Hadelich, BBC Philharmonic, Storgårds, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - youth, fate and pain

Concerts need to have themes, it seems, today, and the BBC Philharmonic’s publicity suggested two contrasting ideas for the opening of its 2025-26 season at the Bridgewater Hall. One was “Fountain of Youth” (the programme title and also that of Julia Wolfe’s nine-minute work that began its orchestral content) and the other “Grasping pain, embracing fate” (used as a kind of strapline).

Given that the latter phrase must have been meant to reflect something in the music, I was wondering – and still am – where pain came into it. Perhaps it was actually a reference to the pre-concert show: that was another composition by Wolfe, LAD, written for nine bagpipers and played from the highest level of the concert hall’s foyers but audible everywhere else. It came with a health warning, “noise levels may be high”, which was reasonable enough, and in some ways was not unlike listening to the car horns of a traffic jam in a busy African city.

Before the event itself, the pipers’ preparation was itself audible, though they were behind closed doors in a side space. I was curious as to why it was important that every one of their 27 drone pipes had to be meticulously tuned with an electronic meter – surely the proper characteristic of ensemble bagpipe playing is that they’re usually all slightly out of tune with each other? But this was different: in LAD, it’s important that the drones all start dead in tune, because the piece consists of a working out of the idea that their pitches can be microtonally changed: they enter in turn with a sort of upward wail, as pipes do as the bag gets to full pressure, and then different pitches and intervals are explored. There are two strains that identify as melodies, and effects of interacting overtones and trills as well as the pitch-bending slithering, and it goes on for 17 minutes. Perhaps best experienced at a distance, it gave a hint of the sort of sounds the composer likes to create, and congratulations are undoubtedly due to the pipers for realizing it.

The orchestral programme was conducted by the Philharmonic’s chief conductor, John Storgårds, whose versatility needs no introductions, with the UK premiere of Julia Wolfe’s Fountain of Youth, originally written for the New World Symphony, a youth orchestra and academy based in Miami Beach, Florida. There’s a drone effect here, too, and quite a lot of pitch-bending, and four washboards, played by the percussion department, have a prominent role. It’s been described as “the musical equivalent of a concrete wall”, and once it gets into its groove there are plenty of minimalist-style ostinati (string-crossing for the violins and violas, pizzicati for the cellos and basses), a passacaglia-like effect as a slow bass line underpins all the hectic activity above it, and a few moments of calm before a general crescendo, a sudden stop, and a final wild dance. Julia Wolfe is the Philharmonic’s “composer in residence” for the season, and we look forward to hearing more of her music, including her oratorio Anthracite Fields next March.

Augustin Hadelich (pictured right) was the soloist in Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2. What a phenomenal player Hadelich is! His tonal and expressive range is vast, his virtuosity extraordinary, and he has the knack of injecting more than one emotional quality into his music at a time – in this case a sense of foreboding amid the sweet-and-sour harmonies and lyrical melody-spinning of Prokofiev in the 1930s (the piece was written contemporaneously with the score for Romeo and Juliet). The wind and brass of the orchestra proved themselves nicely snappy in their role in the quasi-scherzo that makes its way into the neo-classical, pizzicato-accompanied stateliness of the slow movement, and in the slightly clodhopping, folksy finale – aptly judged by Storgårds and Hadelich – the complicated interaction of soloist and various orchestral departments was handled with deft skill. This Prokofiev, in the hands of Augustin Hadelich, has surely never sounded better. If rejuvenation was the theme of the evening, the smile on Storgårds’ face at the close of the concerto, quite a contrast to his wry grimace after the opening piece, proved it had worked for him.

Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony was the second part of the entertainment. This is where fate was to come in: it’s a classic darkness-to-light Romantic symphony, and began with the motto theme announced in doom-laden style and a hesitant, almost staggering pulse, before the first movement’s main subjects began in urgent, nervous mien. There was a heavy tread – fate dogging a hero’s footsteps? – well discernible in the coda.

The inner movements of the symphony are both comparatively sunny and contain some of Tchaikovsky’s most idyllic tunes. Guest principal horn Olivia Gandee saved her loveliest tone for the opening of the Andante cantabile; there was admirable tension in the following passage, and Fraser Langton, principal clarinet, brought a marked sense of lost-love longing to the second big theme. The Waltz moved fast enough to make the violins’ (with Zoe Beyers in the leader’s chair) and woodwind’s lines a demonstration of sheer virtuosity. So far, so very good – though to me the combined French horns’ role in the orchestral blend, when really they have little to do but lend emphasis to the pulse, was over-emphasized in both the first two movements and the last. It’s a matter of balance and may not even be audible in the mix as heard on the radio next month… possibly also a quirk of the hall acoustic.

The finale of the symphony, though, began with a tutti that was incisive and exciting, and it sustained those qualities through to the thunderous half-close before the final major-key transformation of the motto. That was delivered with panache and gusto – understandable, perhaps, as adrenalin took its effect – but not, I believe, quite the moderato assai e molto maestoso that Tchaikovsky asked for. It should sound like a full-throated, heartfelt anthem, not a victory parade, and this was just a bit too cheerful. Listen to Barbirolli’s version, to see how it can be done.  

• To be broadcast on Radio 3 on 28 October 
• More classical reviews on theartsdesk