The National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain has a tradition of inviting composers to work with its annual crop of outstandingly talented young musicians that goes back at least to the early 70s, when Pierre Boulez had several memorable encounters. But it seems an even more regular part of the orchestra’s activities now. A year ago Thomas Adès conducted a programme of Francisco Coll, Stravinsky and his own Polaris; this time it was George Benjamin, who included his 2004 score Dances Figures alongside Mussorgsky, Ravel, Ligeti and Debussy.
Benjamin’s choice of works harked back to his own precocious youth, too – he had told the orchestra that as a child he’d first encountered Mussorgsky’s Night on Bare Mountain in the Stokowski-ised version used in Walt Disney’s Fantasia. Here it was the Rimsky-Korsakov arrangement of the score that began the concert, though for once the huge forces of NYOGB – an orchestra with septuple woodwind, 10 horns and three tubas – weren’t necessarily an advantage, when a leaner, meaner sound might have given this evocation of a witches’ sabbath a bit more intensity and edge.
There were a few other moments when the sheer weight of tone seemed almost overbearing in Symphony Hall, but elsewhere Benjamin clearly relished the extra sonic dimension such huge forces allowed him – being able to realise the divisi cello effects in Debussy’s La Mer with two players to each part, for instance; use five piccolos to bring extra definition to some of the lines in his brilliantly vivid performance of Dance Figures; or give such glowing depth to the textures in Ligeti’s Lontano.
In those pieces, and in Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, there was some fabulously poised solo playing from the NYOGB woodwind principals, and inner details in the concerto that you rarely hear in performance. Tamara Stefanovich was the attentive, surprisingly contained soloist, adding a touching tribute to Oliver Knussen, who died last month, as an encore. His Prayer Bell Sketch, sounding like a Debussy prelude reworked by Scriabin, fitted the context of this concert perfectly.
• The repeat of this concert at the Proms is available on BBC iPlayer.
