With two tone poems inspired by Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a freshly-minted cello concerto, and a rarely performed suite by Richard Strauss, the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s first Barbican concert of the year could not be faulted for original programming, even though it remained unclear what tied all these elements together.
We began with Tchaikovsky’s Fantasy Overture – ‘Hamlet‘ a work that is somewhat overshadowed by the flashier appeal of Romeo and Juliet and Francesca da Rimini, but is arguably better structured than either. A product of his later years, it captures the conflicting moods of the central character, depicts the character of Ophelia in detail, and develops the material in sophisticated ways, giving the lie to the accusation that he had a rickety grasp on musical form. The ensemble was tight, and there were some exquisitely shaped, long oboe solos from Alison Teale.
Joseph Phibbs’ Cello Concerto was the event of the evening, composed for soloist Guy Johnston, and providing plenty of opportunity for him to display his characteristic combination of effortless virtuosity and carefully calibrated emotional expression. There are five movements in alternating contrasted moods, with the first and last a dialogue on a reduced scale between cello and strings.
The opening invocation evoked spacious sonic layers in which the cello’s melody arises like the flight of a bird in a misty East Anglian landscape, perhaps not too far from Aldeburgh. However, the Aubade that follows is a far from peaceful dawn, but an agitated, restless perpetuum mobile building to a powerful climax for the full orchestra. At the heart of the piece is a lyrical Elegy – perhaps inevitable in the case of this instrument – where the soloist muses above a gentle heartbeat before rising to a passionate outpouring matched by bold, brassy brushstrokes and pointed punctuation on the xylophone. A Notturno follows which again belies benign expectations in the form of detailed pointillist exchanges between soloist and orchestra, and a demon of a fast cadenza, lightened with pukish humour.
Perhaps the movement of greatest sustained imagination was the concluding Vocalise, a long ‘song without words’, placed mainly in the higher register of the instrument and supported on a warm bed of gently shifting chords. All credit to conductor Clemens Schuldt for taking the orchestral dynamics right down to a genuine pianissimo for maximum effect – spacious imaginative vistas opened up just as they do, for example, in many works by Aaron Copland; but here the feeling evoked was not so much big skies in the American West, as a peaceful, yet determined prayer and blessing.
We resumed after the interval with a French composer not known to me. The life of Mel Bonis is a case study of the challenges nineteenth-century women faced in expressing their creativity: the tension involved in matching a Catholic middle-class respectability forced on her by her parents with the development of her expressive and emotional freedom was distilled by her having to choose a public version of her name (Melanie) that left her gender undefined. A short tone poem focused on Ophelia revealed an easy, lively mastery of orchestration, but was too brief to make a more detailed impression. We clearly need to hear more of her work.
The concert concluded with a suite of highlights from Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier. This struck me as an odd choice, like serving a large plate of Kaiserschmarrn after a carefully calorie-controlled menu. But there was no denying the virtuosity with which it was played: the five horns distinguished themselves in immaculately clean delivery of the priapic flourishes in the prelude; and elsewhere there were delectable woodwind, trumpet and violin solos. Devoid of dramatic context, this music can seem inconsequential, but the conductor did a fine job in building up the layers of the concluding Act 3 Trio into a convincing culmination. All the same, I could not help thinking that an astringent, wintry tone poem such as Sibelius’ Tapiola would have provided a better fit with the rest of the programme.
That said, the Phibbs cello concerto will repay repeated hearings, and it is to be hoped that further performances will shortly follow so we can gain a more detailed appreciation of its subtle appeal.
Barbican Hall
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Clemens Schuldt
Soloist: Guy Johnston
16 January 2026
Photo Credit : Mark Allan