ODE News

NZ HERALD WILLIAM DART

CLASSICAL REVIEWS

Date: 10/07/2010

Britten: Cello Symphony: Cello Suite no 1 (ONYX4058) *****

"Pieter Wispelwey is quite possibly the finest advocate that Britten’s Cello Symphony will ever have. In the liner note to his new recording of the work, with the Flanders Symphony Orchestra under Seikyo Kim, the Dutch cellist worries whether Britten’s success in the opera house hindered his acceptance as an instrumental composer in some quarters.

Describing the Cello Symphony as a work with a “war zone” of a first movement, followed by a haunted scherzo and a big roar of an Adagio, not to mention an orgiastic closing hymn, Wispelwey gives some hint of what we are about to hear.

The sound of breathing, so often intrusive, adds to the drama of the opening pages, as the soloist’s thrusting chords underpin a rumbling, malevolent orchestra until an eruption of sound frees him for a lyrical flight.

That very sense of drama is what propels the whole score along, even in a scherzo that at times seems on the brink of disintegration. Again, a minute into the movement, a lyrical cello outburst is what is needed to keep potentially dark orchestral forces at bay.

By the final movement – Wispelwey’s “orgiastic hymn” – one realises the strength of the players around him, beautiful caught in a series of live performances through Belguim and Holland. This independent group of 60 freelance musicians,with an impressive catalogue of recordings already behind them, seem especially charged under the FSO’s newly appointed Japanese principal conductor.

Wispelwey describes Britten’s First Solo Cello Suite as a series of fables that surprises, impresses and moves us. And so it does on disc, from a singing Canto Primo, with rich double-stops, through to the fourth and final song, only emerging after a fiery moto perpetuo displays the full extent of Wispelwey’s virtuosity.

Britten’s talent at dipping into a myriad of styles and infusing them with his own wit and individuality was evident from his 1937 Variations on a Theme by Frank Bride. The Skill was still with him in this 1964 Cello Suite, with Wispelwey suitably pensive in the plucked and strummed Serenata while providing all the ghostly barbs needed for a March which almost seems to nod to Britten’s friend Shostakovich."