Mark Padmore sings Britten
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Ryan Wigglesworth conductor, Mark Padmore tenor
City Halls, Glasgow 7/11/24
The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s Thursday night series in Glasgow’s City Halls resumed, after a 5-week hiatus, on the night of 7th November, with a programme that asked us to “Imagine dream-haunted tapestries of song with one of Britain’s greatest tenors”. The tenor in question was Mark Padmore and the two “dream-haunted tapestries of song” were both works written for Peter Pears accompanied by smaller ensembles, Britten’s 1958 ‘Nocturne’ and Lutosławski’s 1965 ‘Paroles tissées’, performed under the baton of the orchestra’s Chief Conductor, Ryan Wigglesworth, before and after the interval. The concert, which was broadcast live on Radio 3 and introduced by Kate Molleson, opened with Mozart’s 1780 Symphony No.34 and concluded with Schumann’s 1847 Symphony No.2. I was pleased to see (for what I think was a first time) Russian-Israeli violinist Ania Safonova guesting as leader (though Laura Samuel remains titular leader). On the downside, attendance was very sparse.
Mozart bored with the spirit-crushing drudgery of employment as court organist to Prince-Archbishop Coloredo in Salzburg and about to make the risky but career-defining move to freelance musician in Vienna is the musical personality emerging in the Symphony No.34. The first movement begins with a showy fanfare right enough, but there is new depth in the way he sets out the material and scores it confidently. Ryan Wigglesworth guided an interpretation that displayed this clearly with bold dynamic contrasts, Haydnesque charm and a pace that sustained the good humour, with a cheeky oboe, a chromatic bassoon, a pair of lovely little timpani on a level with the double basses, and a characterful ‘Mannheim steamroller’ in the elegantly pointed mix. The slow movement, for strings only, could have been straight out of a middle Mozart quartet and received a warm chamber reading. The very Haydnesque finale, a moto perpetuo 6/8 jig, bowled along with pace and wit. A great concert opener, enthusiastically received.
Fans of Britten’s ‘Les Illuminations’ and the ‘Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings’ not familiar with the ‘Nocturne’ (among which, until this hearing, I have numbered myself), will find a work by the same composer with a remarkable facility for setting poetry for tenor voice, producing a work greater than the sum of its parts. The ‘Nocturne’ comprises 8 settings of English poets, played without a break, yet strikingly individual, on themes of night and sleep both literal and as a metaphor for death. A rocking figure on strings reappears occasionally as a bridge passage, after the first Shelley setting where it forms the accompaniment, a poem about literal sleep. From the off, it was clear that Mark Padmore’s voice was no less matched to the music than that of Peter Pears (and indeed, to my personal taste as a lifelong non-fan of the latter, infinitely preferable). Timbral variation through the skilful exploitation of different head voice resonances made an early appearance, raising expectations of an expressive and compelling performance, which were then fully realised and surpassed. The dormant menace of Tennyson’s ‘Kraken’ was made graphic with growling double basses and contrabassoon, making the high bassoon at the end all the more unearthly. The rippling harp that accompanied Coleridge’s ‘beauteous Boy’ ‘Encinctur’d with a twine of leaves’ captured a sense of wonder that was perfectly matched by the voice, so gorgeous that one might miss that the subject is dead. A horn and the playful onomatopoeic echoes in the Middleton nocturnal scene which followed recalled the Serenade no less captivatingly. The drama of Wordsworth’s insomnia at the recollection of the Terror of the French Revolution was made terrifyingly real by a surging barrage from a set of pedal timpani – fabulous. A mournful cor anglais depicts Wilfred Owen’s ‘Kind Ghosts’ who refrain from disturbing the slumber of the spectre of death, the ironic voice reproachful – wonderfully chilling. A fluttering flute and a scampering clarinet framed Keats’ evocation of the bliss of slumber as if it were a magical island landscape, glowing string chords seeming to underline some of the tenor’s words – magical indeed. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 43, where dreams of the beloved are more vivid and precious than realtime presence subject to the distractions of wakefulness, was more richly scored and growingly impassioned to a climax, subsiding to an afterglow. I cannot imagine a more expressive, committed and convincing performance. Glasgow concurred and, despite the paucity of the attendance, the applause was tumultuous.
I met Witold Lutosławski in 1979 (when I was 19 and had just completed a year at University College Dublin). That year, he attended the Dublin Festival of 20th Century Music and conducted a performance of his Cello Concerto in the St Francis Xavier Hall, with the RTESO and Heinrich Schiff as soloist, an amazing piece of music. The same year his compatriot and onetime friend and colleague Andrzej Panufnik also attended the festival, where I first heard his ‘Sinfonia Sacra’, a work that made a deep impression on me. When a hardline Soviet-style regime became established in Poland after the war, Panufnik ‘escaped’ to England (losing almost all his early scores); Lutosławski remained, working within the confines of the diktats of the Communist party. Relations between the two men had cooled. In Dublin in 1979 there was a rapprochement, which I witnessed, also meeting both of them (I had boundless brass neck in those days). An unforgettable experience and privilege. Even then, though, I felt a greater affinity for the music of Panufnik, and I still do.
Lutosławski’s ‘Paroles tissées (woven words – four tapestries for the Châtelaine of Vergy) is an Aldeburgh commission for tenor, strings, harp, piano and percussion, with four settings of poems by French surrealist Jean-François Chabrun, based on medieval tales of amour courtois, performed without a break. The players have individual elements to perform but no clear indication of how the lines relate to each other temporally. The result is an element of randomness, where interesting timbral colours arise out of chance coincidence, with the vocal line hovering within this soundscape. I cannot deny that some fascinating sounds emerged out of the aleatoric texture, but there were no earworms and nothing ‘memorable’. I marvel at the skill of the performers and the eerie beauty of the music, but I can’t love it. Curious listeners may wish to seek it out on BBC Sounds in the coming 4 weeks, but I’ll not be one of them. Perhaps surprisingly, the Glasgow applause was as fulsome as it had been for the Britten, though I expect this was in appreciation of Mark Padmore’s superb vocal ability and the virtuosity of the other performers – I did see at least two punters leave during the middle of the Lutosławski and not return for the Schumann.
The Schumann, by contrast, was everything one might have hoped for. An overriding C-major optimism, rich ingenious counterpoint, dramatic impulsive rhythms, an organic flow of ideas with seamless transitions – Ryan Wigglesworth shaped a performance that displayed the work as the masterpiece it is, with all these elements brought to the fore in the first movement. The scurrying scherzo with its two contrasting trios fashioned from the same material always lifts my mood (even if it’s already elevated) and was a thrill, especially when cellos and brass dig in for the final dash. The slow movement, a romance with the occasional shadow cast which does not derail the optimism, was elegant with some lovely wind playing and very expressive strings. The brisk and business-like opening of the finale promises and delivers a sonata form, but a new Beethovenian theme is introduced to carry us to the conclusion, where the brass calls of the symphony’s introduction reappear to seal the joyous coda. Fabulous.