Concertos for friends: Colin Currie in Tansy Davies, Tamsin Waley-Cohen in Freya Waley-Cohen with BBC National Orchestra of Wales & Kevin John Edusei at Aldeburgh Festival

Tansy Davies: Earthworks - Colin Currie, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Kevin John Edusei (Photo: Britten Pears Arts)

John Adams: Short Ride in a Fast Machine, Tansy Davies: Earthworks, Shostakovich: Symphony No.10; Colin Currie percussion, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, cond. Kevin John Edusei; Snape Maltings Concert Hall (Friday 19 June 7.30pm)

Rachmaninov: Romance (andante expressivo) from String Quartet No.1 in G minor, Freya Waley-Cohen: Dances, Songs and Hymns for Friendship, Ravel: String Quartet in F; Sacconi Quartet; Orford Church (Saturday 20th June 11am)

Elizabeth Ogonek: Sleep & Unremembrance, Freya Waley-Cohen: Violin Concerto for Tamsin Waley-Cohen, Rachmaninoff: Symphonic Dances; Tamsin Waley-Cohen, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, cond. Kevin John Edusei; Snape Maltings Concert Hall (Saturday 20 June 7.30pm)
Reviewed by Tony Cooper

A pair of high emotive concerts from BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the first high octane featuring Colin Currie in Tansy Davies' concerto, and the second more contemplative with Tamsin Waley-Cohen in concerto by her sister Freya, complemented by more Freya Waley-Cohen from the Sacconi Quartet

Opening a ‘noisy’ and high-octane Friday night concert at Snape Maltings as part of the 77th Aldeburgh Festival fell to the well-known minimalist work Short Ride in a Fast Machine by John Adams. Although only lasting a mere four minutes, this bright and driving orchestral fanfare packs a punch like no other and is always exciting and refreshing to hear especially when played by the likes of an orchestra of the calibre as the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Kevin John Edusei.

Specifically designed to capture the exhilarating and sometimes terrifying sensation of a high-speed ride in a sports car, I liken the piece to an F1 racing car on the starting grid. Comprising a relentless beat played by a woodblock imitating a metronomic engine, the orchestra weaves complex, overlapping rhythms round a constant percussive pulse with the rush of brass fanfares simulating the fast-paced shifting of gears and the building of speed. This frenzied pace continues without pause thereby creating an energetic and hypnotic wall of sound that Stan Kenton (the innovator of the ‘Wall of Sound’) would have been truly proud of.

BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Kevin John Edusei (Photo: Britten Pears Arts)

The percussive beat of this brilliant concert continued with Tansy Davies’ Earthworks, a 25-minute percussion concerto specifically written for the internationally renowned virtuoso percussionist, Colin Currie, the work drew heavily from vast geoglyphs and ancient monuments such as the Uffington White Horse in which Davies imagines these colossal shapes carved into the earth as a form of ancient language, a primal communication, say, between our ancestors and the future.

Musically speaking, the work’s exemplary and, indeed, a well-constructed piece as one would expect coming from the likes of Davies, a composer of high ranking. And it was tremendously performed by the ‘man-of-the-moment’, Colin Currie, marking this year the 40th anniversary of his glowing career.

Enjoying a long-standing association with Davies, he’s widely regarded as the foremost percussion soloist of his generation and was most certainly in his element surrounded by so much ‘knocking gear’ at the front of the stage while his active solo passages for a ‘futuristic drummer’ navigated a host of booming orchestral textures and rhythmic patterned grooves thereby capturing the energetic and danceable feel to the work overall.

The concert ended in a bang and a flourish with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales basking in glory with Shostakovich’s Symphony No.10 in E minor conducted by guest conductor, Kevin John Edusei, who dug deep into Shostakovich’s harrowing and seemingly unsettled score to deliver an alert, ravishing and enticing performance.

One of Shostakovich’s most celebrated and intensely personal works written in 1953, it’s widely interpreted to be a harrowing response to the terrors of the brutal and hostile era of Stalin. Structured into four distinct movements, they explore themes of oppression, anxiety and ultimate personal triumph.

Short and not-so-sweet! The fast and lively second movement (about five minutes’ long) produced a violently aggressive attack from the strings that eventually enveloped the whole orchestra in what musicologists and historians interpret is a relentless and terrifying account of Stalin while the third movement introduces the composer’s famous musical motif - DSCH.

This four-note musical sequence translates to D, E flat, C and B natural and Shostakovich derived these notes from the German spelling of his name (Dmitri Schostakowitsch) employing the German musical notation system. Therefore, D remains the note D; S (Es) translates to E flat; C remains the note C; H (Ha) represents B natural. As such, this motif served as a direct musical stamp allowing Shostakovich to weave himself directly into the narrative of his works.

And by living under the heavy censorship and political terror of the Soviet regime, the symbol also serves as a message of human survival and artistic resistance thereby representing the triumph of the individual’s spirit over the act of tyranny.

The finale was a ‘fight-to-the-finish’ beginning slowly before erupting into a fast-paced almost manic celebration with the ‘Stalin’ theme briefly rearing its ugly head only to be completely crushed by a powerful and triumphant declaration of the DSCH motif coming from the brass and timpani.

This year’s Aldeburgh Festival (notching up its 77th edition) has seen town of Aldeburgh and its surrounds basking in glorious sunshine, cloudless skies and so much more thereby adding so much to the overall fun and pleasure of spending time in Suffolk and the festival which this year marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Benjamin Britten who founded the festival in 1948 with tenor Peter Pears and writer/producer Eric Crozier.

Sacconi String Quartet at Orford Church (Photo: Britten Pears Arts)

A Saturday morning concert by the Sacconi String Quartet at Orford Church (dedicated to St Bartholomew) about five miles from Snape Maltings was simply delightful to take in between two blistering and highly emotive concerts by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.

The church was packed, the environment just right for a string quartet concert and I found myself gaining a seat at the very last minute perched on the historic parish chest. I was sitting on ‘history’ so to speak as the strong oak-made chest dates from the early 17th century and was designed to securely store parish ‘valuables’ such as registers of births, deaths and marriages.

Therefore, in order of preventing theft, the priest and four elected churchgoers were each entrusted with the key to a single lock therefore all five individuals had to be present to open the chest - which is positioned next to the baptismal font at the back of the nave - further strengthened by a series of steel reinforcement bands tightly wrapped round its medieval timber frame.

Anyhow, I found it a comfortable seat and enjoyed an immensely comfortable performance by the Sacconi Quartet which I’ve heard on so many occasions to great delight. They opened their concert offering a tender reading of Rachmaninov’s ‘Romance’ from his unfinished String Quartet No.1 in G minor which was followed by a new work by Freya Waley-Cohen’s Dances, Songs and Hymns for Friendship, premièred in February of this year at the Wigmore Hall to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Sacconi Quartet. Happy birthday!

Roughly, a 25-minute piece covering six well-crafted and rhythmically-pleasing movements comprising ‘Spin, ‘Sing’, Play’, ‘Step’, ‘Pray’, ‘Be’, they all seem to relate to one another in a folksy musical style and were delivered in an unhurried and gentle performance by violinists Ben Hancox/Hannah Dawson, violist Robin Ashwell and cellist Cara Berridge. Judging by the reception the audience gave to these gifted and talented performers, they truly took them to their hearts.

Ending their concert with Ravel’s String Quartet in F major, dating from 1902, it’s the only string quartet that he wrote. A staple of the classical and impressionist repertoire it proved an excellent choice fitting so well the programming overall.

Elegant melodies, sweeping harmonic gestures and driving rhythmic energy stamp the credentials of this fine work by Ravel, a piece widely considered one of the most important and frequently performed masterpieces in the chamber-music repertoire. Therefore, a lovely recital all round in a lovely building boasting a parish chest most probably carved from a single hollowed-out oak trunk which from my point of view became ‘the best seat in the house’. Alleluia!

Like the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra earlier in the festival, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales enjoyed a ‘stayover’ in Suffolk, too, thereby offering a second concert at Snape Maltings which opened in style with a grand 12-minute piece by American composer, Elizabeth Ogonek.

Her composition Sleep & Unremembrance, a distinctive 12-minute ravishing orchestral piece, was commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra as part of the Panufnik Composers’ Scheme and performed in March of this year at Barbican Hall under François-Xavier Roth.

An interesting, rhythmic and dynamic work, demonstrating and exploring the vagaries of memory and otherworldly magical connotations, the wanderings of the subconscious flooded one’s mind tinged with fragmented flashes of human recollection and the unseen mechanics of thought and the deep-seated depths of the psyche.

Taking its starting-point from Wisława Szymborska’s poem While Sleeping, the work chronicles the timespan when life, drawing to a close, spins recollected thoughts of human activity in one’s dreams thereby capturing the spirit of the soul as it makes its journey to ‘a heavenly place’ depending, of course, entirely upon one’s religious, philosophical or personal beliefs.

Freya Waley-Cohen: The Dreamer - Tamsin Waley-Cohen, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Kevin John Edusei (Photo: Britten Pears Arts)

Therefore, Freya Waley-Cohen’s new violin concerto The Dreamer brilliantly performed by her sister, Tamsin, could well be said acts as a companion piece to Ogonek’s stirring and thoughtful ‘dreamful’ work. Such an accomplished and relaxed performer, I’ve heard Tamsin Waley-Cohen so many times and she never fails to delight her audience, therefore her performance of her sister’s highly-emotive and challenging violin concerto, gracefully employing the full use of the orchestra, was so highly desirable to listen to in her capable hands thus showing off her musicality and technical mastery of her chosen instrument.

A work in four movements of 30 minutes’ long, The Dreamer (receiving its world premiere) offered the packed house at Snape Maltings a violin concerto to remember and one to chalk up with the soloist getting very little rest in this concerto.

For instance, in the opening movement, Tamsin Waley-Cohen had to navigate some tricky and intense playing reaching the depths of the lowest part of the violin while gradually growing in status to the instrument’s upper reaches with the orchestra shifting, rallying and spinning round the soloist’s line in a massive orchestral pattern truly showing the composer’s aptitude and skill in writing for large musical forces. I sincerely hope that this violin concerto gains momentum and finds its way into concert halls the world over. It thoroughly deserves to.

The second movement, quiet and subtle, could well be described as ‘a song without words’ with the orchestra darting round the central voice of the violin in a pleasant and amicable manner while the third movement, an earthy scherzo, witnesses the soloist strongly bowing against heavy orchestral writing to exciting effect with the final movement capturing the dreamer against the ticking of time while the soloist stands as the individual against the machine and the lone dancer is just a face in a crowded room. All of us are dreamers, though! Freya Waley-Cohen’s invigorating and compelling violin concerto truly reminds us of that fact.

A brilliant concert under the disciplined baton of Kevin John Edusei ended with a stirring and commanding performance of Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances, a three-movement orchestral suite completed in 1940 which offered the excellent BBC National Orchestra of Wales their last big ‘shout’ at the 2026 Aldeburgh Festival.

The composer’s final major composition, it’s also Rachmaninoff’s only major work written entirely in the United States and is celebrated as a brilliant summation of his life’s work blending late-Romantic melodies with dynamic 20th-century rhythms.

Peppered with driving syncopated rhythms, the well-known opening movement showcases a deeply lyrical solo for alto saxophone offering a nod to the composer’s American surroundings while the haunting melancholic waltz of the second movement conjures up a shadowy, nostalgic and ghostly atmosphere that slowly gives way to the final and intense movement creating a sort of a musical tug-of-war between the grim medieval chant of the Dies irae (representing death) with a melody from the composer’s All-Night Vigil (representing the Resurrection) which in the final bars puts the Dies irae (Day of wrath) duly in its place. Summing up his deep Orthodox faith, Rachmaninoff wrote on the final page of the score: ‘I thank thee, Lord.’ Alleluia!

 

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