Page 46 - Final_CBSO's 100th Birthday Celebration

temporary production facility’’ in the outer suburb of Longbridge (formerly one
of the largest car manufacturing plants in Western Europe) that had the
requisite capacity and so enabled social distancing measures to be observed.
Suitably illuminated, it made for an arresting visual setting that, if it conveyed
little sense of acoustic ambience, had no lack of sonic definition. Throughout
the evening, projections onto a screen complemented the performances with
images of the players, of Birmingham and its environs, or visuals deemed
apposite to the work at hand that were seldom detrimental to proceedings.

Tonight’s selection did not open with Bantock as in that inaugural concert, but
Schumann’s overture to his opera Genoveva launched this evening in fine
style. Rattle drew a tangible fatalism from its introduction, then found the right
balance between anxiety and resolve in what followed. Horns may not have
come through wholly unscathed (most often the case with this piece), though
there could be no mistaking the impetus maintained right up to a coda whose
surging affirmation left little doubt that here was an orchestra ‘raring to go’.
Elgar’s Serenade for Strings also featured on that 1920 programme and
tonight received a performance that amply brought out the suavity of its
opening movement. A pity the central Larghetto was overloaded expressively,
its eloquence being impeded rather than abetted by the sluggish tempo and
saturated textures, but the finale evinced more natural poise – Rattle keeping
it flowing as well as eliding nimbly between allusions to earlier themes that
afford the deftest of endings; all the while exuding a pathos such as Elgar was
to make his own.

Sheku Kanneh-Mason has been associated with the CBSO from the outset of
his brief but eventful career, and confirmed no mean identity with Saint-
Saëns’s First Cello Concerto (of which the CBSO made a seminal recording
with Paul Tortelier and then principal conductor Louis Frémaux 45 years ago).
Formal divisions in this artfully constructed single-movement piece were ably
negotiated, creating a momentum allayed but not lost in the central ‘Menuet’
with its archaic elegance, where the rapport between soloist and conductor
was at its keenest.

Now in her mid-30s, Hannah Kendall is well established among younger
British composers (witness her commission for this year’s First Night of the
Proms) and The Spark Catchers – inspired by Lemn Sissay’s poem about
resilience in the face of hardship as displayed by 19th century matchgirls –
fuses scintillating textures and rhythmic agility recalling early Turnage in
onward impetus, with a more subdued central section as contrast. Music
apposite for this setting and for this occasion, Rattle drawing suitably virtuosic
playing from the musicians.

It hardly seems 16 years since A. R. Rahman led the CBSO in a fraught
though exhilarating traversal of Bollywood classics, and his score for Danny
Boyle’s Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire made for a viable suite. The