Stream: SCO - Boulogne, Handel and Mozart
Peter Whelan, former SCO bassoonist, conducts the SCO in tonight’s mainly Mozart programme. He explains to his former colleague, second bassoonist Alison Green, that he wants to reflect various aspects of Mozart’s life and music in his choice of pieces. Joseph Boulogne, son of a French slave-owner and a slave, was brought up a nobleman in Paris, and was already a popular composer by the time he shared accommodation with the young Mozart in 1778. Boulogne’s cheerful ‘Overture to L’Amant Anonyme’ is a spirited short work in three sections. Whelan conducts from the harpsicord, and the bright first and third sections contain interesting parts for bassoon and horn, with a slower middle section scored for the strings.
Equally short and lively is a one of Mozart’s transcriptions of Handel’s music, commissioned later in his career. The 1718 opera ‘Acis and Galatea’ was adapted by Mozart to suit the more modern orchestral forces of 1788. The overture includes a lovely duet for clarinets, a favourite instrument of Mozart, as we’ll see in the next piece.
Katie Bray, the English mezzo, is the soloist in two arias by Mozart. The winner of the Joan Sutherland Audience Prize at Cardiff Singer of the World in 2019, Katie’s repertory includes music from the baroque to the present day, and she also regularly sings cabaret. Her prize-winning performance, still available on the BBC’s Cardiff Singer website, reflects these wide-ranging talents.
She sings first ‘Parto, parto’, Sesto’s aria from Act I of ‘La Clemenza di Tito’. She tells us that Sesto’s obsessive love for Vitellia has led him to agree to her request to kill the Emperor, his friend Tito. Bray believes that in the “crazy fast” later sections of the aria he is attempting to psych himself up to carry out the deed, while in the slower sections he woos Vitellia, hoping perhaps that she will change her mind. She sings the aria beautifully, given lots of space for the expansive early part by sympathetic conducting from Whelan. She has a striking stage presence, with elegant short hair and dark red evening dress. She stands to the left of Whelan, while the clarinettist, Maximiliano Martin is also at the front of the orchestra on the other side. The clarinet part was famously written for Mozart’s friend, Anton Stadler, playing his recently invented basset clarinet.
Concert performances of the aria allow us to hear more clearly the interplay between voice and clarinet, wooing, to use Bray’s words in the first section, but rapid and virtuosic later, where the singer and the clarinettist echo each other’s phrases. Complementing the deeper notes in the clarinet, I noticed for the first time the cello part. A terrific performance of Mozart’s late masterpiece.
More straightforward in its emotion is the joyous Laudamus Te from the C minor Mass. An operatic aria, it taxes the singer’s powers at both ends of her range, with some tricky jumps between them. All are accomplished with aplomb by Bray. Noticeable was some of her lighter singing in her higher register, with trills and staccato notes, which contrasted with the legato passages often in her lower voice. Bray already has an extensive operatic career, with some varied roles ahead of her this year, including Isolier in Rossini’s ‘Le Comte Ory’ at Garsington.
The second half of the concert is devoted to Mozart’s Linz Symphony No 36. Like ‘La Clemenza di Tito’, it was written quickly for a deadline – in three days - to please the people of Linz where he was invited in 1783. The Linz was one of the symphonies played by the orchestra on Charles Mackerras’s last recording with them in 2009, and Peter Whelan and Alison Green remembered playing it with him. Other weel-kent faces in the orchestra will have similar memories. But the performance is by no means a nostalgia fest – there are many newer talents here, not least Louise Goodwin on timpani, which plays an important role in this symphony. Whelan himself brings much energy to his interpretation. He’s recently finished working with the Irish Chamber Orchestra and Irish National Opera on Mozart’s ‘Seraglio’, and notices echoes of that opera’s martial “janisserie” Turkish music in this symphony.
After the adagio opening, the first movement is marked allegro spirituoso, and is distinguished by its exuberant use of brass and timpani. Two natural horns and two natural trumpets flank the timpanist in the back row. (Social distancing has led to some innovative placings of instruments.) We now have a full complement of performers – 29 – producing the distinctive SCO blend of modern and period instruments. As we reached the vibrant end of the movement, this seems as glorious a sound as we’re likely to hear in lockdown!
Unusually perhaps, the back row plays a full part in the later movements as well, the deeper tones bringing a rich sound to the Andante second movement, with full attention paid to some crunchy discords. A shorter second theme on a rising scale starts on the bassoon and is picked up by the strings. The third movement, Minuet’ is anything but delicate – a cheerful rhythmical piece, again featuring brass and timpani, followed by a slightly slower trio section on strings and woodwind. The vigorous finale, marked Presto, rounds off an excellent concert – so many good things packed into an hour!
SCO concerts are available free online – see www.sco.org.uk. The online programme contains an extensive and very readable essay on tonight’s music by David Kettle. Please, if you can, make a contribution to the SCO to enable their work to continue in the future.
The orchestra’s Mozart recordings for Linn Records with Charles Mackerras, nine symphonies, including the Linz and the Requiem, are now available in a bargain-priced box set at £25 for 5 CDs from the SCO online shop. Highly recommended.
Available to stream for free on YouTube until April 21st.
