Christopher Hogwood
The Sunday Times
Review
by Paul Driver
1st November 2009
At Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Britten Sinfonia, playing a work by each of the year's five main anniversary composers, was conducted by Christopher Hogwood, hardly a young thing, though still youthful-seeming, and indelibly associated, for me at least, with that marvellous educational programme he presented on Radio 3 throughout the 1970s, The Young Idea. When he spoke about the items - telling us that they were not thematically linked, but offered a journey through period interpretation from the baroque style of Purcell and Handel to the classicism of Haydn, Mendelssohn's romanticism and the 20th-century neoclassicism of Martinu - well, it was just like another thought-provoking episode of The Young Idea.
The concert's unassumingness, the joy these splendid players evidently take in their work, were refreshing after all the self consciousness and grandiosity at the Festival Hall. They do not have a permanent conductor, but choose someone for each project. This was Hogwood's first appearance with them, and the relationship is clearly productive. The six bright minutes of Purcell's Fairy Queen overture, followed by Handel's Concerto Grosso in F, Op.3, No.4, encapsulated his gifts as a baroque specialist, and valveless brass and olden timpani were retained not only for Haydn's Symphony No. 70, but also for Mendelssohn's Fair Melusina overture, giving the latter a surprising and fabulous crackling edge. For Marinu's Sinfonia Concertante, using four soloists from the orchestra, Handel's harpsichord continuo was replaced by a grand piano, and the music bristled with life.
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Next Production
Britten Sinfonia At Lunch October
London, Norwich, Cambridge and Birmingham
06 - 15 October 2010
Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet is an acknowledged masterpiece and at the heart of this opening concert in Britten Sinfonia’s award-winning lunchtime series. Arguable his best known chamber work, it’s a piece hugely admired by two composers also featured in this concert. The celebrated composer James MacMillan is represented by four miniatures each dedicated to important figures in his life, including Brother Walfrid, founder of Celtic football club, and fellow Scottish composers Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and Sally Beamish. Maxwell Davies turns the tables with a brand new work in tribute to James MacMillan, co-commissioned by Britten Sinfonia and Wigmore Hall.
