Sinfonia of London: Online Concert Programme | Sun 13 October 2024

Kenneth Hesketh (b. 1968): PatterSongs

Born in Liverpool, Kenneth Hesketh began composing during his time as a chorister at Liverpool Anglican Cathedral, and completed a symphony when he was thirteen. Six years later he received his first formal commission, from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. He went on to study at the Royal College of Music, London, and was awarded a Leonard Bernstein Fellowship, enabling him to attend the celebrated music summer school at Tanglewood, Massachusetts, studying with leading French composer Henri Dutilleux. In 1995, he graduated with a master’s degree in composition from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Following a series of prestigious awards and appointments, he is currently a professor of composition at the Royal College of Music, London.

PatterSongs dates from 2008. Commissioned by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society, it was given its premiere the following year by the Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, conducted by Eduardo Portal. It elaborates orchestral music from Hesketh’s 2002-3 opera The Overcoat. This is based on a short story by the Russian writer Nikolay Gogol (1809-1852), which tells the tale of Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin, a downtrodden middle-aged civil servant, the butt of his younger colleagues’ jokes. When his shabby overcoat becomes unrepairable, he is forced to scrimp and save to buy a replacement. But no sooner does he acquire a magnificent new coat, than it is stolen from him.

‘Patter-songs’ appear frequently in comic operas by, among others, Mozart, Rossini, and Gilbert and Sullivan. Usually intended as show-stoppers, their effect depends on the singer rattling off the largest possible amount of text in the shortest possible time, navigating some tongue-twisting verbal gymnastics along the way. The opening of Kenneth Hesketh’s work, marked “brilliantly and sarcastically”, is full of rapid chattering figures, on strings, then percussion, that allude to a patter-song’s typical style of vocal delivery. By continually reappearing throughout the work, they more or less define its expressive character, which the composer describes as “sometimes swaggering, pompous or comic.” His comments on the piece also draw our attention to “the use of various woodblock figures, particularly the constant repeated hammering towards the end of the work…suggesting the constant nagging and harassing voice” of Akaky’s tormentors. He continues: “The sometimes-cartoonish nature of the work belies the cruelty and grotesquery not far beneath the surface, the capricious musical changes underlining Akaky’s forced smile worn through the circumstances he has to endure.”

The music’s expressive intensity ebbs and flows – in particular, climaxes tend to arrive almost out of nowhere, and subside again just as quickly – but the hectic pace doesn’t relax for one moment. The result is a high-energy work-out for the whole orchestra. And just when we think we have arrived at a quiet ending, comes the sting in the tail.

With grateful acknowledgements to Kenneth Hesketh for his assistance.

© Mike Wheeler

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975): Cello Concerto No. 2

1. Largo
2. Scherzo: Allegretto
3. Finale: Allegretto

Shostakovich wrote both his cello concertos for Mstislav Rostropovich, in 1959 and 1966, respectively. No 1 is an established twentieth-century classic, particularly associated with tonight’s soloist, Sheku Kanneh-Mason. The more elusive, even cryptic, No 2 has taken much longer to claim a firm place in the repertoire. It received its premiere in Moscow on 25 September, 1966, Shostakovich’s sixtieth birthday (the composer claimed that he wrote it as a birthday present to himself).

The orchestra he writes for is unusual, with two horns but no other brass, harps playing in unison throughout (the score specifies a minimum of two), and a large percussion section. The first movement opens with a brooding cello solo, unaccompanied to begin with, then joined by harp and strings. Woodwind pick up on the solo cello’s opening notes, provoking a brief, pungent climax, after which the cello shares a passage of dialogue with the first horn. As the music becomes more active, the cello establishes streams of faster notes (though the basic tempo does not change) which propel the music forward, until the bass drum stops the rest of the orchestra in its tracks, then quietly punctuates the cello solo that follows. The first bassoon and contrabassoon re-enter with a new version of the soloist’s opening phrases – “croaking like frogs”, in writer Malcolm MacDonald’s vivid description – then, together with first horn, harps and strings, join the soloist in winding the movement down.

The Scherzo sees Shostakovich in a characteristically sardonic frame of mind. Again, the cello begins unaccompanied, introducing the rhythmic figure that gives gives the music much of its forward drive. When the oboes and bassoons enter, the soloist latches on to a street-song from Odessa, ‘Bubliki, kupite bublike’ (‘Bread rolls, buy my bread rolls’). This, too, is a constant presence. Shostakovich told his friend isaak Glickman: “I have absolutely no idea how that came about.” But it was a shared joke between Shostakovich and Rostropovich, originating in a party game the year before. The music becomes increasingly shrill and grotesque, with the cello contributing edgy glissandos up and down. The first horn calls a halt, and is joined by the second horn in an extended fanfare over a continuous side-drum roll; marking the start of the finale.

A tambourine takes over from the side-drum, as the soloist launches into a cadenza, before a quiet, calm passage, in which its gently rocking theme is counterpointed by a solo flute, then horn, then clarinet. A repeating percussion figure hints at the way the concerto will end. The music then gathers momentum, until a sudden loud crash from the full orchestra leads to another cadenza for the soloist, punctuated by shakes on the tambourine. Strings re-enter, woodwind and horns get the bit between their teeth, and before we know where we are, flutes, violins and cellos, with the full weight of the orchestra behind them, are yelling the second movement’s Odessa street song. An abrupt cut-off leaves the soloist revisiting material from their first cadenza, to start the long process of bringing the concerto to an end. After the inscrutable ticking percussion passage hinted at earlier – a “fascinating form of musical doodling”, as another Shostakovich scholar, Robert Dearling, described it – repeated notes on the double basses underlie a long sustained note for the soloist, which ends with a subdued crescendo and final accent – as enigmatic a sign-off gesture as Shostakovich ever conceived.

© Mike Wheeler

Sergei Rachmaninov  (1873-1943): Symphony No. 1

1. Grave – allegro ma non troppo
2. Allegro animato
3. Larghetto
4. Allegro con fuoco – largo

For many years Rachmaninov’s First Symphony was famous more for the events surrounding its disastrous premiere than for the music itself. He had attracted considerable attention while still a student at the Moscow Conservatoire, and had a number of successful works to his credit by the time he began the symphony, in January 1895. He worked slowly at first, but the score was finished by the beginning of September. He was extremely pleased with the result, and when the St Petersburg publisher and promoter Mitrofan Belyayev offered a performance, it seemed too good an opportunity to pass up. It was, though, bound to be a risky move, since the more partisan members of the city’s musical circles were usually antagonistic towards anything from Moscow, almost on principle.

Rachmaninov’s confidence in the work was destroyed by the first performance, on 15 March 1897. It was conducted by Alexander Glazunov – badly, by all accounts (Rachmaninov’s wife later claimed that he was half-drunk) – and played by a seriously under-rehearsed orchestra. The St Petersburg critics were, with one exception, implacably hostile, led by César Cui, whose often-quoted review was particularly withering, likening the work to a symphony about the biblical seven plagues of Egypt, composed by a student from the Conservatoire in Hell. Under the circumstances, such an original work didn’t stand a chance.

Depressed as he was by the whole lamentable experience, Rachmaninov did not actually destroy the score as was once claimed. He had thoughts of revising and possibly even publishing it, but it disappeared some years later and it has never come to light. That he still felt some regard for the work towards the end of his life is clear from the nostalgic quotation of the first movement’s main theme which he introduced into his final orchestral work, Symphonic Dances, written in 1940. It makes a poignant footnote to the symphony, since in 1945, two years after his death, a set of orchestral parts was discovered in Leningrad Conservatoire, enabling the complete score to be reconstructed. It was performed in Moscow that same year, and published in 1947.

Like Rachmaninov’s other two symphonies, the First opens with music which will run through the whole work like a motto. The abrupt four-note figure for the woodwind which begins the symphony will return, in different forms, to launch each of the remaining movements. Here, it is answered by a stern string theme which, in a less portentous form, also starts the brisk main part of the movement, on a solo clarinet. The momentum slackens for the poignantly lyrical second theme on solo oboe – a swaying two-note figure which blossoms in an expansive melodic arch. A more passionate outburst then arises quickly, and just as quickly subsides. The central section begins with a sudden loud crash and an energetic fugue, a turn of events clearly modelled, consciously or not, on the equivalent passage in Tchaikovsky’s ‘Pathétique’ Symphony. The music builds a powerful momentum which carries it through an impressive return of the main themes, and on to the powerful coda which whirls the music to a complete standstill.

The swift, delicate second movement is set in motion by the four-note motto and the swaying figure from the first movement. The more forceful middle section culminates in a strange, gawky passage, for two solo violins and plucked strings, which must have struck the conservative St Petersburg critics as among the symphony’s most outrageously avant-garde moments. The movement ends as deftly as it began.

The motto and the swaying figure also open the slow movement. This is dominated by the beautiful solo clarinet theme which follows, clearly related to the first movement’s lyrical oboe melody. It takes flight, first on solo oboe then solo flute, over a rocking figure for the second violins. The central section builds an air of considerable menace, before the return of the rocking figure on solo clarinet, and the main theme on two solo violins.

The opening of the finale is the symphony’s best-known passage – a vigorous introductory few bars leading to the first main theme of the opening movement, now transformed into an incisive march, with brilliant fanfare-like writing for the trumpets. As this fades, the strings take the energetic opening figure and extend it into a full-blown theme. It builds an exhilarating surge of energy,  leading to a typically sweeping Rachmaninov melody of the kind which would become such a characteristic feature of his mature style. A quieter central section recalls earlier movements, before the music begins to regain momentum, eventually hurtling towards its shattering conclusion. An almost hysterical climax is silenced by a gong-stroke, and with the four-note motto grinding away relentlessly on the strings, Rachmaninov sets the awesomely baleful seal on one of the most astonishing symphonic debuts in Western music.

© Mike Wheeler