Fairfax City, Virginia – Now on an extensive tour of the U.S., the BBC Concert Orchestra, under the baton of new principal conductor Keith Lockhart, whistle-stopped into GMU’s Center for the Arts for an intriguing all-Russian concert. The orchestra’s program featured three audience-pleasing favorites plus an interesting shorter work, Mily Balakirev’s charming “Overture on Three Russian Folk Songs.”
Unlike the much larger BBC Orchestra, the BBC Concert Orchestra—one of five orchestras functioning as part of the British Broadcasting empire—is a much smaller 56-piece ensemble that does workhorse duties on air, as well as offering concert programs of standard classics and a considerable amount of lighter fare.
BBC Concert Orchestra. (Photo credits:
A. Best.)
Originally established in 1931 as the BBC Theatre Orchestra, it was originally resident in Bedford, a town not far from London. After morphing into the BBC Opera Orchestra, it nearly folded in the early 1950s before assuming its current role. Mr. Lockhart recently assumed the principal conducting chores of this orchestra after leaving his post with the Utah Symphony Orchestra last year. He remains best-known as the current conductor of the venerable Boston Pops Orchestra.
Due to its smaller size, the BBC Concert Orchestra currently specializes in works requiring smaller orchestra forces, but also adapts itself to larger works. Saturday evening’s concert featured both ends of the spectrum.
The Balakirev Overture, which opened the program, is a sprightly, rarely heard work, the kind of folk-based, nationalistic Russian music the composer championed. He captained the informal group known as the “Mighty Five,” which included himself, César Cui, Alexander Borodin, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakoff, and Modest Mussorgsky. Though the latter three later overshadowed him by achieving international fame, they owed him much for focusing them on the kind of material that helped give their music a distinctive Russian edge.
Balakirev’s Overture is an example of this kind of music, a somewhat disjointed piece consisting of folk music snippets that eventually knit themselves to one another, leading to a joyous yet tranquil conclusion. The Overture develops a quote from an old Russian folk tune that Tchaikovsky also employed to great effect in his dramatic Fourth Symphony.
BBC Concert Orchestra's new principal
conductor, Keith Lockhart.
The Orchestra’s performance of the Balakirev was pleasant but not particularly distinguished, perhaps owing to the fact that it’s not familiar and thus not much performed today. Entrances were limp on occasion, and some of the first chair work was not quite up to par.
The Orchestra did considerably better in the next work, Prokofiev’s distinctly neoclassical “Classical Symphony” which subtly transforms Haydn-esque and Mozartian style material into something that’s wittily 20th century but not quite. Maestro Lockhart took a leisurely pace throughout this work, which is so often performed today at such a breakneck speed that one can easily lose its clever and intricate details in the headlong rush. There was virtue in this approach: one could easily discover some of this understated symphony’s finer points. But somehow, once again, it also seemed as if the orchestra was, at times, finding its own way through the piece for the first time.
Both the Balakirev and the Prokofiev were well suited to the size of this ensemble. Yet oddly enough, they seemed to really hit their stride on the larger, showier works on the program, Stravinsky’s famous “Firebird Suite” and Rachmaninoff’s beloved Piano Concerto No. 2.
The Stravinsky suite needs no introduction. It’s still probably one of the most famous and most popular pieces on the concert circuit, something that’s been true since the composer’s longer, eponymous ballet was first produced early in the last century. The “Firebird Suite” was a way for Stravinsky to work the ballet’s most famous moments into the concert hall, and its magnificent music always goes over well, running the gamut of emotions and musical effects.
The orchestra performed the composer’s 1919 iteration of the piece, one specifically designed to retain its big-orchestra sound but with a smaller ensemble. Score one for the BBC Concert Orchestra. If you’d closed your eyes, you’d have been hard-pressed not to imagine you were listening to a much larger ensemble, so effective was this orchestra in putting the piece across.
The same was true, but in a different way, for the Rachmaninoff, which followed the intermission. Guest artist, pianist Ilya Yakushev was the soloist and gave a fluid, moving, and virtually flawless reading of the work. His approach was less flashy than one might have expected. Rather, he chose to blend seamlessly with this smaller ensemble, lending to this famous concerto an unaccustomed intimacy and grace without, paradoxically, losing one bit of its drama and excitement.
The program concluded with a pair of encores, a quick, unattributed solo piano riff on Rimsky-Korsakoff’s “Flight of the Bumblebee” by Mr. Yakushev, and a rousing dance from Khachaturian’s “Gayne Ballet” by the orchestra.
Intriguingly, we heard the Moscow State Radio Symphony—a small ensemble very like the BBC Concert Orchestra—perform the same encore in this same venue roughly a year ago. Their interpretation was fun but more than a bit boorish and sloppy, with the percussion section happily blowing out the rest of the musicians.
The BBC Concert Orchestra’s interpretation was exciting as well, but also under pinpoint control, demonstrating conclusively that a more disciplined sound can be far more exciting and effective than a happy but mad dash to the finish line.
Rating: ** ½ (Two and one-half stars.)
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