Yet more brilliant programming from the CBSO, back on a tremendous roll inspired perhaps by the recent joyous with Simon Rattle and Peter Donohoe, and certainly confirmed by the under Andris Nelsons a couple of weekends ago
Virtually identical concerts on consecutive days have built around Haydn and Mozart, and then last week around orchestral transcriptions by Ravel.
Both presentations were conducted by Nelsons on superlative form even for his gifts, making his departure looming on the far horizon even more poignant.
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The Ravel transcriptions began with his own piano suite Le Tombeau de Couperin, a celebration of French culture, and composed at a time when World War I was destroying everything good and gracious.
Nowadays the music sounds rather fey, and does go on a bit given its content, but Nelsons brought a floating air of fantasy as well as shapely rubato where appropriate.
And the many solo contributions from oboist Rainer Gibbons were elegantly pastoral; how good to have him back in the fold after a long absence on the other side of the world for family reasons.
The other Ravel transcription was that of Mussorgsky's pianistically rugged Pictures at an Exhibition; this is such a magnificent orchestration that it beats me why so many others have bothered to try it themselves.
Nelsons' freely-flowing beat (having learned the technique, now he can modify it as he will) drew grittiness, sonority, desolation, brilliance, devoutness and total dedication from his players - among whom the whimpering trumpet of Catherine Moore was outstanding.
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And trumpets were to the fore in the work sandwiched between these two transcriptions, the Trumpet Concerto of Brett Dean, a CBSO co-commission here receiving its 海角视频 premiere - and what an enthusiastic reception it was given by the thrilled audience.
Hakan Hardenberger was the soloist, totally immersed in the music even when not playing, his colourings via an array of mutes vivid and atmospheric, his agility in all Dean's demands consummate, and his relationship with the orchestra as collaborative as chamber-music - indeed so, when he is the centre of a stereophonically-staged trio with two of the orchestral trumpeters, and later when he goes back onto the risers to join them.
The piece is entitled "Dramatis Personae", and is the trumpeter's lonely journey on a search for identity, finding it at last when he leads a jaunty, charming little march among his fellow-workers, supported now by the enthusiastic percussionists who had been such a clicking threat previously.