The BBC National Orchestra of Wales is currently exploring how composers have tackled the theme of the creation of the world. Mark Bowden’s A Violence of Gifts, premiered last Saturday will be followed next month by the work which inspired it, Haydn’s The Creation, while this concert had works reflecting four different takes on creation myths from different parts of the world.
Hardly any representation of the chaos preceding the creating of order could be more arresting than that of the French Baroque composer Jean-Féry Rebel in the opening of his ballet Les élémens: it is as violently discordant as anything written three centuries later, and its several fierce repetitions with the strings supported by pounding military drum felt like a provocative challenge to anyone coming in his wake.
Argentinian Alberto Ginastera’s Popol Vuh from 1982 made the perfect bookend to complement the Rebel. The suite’s flowing sequence of seven movements treats Mesoamerican myths and its brutally raw, primitive style recalls the impact of Stravinsky and Bartók at their most violent. Conductor Stefan Asbury was at his most incisive here, urging the extended percussion section to ever grittier interventions. BBCNOW principals had came to the fore in Darius Milhaud’s iconic La Création du Monde, the lyrical solos from alto saxophone, clarinet and oboe elegantly played.
Sibelius’s Finnish legend, Luonnotar, was less satisfying, with the powerful soprano of Gweneth-Ann Jeffers only really warming to her task in the latter part of the tone-poem. Ravel’s exuberant G major Piano Concerto was the extra add-on and, though soloist Zhang Zuo showed both her robust tone and delicate passagework, the overall integrity of this piece was somehow lost. So, too often, was the imaginative creative thread of the programme, what with all the to-ing and fro-ing and recorded interviews inaudible to the audience. Radio listeners surely got the better experience.
