Marin Alsop is beginning her second year as the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra's principal conductor, and she seems intent on demonstrating that her repertoire is much wider than the extrovert 20th-century works with which she made her name. Alsop's cycle of the Brahms symphonies begins next week, and she opened the new season in Poole with a programme of choral Brahms and Beethoven.
Brahms's Schicksalslied (Song of Destiny) is rarely heard. Composed in 1871 to a text by Hölderlin, it was a pivotal work in Brahms's development, marking his transition from miserable young man to an even more miserable older one. The orchestral introduction and postlude, and the flaring outburst when the poet rails against fate, are the best moments. Otherwise, the choral writing is rather stodgy and unmemorable.
The bleary acoustics in the Poole Lighthouse (the old Wessex Hall, now renovated and rebranded) were no help; they make most choral singing congested and confused, including that in the finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, where despite the best efforts of the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus it was impossible to understand the text.
In any case, patience with the performance was all but exhausted by then, because from the start Alsop seemed determined to break all speed records for the work, which she got through in 62 minutes. A bit more training and she'll surely get past that one-hour barrier.
The result was lightweight and utterly uninvolving. The first movement had neither the spaciousness nor the weight to launch the rest of the work, with the woodwind detail swamped by overbearing brass and strings, and no spark of electricity as compensation; the Scherzo hardly registered as a change of pace.
Because the Adagio had started so briskly, the music was fairly chugging along by the time the faster tempo was reached. There was no sense of repose, no moment of reflection before the histrionics of the finale, in which the quartet of soloists (Joan Rodgers, Hilary Summers, Timothy Robinson and Neal Davies) were hardly given a moment to collect their thoughts. But at least they got home early.
