Tag Archives: Ludovic Morlot

BBC SSO / Morlot / Leonskaja

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City Halls, Glasgow

Grasping persuasively the conflict of mood and momentum at the start of Sibelius’ challenging Second Symphony is one thing; sustaining that formidable, ambiguous tread through to the bitter end is another. In this performance by the BBC SSO under Ludovic Morlot – returning to the orchestra in his own right after a highly impressive stand-in appearance two seasons ago – what initially promised gold eventually delivered bronze.

In other words, this was a perfectly worthy performance, if not a record-breaking triumph. It got off to a gripping start, the stop-start multiplicity of Sibelius’ opening themes like dramatic fragmentations, yet galvanised by an overarching vision of continuity, grizzly tensions that lingered through the Allegretto’s silences and gear changes, tempi that constantly refreshed the emotional thrust. 

Such qualities again played their part in the ensuing Andante, which felt, as it should, like the symphony’s mindful, but still restive, centrepiece. The spareness of the initially lonesome walking basses cast an immediate aura of introspection, Morlot’s unlaboured pacing avoiding any necessity for knee-jerk tempo shifts later on, letting the heightening inner tussles speak for themselves. The flow of the final movements proved less heated, Morlot’s grip faltering at times, lessening the euphoric arrival and light-giving impact of the final heroic theme.

In all of this, too, was an occasional sense of undernourished, sometimes misjudged, texturing, most noticeably from the woodwind. Where was the abrasive edge that brings Siblelius’ writing so vividly to life, a belligerence so in keeping with the composer’s character? It rarely surfaced in a performance that almost, but didn’t quite, lead the field.

The first half was all Mozart: a relative novelty in the case of five entr’actes composed in the 1770s for Tobias Philipp von Gebler’s heroic play Thamos, King of Egypt; and one of Mozart’s best-known Piano Concertos – No 24 in C minor – with the redoubtable Elisabeth Leonskaja as soloist.

For all that the incidental music bore a certain fascination – its three call-to-attention chords boldly pre-echoing The Magic Flute, and the “theatre” implicit in Mozart’s writing smacking of operatic prototype – there was an overriding sense of a missing dimension. Nor was the performance as tight and together as might have captured more convincingly its stormy thrills and spills.

If such inconsistencies spread to the concerto – some glaringly uncoordinated attacks sadly diminishing its overall preciseness – there was much in Leonskaja’s performance that earned her the adulation her admirers visibly hold. 

She is her own woman, issuing a style of Mozart playing that eschews the intellectualism of, say, the late Alfred Brendel, the sweet lyrical precision of Mitsuko Uchida, or the golden tone-production of a Steven Osborne or Paul Lewis. Her playing offered a sort of resigned simplicity, a performance given to sudden flights of lightning virtuosity (Brahms’ high-calorie cadenza for one) against moments of seemingly detached calm. 

While these were instances to savour, there were equally ones that felt as if the lights had been dimmed and the heat went off, as in Leonskaja’s tendency not always to shape or caress the lyrical line, or simply to mishit notes. Maybe that’s what led to the periodic nervousness emanating from Morlot and the orchestra.

That aside, Leonskaja’s style remains a matter of taste, and a sizeable audience for Thursday’s live BBC Radio 3 broadcast clearly enjoyed it. She responded with smiling gratitude and, as an encore, the charmed innocence of the Andante from Mozart’s Piano Sonata in C, K545.

Ken Walton

This concert was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 beyond which it is available for 30 days on BBC Sounds

BBC SSO / Morlot

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Eden Court, Inverness

It’s been four years since the BBC SSO last visited Inverness, but its audience has not lost interest. A well-packed Eden Court Theatre greeted the SSO’s return on Friday, and a programme that on paper might have seemed a random assemblage of Puccini, Tchaikovsky, Panufnik and Rachmaninov, but which in practice proved engaging, colourful and purposeful.

Much of that was down to a conductor who wasn’t meant to be there in the first place. As a last-minute replacement for the indisposed Valentina Peleggi, Ludovic Morlot – currently music director of the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, and latterly of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra – struck a rapport with the SSO that was so natural and flowing you’d have thought they were meant for each other.

There was glowing tenderness in a little-known Puccini opener, his Preludio sinfonica, written while a student in 1882, which angles towards the emotional heat of La Boheme but with a cooler  countenance that Morlot coaxed out clearly and calmly. Even with the mild challenge of the dryish Eden Court acoustics, there was a simmering sumptuousness, particularly from the strings, in a performance that smoothly negotiated its shifting contours.

It was the perfect appetiser, too, for Tchaikovsky’s Dante-inspired symphonic fantasia Francesca da Rimini, on one hand the hell-raiser you’d expect from a depiction of Dante’s second circle of hell, on the other an impassioned love story. Morlot captured that equivocation, its wild, impatient frustrations of a stormy background allayed by the sensuous allure of the lovers. Here, the acoustics suffocated to some extent the amplified glow this music breathes, though not so much as to quash its tempestuous exhilaration.

The songs of Alma Mahler, wife of Gustav, with their rare beauty and poetic depth, have only recently come to prominence through recordings. Roxanna Panufnik has recast three of them – Hymne, Ansturm and Hymne an die Nacht – as re-imaginations for orchestra. Or, as she calls them in quasi-Mendelssohn terms, Alma’s Songs Without Words. 

She doesn’t hold back, applying harsher layers of sound to climactic points than you might expect, given the golden sumptuousness of Alma’s expressive style, but Panufnik does offer so much in the way of imaginative colour – from hazy atmospherics to busily entwined melodic tapestries – that there is an unceasing sense of genuine discovery. Morlot took that in hand and moulded a sequence that was both thrilling and reflective.

It might seem unusual to finish a programme with Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No 2, but few will have regretted having pianist Boris Giltburg’s towering performance as the memory to carry home. His wasn’t a typical account, more a heightened personal viewpoint that set out to challenge the accepted rhetoric of this popular warhorse. It was clear from Morlot’s intense concentration that he, too, was prepared for the unexpected. Such a duelling sense of danger added significantly to the theatre of the performance.

Giltburg’s playing was bold and gestural, radiant flourishes accented by a tendency to play provocatively with the tempi, though never to the point of disruption. Inner textural gems were projected unexpectedly, adding that element of surprise and delight, which the SSO responded to with equal suppleness and sparkle. Inevitably, Giltburg responded to the cheering audience reaction with an encore, and again – in Rachmaninov’s Prelude in C sharp minor – showed that he only does things his own way. 

Ken Walton

Thursday’s Glasgow performance of the same programme is available to listen to on BBC Sounds