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Trailing clouds of glory. From the American side of the Atlantic, it’s hard to see how Nigel Kennedy pulls it off. To be a bad boy at 41, affect a working-class accent and ghetto handshake, wear a Chinese smock and fringed chemise onstage, and publicly denigrate the formal trappings of classical music – for all this Kennedy has earned the love of the wider British public, regular blokes who ogle the bare breasts on Page Three. He’s a pop hero in a Mohawk as much as a violin virtuoso. I went last night to hear Kennedy play his signature piece, the meandering Elgar Violin Concerto. Not exactly showboat material. You wouldn’t have known it form the swooning crowd, however. Royal Albert Hall (the Wembley Stadium of classical music, with benign Prince Albert sitting in gilded splendor across the road like a Victorian gentlemen strapped in for takeoff in a Gothic rocket) was packed, the crowd cheering when Kennedy pulled a little trick but hushed when he played [at his first Proms appearance in 21 years.- ed.]
The tricks are ubiquitous. Kennedy is the only soloist in classical music who saunters on to greet the public with affable comments (“Here to play a little romantic piece for you”), asides to the oboe after he played his A (“Sounds about right, mate”) among other signs that he intends to act as he pleases for the duration. Kennedy made mini-fist pumps between movements, encouraged the orchestra like a discreet soccer coach, and ended the concert by throwing his bouquet and a towel into the mob of fans. Silly? It was all received ecstatically and broadcast live to the nation via BBC television. Yet for all that, and despite the mannerism of turning his back to the audience during orchestral tuttis, Kennedy’s Elgar deserves its acclaim.
In his major symphonic works Elgar prefers to establish a broad river of themes that recur during the discursive unfolding of the whole. He tends to embed wind and brass harmonies discreetly in the orchestra, the overall effect being like seamless plush. There are incidents when eruptions of energy occur, but these are brief and incidental. The Violin Concerto displays these hallmarks, but it is also marked by private inwardness and a lack of interest in grabbing the listener’s attention. The concerto has virtually no life in American concert halls but is a staple in Britain. Kennedy more or less owns the piece, and despite its diffusiveness and longueurs, he drew rapt attention, especially in the whispering interludes in the finale that alternate with flashes of cadenza. You could have heard a pin cushion drop. Zipping off the opening of the first Bach partita as an encore provided the audience with fireworks at the close – and more commentary from Kennedy, flattering the BBC orchestra and conductor Paul Daniel (who makes estimable Elgar recordings from Bournemouth on the Naxos label).
The first half of the concert was devoted to two English works that hardly no American music lover would guess at Twenty Questions. The first was a richly orchestrated tone poem by Arnold Bax, The Garden of Fand, which was a tepid sea picture – in Celtic mythology Fand was an early sea goddess. Apparently this is considered a major work of Bax’s, despite its dreary lack of invention and harmonies that barely rise above Thirties cinema. Harps, glockenspiel, and piccolo suggest the sparkle of waves, and a later broad tune skirts perilously close to “Swanee River.” An outsider’s reactions matter not a jot, however. British music lovers eat this up with a spoon – it’s like mutton stew on the hob and a cold Guinness in hand.
But Bax was bliss itself compared to a vocal setting for tenor and chorus of Wordsworth’s “Immortality” Ode. The poem cries out not to be set to music (who would want to find a melody for “High instincts before which our mortal Nature/ Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised”?). The composer, Gerald Finzi, another nonentity outside England, writes memorable songs, but the Ode was too much for his gifts. It wended its soporific way until I had intimations of eternity, and the idiom was sub-Gerontius without any dramatic instincts. In the end, Finzi wanted to trail clouds of glory into the concert hall, but it was Kennedy who carried it off.
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