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On paper, this was not an obviously crowd-pleasing programme: Kenneth Hesketh's PatterSongs, Shostakovich's Second Cello Concerto, not the more popular No 1, and Rachmaninov's First Symphony – Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham, UK, 19 October 2024. The fact that the hall was pretty well full was clearly down to two welcome return visits: from Nottingham cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, and the Sinfonia of London with conductor John Wilson.
PatterSongs is a short, abrasive scherzo – edgy, punctuated by gentler moments – based on music from Hesketh's Gogol-based opera The Overcoat. Erupting in a shower of wood-block strokes and rushing strings, it is full of the rapid, chattering figures that the title suggests. The performance fizzed with energy; solo opportunities, like Timothy Orpen's jazzy clarinet break, were eagerly seized; and the surprise conclusion had real bite.
As John Wilson said in his spoken introduction, while Rachmaninov's Symphony 'drops into your lap', the Shostakovich 'gets under your skin'. Sheku Kanneh-Mason has made something of a speciality of Shostakovich's First Cello Concerto, and his command of both No 2's technical demands and its expressive world was equally assured. His unaccompanied opening was hushed to the point of suggesting the composer hardly daring to voice his thoughts. Shostakovich's tart woodwind scoring was pin-sharp; Kanneh-Mason's dialogues with principal horn Chris Parkes had real humanity, in contrast to the xylophone-flute-pizzicato strings mechanisms elsewhere. At the end, Kanneh-Mason's playing withdrew into an inner world – perhaps one of feigned indifference.
Sheku Kanneh-Mason. Photo © 2024 Chris O'Donovan
Unfortunately, he broke a string part-way into the second movement, but when he returned from backstage with a replacement fitted, the movement began again with no loss of focus. The cello's jaunty and defiant quotation of Odessa street-song 'Bubliki, kupite bubliki' (Bread rolls, buy my bread rolls) provoked a ferocious argument from the orchestra, xylophone (not separately credited) and horn leading the way.
Chris Parkes and horn colleague Jonathan Quaintrell-Evans put a stop to it all, and moved us authoritatively into the finale. Every twist and turn of the music's expressive progress was vividly conveyed, from the almost hymn-like tune that appears seemingly from nowhere, apparently serene episodes, insistent dance rhythms, the orchestra roaring 'Bubliki' at top of its voice, to the impassive percussion ticking at the end, and the solo cello's withdrawal to an even more recessed space than before.
Throughout, Kanneh-Mason met every technical demand head-on, including some impressively spot-on double-stopped octaves. His solo version of Bob Marley's song 'She used to call me' made an aptly introspective encore.
The fierce opening to Rachmaninov's Symphony No 1 set down a marker for the rest of the performance. An impassioned, earthy account of the first movement included intense determination in the central fugue - no doubt an echo, conscious or not, of the equivalent passage in Tchaikovsky's 'Pathétique' Symphony.
While the other movements reflect Tchaikovsky's influence, the second movement's buoyant airiness seems more indebted to Borodin. Wilson and the orchestra kept it all beguilingly airborne, which emphasised the gargoyle awkwardness of the short angular passage for two unison solo violins and pizzicato strings.
In the third movement, soulful clarinet and flute solos - Timothy Orpen and Charlotte Ashton, respectively - contrasted with edgy brass and timpani. At the end, the music receded with such sensitivity and concentration that we couldn't help but be drawn in after it. It was one of those moments when you become aware of how totally absorbed the audience is.
The finale's opening thunderclap and the march that followed had real urgency, with soft muted horns adding distant echoes of their own. As throughout, conductor and orchestra always kept the long view in sight, piling on the excitement in the coda until you thought it couldn't take any more.
John Wilson. Photo © 2019 Astrid Ackermann
I did have one niggle – the four-note figure at the very start of the Symphony, which goes on to play such an important role throughout, seemed rather skated over, somewhat blunting its impact on its later re-appearances, not least at the very end of the finale. But this was a small blemish in an otherwise utterly gripping account of this extraordinary work.
Afterwards, Wilson and the players turned and bowed to the audience in the choir seats behind the stage, something which, I'm please to say, is happening more regularly here.
Copyright © 24 October 2024
Mike Wheeler,
Derby UK