Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham, 24 October 2024, 4☆☆☆☆. Review: William Ruff.

Photo credit: Kaupo Kikkas.

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham. 24 October 2024. 

4☆☆☆☆ Review: William Ruff.

“A concert rarity meets a popular showpiece.”

You sometimes hear people complain that classical concert programmes have become too safe and predictable.  It’s highly unlikely, however, that anyone would point a wagging finger at Nottingham this week.  Within only five days there have been performances of two cello concertos which most people will never have heard live before: Shostakovich No 2 last Saturday and on Thursday an even rarer visitor to the concert platform, the Cello Concerto by Sir Arthur Bliss.

Guy Johnston was the soloist in the Bliss Concerto, blowing the dust off one of the composer’s last works, written just four years before his death in 1975 (hence the 50th anniversary interest).  Bliss isn’t much performed these days, so is his Cello Concerto worth an outing? 

Guy Johnstone was certainly a committed, energetic advocate of a work which offers plenty of rhythmic excitement but is short of memorable melodies.  Johnstone packed a powerful musical punch from the outset, matching sheer physical strength with musicality, making those leaping intervals and fizzing rhythms really tell.  The second movement is very different: tender, melancholy, altogether more introverted, even though Bliss never allows the material to settle into anything remotely relaxing.  In the finale Johnston captured the music’s rapid changes of mood, from the quick-footed and mischievous to the gently lyrical.  Overall Guy Johnston showed that there’s a lot to admire and enjoy in a work which is strenuously demanding for the soloist, hardly allowing him to draw breath.  But it’s not a very lovable work and its revival may not survive this anniversary year.

Andrew Manze and the RLPO have made quite a name for themselves with their highly acclaimed recordings of British music so it’s not surprising that this programme sounded as if it was part of their musical DNA.  They started with Spitfire Music and Battle in the Air from Sir William Walton’s film score for The Battle of Britain.  This is stirring stuff, a heady mix of heroism and visceral excitement.  It requires razor-sharp precision from all sections of the orchestra to capture the planes in action, with Andrew Manze ensuring that the adrenaline kept pumping throughout this brief but ferocious burst of energy.

And to end: one of classical music’s biggest and most enduring hits – Holst’s The Planets.  It was a huge success at its first performance in 1918 and it’s still thrilling audiences around the world through its wealth of good tunes, spectacular scoring for vast orchestra and the astonishing variety of its seven movements. Holst was more interested in astrology than astronomy, his focus the influence of the planets on human life as it journeys from youth to old age.  Andrew Manze knew how to create exactly the right atmosphere for each movement, drawing from the RLPO not only virtuosity but also sound-pictures that had warmth, clarity and depth.  The music may be familiar but the RLPO never took it for granted.  The young voices of Cantamus brought the concert to a magical conclusion, floating and disappearing into nothingness within Neptune’s mystical world.

 Guy Johnston (cello), Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Andrew Manze (conductor)