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It’s been a busy week for Wynton Marsalis. Fresh from opening the Edinburgh festival with his monumental 1999 jazz symphony All Rise, the Grammy-winning trumpeter and composer saw the UK premiere of his Concerto for Orchestra at the BBC Proms. And if the former is Marsalis at his most earnestly, sprawlingly ambitious, the latter finds him almost relaxed in a genial, playful tribute to musical Americana.
The giveaway to this newly unbuttoned Marsalis is the tuba, a deadpan commenter throughout the Concerto’s six compact movements. Marsalis sets up his gambit early on: a six-strong percussion section throws out cheeky rhythmic barbs at the rest of the orchestra, who respond lyrically at first, then more forthrightly. The two worlds wrestle and tussle in dances, marches and a swaggering series of solos, that tuba ensuring that flick-knives stay sheathed for these orchestral Jets and Sharks. It’s glossy, punchy writing, setting aside symphonic development in favour of a restless parade of episodes and invention.
The BBC Symphony Orchestra played superbly for James Gaffigan (also straight from Edinburgh), locked in to the conductor’s sleek groove. Special mention for principal trombone Helen Vollam, raising her bell skywards for her solo in Testimonials – all rasp and thunder, like a street evangelist.
Jazz and the classical concert hall met for round two in Gershwin’s Piano Concerto. South Korea’s Yeol Eum Son is always an elegant soloist, but against the muscular cut and thrust of Gaffigan’s orchestra, her delicacy read as prim, her restraint as rigidity. At times, the sheer weight of ensemble sound swallowed her whole.
Every season you come across a Proms statistic that pulls you up short. Is it really just the “dark-toned, Nordic” quality of Samuel Barber’s Symphony No 1, as he described it, that has kept it off the roster since its 1941 festival premiere? Whatever the reason, Gaffigan and the BBCSO demolished it with an urgent, edge-of-seat account of this tautly wrought work: bringing out the noirish quality of the craggy opening Allegro, tension relenting only briefly in the shimmering Andante, before bringing all the lurking threat into focus in a powerful closing passacaglia. Gripping stuff: a Hitchcock film in sound.
