Mozart & Shostakovich, CBSO, Symphony Hall, Birmingham, Wednesday 25 September 2024.

4.5✩✩✩✩ Review: David Gray & Paul Gray.

Mozart – Ballet Music from Idomeneo

Mozart – Bassoon Concerto in Bb Major

Mark Simpson – Concertino for Trumpet and Orchestra (UK Premier)

Shostakovich – Symphony No. 9

“Some impressive virtuosity and an exciting new work.”

This was very much a concert of two halves – the first giving us a delightful selection of Mozart, the second skipping forward two-and-a-half centuries or so to deliver pieces from the mid-20th Century and  21st.

It is not clear exactly where, in his opera Idomeneo, Mozart intended the ballet music to occur. Indeed, there is some question as to whether all of it was even performed. It tends not to be included in modern productions of the opera, so the only way to hear it is in the concert hall. 

Conductor, Fabien Gabel, grabbed our attention from the outset with a swaggering, panache-laden reading of the grandiose Chaconne movement. The subsequent, more courtly movements, could perhaps have been more delicate. For this kind of music by Mozart there were a lot of string players on the platform, and - although playing with light vibrato – the texture in the movements after the Chaconne tended to be overly rich and a bit swamping. Sometimes, less can me more. Frankly, given the substantial length and (correct) fuller scoring of the Chaconne, maybe just performing this without the other movements would have been better programming?

The CBSO continued its admirable practice of bringing principal players out of the orchestra to take the lead in concerti. Here we got not one, but two excellent soloists from the band.

Now virtuosity and the bassoon are not often words you find in the same sentence. However, Mozart’s concerto for this instrument requires a very high level of technical accomplishment from the player.  Nikolaj Henriques proved himself more than equal to the task, negotiating some fiendish passage work with precision, character and terrific humour. He really brought out the aria-like quality of the Andante with a rich, singing tone and exquisite phrasing.

Mark Simpson’s Concertino for Trumpet and Orchestra, played here in its UK premier, opened the second half. This is a succinct and densely orchestrated work, characterised by a mass of detail. This detail created surging, bristling, and multifaceted textures. The solo trumpet moves deftly through these textures with, on the one hand, spikey passage work, and on the other, with plaintive lyrical passages that soar over the orchestra. Trumpet, Jason Lewis gave a performance cool and self-contained but, at the same time, highly expressive.

The Concertino is a compelling new piece which packs an emotional punch, together with a dizzzingly wonderful use of rhythm, counterpoint and a huge orchestra: a truly extrardinary sound-world to inhabit, and “Bravissimo” to composer, conductor and soloist for holding the whole thing together.

Plaintive lyrical solo passages are also a major feature in the inner movements of Shostakovich’s 9th Symphony. Lonely woodwind phrases wander, lost, through an austere, almost bleak landscape provided by the strings. Gabel articulated the interplay between these moments and the hurley-burley burlesque passages to shape a narrative that had a sharp, sardonic intent. The CBSO responded to his reading with vigour, well defined detail and tight ensemble.  A seriously impressive performance.

Fabien Gabel – Conductor

Nikolaj Henriques – Bassoon

Jason Lewis - Trumpet