Concert review: The Hallé at Royal Concert Hall

Gardolińska’s laser-precision conducting technique, engagement with the orchestra and keen musical intelligence were immediately apparent in Copland’s Appalachian Spring. Often played as brash showpiece, here the emphasis was on the evocation of landscape, community and heritage. Gardolińska’s take on it was expansive and unhurried, allowing nuance and the fine detail of the score to emerge. Appalachian Spring is much-recorded and much-performed; I sometimes find it a jaded and over-familiar listening experience. Gardolińska’s interpretation made me feel as if I were discovering it anew.

She would similarly reinvigorate Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 before the evening was over; but prior to that, violinist Alena Baeva took the spotlight for Barber’s Violin Concerto. Understandably popular - it gives the soloist plenty of opportunity to shine and, at twenty minutes, doesn’t outstay its welcome - it nonetheless fixates on technical prowess over musicality and demonstrates little in the way of thematic continuity across its three movements.

Baeva took the expected approach and went at it full throttle. Wild of hair, quirky in her stage presence, resplendent in flowing Victorian dress, she brought more than a touch of Kate Bush to the proceedings. But whereas Bush’s eccentricity is inherent to the persona and the performance, there was a theatricality to Baeva’s stage presence that threatened to detract from the music.

It was Gardolińska’s handling of the material, weaving The Hallé around Baeva’s performance with a knowing ironic wit, that elevated the concerto and turned what could have been a makeweight between the Copland and the Dvořák into a fine example of nimble and intuitive conducting.

A lithe and athletic figure on the podium, Gardolińska rejected the showboating style of many conductors, shaping the music precisely and with articulate definition, the players at one with her artistic vision. At times she reminded me of Bernard Haitink, particularly in the way an ostensibly small gesture drew from them a specific colour or nuance; elsewhere, she achieved a raw power that Giulini or Solti would be proud of.

Dvořák’s New World symphony - the subtitle added to the score almost on impulse - occupied the second half of the bill. Like Appalachian Spring, it’s been done to death and is too frequently treated as a showstopper of the crash-bang-wallop variety. The closing movement can easily degenerate into cacophony and, for all that it’s a staple in the recorded legacy of most maestri, there are comparatively few recordings which manage to sidestep this tendency. Personally, I tend towards Kertész’s with the London Symphony Orchestra and Kubelík’s with the Berlin Philharmonic - from 1967 and 1972 respectively - and eschew just about everybody else’s.

Marta Gardolińska proved herself the equal of Kertész and Kubelík, delivering an opening movement full of snappy vitality which set up a wonderful contrast with the immediately recognisable second movement, where the keening homesick theme offers an easy temptation to cheap emotionalism and strings that sound like they’re slick with syrup. In Gardolińska’s hands, it became an introspective passage imbued with quiet dignity. The finale was equally impressive, the necessity of a thrilling, even bombastic, denouement held in perfect balance with an expansive tone which allowed the music to heard rather than rushing headlong for the final bars. 

Gardolińska is carving out an impressive career. She was second conductor during the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s 2019-20 season to Gustavo Dudamel, a Deutsche Grammophon recording artist. It would great to see her on that label in the not too distant future, perhaps launching with a complete Dvořák symphony cycle. How about it, DG?

The Hallé took place at Royal Concert Hall on 2 May 025.

trch.co.uk