Celebration of Nicholas Maw (Concert Review - The Times, 2011)
****
A rhapsodic critic once said: “For generations people will be buying tickets to hear his music”. It’s a cheering prophecy, though to judge by the half-empty auditorium on Sunday night, when one work by Nicholas Maw followed another, complete fulfilment seems a distance away. Yet listening to a basketful of the late English composer’s compositions, you can certainly understand some reasons for predicting a rosy future.
Always his own man, Maw forged a path through 20th-century music that kept springing back to what came just before: communicable music with a romantic sweep and ample melodic life, despatched with structural logic and dazzling instrumental finesse. Passion, in short, plus restraint: a uniquely British mixture.
Presented by the City of London Sinfonia and the Royal Academy of Music, this commemorative day couldn’t stretch to Maw’s most lustrous pieces — the succulently juicy Scenes and Arias and the 96-minute Odyssey, supposedly the largest single-span symphonic creation since time began. But we could still sink our teeth into the Violin Concerto: 40 minutes of lyrical dreaming delivered by Tasmin Little with a magically-smooth technique but eyes resolutely fixed on her score. Her interpretative caution, plus Christopher Austin’s moderate impact as conductor, shrivelled a little of the work’s retro beauties.
Bolder musical projection arrived when the Holst Singers joined the CLS for the half-hour Hymnus, a modern triumph in the English choral tradition, incisively conducted by Stephen Layton. Tolling phrases rang hypnotically through the first of its two settings of early Christian texts; music and performance both blazed with tenderness and glory. It was equally good to hear Layton conducting an anguished, lyrical orchestral selection from Sophie’s Choice, music freed from the opera’s problematic libretto and ingeniously poured into a continuous 20-minute suite.
Earlier, in a “pre-concert” concert, the RAM’s Manson Ensemble and their conductor Bruce Nockles enriched the day with Maw’s sensuous instrumental songcycle, La Vita Nuova (Sara Lian Owens was the plangent soprano), and the exotically coloured shadowplay of Ghost Dances. Finally, a quick word of welcome for Robert Peate’s ear-tingling Images: work in progress from an RAM student who’s already writing genuine music. Supported by the Boltini and Willoughby memorial trusts.
Reviewed by Geoff Brown
The Times