Page 520 - Aldeburgh Festival 2022 FINAL COVERAGE BOOK

Commissioned by The Cleveland Orchestra, which ceded the premiere to Aldeburgh but will
give the first US outing in due course, Cleveland Pictures is outlined as follows:
“From Rodin and Fabergé to Goya and Turner, each movement of the Cleveland
Pictures brilliantly translates a different item from the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art
into sound. Even in its incomplete form, at 15 ½ minutes the work ranks as one of Knussen’s most
extensive orchestral statements. Of seven projected movements, four exist complete, two exist as
fully-orchestrated fragments, and one exists only as a 10-bar sketch in short score:

I. Portail avec Penseur (Rodin)
II. Calabazas (Velásquez)
III. Dans les vagues (Gauguin) [a fragment]
IV. Two Clocks (Tiffany/Fabergé)
V. St. Ambrose (Goya)
VI. Don Quixote (Masson) [sketch only]
VII. The Burning of the Houses of Parliament (Turner) [a fragment]

… every note of these extraordinarily vivid orchestral pieces … [will be] presented exactly as
Knussen left them – with no interventions or attempts at completion.” [Faber]

On a first hearing, Cleveland Pictures (which Knussen tried out privately in 2008 with the New
World Symphony in Miami but was unhappy with what he’d written at that juncture and, I’m
not sure, maybe made little headway during the remaining ten years). What we have though
is ravishing, dramatic, expressive, outgoing, intense, and specifically picturesque –
unexpectedly so in places, perhaps – fastidiously orchestrated and creatively characterful,
suspenseful as to what is coming next, and slightly longer than anticipated at seventeen
minutes. This first public performance (can it be termed world premiere?) went splendidly,
so too the second one – Knussen often played a new piece twice – and it was good to have a
further bite so soon (following the interval), a chance to relish certain features again, not
least the rich string-writing, and discover new aspects: a flute line, a Baroque imitation, the
crackle of fire, the concertante use of a bass clarinet…

The concert opened with Mussorgsky’s Night on Bare Mountain in Leopold Stokowski’s
graphic if shortened arrangement (which Knussen recorded in Cleveland for DG) made for
Disney’s Fantasia, eerie and ghoulish certainly but the cuts do the piece no favours: de-
satanised Rimsky-Korsakov’s version may be but it’s so much better, as is the composer’s
own untutored original. Stokowski made his own score of Pictures at an Exhibition, also
championed by Knussen, so it would have made a change to have had that rather than what
has become the ‘everyday’ Ravel orchestration (flawless though it may be), especially given
the BBCSO’s recent account under Semyon Bychkov, which really freshened and invigorated
this much-put-upon suite, http://www.colinscolumn.com/bbc-symphony-orchestra-
barbican-centre-semyon-bychkov-conducts-mari-pictures-at-an-exhibition-kirill-gerstein-
plays-richard-strausss-burleske-live-broadcast-on-bbc-ra/. That said, Ryan Wigglesworth, as
throughout this concert, led an impressive performance, full of good things, newly realised
without intrusions for their own sake; tempos well-judged aiding clarity and articulacy, a
concern for timbre, and an acknowledgment that description is already in the music and just
needs to be teased out, all done in various ways to illuminating and gratifying effect. (Do try
Wigglesworth’s own Clocks from a Winter’s Tale, as recorded