Play it again, Sam: Aimard in the 'Emperor' and Tansy Davies's Concerto for Four Horns at the Southbank Centre
Beethoven's 'Emperor' Piano Concerto, Tansy Davies's Concerto for Four Horns, Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra
Philharmonia Orchestra with Esa-Pekka Salonen, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Richard Watkins, Katy Woolley, Nigel Black, Michael Thompson
Royal Festival Hall
23 February 2017
Choir B59, £11
https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/92100-salonenaimard-inspirations-2017
I've approached Tansy Davies with some wariness since her opera Between Worlds, which I didn't like. But Forest, a concerto for four horns, I found quite miraculous. It certainly helps having four amazing horn players and part of the piece's thrill was seeing these four wonderful musicians perform so brilliantly, with such musicality and understanding between them.
On this first listen the piece sounded to me to be written in a kind of 'u' structure, with two agitated sections framing a slower central one. The opening passages have repeated high screams, across the orchestra but particularly in the horns and woodwind – cries of birds and earthier animals, the huntsman's hulloo, animalistic shrieks from a sacrifice – that kind of thing, with virtuoso figurations from the horns around and over this. The second melts into a woozy mirk, all dark and mysterious and I felt slightly tongue-in-cheek jazz. From here the colours lighten by almost imperceptible degrees into heightened final exuberance. I would love to listen to it again.
Ditto the piano concerto, unsurprisingly given the people involved. For all his famous precision Aimard played with what sounded to me like insouciant swagger: a glitzy confidence with a steel core running through it. Salonen and the orchestra were abetting accomplices, asides from one or two minor ensemble slips. Some 'authentic' timps were a nice touch, lending a wonderfully deathly rasp at apposite moments. My kneejerk reaction is always to feel a bit askance when I see 'authentic' and 'modern' instruments piled into the same orchestra, but maybe it's the sort of fun experiments in timbre conductors should be playing with, if their orchestra has the resources.
I love what Kubrick did with it but otherwise I struggle with Zarathustra (as with most of the early Strauss tone poems). This time it was no different, although it was of course fun to be that close to such a large orchestra in such a loud piece.
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