One quality that Ryan Wigglesworth shares with his former teacher and fellow composer-conductor Oliver Knussen is a talent for programme building, juxtaposing unlikely works to create a satisfying whole. The works in Wigglesworth’s latest appearance with the BBC Symphony Orchestra ranged from Schumann’s Rhenish Symphony to the UK premiere of his own most recent composition, and took in a group of orchestral songs by Richard Strauss and Mauricio Kagel’s Three Etudes en route.
Wigglesworth’s Etudes-Tableaux was first performed last month by the Cleveland Orchestra, with whom he has had a composer fellowship for the last two years. The title suggests a sequence of sharply etched musical images, and Wigglesworth’s orchestral writing is certainly vivid enough, but any suggestion of a rapid turnover of ideas is belied by the work’s structure. Everything comes to an unexpected, inconsequential halt after less than 15 minutes, just as the music seems to be gathering momentum, leaving the impression of a work in progress rather than a finished article.
But very many new works would struggle to make an impression alongside Kagel’s pieces, which are tremendous examples of the ability of one of the late 20th century’s greatest composers to recycle convention in ways that are utterly fresh and exhilarating. Composed in the 1990s, the pieces are studies in recollection as much as anything, with ghosts of long-gone musical styles drifting in and out of focus along utterly unpredictable and quirky paths. They are tremendous virtuoso showpieces, and Wigglesworth ensured the BBCSO made the most of them. He also gave sympathetic support to soprano Sophie Bevan in the Strauss group, without quite the rapturous results such songs can generate, but the Schumann symphony was a bit too well-mannered: it really needs more athletic energy than it was given here.
• Available on iPlayer until 8 March.
