Arriving at Ladies’ College at the seventh hour, game-faced and Chooty drawn, I was informed that the Symphony Orchestra of Sri Lanka’s New World Concert was sold out.*

While a few hundred rupees for an evening’s live music remains a pretty good deal, I have to confess this eventuality had not occurred to me. But I was pleased to see the event attracting a crowd, relieved to get a return from a righteous absentee, and sorry to see that other iniquitous no-show-ers had let their seats simply go to waste. (For shame!)

Though they put their best foot forward from the outset, the SOSL did not (does not) quite have the coherence or verve demanded by Edmundo Villani-Côrtes’ Concerto for Flute and Chamber Orchestra (essentially Western Classical tradition, with Brazilian flavouring). The brass and wind sections, especially, struggled with the punchy rhythms of the opening ‘Gingado’ (though the percussion were conspicuously precise). The ‘Moderato’ was more solid – although I find I now experience a default hint-of-Orson-Welles nostalgia in any and every SOSL slow movement [see all previous reviews].

The ‘Allegro’ is heavy with the roaming vigour of early C.20th Americana – Gershwin, Copland, Grofé et al. – and the orchestra went at it. The result was not always four-square (it’s Latin Americana, after all), but the mellower, sunset-over-broad-flowing-river moments were good, and even the mistuning of the horns [also see all previous] seemed somehow to contribute to the melancholic flavour.

The end came out of nowhere, rather, and I was left reflecting that a) it was a smart move to begin with this lesser-known Concerto, and b) it was hardly the orchestra’s fault that the music itself doesn’t quite seem to go the distance.

Their lack of indulgence to visiting flautist Celina Charlier, however, was reprehensible. The Brazilian could not have been expected to blow much more life into the piece without sacrificing the ever-fragile tone of her instrument; but for the most part the solo line did not stand out, which rendered the whole business somewhat underwhelming.

Conversely, the ensemble seemed impelled by soprano Tharanga Goonetilleke’s authority over the two square feet of stage she was permitted to call her own. Her voice was full-throated and -lunged without ever sounding forced, and her physical performance active enough for the four operatic excerpts to retain the excitement of their theatrical origin. (The imaginative failure of the programmers to consider looking for four songs also from the new world we will ignore for now.)

Goonetilleke’s flexibility, in particular, was impressive. Sparkling and graceful in Gounod’s ‘Jewel song’; vivid in Puccini’s ‘Quando m’en vo’’ (Boheme, inevitably); mournfully beautiful in the ‘Porgi amor’ from Figaro (otherwise a bad choice: no offence to Mozart, but shorn of its context the aria is underpowered and absent its natural trajectory).

The highlight, though, was the utterly sensual ‘Piangero la sorte mia’ from Handel’s incomparable Giulio Cesare in Egitto. Both musically and emotionally, Goonetilleke’s torment was pitch-perfect. Moreover, she had the confidence not to over-reach: the da capo was a model of restraint.

I wasn’t banking on enjoying the second half quite as much. Even with the watchful and experienced Gregory Rose at the helm, the headline item, Dvorák’s tumultous Symphony No. 9 in E minor, From the New World, seemed like a voyage too far for the SOSL and all who sail in her.

But it seems you can teach an old sea-dog new tricks. Some, anyway.

The strings rose out of the mist and the horns pa-pah’d, firm but clear; the woodwind were appropriately tremulous; the tutti strings were a little effete, but nonetheless present and correct; on cue, the trumpets sounded the battle call, a clarion of terrible, crystalline beauty. Five stars, again, to the percussion.

It wasn’t all perfect, of course. Where the cellos led, the others followed (round the teepees, step in time!), but where the violins led the merry dance, things were prone to rushing. Perhaps they were disoriented by Rose’s habit (perfectly musical…) of conducting now downwards, now upwards (…but not necessarily very easy to follow).

But there were some nice touches: I particularly liked the billowing curtains at the moment when the spirits of the dead appear to invade the security of the campfire. And on the crest of the great crescendo I found myself smiling. It was an ungenerous ‘I didn’t think you had it in you’ smile; but they did.

After the final cascade there was applause. Which was fair enough. This once.

Rose sped up the ‘Largo’ a tad. The cor anglais was not pretty; but it was haunting and rustic and honest – think Jeremy Irons’ ‘playing’ in The Mission – and thus, I suppose, contextually ‘right’. The string interventions were still a little thin, frankly. But the audience were patient, and allowed the orchestra to marshal their forces. The rewards were in some delicate duetting between the first-desk cellists, sweet interplay between flute and clarinet, and good cavalry from the brass.

In the slide-show of the earth from the air (the continental US, anyway) that is Dvorák’s ‘Scherzo’ not all images got the same treatment, a few clunked in transmission, and some were slightly out of focus; but we definitely felt we’d been given the full tour (albeit with the wild Hinjuns safely air-brushed out).

And then the final ‘Allegro con fuoco’. Even the violins got out the elbow grease for this, even if they were not over-liberal in its application – and bravo (blastro!) to both trumpets and trombone (from somewhere I caught a pre-echo of Dukas’ Sorceror’s Apprentice that I’ve never noted before: was it them?). The horns predictably wimped out of the vital slog to the summit, but by the end it was as broiling and stormy as could be mustered.

Which is to say… underpowered. Even stingy. Lacking in lustre. The Mayflower pilgrims were a parsimonious bunch, no doubt; but even they might have found two double basses to be unnecessarily cheap (the SOSL does have more). Oh, the notes were alright, sure; but the sound – played so safe – was, by and large, less New World than New Deal: snatching victory from the jaws of depression, but at (a) cost.

Same old, same old. Let’s have Gregory Rose back, though. Why, he even restored the National Anthem to its occasional glory!** [Yes, I’m going to keep treating it like a programmed item, as long as the SOSL keep on performing it.]

He also gave little intro speeches to each piece – about the Latino-orchestral tradition, say, or the fact that the New World was new to Dvorák too – and even, rather charmingly, sang a couple of musical examples. With his modernist black suit, and professorial white hair, he was like a kind of musical neo-Jesuit: Lennie Bernstein (oh, Lennie! Lennie!) meets Benjamin Britten. It shouldn’t really need someone to fly halfway round the world to deliver such Classicfmera, of course, but it beats shelling out for the programme and trying to decipher it in the dark.

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* Yes, the Sunday Times has not been receiving its press tickets of late. Go figure.
** Is there a reason why this only happens under the foreign conductors? Is it because they actually treat it like a piece of music instead of a dreary obligation?

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As printed*** in the SL Sunday Times.

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*** without asterisks.

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For theartsdesk

Like a veteran sprinter in a distance race, the Symphony Orchestra of Sri Lanka was quickly away, found stride of genuine grace and quality, travelled well, and then, all-too-predictably, weakened through the latter furlongs until eventually, but barely, making the finish.

They came out of the gate with Dvorak’s Cello Concerto in B minor, a movingly ‘vocal’ piece reminiscent of the great C.19th opera overtures (Act 3, the heroine dying), decorated with flourishes of the composer’s freely-mined Bohemian heritage. With (re-)visiting conductor Keiko Kobayashi in the saddle,* the woodwind led confidently (someone had had a bee in his bassoon during the Anthem…) and the orchestra rose sweetly to greet Dushy Perera’s cello entry.

Perera played courageously, rattling around in nth position, deft and chromatic, displaying much elbow and spiritedly vaulting the hurdles of potential fastidiousness. The more elegiac moments – in that soaring (and sawing) high-romantic mode – were worthy of a frame or two in Citizen Kane. None of which is to mention the feat of playing a 45-minute concerto from memory.

Some of the solo-tutti interchanges were not exactly 100%, nor were the chasseur horn moments any too convincing (though there was one startlingly mellifluous phrase). Albeit the SOSL horn section still isn’t nimble enough – and not a patch on the trumpets who went at it in the rare moments they were allowed to get the brass between their teeth – they were audibly present and generally coherent, which is a step. Generally, though, rough patches were masked by the energetic hocus-pocus of Dvorak in mischievous mood.

The Austro-Hungarian was famously into his folk tunes, but he can’t have intended the opening of the lyrical ‘Adagio’ to sound quite so much like a peasant-village squeeze-box band. The orchestra were reasonably – unusually – agile in their down-shifts from volcanic to balletic, but, in truth, the SOSL is simply not accurate enough to play very quietly.

Nor, indeed, is it big enough to play very loudly – and after a solid and cohesive start both orchestra and soloist struggled in the demanding ‘Finale’ of this monsterwerk (one might blame Dvorak: the piece has more false stops than Lord of the Rings). It was left to the trumpets, the bright and shining stars of the evening, to spur the heaving flanks of the tired beast into one last triumphal gallop. [I’m going to put the equine thing out to pasture now. One-trick ponies rarely go the distance, and it wouldn’t do to be caught flogging a dead horse metaphor.]

Dushy Perera is a front-rank cellist, and the orchestra, for the most part, did a decent job of keeping it down while she played. But for all that she couldn’t quite carry the day against the massed ranks. It’s not enough merely to put the soloist out a foot or two in front of the band: something more, I fear, is needed.

Carl Maria von Weber and his Clarinet Concerto No.1 are (in every sense but the geographical) pretty much exactly halfway between Mozart and Beethoven – and pretty much prime territory for the SOSL.

Guest clarinettist Ado Kihara is, it turns out, also a dancer. As in, a panto dwarf. Or a slightly pissed giraffe. Or just someone who needs the loo. It’s distracting (I had notes to take, but I felt for those obliged to watch). Sound unseen, though, Kihara is technically dazzling: a crisp, light tone (no honking), and immaculate entries with no more zeal to them than was actually required. His practically flawless musicianship hauled the orchestra into his orbit, and when they weren’t putting the sturm to his frenetic drang (or vice versa) they demonstrated a new-found sympathy and restraint with regard to volume.

The slow middle movement never really got going, alas (little point trying to stop the disruptive clapping between movements if the soloist is going to get precious and spend three minutes tinkering with his instrument – and then come back in sharp), and it was marred by orchestral infelicities. I kept thinking that the horns were pulling it off, but then someone would crack a note or underplay an entry: this mournful habit, alas, concluding the ‘Adagio’ (no applause). Kihara’s captivating rendition of the sprightly, elfin ‘Rondo’, though, was a joyous riot – if not, perhaps, so far beyond the realms of expectation as to warrant a rather unedifying encore with two pieces still to go.

One of those pieces was Barber’s Adagio for Strings, or ‘the saddest music ever’, as the programme unwisely tagged it. The Barber is only ever played when someone dies (Butch Cassidy; JFK; Willem Dafoe in Platoon) or there’s a major Barber anniversary (so… death). It’s depressing on the best of days. Here, spliced, without context, into the graceful cheer of the Weber and the wild exuberance of what followed (see below), it was enough, emotionally speaking, to give you the bends.

It’s also not actually all that simple to play – and it bore the dread hallmarks (cf. ‘scars’) of being easy-and-therefore-under-rehearsed. Kobayashi had rightly strategised that slightly too quick trumps rather too slow (and/or flagging), but at a cost to Barber’s dignified anguish. And she couldn’t do much about the fact that the strings simply played the wrong notes. Was that screaming sound someone half a bar ahead, or the agony of the music being pulled apart? (Tip: it was both.)

The curtain lowerer – and this year’s ‘première’, incongruously stuck on the end – was Copland’s El Salón México. Populist as it may have been by the standards of his avant-garde contemporaries, this polytonal box of tricks was too big a risk for the SOSL – or at least a risk they were less than keen to take. To play modernist, even modern-ish, stuff you gotta have what our Mexican friends would call cojones. Or at least the faith of the audience that you know what you’re doing. To wit (actual post-mortem conversation, overheard):

‘Were the woodwind playing wrong notes at the start?’
‘No, I think that’s how the piece is written.’
‘Oh. We just assumed…’

QED. Mis-programmed after the tortured and torturous Barber, El Salón México – lacking in charisma, commitment, or even the requisite variations in tempo (and who could blame Kobayashi for not wanting to take that chance?) – came out more hotel mezzanine than mojito-ravaged dance-hall.

Though there were little sparks of flamboyance (Naveen Fernando’s trumpet was a veritable flare in a string of fairy lights), Copland is beyond SOSL’s imaginative remit. Individual units went off alright, but the orchestra was not at peace with the crazy-paved modular structure of the music. Nor are many of Copland’s chordal sections quite as ‘modern’ as they were made to sound. And nice as it is to see the imported soloist modestly joining his fellow musicians for the closing number, Ado Kihara’s coolly comic input ended up sticking out like the healthy thumb on a rather sore hand.

There was a standing ovation, but – as it transpired – only from three people. The rest were heading for the door.

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* While it is good – vital, even – for SOSL to be exposed to external influences and talent, the aim of these interactions must surely be to develop the orchestra’s core skills and competences. It seems perverse, therefore, that the SOSL has four home-grown conductors in its stable, all of them working with the orchestra on a regular basis (and across several sections, too, which can only foster a healthy and competitive spread of expertise). But between the month just ended and June of next year, four concerts in all, only one will be conducted by an SOSL stalwart, and that is the Christmas sing-along. This is no way to build durable infrastructure.

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For the Sunday Times (SL). Who also chose to run this, presumably by way of satirical contrast.

The second national anthem was rather rousing – the Norwegian, in honour of the sponsors of this gig, the unfailingly generous Norwegian Embassy. Alas, not so the two extracts from Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite No.1 which followed.

‘Morning’ was lacklustre and naïve. ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’, though it entertained a certain glowering momentum (built, fool-proof, into the score), had a different misfiring cluster of notes in every punctuating chord. The result was not evocative. (It was not even, in the technical sense, noteworthy.)

In the grand scheme of things it seems unlikely that the Norwegian government really expects a rousingly pro-Scando musical kick-back every time they sponsor an event; but, by this ham-fisted gesture of appeasement, right on the Ambassador’s nose, the SOSL surely turned the outside chance of causing offence into an iron-clad certainty. (Grieg himself famously came to hate his Norgie-nostalgia smorgasfjord: so programme notes highlighting that Peer Gynt is now principally the stuff of bad TV jingles seemed an unnecessary low blow to the evening’s benefactors.)

As the orchestra plinked and prepped for the Rachmaninov and soloist Harsha Abeyaratne settled at The Ugliest Concert Grand Ever (obscuring half the orchestra) I’d swear the woman next to me crossed herself – though she could have been swatting a mosquito.

But the Piano Concerto No.1 (F#m) was melodious enough. Abeyaratne was technically solid, and there was fire in his heart (if no lower). Not every note was right, but most were righteously intentioned. And Rachmaninov himself, with his mauling paws, wouldn’t begrudge a mere mortal a couple of clipped keys so long as the mortal was giving it both tins of elbow grease.

Of greater concern was that the pianist seemed to be constrained by the orchestra, as though waiting for them (rather unfair since the orchestra’s parts are significantly easier than his). Ananda Dabare, at the podium for the evening, ought to have done more to cut the orchestral cloth according to Abeyaratne’s pocket.

At times, the ‘Vivace-Moderato’ first movement exhibited the loose tonal ‘spread’ of a ‘30s movie soundtrack (at one point disparate sections conspired to rejoin the piano simultaneously flat and sharp). But for their part(s), the orchestra, too, turned out to have guts when they really needed ‘em, and even the brass section – cf. ‘horns’ – stayed on track, on key and on cue. The ensemble was altogether better in the ‘Andante’ (slow movement, innit), and there was a good bite on the beginning of the ‘Allegro Vivace’ third.

Romanticism being the not-so-light motif for the evening, the Rachmaninov landed its punch squarely enough. But it’s a small step from ‘hitting home’ to ‘domestic abuse’ – and expectations for Tchaikovsky’s megalithic Symphony No.4 were, I confess, not high.

Things began badly, the opening brass blast absent of any clarity or commitment, the whole section apparently lacking the will to screw their courage to the blowing place. By the second phrase, though, our huntsmen had found their mojo, and matters began to progress.

Barring a ‘moment’ early on, it was clear that serious rehearsal had gone into this piece. Though the brass section could hardly be accused of overconfidence, the trumpets gave a good lead and at least they all generally sounded like they knew where they were (‘the Most Improved Player Award goes to…’). The brass-and-timpani motif is a focal point of this movement, and they nailed it. The woodwind mini-solos were very tidy, and the strings performed a steady underpinning role with their expansive Russian theme.

Nineteen minutes in (ahem…), there was inter-movement applause. For once, I didn’t mind.

Kudos to the oboe soloist who opened the song-like ‘Andantino’ second movement, and to the cellos (still consistently the most assured unit in the SOSL, with a uniform and sonorous style) who bolstered him with their warm lyricism. The short slow movement struck just the right balance between mellifluous snatches of descant and rolling-Vltava-style melody.

The words ‘Scherzo. Pizzicato ostinato. Allegro.’ are not ones string-players care to see in any combination, and the third movement loomed ominously (a potential pizz.-fall, so to speak). The strings don’t set hair to gut the entire time, instead having to pluck away at a hectic pace – which they didn’t, quite. But the woodwind kept things perky; the brass were pugnacious; and the whole was notably accurate. No great dynamic range, mind, but otherwise pragmatically managed.

The strings, wilting a little, wisely ceded the high ground of the ‘Finale’ to the trumpets, who valiantly led the charge to the finishing line. Even the horns got in on the act, and the cumulative zeal was such that I found myself actually grinning. In the good way.

Thus did this mighty symphony reach its seismic conclusion and – guess what? Not a single soul stood up, and the clapping died out as soon as Dabare left the stage. Audiences can be so contrary.

Having struck themselves in the face with the gauntlet of the Tchaikovsky, the Symphony Orchestra did the only honourable thing and picked it up and got to grips with it. Just. I gather the last three months have been… adventurous… over at SOSL, and one might humbly suggest that the next concert not feature Mahler’s 9th. For the time being, however, congratulations are in order.

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From the Sunday Times (SL).

[In which we learn, also, that it is better to file one’s copy at the absolute last minute, thereby precluding the editor from tampering with the text.]

For the Sunday Times (SL).