The BBC National Orchestra of Wales is marking the 250th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence in a series of concerts, and the UK premiere of Love Returns, by the 87-year-old American composer Joan Tower, was at the centre of this programme with Finnish conductor Tomas Djupsjöbacka.
Tower is best known for her Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman and, in this work, a concerto for alto saxophone, she has realised an uncommonly appealing piece. Its title relates to Tower’s use of a melody from her piano piece, Love Letter, written in memory of her late husband, as the basis for a theme and variations structure, as different from conventional concerto form as can be, evolving and gradually accelerating in tempo over its whole span of six sections. The only departure from this is in the fifth of the six: a solo saxophone cadenza, brilliantly delivered by soloist Steven Banks. His sometimes edgy, sometimes honeyed tone was wonderfully expressive throughout, whirling virtuoso passagework countered by aching lyricism, with Djupsjöbacka ensuring that Tower’s orchestral textures offered the optimal balance to the solo lines.
In the second half, Weber’s Second Symphony in C major and Paul Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber made for a witty pairing. BBCNOW’s wind players revelled in Weber’s felicitous instrumentation and operatic verve, with the energetic Djupsjöbacka making a strong case for the rarely programmed symphony. The Hindemith, written in the US in 1943, is a reimagining of Weber themes rather than a zealously faithful tribute, and a sort of concerto for orchestra: each section gets its turn in the limelight. Noisy and occasionally a bit vulgar, lots of it is plain fun, not a word much associated with Hindemith.
When Britten’s An American Overture – an early work he’d thought of as dead and buried – was exhumed three decades later in the New York Public Library, he asked that it be destroyed. Committed pacifist that he was, he would surely have been mortified to find it here opening this performance at a time of Trumpian war-mongering. Not anyway great Britten, so the less said the better.
• This concert will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 26 March.
