themes by Weber

The deeper you delve into music the more eclectic become your tastes. Go into any well-stocked record shop and you will find something for almost everyone. This plethora only exists because there is a market to sustain it. The live concert-goer doesn’t have it so easy. The more specialised the taste, the further the true dedicatee will travel. I for one would have driven far to hear the Hindemith that MSO played on 7 February, and almost as far for the Bartok, and had I known in advance what a memorable performance it would be, I would have ranged many miles for the Elgar. For me this was a concert that heaped glory on glory. Gone were the reservations one sometimes feels.  This time there were none. Had the same programme been played by the world’s top orchestra it would have impressed me no more profoundly. Seeing such music played by so many familiar faces made it an evening never to forget.

I accept that to some the Symphonic Metamorphoses may have been new ground. Lucky them for the discovery! This work has excited and delighted me since the 1950s, when the composer was still with us. I was celebrating Christmas with friends near Zurich when the radio announced that Paul Hindemith had died. I expressed sorrow but was promptly admonished with - “Being Catholics we do not listen to Hindemith.” As a guest I held my tongue, but pondered that it was anti-Nazi protestant Hindemith whose two great works – the operas Mathis der Maler (Matthias Grunewald the painter) and the later Die Harmonie der Welt (the Harmony of the World), on the persecution of astronomer Kepler - that reveal to all the store this German composer set by freedom. With his part-Jewish wife Hindemith decamped to America, as did Bartok. There is wry irony in the quasi-academic title Symphonic Metamorphoses on themes of Carl Maria von Weber. He had written a winner and could afford to deflect those who only want lush tunes with seductive titles. It was all brilliantly handled by conductor and orchestra, on top form even in the wonderfully syncopated second movement.

The Bartok Concerto for Orchestra is just what its title says – a concerto for each section, almost for each player. (One could almost say the same for the Hindemith). I have heard second-rate performances of this challenging work (in fact I have one on disc). Bartok is not about perfection but spirit, and here the spirit was as compelling as ever. What a native Hungarian would have said of our predominantly Anglo-Saxon orchestra today I cannot say, but to this particular Anglo-Saxon it shimmered intensely from beginning to end. Maybe one native Hungarian had left his mark.

To separate Hindemith and Bartok with Elgar was a master-stroke of programme-planning. This may be the internationally best-known English orchestral work, almost unparalleled in the cello repertoire. The soloist’s performance, experienced at closest quarters, was as much a delight to see as to hear. To remark further on Guy Johnston’s impeccable playing would be an affront to true poetry.

Don Goodsell