Page 535 - Media Coverage Book - 75th Aldeburgh Festival 2024

a feat of stamina and a revelation: especially so, for me, No. 2 in A, with the seeming
effortlessness of Brahms’s late, more compressed, style (and such originality in Smith’s handling
of the exquisite piano role in the opening Allegro amabile).

Alas, a mobile went off in the hybrid middle movement, probably for a minute in the bag and
another minute as the lady tried to work out how to switch it off. The players had to stop; the
person in my seat near-shouted “go out” just before she managed to silence the jingle. Curiously,
the ethereal episode that followed was perhaps the highlight of the whole concert. The Third
Sonata begun in the same year (1886) sees a partial return to the old storminess – you’d think
No. 1 was the later work – which allowed Pioro and Smith to end on a tidal wave of committed
ferocity. If only we’d been able to see as well as hear that.

There are never any such drawbacks to the total performance art of Alban Gerhardt, another
“festival featured musician”, who showed us his relish at total collaboration with Edward Gardner
and the London Philharmonic Orchestra over in the main Maltings hall that evening. His – and
their – Elgar Cello Concerto came across with absolute freshness, rollicking forwards, the
bitumen removed, if also some of the more inward shadows; it was difficult for me to judge
because another unfortunate lady, this time with a condition so you couldn’t possibly say
anything, had a singing and a perpetual conversation with herself going on. When the music got
louder, so did the reactions. And a lot of loud music there was, starting with Colin Matthews’
fanfare (a surprise?) for Roger Wright, surely not a portrait of the man in its gnarly opening, but
an effective homage as perhaps Shostakovich’s Festive Overture, which I find harder to sit
through over the years though I know it’s a fine professional piece of work, was not.
Gardner’s innovative programming at the helm of the LPO gave us a spectacular second half.
He’d selected his own highlights from Britten’s full-length ballet The Prince of the Pagodas,