Originally posted on February 19
Huw Watkins has enjoyed a recent productive relationship with the Hallé & Sir Mark Elder (music director at the time), four commissioned works. Here are three of them (the other, Symphony No.1, is also recorded), music of fine craftsmanship in the Britten/Tippett axis, opening on this release with the surreptitious Fanfare that seems to come from deep in the forest, suggestive of A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream (as experienced through Britten’s opera) and which finds Hallé brass in fine fettle.
Symphony No.2 and Concerto for Orchestra – both in three movements and each lasting just over half-an-hour – are cut from similar cloth, which perhaps suggests that they should be listened to with an interval between them: doing so allows their respective qualities to shine. The Symphony radiates a Tippettian clamour of ecstasy, as well as being secretive if inviting, the first movement suggestive of exposition and development being concurrent, a sense of storytelling apparent in the rhapsodic second – of quiet rapture, nostalgic, expression deeply-felt – and a Finale that at first conjures a magical landscape, if also questioning the Symphony appellation, although there is an increase of momentum and greater activity, goals reached (almost); ultimately, if perhaps slightly too long, there’s no doubting the intrigue and appeal of this carefully crafted music.
Concerto for Orchestra is equally symphonic, just as attractive in ideas and colours, Watkins introducing showier scoring (trumpets especially demanded of, and repaying the composer’s confidence) while maintaining a musical argument, exploiting, at times, a cinematic projection and also a touching sadness, with some ravishing interplay between the two violin sections, typically placed either side of Elder (with, presumably, the antiphonal effects consciously exploited by Watkins). And it’s a sympathetic Elder who elicits the sort of refined, dynamic and focussed, even balletic, playing that these three works require (nimble brass in Fanfare), minutely observed (enchanted use of a celesta in the Concerto’s final movement, reminding of its use in Tippett’s Piano Concerto) to ensure that the two substantial opuses’ bigger pictures emerge, very well recorded if needing a volume increase, the Concerto, also ending as if nearly reaching the finishing tape (a World view?), greeted by warm applause.
Hallé CD HLL 7569 – BTW, the total playing time is 63:35, not the stated 68:20 – is released on March 6.