her idea or conductor Norman Nelson's I cannot be certain, but I can be certain that the two of them made it work (unlike the last performance I reviewed); van der Sloot indulged in some wonderful portamentos (very "authentic", in the sense that Elgar would have probably expected it) and the orchestra produced a gloriously "big" sound in the tuttis.
The scherzo-like second movement featured some fairly extreme rubato from the soloist, which Nelson and the orchestra followed meticulously and the movement's close was suitably crisp.
The slow movement offers an uneasy consolation and a subtle half close; Novello hoped to publish this movement separately and that Elgar would provide a different ending. He tried, but abandoned the task, writing in August 1919,"I fear I cannot think of anr. ending for the slow movement — it will do as it is if played separately". Nelson and his players showed that they entirely understood.
I can completely sympathise with the orchestra's predicament in the finale, when it became clear that a number of them could hardly bear to finish the music. Unfortunately, this resulted in a somewhat ragged close, which was a pity, for so much of the concerto had been deeply affecting and if there is one composer more likely to bring a tear to my eye than any other, that composer is Elgar.
Still, the orchestra can take consolation from Ernest Newman's review, in The Observer, of that premiere: "never, in all probability, has so great an orchestra made so lamentable a public exhibition of itself".
Consolation from that and from the fact that they provided mostly excellent support for a young musician from whom we shall surely hear much more. And I look forward to hearing her play the concerto again in five or ten years time.
The rest of the programme was dedicated to Beethoven.
Beethoven's only opera possibly gave him more trouble than any other single work. First performed in 1805, shortened from three acts to two in 1806, finally revised and given a new title in 1814.
As if that weren't enough, Beethoven also wrote four overtures: three entitled Leonore (after the opera's original title), the last Fidelio, the revised title. The last also contains the fewest thematic references to the rest of the opera.
Today the opera is usually performed with the final overture but often with Leonore No.3 interpolated as an entr'acte between the two scenes of Act II.
And it was with Leonore No.3, viewed by most commentators as the finest of the three Leonore overtures, that Nelson and the Sooke Philharmonic opened Sunday's concert.
From its solid opening chord and pregnant slow introduction, with characterful winds, the performance worked well. The main allegro featured some propulsive viola playing (as well as some slightly scrappy intonation and ensemble all round) but was well-shaped by Nelson and the offstage trumpet — the ever-reliable Marianne Ing — thrilled, as it should.
At its first performance, Beethoven's Seventh Symphony was overshadowed by the (today almost universally-despised) Wellingtons Sieg oder die Schlacht bei Vittoria, also known as the "Battle Symphony, perhaps the composer's most notorious potboiler. Two months later it was the turn of Beethoven's Eighth Symphony to be overshadowed at its premiere by its companion piece — the Seventh.
When Carl Czerny asked why this should be, Beethoven allegedly replied "because the eighth is so much better".
Posterity has not unanimously agreed with the composer, who may well have said what he did in a spirit of annoyance with the audience. Indeed, one might reasonably claim that the Eighth is Beethoven's most underrated symphony.
Sunday's programme closed with a fine performance of this, by comparison with its immediate siblings, neglected work.
The determined first movement, complete with repeat (thank you), featured some marvellously propulsive inner string parts, a wealth of detail, particularly in the winds, and an almost delicate close.
The scherzando was playfully metronomic (or, just possibly, metronomically playful) and my only criticism of the third movement would be that the cellos could have been a little more prominent in the trio.
As to the finale, I was clearly so engrossed that I took not a single note.
Which is always a good sign.
Another enjoyable and rewarding afternoon from the Sooke Philharmonic, now embarking upon their third musical decade.
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