Photo, Mark Allan

Monday, July 28, 2025

Royal Albert Hall, London

March 14, 1986, Royal Festival Hall, Péter Eötvös conducts the BBCSO in the premiere of Harrison Birtwistle’s Earth Dances. A sonic masterpiece is launched. Eötvös went on to record it, as did Christoph von Dohnányi in Cleveland (also Proms, and Philharmonia/RFH) and Pierre Boulez (Earth Dances is dedicated to him); Martyn Brabbins is equally a wonderful conductor of it. So too Ryan Wigglesworth as this terrific BBC Scottish account demonstrated, bringing out all the music’s primordial cries, thrilling surges and rhythmic power, starlit beauty, cragginess, volatility, complex (multi-strata) detailing, all part of a hypnotic, rewarding (here, thirty-seven-minute) journey capturing the music’s changes of perspective (different views of an image), a characteristic Birtwistlian trope.

Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ Symphony also remains music to continually discover, even if thought familiar. Wigglesworth and BBCSSO delivered a fleet, punchy, shapely and – important – subtly flexible first movement (repeat observed), with instrumental and rhythmic clarity, woodwinds, brass and timpani the equal of strings, a wide dynamic range, and, for me, an awareness of ‘new’ aspects, maybe a staccato that one instinctively knows is in the score or a trumpet note often buried. The ‘Funeral March’ was of myriad feelings, the Scherzo ebullient, with fine nimble horns in the Trio, and the Finale continued this freshly considered approach, avoiding HIP pedantry, and not debunking decades of extreme conductorial viewpoints (e.g. below), with joyous release in the ultimate coda.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002g5gv

https://www.classicalsource.com/concert/bbc-symphony-orchestra-martyn-brabbins-birtwistles-earth-dances-vaughan-williamss-sea-symphony

https://www.classicalsource.com/cd/harrison-birtwistle-nights-black-bird-the-shadow-of-night-the-cry-of-anubis-halle-ryan-wigglesworth-nmc

BBC Proms 2025 – BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Ryan Wigglesworth conducts For Laura, and Bruckner Seven, with Mariam Batsashvili playing Mozart’s D-minor Piano Concerto (K466). Live on BBC Radio 3.

Two contrasting Eroicas (so many possibilities)…

1958. 44 minutes, with repeat.

Or…

59 minutes, without repeat…

On an unspecified date during 1996, this Munich Philharmonic performance proved to be the final time that Celibidache would conduct Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ Symphony, here sublime in its spaciousness.