Conductor: Julia Jones
In a programme of 19th and early 20th century French music, only one work could be said to be a popular favourite – and the concert bore its name, but, well played at Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique was, with its wild finale, the highlight of the evening came before the interval, Saint-Saens’ Piano Concerto No. 2, another work that breaks all the rules.
The remarkable series of conductors and soloists in Opera North’s Kirklees season continued with internationally acclaimed pianist Artur Pizarro, winner of the 1990 Leeds competition, and Julia Jones whose experience stretches across four continents and who is a regular in such opera houses as Covent Garden and the Vienna Staatsoper.
Many of us are familiar with the sprightly and mischievous second movement of the Saint-Saens from its appearance, separated from the outlying movements, in the schedules of Classic FM, but it took on a whole new meaning in its rightful place, played with prodigious technique, wit and poise by Pizarro. This remarkable work begins with a piano solo that recalls the organ works of Bach, played with disarming simplicity by Pizarro. The orchestra joins in with portentous chords and we’re away, After a series of sometimes quasi-improvisatory passages the portentous chords return, then we turn from the grand to the delicate with the charming allegro scherzando, full of conversational exchanges between pianist and orchestra.
After that the third of three ever-faster movements, an exciting tarantella, featured the pianist in ever-more virtuosic form as the orchestra buzzed around him like a swarm of bees. Julia Jones kept the orchestral accompaniment crisp and precise.
One can’t help feeling that the phrase used in the programme about the Berlioz, “extravagant modernity”, could apply equally to that and Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole which started the programme, certainly in terms of the orchestral forces deployed: six percussion plus celeste in the Ravel, two tubas and an E flat clarinet (used to tellingly grotesque effect) in the Berlioz.
The Ravel took us through three short, for the most part languorous movements until the thrilling climax of the extended final movement where the exuberance of the Feria bursts out in an echo of the composer’s Bolero. Jones built the excitement in the first of three breathtaking last movements in the evening.
Symphonie fantastique is a strange work, five movements detailing an obsessive love affair, the regularly abstracted show-stoppers coming in movements 2, 4 and 5, the first and third movements much longer, introspective, with much interplay with the idee fixe. It also gives huge scope for individual instruments to shine – Catherine Lowe’s cor anglais answered by Richard Hewitt’s oboe in the third movement or standing isolated among the timpani rolls at the end of the same movement, Oliver Casanovas Nuevo’s clarinet finding infinite variations on the idee fixe and so on.
The last two movements were hair-raising. In the March to the Scaffold the programme referred to “snarling trombones” – they were out in force, but it was almost as if the whole orchestra was snarling. As for The Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath the irregular tubular bells overlaid with a menacing Dies Irae from the tubas was only one of the elements that kept you on the edge of your seat as the symphony reached its bizarre conclusion.
Reviewed on 25th January 2024
