Who paints a city best, sees it most clearly – the resident or the visitor? Is it Turner or Monet, Dickens or TS Eliot, Vaughan Williams or Haydn who captures the character of London more vividly? The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and conductor Andrew Manze put the latter to the test this week with a Prom pairing two great ‘London’ symphonies.
Vaughan Williams is home territory for Manze – a musical tour-guide of unrivalled knowledge, instinct and understanding where this repertoire is concerned. Just as the composer’s A London Symphony delights in detail – the coaxing call of a lavender-seller, the jangle of a hansom cab, the metallic chill of dawn over the Thames – so does Manze’s interpretation.
Bright strands of woodwind, flecks of harp and a glinting solo violin caught the ear like brightly coloured flotsam carried on the surface of the river of strings – inauthentically clear and glossy from the BBC SSO, not a shopping trolley or hint of murky brown in sight. Careful pacing gave this essentially public vision of London a tempering sense of private introspection, broad vistas giving way to narrow musical alleyways full of anxiety, alienation and violence, leading the listener to the contradiction at the centre of the piece.
Where the Vaughan Williams is a musical travelogue, taking in the sights, sounds and spirit of the city, Haydn’s symphony is more accurately a symphony for Londoners – a work that sees the composer skilfully reinventing himself for the English market. The result is genial, irrepressibly jolly – a crowd-pleaser whose simple jokes (just listen to that solo bassoon) are told with the greatest sophistication.
Catching the high-low collision, Manze gave us a Menuet whose third-beat emphases were dig-in-the-ribs cheeky, musical nudges to prepare the listener for a full-on Cockney knees-up (by way of Merchant Ivory) of a Finale. In a city not short on parties, this was one to remember.
