Conductor Alan Gilbert makes Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra shine

Alan Gilbert conducted the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra for the fifth time on Wednesday 8 February. Until the end of this season, he is chief of the New York Philharmonic, exuberantly expressing his love for contemporary music. He proved the ideal conductor to perform the new work of Joey Roukens and led the musicians confidently through the stirring score of his music. Boundless (Homage to L.B.).

Roukens wrote his piece as part of the commemoration of Leonard Bernstein's centenary in 2018, putting the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra a year ahead of the troops. An ode to the American eclectic is right up Joey Roukens' alley. Boundless (Homage to L.B.) is his third composition for the Capital Orchestra. - Better said part of the orchestra, as the scoring calls for only strings, percussion, harp, celesta and keyboard. The piece flanked Bernstein's Serenade for violin and string orchestra for a similar instrumentation.

Adams meets Bernstein

Boundless (Homage to L.B.) hits the ground running. In a murderous tempo, we hear juicy, repeating motifs à la John Adams, spiced with swinging syncopations à la Leonard Bernstein. What is striking is the smoothness with which the musicians convey the swinging tempi. As if they have never done anything else and spend all their free time in smoky jazz clubs. A big contrast with last week, when Gustavo Gimeno also took them through compositions by Bernstein and we heard a kind of swing-on-clogs.

After the propulsive opening, Roukens halts the movement with a firm slap in the percussion. A deep buzzing bass introduces a passage with misty strings that create a restrained tension. This is somewhat akin to the brooding atmosphere of Sibelius' Fourth Symphony, performed after the interval.

Box music

A dramatic swelling crescendo is followed by tinkling music of harp and celesta. This smacks of the last of the series Anniversaries for piano solo, with which Bernstein honoured friends and colleagues. The piece picks up steam again and ends with sticks bouncing adrift on the strings that come to a splashy halt with a thunderous patsboem from the percussionists.

Roukens can congratulate himself on the superb performance of his energising piece. Gilbert moulds the sound of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra into a charming spring breeze as easily as into orgiastic bursts of sound. Roukens is often accused of his music tending towards kitsch, but manages to avoid those cliffs sufficiently as far as I am concerned. Effective and appealing she certainly is, even if she kept Boundless not hold the tension for the full 15 minutes.

Creamy and sophisticated

Gilbert again showed his class in the Serenade by Bernstein. The sophisticated, creamy sound of the string orchestra perfectly supported Augustin Hadelych's lilting playing. The American violinist replaced Liviu Prunaru, concertmaster of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, who had had to cancel due to illness. Although performing the piece for only the second time, Hadelych played from memory. A feat of stature.

Sibelius' Fourth Symphony was also a model of sophistication. Gilbert introduced this brooding work with a few touchingly placed comments. For instance, he pointed out the bright spots in the second and last movements, which undermine the common perception that this would be a pessimistic work. The performance was memorable. The many meandering, slightly dissonant themes, the Wagnerian outbursts, the threat of dark Finnish forests, the dancing nimbleness, it all sounded like clockwork.

The concert will be repeated several more times in the coming days. I would say: make sure you are there!