This Is Knussen! (but mainly Birtwistle): Knussen and BCMG at Milton Court
Music by Brennan, Stravinsky, Birtwistle and Knussen
Oliver Knussen, Claire Booth, Marie Christine Zupancic and BCMG
Milton Court Concert Hall
Stalls A17, £17.50
16 September 2017
Barbican page
I know it's not news that Birtwistle's Silbury Air is a tremendous piece, but it really is a tremendous piece. Knussen and BCMG's performance impaled me, froze my bones, wrenched my guts and generally left me a fragile waif of longing and fear. (Maybe front-row seats should come with a health warning.) What a great piece.
This being the case, I think if I were Knussen I would have chosen to put my piece before rather than after Silbury Air – although in all other senses I could see why he didn't, the programme being beautifully weighted and considered. Knussen's music is usually a concert highlight for me but the London premiere of O Hototogisu! didn't do much for me beyond prompting me to admire again Knussen's gift for orchestration. Otherwise, the super-self-conscious meta-meta-Japonism is obviously supposed to be affected but I'm not sure why, and the opportunity to hear the piece a second time didn't yield an answer.
Patrick Brennan's short and ebullient Polly Roe, on the other hand, was even more entertaining the second time round: lightly spectralist, imaginatively orchestrated and impressively clearly structured within its tight confines, it's a smart programme opener and I (probably) wouldn't have minded if Knussen had given it another reprise or two. Otherwise the programme was all Stravinsky: the miniatures Two Poems of Balmont and Three Japanese Lyrics, both new to me; and the wonderful Renard, superbly zithered by BCMG's zitherist and bravely sung by RSVP Voices.
I'm going to end with a gripe, though. Is it right that a concert should be called 'This Is Rattle!' when it features Rattle neither on paper nor in person?
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