Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)
Symphony no. 1, op. 13 (1895)
Symphonic dances, op. 45 (1940)
Sinfonia of London/John Wilson
rec. 2024, Church of St. Augustine, Kilburn, London
Chandos CHSA5351 SACD [77]
The city of Bristol in the west of England regularly features in lists of the most desirable places to live in the UK. Since November 2023 it has had an even greater attraction for classical music lovers after the opening of the Bristol Beacon, a new £132 million concert venue that replaced the old – and, for well-known reasons, subsequently renamed – Colston Hall.
Some months ago I was seated in the stalls at the Bristol Beacon when John Wilson and his Sinfonia of London performed Rachmaninoff’s first symphony. Given the fact that, since the orchestra’s foundation getting on for a decade ago, it has garnered a clutch of very enthusiastic reviews for its recorded performances across a very wide ranging repertoire (among others, review ~ review ~ review ~ review), I was expecting something a bit special from Mr Wilson and his players and, as it turned out, that Bristol Beacon live performance was a really memorable occasion. Revelling in the new venue’s superb acoustics, the orchestra gave full rein to the symphony’s vigorous, often brash energy in an expertly articulated performance. Exploiting its vivid, primary-coloured scoring to the full, its players gloried, too, in those occasional rough-hewn – not to say positive jagged – edges that, at the work’s disastrous premiere, had famously led César Cui to compare it to “a programme symphony based on the story of the ten plagues of Egypt… [that] would delight the inhabitants of Hell”. At the same time and to great effect, they seized every one of the many available opportunities to plumb the piece’s darkly emotional depths. All in all, I left the Bristol Beacon that day feeling that I had experienced a well-conceived, well-balanced, expertly delivered and, above all, tremendously exciting performance.
It would be unfair for me, however, to compare chalk with cheese by using my recollection of that concert’s enormous success to assess this new release. Made under studio conditions in a North London church, the latter needs to be considered entirely on its own terms and, now that the symphony has shed the ugly duckling image that it had for many years, there are, thankfully, plenty of other studio performances around for comparison.
As it turns out, listening to this disc alongside other accounts from the likes of Eugene Ormandy, Evgeny Svetlanov, Vladimir Ashkenazy (Decca 448 1162) and Lorin Maazel (DG E445 590-2), as well as the undeservedly overlooked Pavel Kogan, produces somewhat disappointing results. The main reason lies, I think, in John Wilson’s somewhat idiosyncratic approach to the piece in this recording.
As it happens, that approach turns out to be rather similar to that which, a couple of years ago, he applied to Rachmaninoff’s second symphony. Regular MusicWeb readers may recall that our reviewers’ verdicts on that particular release were very positive, singling out, in particular, a distinctively sophisticated musical style not normally encountered in the piece to such a degree. Ralph Moore, for instance, lauded the performance’s “refinement” and admired passages that were “delicately traced”, “silky”, “exquisitely played” and averse to “undue haste”. Indeed, he actually found the level of sophistication rather excessive at times, with other parts of the score “too tastefully played”. “[B]eautiful though the playing is”, he concluded, “I would like more release”, adding regretfully that “I wish that Wilson did not have such good taste”. Our colleague Jim Westhead was surely making essentially the same point when he pinpointed “an occasional impression of lack of intensity”. David McDade, meanwhile, was similarly struck by the performance’s “consummate delicacy” and the fact that it had been “very much cooked on a cooler setting than the great classic recordings of old… [and] largely eschews traditional Russian emotionality… Wilson pays Rachmaninov a highly flattering compliment by not sticking him in a pigeon hole marked Exotic Russian”.
That’s all well and good in the case of the second symphony, but anyone who is familiar with the first will appreciate that it is an entirely different kettle of fish, a product of youthful and as yet uncoralled impetuosity, written before the composer’s nervous collapse and the therapy that consequently directed him onto a more conventional compositional path. While expressing himself in ridiculously over-the-top language, Cui did have a point of sorts – that Rachmaninoff’s fiercely impassioned, sometimes bluntly expressed, never-revised warts’n’all first symphony, with its often menacing atmosphere linked by the composer himself to the Biblical quotation “Vengeance is mine; I shall repay”, wasn’t a comfortable listen for most contemporary audiences. To approach it in a way that seeks to relate it to its better-known successor and, in so doing, prioritises such qualities as refinement, delicacy, exquisiteness, good taste and cooler settings, while, at the same time, steering clear of intensity and “traditional Russian emotionality”, surely flies in the face of the score itself. In his review of the Svetlanov recording referenced above, my colleague Rob Barnett rightly characterised this music as redolent of “the steppes, oriental fantasy and gypsy campfires”, to which I would add a notably strong whiff of Russian orthodox church incense. If Rachmaninoff’s first symphony isn’t “Exotic Russian”, whatever else is it?
To be fair, John Wilson clearly recognises that it would be inappropriate to apply his distinctively refined approach uniformly throughout this extraordinarily conceived piece. At many points, particularly in its outer movements, anything other than a directly delivered, rugged interpretation simply would not work. A performance that, for instance, plays down the visceral impact of the very opening flourish of the first movement, where rugged, growling brass grabs us by the scruff of the neck and urgently demands our attention at all costs, is surely doomed never to recover its musical mojo. Mr Wilson quite rightly, therefore, gives that particular moment its due weight, driving the point home at a rather slower than usual tempo and thereby delivering a promisingly awesome start. All too soon, however, any real sense of strong, propulsive drive is prematurely relaxed and we find the performance slowing to a crawl and self-indulgently focussing its attention on the – admittedly rather beautifully achieved – delivery of individual passages or phrases. All this militates against any sense of inexorable drive and the infliction of that stern, inevitable vengeance specifically referenced by the composer himself. It’s as if, in admiring the attractiveness of the odd individual tree, we are losing overall sight of the dark, threatening forest that’s steadily throwing up new impenetrable thickets all around us and that we urgently need to cut our way through.
Conversely, a few moments that we might have expected to be more justifiably emphasised pass by relatively unremarkably. Thus, approaching the 7:00 mark in the first movement, there is a declamatory and atmospheric passage, delivered by the composer in a forthright, no-nonsense manner that compels the listener’s full attention. Some conductors, including Ormandy (6:47 – 7:42) and Kogan (6:50 – 7:46), choose to enhance its impact by adding a prominent accompaniment of glittering bells. Others, including Maazel (6:55 -0 7:46) and, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, Svetlanov (7:17 – 8:05), don’t do so. Neither does John Wilson (6:49 – 7:42). That may simply reflect the fact that he is apparently using a new edition of the score by Ed Liebrecht, though David Fanning’s otherwise usefully informative booklet essay is silent on the point. Whatever the case, the option to go for a dash of colourful glittering orchestration that would certainly have added a welcome element of “oriental fantasy” has been missed.
After that frustrating start, both the second and third movements go rather well. The second movement is energetically delivered, nicely agile and skittish, while the third is a more notably contemplative account than some others. Mr Wilson’s tempi choices widen the interpretative gap between the two: while his second movement is nearly a minute shorter than, for instance, Ormandy’s, his third is more than a minute longer. The symphony’s overall balance is all the better for that.
The finale, however, once again throws up some issues. Given the entirely appropriate heavyweight way in which he had opened the first movement, it is perhaps surprising that John Wilson doesn’t make more of the opening of the fourth. Its introductory fanfare – which listeners of a certain age will recognise as the old BBC TV Panorama theme music – lacks the last ounce of that essential oomph that’s needed to make the audience sit up and recognise that they’re in for a tumultuous, even terrifying, ride ahead. Later on, too, there’s a degree more dawdling when we ought surely to be rushing onwards relentlessly towards the tremendously powerful coda – except that when it does arrive, preceded by a distinctly underwhelming stroke on the tam-tam, those final declamatory moments don’t turn out to be as mightily delivered as they can and surely ought to be.
If I found John Wilson’s approach to the first symphony paying insufficient regard to its “Exotic Russian” nature and to those inevitable youthful rough musical edges that were never to be revised or tidied up by the composer, I am not so concerned when it comes to Rachmaninoff’s late (1940) masterpiece Symphonic dances. Although it’s true that the work contains the odd thematic reference to the first symphony of nearly five decades earlier (as well as to the 1915 All-night vigil), it is an altogether more sophisticated composition, reflective of a full lifetime’s experience, that sits far more comfortably with the way in which Mr Wilson seems to approach to the composer.
Just as we noted that the symphony on this disc was “edited by Ed Liebrecht”, the Symphonic dances are described as, on this occasion, “edited by John Wilson”. Although once again denied any further enlightenment on the matter, I imagine that we can thereby assume that Mr Wilson feels some sort of affinity with the piece and with the characteristic musical idiom that Rachmaninoff had brought to full refinement by the point of its composition. Whatever the case, this is a pleasant enough – if not an outstanding – account of the piece. Even so, I’m afraid that it isn’t enough to redeem a disc that’s compromised to a serious degree by an unconvincing conception of the first symphony.
Rob Maynard
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