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Reviewer: William Yeoman
Both conductors – Ryan Wigglesworth (in No 4) and Vladimir Jurowski (No 8) – make a strong case for these symphonies and indeed I can imagine them inter-changing with equal success. Wigglesworth’s Fourth arrives with a roar but the outrage is in the remorseless drive; Jurowski suggests parallels with Rachmaninov’s The Bells in the tintinnabulations of the Eighth.
I think the fury of the Fourth is more unremitting when the tempi of the outer movements are pushed to the point of recklessness. So many relax into the first movement’s second subject, for instance, looking for and finding a degree of relief or solace – but its lyricism is full of anxiety and Wigglesworth lends an air of nervy breathlessness. The second half of the first movement (as indeed the still centre of the finale) evokes a fragile peace and there is an authentic ache in the LPO’s stringplaying throughout. The fractured syncopations of the Scherzo suggest a grotesque carnival of sorts, while the headlong militarism of the finale speaks for itself, the scoring shrill and demented.
As I write, the Australian Chamber Orchestra are touring Australia with The Four Seasons interspersed (seasoned?) by contributions from oud player Joseph Tawadros and percussionist James Tawadros – reminding us that ‘Venice is barely a day’s sail from Cairo’. Alas, the only exoticism you can expect from the ACO’s recorded version is a reproduction of West Australian artist Guy Grey-Smith’s striking painting Karri Trees, which adorns the booklet cover.
Nevertheless, although this isn’t a live recording, what you do get is all the excitement and spontaneity of a live performance – along with the ACO’s trademark visceral approach to early music. Throughout, Tognetti practices a kind of refined larrikinism as he dances over ensemble paragraphs that seemed hewn from granite. Or perhaps a better metaphor is the salt water that runs in rivulets over the ripped body of a bronzed Aussie lifesaver?
Perhaps that’s taking things a little far. But there is some exceptional playing here, which, while it doesn’t reach the exalted heights of Carmignola and the Venice Baroque Orchestra (still my favourite Four Seasons), has all the poetry and ferocity of the best accounts. And the overall narrative is brilliantly stage-managed: in Spring, Tognetti seems deliberately to hold back, setting us up for the extremes of Summer before a rather forthright Autumn similarly leads to a Winter crackling with startlingly realised sonic effects.
Of the fillers, the B minor Concerto for four violins and the Sinfonia from the opera La verità in cimento best demonstrate another quality for which the ACO are well known: an utterly unified aesthetic which admits of the wildest fantasy. |
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