Rhapsody in Blue, CBSO, Symphony Hall, Birmingham, 27 March 2024.

4✩✩✩✩ Review: David Gray & Paul Gray.

“A challenging programme for performers and audience alike, brought to a toe-tapping conclusion.”

Ives – Three Places in New England

Zappa – Bob in Dacron and Sad Jane

Lewis – Memex

Gershwin – Rhapsody in Blue

This concert, curated by conductor, Ilan Volkov, comprised music with various common themes. They were all, to start with, by American composers. Beyond that, they all seemed to involve an exploration of intersection. In the case of pieces by Ives and Gershwin, the intersection was between diverse musical idioms and the classical orchestral tradition. Zappa was an individual in whom a range of cultural influences coexisted. The music of Lewis explores an interplay between music and the potential of technology. All the composers featured in this concert use this intersectionality to reflect concepts of Americanness.

Charles Ives’ ‘Three Places in New England’ is characterised by a feeling of fragmentation. The first movement, a slow march, seems to by trying to construct itself from small fragments as it progresses. The second takes social musical idioms: the march, the dance, and shatters them, only to recombine in a disturbingly chaotic whole. Volkov shaped each movement so as to locate and highlight their narrative momentum, through deafening climaxes, to a dying-fall conclusion.

One cannot not help but feel that Zappa’s ‘Bob in Dacron and Sad Jane’ is a bit of an exercise in kitchen-sink throwing. Orchestrally, it has everything, and then some. Very impressive to watch, and full of rhythmic complexity and imaginative textures; the piece presented the CBSO players with many technical challenges. All of which they met and surmounted with a real display of virtuosic ensemble playing. Hats off to the percussion section and, in particular, to the drum kit, which provides a thread of continuity through the piece.

In George Lewis’ ‘Memex’, blocks of texture dominate to create a monolithic soundscape. As in the Ives, there is use of fragmentary material, but Lewis uses these to ornament and colour, rather than use as building blocks. Again this is a piece requiring tight ensemble and rhythmic virtuosity and, again, the CBSO delivered with precision.

It has to be said that the foregoing three pieces left one with a rather bleak view of Americanness: the composers seem to take a dim and rather disillusioned view of it.

Thank goodness, then, for Gershwin. His ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ is a sleek, glossy, Hollywood vision of a bustling, diverse and optimistic nation. Pianist Stewart Goodyear played with total technical command and didn’t overdo the jazzy twists. Clarinet, Oliver Janes, delivered a sultry sexy opening solo. Volkov kept energy levels high, and the orchestra seemed to be having enormous fun. This was an exuberant reading which brought a largely challenging concert to a joyous conclusion.

Ilan Volkov – Conductor

Stewart Goodyear - Piano