BBCSSO: Strauss - 'Four Last Songs'

City Halls, Glasgow - 24/11/22

“Rapturous, Serene, Heart-Breaking Strauss” – this legend adorned the programme cover of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s concert on the evening of 24th November in Glasgow’s City Halls, over an image of a radiant sunset, a direct reference to the last and most achingly beautiful of Strauss’ Four Last Songs, ‘Im Abendrot’ (At Sunset), Eichendorff’s poem depicting an elderly couple appreciating the beauty of an autumn evening, stoically resigned to their own mortality.  It is one of a handful of pieces that always make me cry.  That same handful includes the closing pages of Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No.5, where pianissimo string polyphony divisi in nine parts prolongs a perfect D-major cadence evoking perfect tranquillity of spirit, and this glorious autumnal work, more pastoral than his “Pastoral” Symphony, paradoxically written during the Second World War, closed the programme.  It opened with one of the scariest pieces I know, Sibelius’ bleak evocation of savage winter in the dark northern forests of Finland, his final completed work, the tone poem ‘Tapiola’.  This varied yet themed programme, under the baton of guest conductor Martyn Brabbins, promised an emotional roller-coaster of music.  It was introduced by Kate Mollison and broadcast live on Radio 3. 

For sheer unalloyed bleakness and desolation, Sibelius’ Symphony No.4, written a decade and a half before ‘Tapiola’ is a far more austere work, but the later tone poem explores not the internal landscape of a troubled mind, but the very real landscape of an environment that, whilst undoubtedly beautiful, is ready, willing and capable of killing you.  Momentary flashes of late romanticism, such as the cello section playing a sumptuous harmonic phrase answered by the violins, cannot conceal the underlying malevolence of the landscape, breaking loose in crashing brass discords and, an effect never realised before Sibelius, the violins divided in many independent parts emulating the blizzard howling through the bare branches of the trees.  The piece settles on a concluding major chord, but that should deceive nobody.  The playing was superb, as yet again our BBC Scottish responded with rapport and virtuosity to the direction of a guest maestro. 

The soprano in the Strauss was Elizabeth Llewelyn.  From the start of the first of the three Hess settings, ‘Frühling’ (Spring), her mezzo timbre was radiant and full, while her top end was mellifluous and clear.  The tessitura of Strauss’ masterly writing appears tailored to exploit exactly this vocal profile, so the melodic line was very clear and beautiful.  However, Strauss employs a large orchestra and the balance in the hall was such that the words were less clear and, had I not already known them, would have been lost to me.  I expect that the radio audience may have benefited from the wonders of BBC sound engineering and received a clearer lyric sonic image.  If the first song is “rapturous”, the next two are “serene”, ‘September’ and ‘Beim Schlafengehen’ (On going to sleep).  Laura Samuel’s violin solo in the latter was exquisite.  I knew that ‘Im Abendrot’ would ambush me, and it did.  Two flutes evoking a pair of larks ascending over an autumnal alpine valley – hard to imagine a landscape in greater contrast to that of the Sibelius: death seems kindlier. 

The composer of ‘The Lark Ascending’ is very much in evidence in his Fifth Symphony, though the work also has depths of subdued passion and is no mere Constable painting adorned with English folk tunes.  The angry Vaughan Williams of the Fourth Symphony does not surface, nor does the desolate war-ravaged landscape of the Sixth.  The Fifth allows a country in wartime to dream of peace, to dare to hope.  The landscape itself seems charged with stoicism, eternally imperturbable.  A flash of mischief in the tripping Scherzo with its mocking Trio recalls Job’s Comforters in the ‘Masque for Dancing’ of a decade earlier.  The Romanza begins serenely but has its moments of anguish and a chromatic modal cri de coeur before serenity reasserts itself.  The Passacaglia’s beautiful major key melody is developed to a climax, when it crashes to a crestfallen minor, searching in vain for the confidence of the opening melody.  Instead, the theme of the first movement comes to our rescue.  The Passacaglia theme returns, slow, ethereal and serenely nostalgic, the strings divide into 9 parts and I greet like a bairn.  Martyn Brabbins held in focus every nuance of this enigmatic work and guided the players to the most sympathetic realisation of its deep beauty.  It was a very fine performance and I would encourage any music lover to catch it on BBC Sounds over the next few weeks.