How would you spend the hours preceding your conducting debut with the London Philharmonic Orchestra? Last-minute study, breathing exercises, a hand-steadying snifter? Andrew Manze, a well-known violinist and emerging conductor, chose to spend them presenting an informal “pre-concert” of Purcell arrangements and adaptations.
Though sparsely attended, the fine performances by young instrumentalists of the LPO’s Foyle Future Firsts programme were quietly inspiring, Manze’s congenial introductions utterly failing to foreshadow the firestorm he would later unleash on the same stage, in a misleadingly polite-looking programme of early 20th-century English music.
Beginning with Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro, Manze drew a rich, focused sound from the LPO strings, their super-smooth but precisely contoured phrasing making an unexpected virtue of the Festival Hall’s muted acoustic. Manze’s podium manner might resemble an irate scholar losing his rag over library fines, but the musical results were extraordinary: his long arms seemed to reach over the stand and pull each player from their seat, eliciting an electricity of ensemble that tore into Elgar’s green and pleasant surfaces to release the pent-up energy beneath.
Manze also led his players expertly through the ambiguous terrain of John Ireland’s piano concerto, a work in which the orchestra’s main role is one of prodding and chivvying the soloist (an excellent Piers Lane), rousing him from his daydream-rhapsodising to join them in trying to make a concerto.
After the interval, William Walton’s First Symphony exploded from the blocks, the music’s tortured energy brilliantly revealed in both design and detail. Manze’s lead was unerring in negotiating the score’s sharp angles and layered textures. More impressive still was the orchestra’s overwhelming singularity of attack and purpose: while Manze drew the first movement to its close, pressing ahead like a deranged general cantering over the volcano’s edge, his faithful cohort followed without pause for thought.
• Available on iPlayer until April 11.
