The Wooden Prince and more from the LPO and Edward Gardner

A short homily from the conductor, required to explain that the interval had moved from that advertised in the printed programme, served also to introduce the music of Vítězslava Kaprálová (1915‑40). A Martinů student (and more), her music is comparably busy and restless without quite convincing us that she might have been a leading composer of the last century had she not died at the age of 25. Or at least the evidence tonight was mixed. The Rustic Suite rather torpedoed its copious energy and colour by flitting from moment to moment, recollections of Petrushka and La merjostling for idiomatic dominance with more overtly folkish (Bartókian?) elements. Janáček in ‘military’ mode loomed largest of all (Kaprálová had previously composed her own Military Sinfonietta). The Suite’s slow movement, initially reminiscent of English pastoralism and Smetana, went on far too long.  Later, Kaprálová’s Waving Farewell, an extended orchestral song with a voluptuously Late Romantic ambience reminiscent of Korngold, was repositioned just before the interval. Were the disparities destined to remain as part of Kaprálová’s stylistic armoury? Were they the very essence of it? We shall never know. 

The tremendously gifted young Armenian soprano Juliana Grigoryan made a liquid, rich-toned, pitch-perfect impression there as she did in what was, for me at least, the main event of the night, a simply glorious, ideally paced account of Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater. Transmuting self-indulgent orientalism and what I see the late Andrew Clements disdained as the ‘cosmetic modernism’ of his earlier music, Szymanowski here provides ecstasy and consolation on a whole other level. After the previous night’s desultory revival of Stravinsky’s Perséphone over the water, this was A* music-making, the singers’ Polish more convincing than the ‘French’ perpetrated in the Barbican Hall. Mezzo-soprano Agnieszka Rehlis, her Verdian chest register resplendent, was the only native speaker involved. If Lithuanian bass, Kostas Smoriginas was at times swamped by the choir and orchestra, that was probably a trick of the acoustic from my seat: the voice lacks nothing in Slavic power and penetration. The chorus certainly sang out with the requisite fervour. Nor could the LPO be faulted. These players are sometimes disinclined to achieve a real pianissimo. Not so here. The sixth movement, ‘Chrystus niech mi będzie grodem’, elicited tears.

After the interval came the official headliner, a similarly expert rendering of Bartók’s The Wooden Prince in its entirety. Someone had had the idea of using supertitles to link its bitty sonic vignettes to the ballet’s original fairy-tale narrative although there’s a limit to what can be done in the absence of truly memorable musical material. Not without committed advocates (and Edward Gardner is unmistakably one), the score’s over-reliance on magical orchestration and short-term mimeticism begin to pall before the close. That said, the orchestral playing never flagged and an enthusiastic reception was much deserved. 

This second in the LPO’s rewarding mini-festival of music from central and eastern Europe was preceded by a free pre-concert performance in which Gardner directed students from the Royal Academy of Music and orchestra members in Ligeti’s Melodien and Bartók’s Dance Suite.