Before even London could claim to have organised regular first-class concerts, Bradford had them courtesy of Mr. Charles Hallé’s ensemble from Manchester and, still today, it is considered to be the city’s ‘regular’ orchestra. Indeed, it has become the custom, perhaps more a civic courtesy, to invite the players from across the Pennines to open each orchestral season, but not this time. For the overriding celebration of Bradford’s 150th season of orchestral music-giving is a major revamp of its principal venue, St. George’s Hall, which will make necessary the building’s closure from March 2016 for fully 12 months and leave audiences with a truncated season of just four concerts. Perhaps, in the manner of economic text-book supply and demand, this curtailed provision renders each of those remaining programmes that little bit more precious.
In the first concert, the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra, half-way through a three-week UK tour, play Wagner, Elgar and Beethoven (Sat. 10 Oct., 7.30pm). Conductor Michael Sanderling (pictured above) can be expected to offer soloist Thomas Carroll a generous and sympathetic orchestral contribution to Elgar’s Cello Concerto, much as we know Barbirolli used to give, by virtue of being a notable cellist himself by training. The Overture to Wagner’s only comic opera The Mastersingers of Nuremberg starts off the evening, its genial C major opening building in grandeur to an impressively opulent climax combining its three themes at the close. Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony was to the 19th-century what Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring was to the 20th: a bold, expansive score that set music on a new course. We still await its 21st-century equivalent.
Germans playing Wagner and Beethoven for the first concert are matched by Czech musicians playing Smetana and Dvořák in the second (Sat. 21 Nov., 7.30pm). The Prague Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Jan Kucera, programme Smetana’s symphonic poem Sárka, a dark depiction of a fabled Bohemian Amazon, once betrayed by her lover and now hell-bent on the destruction of the entire male sex. Smetana manages a piquant Wagnerian love scene, but, trapped in a world lacking anger management classes, Sárka finishes in predictable heartache. Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8 is the one most characteristic of the composer’s homeland and these musicians should have it firmly established in their blood line. Beethoven’s Violin Concerto is one of the most lyrical of the genre. The 1806 premiere was music-making on a knife-edge. Routinely, Beethoven was notoriously late fulfilling commissions and poor Franz Clement was said to have had to sight-read the solo violin part on the night. The wonderful Chloë Hanslip – what a sustained and committed Sibelius Concerto she gave last year – will not be taking such risks with the notes. What is so compelling about her performances is how she pushes her consummate technique to its considerable limits in the service of the music’s emotional outpourings.
The Hallé’s contributions are the traditional Viennese New Year Concert (Sun. 03 Jan. 2016, 3pm) and a pre-Christmas concert of Mendelssohn, Schumann and Berlioz (Sat. 05 Dec., 7.30pm). Mendelssohn’s beautiful evocation of Scotland, the Hebrides Overture, is justifiably popular. Schumann’s Piano Concerto (soloist: Alexander Gavrylyuk) opens with an affectionate musical love note for his future wife and concludes with one of the busiest finales around. Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique portrays drug-induced dream episodes dominated by a beloved who proves far more elusive to its composer and, though they were to be united, their marriage ended unhappily.
Savour these nuggets as the last orchestral sounds to come from St. George’s celebrated acoustic and contemplate what its next incarnation will have to offer to the people of Bradford.
Tom Tollett