Tippett - Piano Concerto, Symphony no.2
£11.88
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Label: LPO
Cat No: LPO-0129
Format: CD
Number of Discs: 1
Genre: Orchestral
Release Date: 29th November 2024
Contents
Artists
Steven Osborne (piano)London Philharmonic Orchestra
Conductor
Edward GardnerWorks
Piano ConcertoSymphony no.2
Artists
Steven Osborne (piano)London Philharmonic Orchestra
Conductor
Edward GardnerAbout
Recorded at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, 25 January 2023 (Piano Concerto) & 10 April 2024 (Symphony no.2)
Sound/Video
Paused
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1Piano Concerto (1953–55): 1. Allegro non troppo
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2Piano Concerto (1953–55): 2. Molto lento e tranquillo
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3Piano Concerto (1953–55): 3. Vivace
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4Symphony No.2 (1956–57): 1. Allegro vigoroso
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5Symphony No.2 (1956–57): 2. Adagio molto e tranquillo
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6Symphony No.2 (1956–57): 3. Presto veloce
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7Symphony No.2 (1956–57): 4. Allegro moderato
Europadisc Review
Following on from their acclaimed 2022 release of Michael Tippett’s opera The Midsummer Marriage, Edward Gardner and the London Philharmonic turn to two further mid-1950s works by Tippett on the orchestra’s own label. Neither the Piano Concerto nor the Second Symphony had the most auspicious beginnings. The soloist originally intended for the Concerto, the brilliant young Australian pianist Noel Mewton-Wood (who had assisted Tippett with the piano reduction of The Midsummer Marriage), committed suicide in December 1953; the eventual choice, Julius Katchen, then walked out of rehearsals shortly before the 1956 premiere, declaring it ‘unplayable’, leaving Louis Kentner to step into the breach. The 1958 premiere of the Symphony, meanwhile, was famously a disaster, with Adrian Boult and the BBC Symphony Orchestra – once the go-to partnership for new music – having to restart just a few minutes into the opening movement. The resulting recriminations soured relations between Tippett and the BBC for years.
None of these misfortunes are evident in the present performances, recorded in January 2023 and April 2024 respectively at London’s Royal Festival Hall. The soloist in the Concerto is Steven Osborne: an ideal choice for a work whose formidable technical demands are disguised beneath a joyously poetic surface. Tippett’s immediate inspiration for the work came from witnessing the great Walter Gieseking rehearsing Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto, and the ground-plan of a relatively expansive first opening movement followed by two more compact ones is an obvious debt. But where Beethoven’s harmonic language is rooted in richly-consonant thirds, Tippett’s is built on the interval of a fourth, as adumbrated in the falling tetrachord of the beguiling opening theme. The special magic of this work is also founded on its collaborative musical style, in particular the way in which the orchestral celesta acts as a go-between (recalling its ‘supernatural’ role in The Midsummer Marriage).
To the general atmosphere of lyrical ardour, the LPO woodwind add a pungent spiciness when playing en bloc, there’s a rhythmic alertness, and the first movement cadenza finds Osborne at his most inwardly poetic. To call the central Molto lento e tranquillo a ‘slow movement’ is somewhat misleading, for the calm orchestral underlay acts as a backdrop to what Stephen Johnson in his booklet notes describes as ‘an almost manic, florid outpouring for the piano’, which Osborne unfolds with his customary meticulous attention to detail. The Vivace finale initially affords some respite for the soloist (whose eventual bravura entrance is prepared by the celesta), and there’s a bluesy episode for the two keyboards before the jubilant, emphatically major-mode ending. It’s all brought off with utter conviction by Osborne, Gardner and the musicians of the LPO, and in a work that’s not exactly overrepresented in the catalogue, this live recording (before an immaculately behaved audience, and with no intrusive applause) is hugely welcome.
At some 34 minutes in length (more or less identical in duration to the Concerto), the Second Symphony is a compact, dynamic work. Here the creative spark was provided by a recording of Vivaldi heard in a Radio Lugano studio overlooking a sunlit Alpine lake. The chugging low Cs of the opening suggest that this was a pre-HIP Vivaldi, and the cross-fertilisation also includes a generous helping of neo-classical Stravinsky, and – in the Adagio molto e tranquillo second movement – the jazz trumpet of Miles Davis. The orchestral piano and harp play important parts, sometimes in harness, at other times contrasted. Where fourths provided the harmonic foundation for the Piano Concerto, fifths create the brightness of the opening Allegro vigoroso, while the Presto veloce scherzo combines rhythmic incisiveness with intricate interplay between the keyboards.
The unconventional form of the finale eventually works its way back to the Symphony’s pounding opening, and the final affirmative chord is left hanging in the air, as if above some great mountain vista. In the post-war years Tippett strove to find another path, distinct from the angst-laden textures of the European avant-garde and the beige tweediness of much British music. The attractive coupling of these two works suggests that to a large extent he succeeded, and these performances – enhanced by the clarity of the Festival Hall’s dry acoustic as well as by Gardner’s trademark musical clearheadedness – make an ideal coupling for those seeking insight into the composer’s music of this period.
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