Czech National Symphony Orchestra
Sunday Classics – International Orchestra Season – Usher Hall, Sunday 26th May 2024
Czech National Symphony Orchestra, Steven Mercurio (Conductor), Mark Bebbington (Piano)
As part of the season of Sunday concerts given by international orchestras at the Usher Hall, the Czech National Symphony Orchestra gave the final concert of their UK tour on Sunday afternoon, and offered a lovely programme which attracted a decent audience of over 600 on a wet and miserable day. This is not a venerable orchestra, like the Czech Philharmonic, but a more recent creation, set up in 1993 by the trumpet player, Jan Hasenöhrl, which has made a name for itself playing film music and popular classics, in particular having collaborated extensively with Ennio Morricone. This is not to disparage the orchestra’s quality, as this concert proved that it is a very good ensemble indeed, with fine tone throughout and excellent principals. It was quite interesting to see the makeup of the ensemble, with an older and more male demographic than one might find in western Europe and it was also refreshing to see the orchestra laid out in the traditional way with the strings making a semi-circle round the conductor from highest to lowest, and the timps high up at the back, dominating the visual effect.
The American conductor, Steven Mercurio, one time student of Leonard Bernstein, was appointed Principal Conductor in 2019, and it was clear that he was a dominant figure on the podium, tall and angular, like a giant musical octopus. He spoke a couple of times to the audience, and came over as quite a character, and his flamboyant conducting style was hugely entertaining, eerily reminiscent of Bernstein himself, complete with jumps in the air and dramatic twirls. I have no problem at all with extrovert conducting, provided the musical results match the showmanship, and this concert produced terrific results, clearly thrilling the audience.
We started with Frederick Delius’s ‘The Walk to the Paradise Garden’, the intermezzo from his opera, ‘A Village Romeo and Juliet.’ I have never seen this opera, and it’s clear from reading about it, that Delius was not a great writer for the stage, but this intermezzo is lovely. It describes the short journey taken by the two ill-fated lovers from the local fair to the inn, the Paradise Garden, where they can dance all night, away from their warring families. Delius cleverly inserts a few chords from Isolde’s Liebestod in Wagner’s ‘Tristan und Isolde,’ as the lovers near their destination, for, at the end of the evening, they will float downstream to their deaths in a boat steadily filling with water. Mr Mercurio and the orchestra played this sumptuous music to the hilt.
The Usher Hall Steinway was brought on stage for a performance of Beethoven’s great 5th Piano Concerto, the so-called Emperor, with the magisterial English pianist, Mark Bebbington as soloist. I hadn’t heard the 5th for a while, and it was wonderful to hear it in the context of an orchestra with a home only 200 miles from Vienna, where it was composed in April 1809. The period of composition was a traumatic one, as Vienna was under bombardment by the French army, led by Napoleon, and there are tales of Beethoven burying his head in pillows to avoid the noise of the bombs. A month later, Vienna was under occupation by the French, and the concerto was not performed until 1811, firstly in Leipzig and then in Vienna in 1812 with Beethoven’s pupil, Carl Czerny, as soloist.
Later that year, Napoleon’s hubris had taken him almost to the gates of Moscow, where he would suffer his first major defeat, and Beethoven, although more and more profoundly deaf, was becoming the most famous composer in the world.
This performance of the 5th Concerto was a tour de force with a truly superlative rendition by Mark Bebbington. Dressed slightly bizarrely in a maroon velvet jacket (orchestra in black tie and black dresses with the conductor in white tie and tails), his playing was magnificent throughout, showing a complete command of his instrument, whether in the glorious dramatic sections of the first movement, the beautiful, filigree touches of the slow movement or the bouncing rhythms of the rondo finale. Orchestral solos were delightful, and I loved the Slavonic sound of the Prague horns. Mr Mercurio was an able accompanying figure, curbing his flamboyance to the advantage of the music and the soloist. Mr Bebbington sent us off to the interval with a suitably gentle encore.
Next, we heard the exhilarating overture to Smetana’s opera, ‘The Bartered Bride’. Fêted as the father of Czech music, the composer was one of the first to bring the rhythms and tunes of Czech folklore to the mainstream of European culture. I sang in a Scottish Opera production of ‘The Bartered Bride’ 40 years ago, starring our own Bill McCue as the Marriage Broker, although as the father of the unfortunate Vašek, I had to be heavily disguised, since at the age of 28, I was younger than my stage son! In addition, the plot, involving arranged marriage and a stammering half-wit, would be harder to stage these days.
The overture, written a couple of years before the full opera was performed in Prague in 1866, is a whirlwind of excitement, and Steven Mercurio and the orchestra played it to the hilt, at a breakneck speed which just about worked. The looks on the players faces at the end betrayed relief and exhaustion!
The second half continued with the Czech theme, and the wonderful Seventh Symphony of Antonín Dvořák. This great work was commissioned by the London Philharmonic Society in 1884, and first performed, under the composer’s baton, in London in 1885. It was a runaway success and ushered in the period of worldwide fame which culminated in the New World Symphony, No 9, in 1893. Musicologists and critics have argued ever since over which of the last three symphonies is the greatest. That discussion can be put to one side today, and we were privileged to hear a masterful performance in the Usher Hall from the Czech National Symphony Orchestra and Steven Mercurio of this masterful score. From blazing fortissimi to beautiful moments of calm, the orchestra showed off their undoubted skills in this deeply Czech music, written for a wider audience but clearly rooted in the national tradition.
The symphony follows a path through dark moods, lyrical tenderness, funky rhythms and explosive outbursts, and I was very conscious of the sheer noise that this orchestra could produce. The climaxes were phenomenal, and the final announcement of D Major after all the preceding minor mood was truly sensational. All the sections of the orchestra were superb, and Mr Mercurio’s extrovert style was great to watch. His flourish at the end and the 180° turn to face the audience was a masterpiece of flamboyance and went down very well!
The encores were beautifully judged, a perky new piece by a young Canadian composer and a smoky, jazz-orientated piece for solo trumpet (played by the orchestra’s founder, Jan Hasenöhrl), with drum, triangle and hand percussion to the fore, sent us out into the rain buzzing.
