Music Review: Rodewald Concert, St George’s Hall

Nov 22 2007 by Glyn Mon Hughes, Liverpool Daily Post

The side of St George's Hall, lit up at night _158

ANYTHING with the words “world premiere” normally has most people reaching for their tin hats, heading for the trenches or simply simmering at home in stony silence.

Not so the latest offering from the Rodewald Concert Society, which attracted a virtually capacity audience for its concert in its new home at the Concert Room, in St George’s Hall.

This particular special occasion – one of very many world premieres to be heard in Liverpool in the coming 18 months or so – was the first performance of Hugh Wood’s Clarinet Quintet. This delightful piece was performed by the Chilingirian String Quartet, making a welcome return to Liverpool: they were, for some years, quartet in residence at the University of Liverpool. They were joined by Nicholas Cox, principal clarinet at the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.

We’d had something of a taster of Wood’s music. The orchestra, with the Chilingirians, played his Serenade and Elegy last week.

But this was a splendidly intimate piece. It opened with a lively conversation between clarinet and strings. It was a piece which flowed well and produced that hard-to-describe “English” sound. The lively rondo finale, too, was a particularly bright spot in the recital.

However, the movement which evidently stole the hearts of the audience was the slow movement which was played again after the initial applause, on the request of the composer, who was present. This was a quite ecstatic piece with sublime harmonic shifts, achingly longing and wistful.

The slight moment of agitation in the middle soon settled into the restful mode encountered at the outset. In many ways, it was reminiscent of the work of Gerald Finzi or Percy Whitlock.

The opening work, Mozart’s grandly conceived Hoffmeister String Quartet in D, was played brightly, if a little over loud. The acoustic in the hall is quite unforgiving and little is left unexposed. That said, the delicacy of the adagio, with its complex lines, was a completely different experience.

So it was with the Brahms B minor Clarinet Quintet, a large conception where, again, the slow movement seemed to be the one which was most emotionally charged.