There are venues that boost a performance – spaces that subtly polish or burnish or clarify – and those that hinder. The latest concert in the Philharmonia’s residency at Canterbury’s Marlowe theatre suggests this handsome building is unfortunately among the latter. The acoustic isn’t so much dry as desiccated, exposing the slightest flaws and offering all the atmosphere of an anechoic chamber.
The orchestra’s dynamo principal guest conductor, Marin Alsop, presumably knew what she would be up against, having made her local debut last year. The concert began with a deliciously natty performance of Arturo Márquez’s Danzón No 2. The opening episode – dusky clarinet, piano, claves, string pizzicato – was loose-limbed. A trumpet solo was served with outrageously slow vibrato, the strings strutted to order.
The music of fellow Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz demands a subtler approach. A recording of her Cello Concerto “Dzonot” (“Abyss”) has already won a 2026 Grammy and here it received its UK premiere from Alisa Weilerstein, the cellist for whom it was written. There was a hiatus for adjustments to her wobbling chair (“We worked on this earlier”, Alsop grimaced) and an awkward moment at the end when Alsop beckoned Ortiz from the audience, only to find there was no route on to the stage. In between, there was a veritable merry-go-round of effects and textures – post-Romantic rhapsodising, flurries of solo scrubbing as if Led Zeppelin had taken up the cello, eddies of minimalist repetition, ethereally twinkling percussion. Weilerstein’s virtuosity was clear but the acoustic kept the score’s potential magic distinctly earthbound.
None of this boded well for Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, in which sonic drama is vital. Solos were given generous space by Alsop, the chamber-music moments beautifully intimate. Some of the louder passages surged compellingly. But elsewhere the strings were uncharacteristically scrappy, evidently unable to hear each other. By the time Alsop returned to conduct Anna Clyne’s noisy, foot stamp-filled Restless Oceans as an encore, that work’s performative frustration seemed all too real.
• Also at Royal Festival Hall, London, on 12 March and Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, on 13 March.
