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OSJ at Queen Elizabeth Hall 19 January 2004
The scheme was a journey from light to dark. One should not feel that way at 50? Routine performances of the Figaro & Don Giovanni overtures got each half off to a bad start. The main meal was a succession of miniatures, tiny songs and orchestral pieces, "Blessed be instants and millimetres and the shadows of tiny things" began the evening's only Woolrich premiere. That might work on the radio with good continuity, but not with lack lustre performances in a sparsely peopled QEH, with endless comings and goings of musicians for platform re-arrangements, so often the bane of contemporary music occasions. Stravinsky was represented by little early songs and orchestrated piano duet trifles. Woolrich's own Pessoa fragments from the Book of Disquiet were attractive for their seven minutes; likewise his settings of tiny Ophelia Songs by Brahms, originally for unaccompanied voice and rescored considerately for three low strings, so that the words could come through. Together, those would have made an effective group if Christine Cairns had gone straight on to Stravinsky's orchestrations of two Sacred Songs of Wolf. Having failed to create a feel-good mood by the interval with fun and games in the first half, the second sequence led us inexorably, via Dallapiccola's little night music - good to hear it again - to the only major Woolrich work included, the lugubrious viola concerto, which I had found moving on a well conceived Woolrich CD, with Lars Anders Tomter as soloist, but less so in this context. John Lubbock buried his head in the score and Jane Atkins gave a rather tentative account of this work. The concert was apparently being recorded for BBC R3, but best go for the BBCSO CD which I recommend unreservedly, NMC D 071. A couple of hours before that concert I had happened upon a real buzz of excited anticipation in the foyer, and was invited to join the large throng of children and their relatives for the 6 o'clock performance of Dance to the Music of Art. Members of the OSJ had collaborated in bringing to fruition in QEH an ambitious Hayward Gallery and JPMorgan project, in connection with the admirable exhibition next door celebrating 100 years of the National Art Collections Fund's acquisitions Saved! for the nation (we'd visited it three times). Groups of primary school children from three London schools took part in ambitious realisations of three artworks which had clearly fired their imaginations, abetted by a couple of OSJ musicians working in each school with visual art, dance and music workshop leaders. The music they evolved together was lively, the singing lusty, the choreography inventive and acrobatic, all taking place under projected images of Jeff Wall's spectacular photo montage A Sudden Gust of Wind, Anish Kapoor's gleaming sculpture Turning the World Inside Out and an exotic Uvol Dance Crest. Afterwards there was a final viewing of the (closed) exhibition for them all, and the project will be completed in March with a reception for all the young people who will receive certifcates and DVDs of the project. Those will be proudly treasured and will have given the Northwold, Gallions and Grasmere primary school children involved lasting positive feelings about the different arts which were combined so imaginatively by the dynamic new creative arts charity, Create Arts. (For an opposite view of this Woolrich Birthday Concert see Erica Jeal in The Guardian) Black Box has just re-released the OSJ's 1990s recording of five of Woolrich's works, as well as a new recording of chamber works recorded by the Schubert Ensemble. A further birthday tribute takes place at the Purcell Room on 9 February, with the Schubert Ensemble. Don't miss! |