BBCSO/Weilerstein review – Dean's Hamlet 'diffraction' whets the appetite

Barbican, London
The BBC Symphony Orchestra under the assured direction of Joshua Weilerstein performed music from Brett Dean’s forthcoming opera, and impressed in Hallman’s Gesualdo setting

Brett Dean’s opera based on Hamlet – note the composer’s own “based on” formulation – premieres at the Glyndebourne festival in June 2017. Dean has been building towards the finished work in a number of recent compositions, with From Melodious Lay, a treatment of Hamlet and Ophelia’s relationship, the latest. This BBC Symphony Orchestra performance under the assured direction of Joshua Weilerstein more than whetted the appetite.

Whether these scenes for soprano, tenor and orchestra transfer in whole or in part into the opera remains to be seen. The scale of the orchestration may struggle to be accommodated in the Glyndebourne pit. But Dean’s “diffraction,” a setting of Shakespeare’s words from the three surviving editions of the play, with some lines reassigned from other characters to the two principals, clearly points to the essentially psychological direction of the treatment. The troubled and oppressive desires of Hamlet and Ophelia are expressed in the slip and slide of eerily erotic harmonies. Allan Clayton, next summer’s Hamlet, commanded the appropriate princely urgency; but Allison Bell’s fragile Ophelia was the musical and dramatic focus. A boldly written orchestral interlude marked the contrast from the music’s interior world.

Weilerstein began the evening with his fellow American Joseph Hallman’s atmospheric ricordi decomposti, an enticingly scored chamber orchestral setting of vocal music by Shakespeare’s contemporary Carlo Gesualdo. Here too, nothing was quite as it seemed, as harmonies flickered and dissolved, cymbals shivered amid the apparently assured renaissance tonalities and the string players whispered and sighed spookily to themselves as they played. After all this instability and fragmentation, Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances, after the interval, felt like exactly what it was: a blaze of orchestral light. It also gave the impressive Weilerstein the opportunity to showcase the crispness and rhythmic control of his conducting in an established part of the repertoire.

Contributor

Martin Kettle

The GuardianTramp

Related Content

Article image
BBCSO/Weilerstein review – simpatico siblings power expressive Prom
The orchestra’s second Proms appearance this year saw Joshua and Alisa Weilerstein lead a smartly restrained recital of of Pascal Dusapin’s concerto

Andrew Clements

20, Jul, 2017 @11:00 AM

Article image
BBCSO/Oramo review – there's real terror in Brett Dean's Knocking at the Hellgate
The panicky, tumultuous music of Brett Dean’s hellish vision – complemented by pink feather boa and roulette wheel – is delivered with complete conviction

Erica Jeal

29, Sep, 2016 @12:48 PM

Article image
BBCSO/Bělohlávek review – unforced musical truthfulness
The instrumental colours of Dvořák’s quiet and introspective evening-long Requiem came to the fore in the conductor’s reunion with his former orchestra

Andrew Clements

14, Apr, 2017 @2:51 PM

Article image
BBCSO/Bychkov review – sheer exhilarating musicality
The BBCSO’s strings danced and soared as Bychkov and soloist Kirill Gernstein offered a supremely poised account of works by Tchaikovsky and Taneyev

Flora Willson

26, Oct, 2016 @12:32 PM

Article image
BBCSO/Oramo review – Glanert premiere vividly realised
Works by Nielsen and Sibelius preceded Detlev Glanert’s beguiling Megaris, with its bursts of cartoonish fun and stretches of languor

Flora Willson

05, Mar, 2017 @1:03 PM

Article image
BBCSO/Bychkov review – faultless and furious Larcher premiere
Thomas Larcher’s formidable symphony commemorating refugees drowned in the Mediterranean builds to a climax of tremendous irony and power

Tim Ashley

29, Aug, 2016 @1:06 PM

Article image
BBCSO/Young review – sumptuous variety but balance problems
Simone Young gave Zemlinsky’s Lyric Symphony a rare Proms outing and debuted Bayan Northcott’s Concerto for Orchestra

Andrew Clements

01, Sep, 2016 @2:11 PM

Article image
BBCSO/Koenigs review – Rihm's piano concerto keeps you guessing
Rihm’s second piano concerto was negotiated in style by Lothar Koenigs and soloist Nicolas Hodges, while an account of Bruckner’s Seventh was magnificently convincing

Andrew Clements

23, Feb, 2017 @12:43 PM

Article image
BBCSO/Saraste review - courtly bonhomie to precision-crafted ecstasy
A luxuriant new concerto by Diana Burrell was accompanied by a brisk account of Haydn’s The Hen and a driven, hyper-focused Firebird

Flora Willson

08, Dec, 2016 @2:53 PM

Article image
BBCSO/Davis review – mixed rehabilitation of Bliss’s bland Beatitudes
Andrew Davis’s attempt to give Arthur Bliss’s strange choral work dramatic shape and intensity foundered despite powerful, spiky orchestration

Andrew Clements

15, May, 2017 @6:47 AM