RSNO plays Perth Concert Hall

Feb 23 2010 Perthshire Advertiser Tuesday

FOR Thursday’s concert the RSNO were reunited with their former Principal Conductor, now Conductor Laureate, Neeme Järvi. His partnership with the RSNO is as strong as ever and this concert, featuring music from two tragic love stories: Sibelius’s Pélleas et Mélisande, and Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, fully demonstrated Järvi’s wonderful charisma, style and magnetism.

Sibelius composed incidental music to Maeterlinck’s play Pélleas at Mélisande and arranged this suite of nine short movements for concert performance. The music captures the dark moods of the play with its symbolist motifs and dramatic effects, not least in the opening movement At the Castle Gate, which gained popularity as the introductory music for the TV programme The Sky at Night. Here the RSNO strings produced a full-bodied rich sound with the brooding main theme, whilst the woodwind produced dark undertones to heighten the tension as the movement developed to its grand climax.

The cor anglais played an important role in the second movement with its yearning, soulful sounds portraying Mélisande, with shades of Sibelius’s earlier work The Swan of Tuonela. Again the bleak mood was continued in At the Seashore, The Three Blind Sisters and the Pastorale movements with the clarinets adding to the darker hues with superb atmospheric playing. Some light was portrayed in A Spring in the Park and Entr’acte, which were dance-like in their simplicity of style and approach, and the Spinning-wheel movement was given great momentum from the violas, whilst the woodwind spun the delicate melody.

The final movement, The Death of Mélisande is a touching elegy and was played with pathos and yearning by the muted strings that brought the work to a hushed, sad conclusion.

Tristan und Isolde is Wagner’s most important opera in its development of tonality and chromaticism. It is full of orchestral colour and drama and it is little wonder that the Dutch musician Henk de Vlieger has made a concert arrangement, which he has subtitled ‘an orchestral passion’. Wagner made concert performances of the Prelude and Liebestod, which both appear in Vlieger’s arrangement, but the opportunity to hear five more important excerpts from the opera in a continuous symphonic arrangement is inspired.

Some of the more striking aspects were the hunt scene, performed by six horns off stage and the wonderful cor anglais playing in a long solo section of cadenza length. The brass had their day in strengthening the texture at the climaxes but it was the woodwind and strings who played such a dominant role in the love scene where the harmonic structure had wonderful suspensions that seemed to last forever.

The climax in Isoldes Liebestod was shattering, played with all the passion and sensuality the RSNO could muster. However, it was the conducting of Järvi that brought out all the depth of emotion and the dramatic ‘ebb and flow’ of the music that was truly inspirational. His concise yet commanding gestures were a joy to behold and clearly demonstrated his love and devotion to this music.

It was a unique experience to hear this great music arranged for the concert hall and one the audience obviously relished with sustained applause.

Peter Rutterford