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Let’s face it: the programming of many classical concerts is as nourishing as sliced white bread. But not this London Philharmonic Orchestra concert. Admittedly, the meal became too extended, stretched toward a ten o’clock finish by platform rearrangements, Marin Alsop’s perky introductions, and the probable presence of one work too many. But how many concerts mingle Satie’s epochal 1917 ballet score Parade with the best of Cool Britannia — Turnage, Adès, MacMillan — and throw down Stravinsky’s Jeu de cartes along the way? This was a multi-seed, multi-vitamin loaf, and served piping fresh.
True, those allergic to nuts had to be careful savouring Parade, the work that colours po-faced chorales and fugues and ragtime fragments with typewriter, siren, revolver shots, lottery wheel and the domestic clank of the bottlephone. Yet any pain was surely worthwhile: the LPO’s rare concert performance, precisely gauged, achieved just the right Satiean sense of ordinary music become very strange.
Calorie watchers might have felt some twinges during Mark-Anthony Turnage’s new Hidden Love Song. The younger composer of Three Screaming Popes was never one for lyric sentiment, but this ten-minute piece brought excellent reasons to add a little sugar. For one thing Turnage was writing the solo part for the soprano saxophone — pure melted gold and honey in the hands of Martin Robertson. He was also writing a present for his fiancée; and though mild turbulence strikes midway, the dominant mood, warmed with jazz inflections, stayed calm and reflective.
And never once soft-focused. One of the work’s immediate delights is Turnage’s piquant instrumentation, ushered in by harpsichord and tinkling percussion making what notes they can out of the letters of his fiancée’s name, Gabrielle. The chimes of a vintage clock, they sounded like. As he ages, Turnage’s ear for timbre just keeps sharpening. A small piece, no doubt, but an endearing one.
There were absorbing sounds too from the other Brits, represented by two favourite oldies of 1990: the awesomely accomplished Chamber Symphony by the teenage Adès, and MacMillan’s loud cry against persecution, The Confession of Isobel Gowdie.
Alsop always conducts with heart and soul, but Adès’s darting rhythms and MacMillan’s rage and lament found her especially aflame: by the end of the MacMillan she had tears in her eyes. Throughout the LPO responded with their best, brightest playing; the house was full, young, and alive. More loaves of bread like this, please.
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