The BBC Philharmonic’s first Aldeburgh Festival concert this year was a powerful experience featuring Francisco Coll’s blistering orchestration of De Falla’s Fantasia baetica, Britten’s Violin Concerto with soloist Simone Lamsma, Cassandra Millar’s new work La Donna, and an epic rendition of Sibelius’ fifth symphony conducted by John Storgårds.
There was a charming matter-of-factness about the Philharmonic’s presence on stage at Snape Maltings Concert Hall – an exciting air of lightly-held experience and expertise minus the pretension. John Storgårds’ arrival on the platform like that of the leader before him was warm and workmanlike. What followed when the baton went down – the opening lines of Coll’s glittering arrangement of De Falla’s Fantasia baetica – was clear, colourful, powerful, and uncompromising. No half measures here, and no fuss and nonsense either. Just lots of notes, colours, textures and power. Coll has created a tantalising concert opener.
The Britten Violin Concerto sat well in the Snape acoustic. The opening chords played by the strings played with the burnished richness that characterises the Britten sound, similarly heard in the opening of the third movement. Far from muddying the soundscape, Snape makes it possible to pick out more detail in the score, notably the soloist and woodwind section finely matching sounds and effects during the first movement. Some of the harmonics in the cadenza missed details, but this didn’t distract from Simone Lamsma’s bright and assertive sound, nor her obvious love of Britten’s burly rhythmic sequences.
The first movement was prompt, the second a rip-roaring frenetic chase, and the concluding third sometimes dark and pensive before a seemingly fragile resolution in the final bars. Lamsma was a scintillating watch, snatching and jabbing at accents, and luring long lyrical lines and chants from the instrument, when the score demanded.
Cassandra Miller’s writing in La Donna was an interesting excursion. The trippy sound-world forged by out-of-phase sliding notes across the string section established a world but I finished the piece feeling as though we hadn’t necessarily been on a journey. The extended dying-away felt disconnected from the brassy belligerence of the opening material.
To conclude, an epic heart-stopping Sibelius 5 with the BBC Philharmonic seemingly scooping giant ladles of sound from the earth and casting it all around. The strings tore sound from their instruments as though their lives depended on it; the brass punctuated with thunderous depth charges. Come the much-anticipated horn calls in the final movement, we were primed for an emotional outburst. My lip began to tremble when the cellos counter-melody cut in. I don’t think I’ve heard an orchestra play so much verve in Snape Maltings. A gloriously uplifting experience.
Listen to the BBC Philharmonic as part of the Aldeburgh Festival play Sibelius 5 via BBC Sounds
