I’ve not frequented BBC NOW performances much recently. Whilst all their concerts have remained in their Hoddinott Hall space at the Wales Millennium Centre, I think some are still waiting for larger audiences, and bigger pieces, back at St David’s Hall, closed until further notice.
This Thursday evening performance, titled Love & Transformation, offered new music and new musicians in an all-round approachable, grounded concert. The Finnish Tomas Djupsjöbacka is our conductor, and we will be seeing more of him: his elastic moves over the players seem to capture the spirit of the night rather well.
Britten’s An American Overture, which was lost for decades, was an opener which looked to the USA and what will likely be an eventful 250-year anniversary Independence Day this July. With jazz elements meeting a Copland-esque breeze, churning woodwind, snapping chords and misty percussion are among several standout elements. Reputedly written as a rush job in the early 1940s, before Britten headed home to England, he captures all things American rather well.
A UK premiere for Joan Tower’s Love Returns followed. Inspired by the loss of her husband, piano music was created; in Love Returns, we are witness to a similarly themed saxophone concerto of sorts. Of Tower’s work familiar to this reviewer, her subversive Fanfare For The Uncommon Woman is a riff on Copland and her Piano Concerto (a homage to Beethoven) I’ve found listenable and engaging. Saxophonist Steven Banks, coming over from South Carolina and playing the UK for the first time, proves an elegant soloist: unafraid to embrace familiar modes and harmonies, it remains sweet to the ear and often unassuming. Banks left us with an arrangement of Debussy’s Syrinx – usually for flute, and perhaps best left in that guise.
German composer Carl Maria von Weber is most famous for his operas, but rarely heard in Wales, yet delights are present in his canon. Hearing his Symphony No. 2, then, was a charming surprise. Weber owes to Mozart in some artistic respects, yet the simpleness and gentility of these little movements were marvellous on their own terms, brought to life with bite by BBC NOW. Djupsjöbacka’s holding of it all was swift – and his little head turn at the end was amusing.
The end of a varied concert offers Paul Hindemith – another hardly-heard composer – and his play on, yes, Weber. For Symphonic Metamorphosis Of Themes By Carl Maria von Weber, Hindemith wrote four hand piano bursts, elevating them with an orchestral varnish. Extensive use of striking percussion and tornado-like brass – plus Hindemith’s own inventiveness and militant modernism – mean these passages are in fact most unlike Weber. I’m still not fully convinced by Hindemith, yet this was very entertaining, and I’d love to see further probing into his extensive compositions from the orchestra.
A sidenote, by way of a conclusion: physical programmes for BBC NOW concerts would go a long way. I frequent concert halls across the UK, yet in Cardiff I’m most often asked to scan a QR code to read the programme digitally. The result, a room of people all checking their phones to see what’s next on the bill, can strain. Can we stop making this a thing?
BBC NOW: Love & Transformation, Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay, Thurs 12 Mar
To be aired on Radio 3 on Mon 23 Mar; on BBC Sounds for 30 days after. Info: here
words JAMES ELLIS photos KIRSTEN MCTERNAN
