On 12 December George Benjamin conducted his Concerto for Orchestra with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra as part of the musica viva series at the Herkulessaal. It features alongside music by Clara Iannotta, Harrison Birtwistle, and Oliver Knussen, to whom the Concerto is dedicated. The concert will be broadcast on 6 February.
The Concerto is varied and dynamic across an unbroken 17-minute span, with skittish lines playing against still, suspended ones. Its various instrumental protagonists play multiple roles – both dramatic and sonoric – including a volatile solo tuba, elaborate horn duos, bubbling clarinets and two pairs of rumbling timpani. Most prominent of all are the impassioned first violins, who almost have the last word during the work’s tranquil conclusion. Its virtuosity is also a tribute to the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, who premiered with work at the BBC Proms in 2021, and with whom Benjamin has developed an especially close working relationship both on the concert platform and in the opera house.
Watch Benjamin conduct the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France in the Concerto for Orchestra here. Benjamin has said that the piece attempts “to conjure a trace of the energy, humour, and spirit” of its dedicatee, though it occasionally moves into more turbulent terrain.
The full score of the Concerto for Orchestra was published in 2022 and is available to purchase here. Since its premiere the piece has received 25 performances internationally; its various exponents have included the London Symphony Orchestra, Gürzenich Orchester, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and Orchestre National de Lille; conductors to take it up have included Daniel Harding, Nicholas Collon, and Susanna Mälkki.
The programme opened with the German premiere of Knussen’s Choral (1970-72) – a 10-minute work for wind, percussion, and double basses. Benjamin previously conducted Choral at the Concertgebouw alongside his Concerto for Orchestra in 2023.
Knussen’s original vision of the work was inspired by Charles Ives, imagining several funeral processions converging at a distant point. Its title describes both the use of the large wind orchestra, which is divided into several choirs and shift around as the work unfolds, as well as the chorale at the centre of the work – a statuesque, frieze-like procession of four immensely slow chords.
These chords are subject to gradual transformations in the following three sections, with rhythmic decoration or by long melodic strands; the third section, recalling Scriabin’s Mystery Chord, builds to a violent climax, before the original four chords return to conclude the work. Knussen noted that traces of Choral could be felt at the end of his Third Symphony (1979) as well as in the interludes of Where the Wild Things Are (1979-83) and Higglety Pigglety Pop! (1983-85).