Orchestra di Santa Cecilia
Peter Maxwell Davies (conductor)
Massimo Quarta (violin)
Tuesday 6 November 2001
Auditorium di Santa Cecilia, Rome
Berlioz: Overture to Benvenuto Cellini
Paganini: Violin Concerto No. 2 in B minor, Op. 7
Davies: Roma-Amor (first Italian performance)
Over four decades after his year of Roman studies with Petrassi, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies is back at Santa Cecilia, this time as an acclaimed conductor and composer offering a rich symphonic tribute to the capital. For four consecutive evenings, the Roman public responded, flocking to hear a world-class performance of a famous virtuoso showpiece as well as the famous modern composer's interpretation — for the first time in Italy — of one of his recent symphonic scores.
The Overture to Berlioz's Benvenuto Cellini is a brilliant piece well suited for the occasion, in view of the opera's Roman setting. Deeper connections emerge from the vigorous pace, the frequent stringendo and the strength of the contrasts between winds and strings in Davies' rendering, a possible hint of the love for the Eternal City where the Romantic composer spent a year of his youth as winner of the Prix de Rome.
The Berlioz–Paganini sequence did not carry any suggestion of deviltry, as Massimo Quarta's approach to "La campanella" is more intimate than histrionic, even in the flamboyant last movement. Quarta mastered the music's difficulties with natural ease and the focus shifted toward the refined melodies, the balance of the double-stops, the research behind the fingerings and the inner polyphony rather than the brilliance of fiercely attacked fortissimo chords, the speed of the ricochet bowing and the magic of the harmonics. Davies contributed to this approach by keeping the orchestra under tight control and by accentuating the contrast between roaring winds and the hushed strings as a structural element dividing the three lyrical episodes of the central Adagio.
This leads us to Maxwell Davies' own triptych Roma-Amor, a composition of contrasts. "Flamma Fumo
Proxima" was a provocative (and somewhat elephantine) interweave of disparate
sounds, gestures, techniques — very apt to convey the juxtaposition of
ancient magniloquence, Baroque aestheticism and empty rhetoric that must have
overwhelmed the young English musician in 1957. After the first movement, Davies
turned around and stared for about three minutes at the handful of people
impolitely leaving the premises — a customary occurrence with
contemporary music in this hall. In the central section, dominated on the whole
by a dull fascination for the picturesque, the unifying element of the entire
composition comes to light for a moment in the shape of a folk tune. However, it
is in the concluding "Manet in Aevum" that one can really hear a sincere love and deep understanding for Rome. The multitude of descriptive suggestions, musical elements and compositional procedures effectively mixes idioms ranging from plainchant to serialism, passing via Stravinsky, Respighi, and many others with astounding technical virtuosity. But the most celestial moment owes entirely to Ives and his suspended harmonies — and these can be largely held responsible for the final ovation given by the audience.
