RSNO: Gershwin and Rachmaninov
Usher Hall - 20/05/22
I’ve long been an admirer of John Wilson’s conducting and his versatility but have never before seen him in person. I’ve been at many of the RSNO’s concerts this season and will confidently assert that this one contained the most exciting playing of the season! Wilson, well-known for his star-studded orchestra’s Prom performances of Hollywood musicals – last year ‘Oklahoma’ – has never been pigeon-holed in this repertoire. His concerts and recordings feature British music from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, modern American, French and German music, and much else.
Tonight’s music is by Ravel, Gershwin and Rachmaninov. Wilson’s brief introduction wittily links all three. In the 1920s the young Gershwin sought lessons on orchestration from the Paris- based Ravel. Ravel, who admired Gershwin’s music, tried to deter him as he felt he had nothing to teach him. Finally Ravel said he made a charge dependent on income – how much did Gershwin earn? “Two million, before tax,” said Gershwin. “Stay where you are,” said Ravel, “and I’ll come over to learn from you!”
Ravel’s own talents in orchestration were showcased in the first work on the programme, ‘Valses Nobles et Sentimentales’. Ravel rescored his original piano version for orchestra in 1912. The orchestra is large – almost the same stage setting for all three works tonight, with four percussionists plus timpani and celeste, and a full line-up of woodwinds and brass. Inspired by Schubert and by Viennese waltzes, Ravel’s eight dances flow into each other, with delightful melodic invention. Some are delicate and quiet; some are sadder with some dissonance. The second last section blossoms into a full-blooded Johann Strauss-like waltz, swirling ever faster and joyfully as it comes to an end.
Wilson is joined by Swiss pianist, Louis Schwizgebel for Gershwin’s Concerto in F, first performed in 1925. This work was commissioned by Walter Damrosch, the Director of the New York Symphony Orchestra after he heard Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ in 1924. That single-movement work was written for jazz band, strings and piano, but Damrosch wanted to bring jazz to the concert-hall in the form of a three-movement piano concerto for full-sized orchestra. Gershwin had left the orchestration of ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ to an arranger, but he orchestrated the concerto himself, in a way which suggests he had learned how to replicate Ravel’s rich textures and dance rhythms.
It is engrossing and exciting music. I thought I had heard it before, but it was certainly not like this. Wilson is a physical conductor, constantly moving with the music and keeping the orchestra on their toes, staying in charge of the detail as well as the grand sweep of the gorgeous melodies. I’ve sampled a few performances online since the concert, but no-one gives the opening five beats on the timps the clarity that Wilson and Paul Philbert provide – four big thumps then a pause and a syncopated fifth beat. And in a work where large-scale sweeping strings or unrestrained brass often dominate, the instrumental solos, especially Katherine Bryan on flute and Christopher Hart, who opening the second movement with his bluesy solo on muted trumpet stand out as significant moments. Also to be commended are the four percussionists, who play wooden blocks, triangle, xylophone, as well as snare drums, bass drum, cymbals and, in the finale, a cinematic strike of the gong.
Schwizgebel is an impressively controlled figure at the piano. Possessing all the techniques of an outstanding concert pianist, he also clearly understands the jazz idioms that much of his part is written in, from the quiet blues that he opens with to the ragtime or honkytonk-inspired faster sections later. In some ways the concerto is like a Gershwin musical without choreography or words. There’s a Charleston section near the beginning, with conductor and musicians responding to the rhythm, and when the main ballad theme lets rip, you feel you could sing along if only you could remember the words. Wilson, it appears, does know them and inspires the orchestra to feel the same. So this is what cantabile means!
The first movement ends to spontaneous whoops and applause. The slow movement is most like the ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ in mood with the piano playing the blues, and duets between trumpet and flute. The finale, marked Allegro agitato, sets out at a cracking pace, with Schwizgebel keeping up the excitement into a swirling reprise of the main theme. The concerto ends with the same five beats on the timpani as it started with, and there’s a great ovation. Wilson modestly lets the young pianist take most of the applause, and he plays a lovely quiet solo encore.
The first half of the concert has been so good that I wonder how the second half will match it. Rachmaninov’s Symphony No 3 is a full-blooded work for large orchestra. Wilson had said earlier that, unlike Gershwin who wrote his second piece for piano and orchestra shortly after his first, Rachmaninov waited many years to follow up his successful Second Symphony with his third. Like the other pieces it gives all sections of the orchestra their chance to shine, and Wilson conducts the great sweeps of sound impressively. The orchestra, I should say, clearly enjoy their experience of working with him. The programme note suggests that there is a sombre quality to the music. I didn’t feel this particularly, but it may contribute to my sense that enjoyable as the piece was there was something lacking compared to the inventiveness of the Gershwin.
Perhaps there’s a case for reversing the conventional order of business in concerts. It’s true that a concerto to end the first half, lets the soloist play when fresh, and often provides a chance for an encore, while the traditional symphony in the second half showcases the orchestra, letting them and the conductor take the limelight. But if, like tonight, the more innovative and exciting music is in the concerto, perhaps the soloist might be tempted to work later and let everyone go out on a high.
But this is a quibble after a terrific concert. One of John Wilson’s Proms from 2021 with his own orchestra, the Sinfonia of London, is on the BBC iPlayer now, and his Prom with the same orchestra in Vaughan Williams, Walton and Elgar is on 16th July, and will be televised. Well worth catching.
