Thursday, February 13, 2025
Barbican Hall, London
Guest Reviewer, David Gutman
With one or two exceptions London audiences tend to avoid the American classics. Perhaps that explains why the publicity for this sparsely-attended concert rather overegged the pudding with its promise of ‘three musical salutes to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’.
Gabriela Ortíz, who is Mexican, would seem to be a favourite of Domingo Hindoyan, a product of Venezuela’s El Sistema music education system now embedded with the RLPO and making his first appearance with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Hindoyan had previously brought Ortíz’s music to the Proms with Clara in 2023. That piece had something to do with Clara Schumann. The present crowd-pleaser, rather shorter at seven minutes, offered the mixture much as before. A convoluted backstory this time relating to hallucinogenic animal or cactus worship was perhaps best forgotten: I reproduce it below in case it makes sense to you: ‘Among the Huichol people of Mexico, Kauyumari means “blue deer.” The blue deer represents a spiritual guide, one that is transformed through an extended pilgrimage into a hallucinogenic cactus called peyote. It allows the Huichol to communicate with their ancestors, do their bidding, and take on their role as guardians of the planet. Each year, these Native Mexicans embark on a symbolic journey to “hunt” the blue deer, making offerings in gratitude for having been granted access to the invisible world, through which they also are able to heal the wounds of the soul.’ Where so much contemporary fare is literally static, Ortíz follows Carlos Chávez, Silvestre Revueltas and their peers in melding elements considered modernist in the 1930s with rhythmic ostinatos, repeated folkish motifs and various forms of strumming. Much of Kauyumari sounds like what used to be called world music. Accompanying TV or film credits (think Henry Mancini’s score for Orson Welles’s cross-border Touch of Evil) it would work just fine. There was colourful activity but, again, no real movement, only repetition in different shades of intoxicating colour.
The remaining works were composed by citizens of the nation that includes Thomas Jefferson’s aspirational phrase in its Declaration of Independence. Not that the Barber Violin Concerto is a particularly ‘public’ piece. Now among the most popular of twentieth-century works in the form, it had a slow start in Britain at least with no renderings at the Proms between its first UK performance in 1944 and an isolated revival in 1976. Nowadays it’s a staple. Kentucky-born Tessa Lark has dabbled in cross-genre music, slipping Bluegrass treats into her classical programmes, a genre very much in her DNA. Tonight she gave us a brief sample in her characterful encore, ‘Emily’s Reel’ by Mark O’Connor, confidently and clearly announced. Encores are now obligatory at BBC promotions it seems. The main work went well enough if without special distinction. Lark’s sound is bright, with no-nonsense attack, perfect intonation and a sparing use of vibrato though she also has a sparklier timbre in her armoury. The orchestra accompanied well but the scale was a little uncertain, tuttis raising the roof disproportionately. The scurrying Finale was articulate but unavoidably inconsequential. Barber’s fault.
Copland doesn’t make things easy in his Third Symphony. The music is not difficult to respect or even to love but it is difficult to bring off, particularly in a hall that tends to cramp the sound. Here its wide open spaces did not always cast their spell and the noisy rhetoric of the Scherzo felt a little jumbled. Hindoyan was in his element for Copland’s socialist realist vision of the Common Man but the broader harmonic direction of the music tended to cloud over at times. Or perhaps it is simply that one is accustomed to the broader frame set by Leonard Bernstein and Michael Tilson Thomas in more hospitable venues. An elegant podium presence, Hindoyan majored on flair and elation but the violins in their highest register seemed imperfectly aligned and a mite directionless in the hushed opening of the third movement. Above all there was a general reluctance to play really quietly, all the more noticeable because Sir Antonio Pappano’s LSO had managed just that so memorably in Vaughan Williams the previous night. On a positive note the audience was exceptionally attentive throughout.
Gabriela Ortíz
Kauyumari [London premiere]
Barber
Violin Concerto
Copland
Symphony No.3
Tessa Lark (violin)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Domingo Hindoyan