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GRAMOPHONE (05/2015)
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Reviewer: William Yeoman


 

Both conductors –  Ryan Wigglesworth  (in No 4) and  Vladimir Jurowski (No 8) – make a strong case for these  symphonies and indeed I can imagine  them inter-changing with equal success.  Wigglesworth’s Fourth arrives with a  roar but the outrage is in the remorseless  drive; Jurowski suggests parallels with  Rachmaninov’s The Bells in the  tintinnabulations of the Eighth.

 

I think the fury of the Fourth is more  unremitting when the tempi of the outer  movements are pushed to the point of  recklessness. So many relax into the first  movement’s second subject, for instance,  looking for and finding a degree of relief  or solace – but its lyricism is full of anxiety  and Wigglesworth lends an air of nervy  breathlessness. The second half of the first  movement (as indeed the still centre of the  finale) evokes a fragile peace and there is  an authentic ache in the LPO’s stringplaying throughout. The fractured  syncopations of the Scherzo suggest a  grotesque carnival of sorts, while the  headlong militarism of the finale speaks  for itself, the scoring shrill and demented.

 

As I write, the  Australian Chamber  Orchestra are touring  Australia with The

Four Seasons interspersed (seasoned?) by  contributions from oud player Joseph  Tawadros and percussionist James  Tawadros – reminding us that ‘Venice is  barely a day’s sail from Cairo’. Alas, the  only exoticism you can expect from the  ACO’s recorded version is a reproduction  of West Australian artist Guy Grey-Smith’s  striking painting Karri Trees, which adorns  the booklet cover.

 

Nevertheless, although this isn’t a  live recording, what you do get is all  the excitement and spontaneity of a live  performance – along with the ACO’s  trademark visceral approach to early  music. Throughout, Tognetti practices  a kind of refined larrikinism as he dances  over ensemble paragraphs that seemed  hewn from granite. Or perhaps a better  metaphor is the salt water that runs in  rivulets over the ripped body of a  bronzed Aussie lifesaver?

 

Perhaps that’s taking things a little far.  But there is some exceptional playing here,  which, while it doesn’t reach the exalted  heights of Carmignola and the Venice Baroque Orchestra (still my favourite Four Seasons), has all the poetry and ferocity of  the best accounts. And the overall narrative  is brilliantly stage-managed: in Spring,  Tognetti seems deliberately to hold back,  setting us up for the extremes of Summer  before a rather forthright Autumn similarly  leads to a Winter crackling with startlingly  realised sonic effects.

 

Of the fillers, the B minor Concerto  for four violins and the Sinfonia from the  opera La verità in cimento best demonstrate  another quality for which the ACO are well  known: an utterly unified aesthetic which  admits of the wildest fantasy.


   

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