Already a subscriber? Log in
Anyway, the weather held, and the whole thing had the cheerful, semi-improvised feel of a village-hall concert party, with Gilbert and Sullivan’s Three Little Maids (Howard, plus Fflur Wyn and Alison Langer) indulging in competitive selfie-taking, and John Savournin and Robert Murray doing silly things with courgettes during the ‘Gendarmes’ Duet’ from Offenbach’s Geneviève de Brabant. It was all in this sort of vein; the words came across quite well, considering (admittedly, I was seated fairly near the front), and if, like me, you can think of no pleasure more delicious than an al-fresco evening of operetta bonbons, the regular incursions of urban reality only added to the fun.
Forbidden by Mr Whitty from singing along, the audience whispered the responses to Sullivan’s ‘Policeman’s Song’ en masse. Seagulls honked, local kids scaled trees around the perimeter to watch the show for free, and a squadron of west London parakeets performed aerobatics above the stage during Offenbach’s ‘Infernal Galop’. Pleasure all round, and it’s only fair to say that (with the possible exception of the parakeets) this kind of thing doesn’t happen by accident. With no printed programme, the stylish scaled-down orchestrations — presumably created for the occasion — went uncredited. Nor was this the time to wonder why Andrews can curve a phrase so gracefully, or how Savournin’s slight, youthful frame can produce a voice that’s so pregnant with comic gravitas.
Classical music, by its nature, moves slowly. Its most rewarding qualities develop only with frequent and repeated performing experience — not something that has been in great supply lately. But when the industry is forced to improvise, it can; and with at least half the coming season now almost certain to be quarantined, there are signs that orchestras are about to get (relatively) inventive. Cue rare repertoire, chamber music, genre-bending, and flexible ensemble sizes. It’s happening already, online at least. A YouTube Summer Session from the London Philharmonic Orchestra featured the orchestra’s wind section, conductorless, playing works by Mozart, Rossini and Janacek that simply wouldn’t feature in a routine symphonic season.
It was salutary to watch the to-and-fro of the players; their care as well as their evident enjoyment. Lovely, too, to hear the way Mozart can make clarinets and bassoons bubble like a chocolate fountain. In Janacek’s Mladi the old rascal adds just two instruments — a bass clarinet and a piccolo — to a standard wind quintet, and suddenly the music’s roof seems to blow clean off, even while its roots coil ever deeper into the damp Moravian loam. It’s certainly worth a quick online donation, and it feels good to sit and roll the music’s flavours over the tongue, rather than to graze endlessly from a limitless musical buffet. A consolation, of sorts, in this whole bloody mess.
Because you read about chamber music
Also by Richard Bratby
Latest
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in