THERE were only about 400 there, but what a concert Ilan Volkov and the BBC SSO played on Saturday night in an exploration of so-called 20th Century Classics, featuring mind-blowing performances of Edgard Varese's Integrales for huge woodwind, brass and percussion sections, the same composer's colossal Ameriques for a mountainous orchestra, and a rare performance, with the shining vocal group, Synergy Vocals, of Luciano Berio's Sinfonia.
Its third movement, whatever the composer might have wanted us to think, is an entertaining pastiche, a delicious amalgam of classics, notably Mahler's Resurrection Symphony, Ravel's La Valse and Daphnis and Chloe, some delectable dods of Richard Strauss. This was a job for a conductor who knew the music inside out and how to get the most lucid results from the orchestra. As he demonstrated consistently and convincingly, with supremely superior playing from the SSO, Volkov is one of the best in the world at getting those results.
The Varese pieces, once so scary and forbidding, revealed audibly the myriad motivic and rhythmic cells, with plentiful repetitions, that cement their structure. Why did I ever believe this music was recondite? This was lucidity, loud lucidity, made translucent.
The Berio? Well, as addicted to it as I was in the seventies, it sounds a bit old-hat now: maybe it was a piece for its time. Adding a fifth movement, it seems to me, added nothing other than length. Still, a cracking night from this front-line battalion and their great general.
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