Arnold Bax’s lavishly scored Tintagel was inspired by a holiday romance with pianist Harriet Cohen whilst visiting the north Cornish coast in 1917. Whether an evocation of Atlantic rollers, the castle-crowned cliff of Tintagel or an encapsulation of the composer’s surging passion for his inamorata, the tone poem retains a tenuous foothold within the repertoire (ever since its première by the Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra in 1921 under Sir Dan Godfrey). With this bracing account led by the BSO’s Calleva Assistant Conductor Enyi Okpara, it was not difficult to imagine fearsome waves being hurled against a rugged coastline. Bax’s vision of “a sunny, but not windless, summer day” was handsomely met. If a more atmospheric opening (pp in the score) was needed, there was no doubting Okpara’s well-judged pacing and the orchestra’s evident love for this rich-hued portrait.
Martin James Bartlett then joined the BSO for Beethoven. Despite the reduced forces, there was little to suggest this would be a chamber performance, Bartlett’s entry confirming an account of joy and ebullience, becoming darker in the development, technically flawless and exquisitely detailed, the first movement culminating in an extensive cadenza, probably one of Beethoven’s three for this work. Delicate murmurings arrived in a poised Largo shaped by polished exchanges with woodwinds and the soloist’s tender embellishments, countered by the unbuttoned Finale, variously frisky and teasing. Bartlett’s warmth of expression was heard in his encore, ‘Von fremden Ländern und Menschen’ from Schumann’s Kinderszenen.
It was warmth rather than dreamlike stillness that ushered in the ‘Preludio’ of Vaughan Williams’s wartime Symphony of 1943 (dedicated to Sibelius, “without permission”, later given), its unfolding polyphony nicely balanced even if the main climax felt pre-empted. No quibbles with the Scherzo, humour and menace neatly signposted, the ‘hobgoblins and foul fiends’ of the composer’s “Morality” (the still-to-come opera The Pilgrim’s Progress never far away). From transience to timelessness in a beatific ‘Romanza’, its serenity (seemingly at odds with the date of composition) set in motion by Bryony Middleton’s haunting cor anglais, the music’s rapture wondrously caught, the closing bars a vision of peace and beauty. Okpara was perfectly at ease with the final ‘Passacaglia’, bringing out its dramas, unerringly arriving at a glowing D-major, affirming the work’s harmonic goal, to close this transcendent performance.
