Barbican, London
An all British programme featured music by Thea Musgrave, Vaughan Williams and William Walton, with Antoine Tamestit an expressive and sensitive soloist in the latter’s Viola concerto
Antonio Pappano’s evangelical embrace of British music continued apace in a concert featuring a welcome rarity by Thea Musgrave, William Walton’s strangely neglected Viola Concerto, and the latest in his ongoing Vaughan Williams cycle, the evocative A London Symphony.
Musgrave, still composing at 97, wrote Phoenix Rising in 1997 for the late Andrew Davis, to whom Pappano dedicated this concert. A 23-minute rollercoaster, it pits a blackguardly timpanist and his stick-wielding allies against a devil-may-care hornist and his brassy backup band. The horn player enters from off stage, the timpanist stalks off in a huff, and somewhere in the middle, for no immediately discernible reason, a phoenix soars aloft in an iridescent haze of tuned percussion. Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra gave it a thorough workout with marimba, vibraphone, glockenspiel, xylophone and tubular bells creating a magical aura. The musicians certainly revelled in its prickly harmonies, though the theatrical elements might have been pushed further.
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