After the ragbag of new pieces composed for the coronation earlier this month, it was good to be reminded of some of the music that was written in Britain 70 years ago, at the time of the coronation of Elizabeth II. The Britten Sinfonia’s concert included three works for string orchestra that were premiered or composed in 1953. Strictly speaking, only one of the three was directly connected to the royal celebrations – the fugal finale that William Walton contributed to the collective Variations on an Elizabethan Theme that six British composers (all male) were invited to write for the Aldeburgh festival that year. Brief and extrovert, here it provided a last athletic workout for the 30-strong sinfonia, whose playing, with leader Thomas Gould directing from the violin, had been immaculate throughout.
But the other works from 1953 were far more substantial, and among their composers’ finest achievements. Michael Tippett’s Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli, preceded here by the Corelli concerto grosso from which its themes were sourced, and with Gould, violinist Miranda Dale and cellist Caroline Dearnley as the concertino group in both, sounded as radiantly ecstatic as one remembered, even if the warmth of the Milton Court acoustic was a bit too much of a good thing when it came to separating out some of the denser contrapuntal passages.
Conducted by Agata Zając, Elizabeth Maconchy’s Symphony for double string orchestra made a wonderful contrast. Driven by fierce Bartókian motor rhythms in the first movement and the playful scherzo while uncovering deeper, darker currents in the slow movement and final passacaglia, its almost total neglect is hard to explain.
There was a new work in the programme, too, Joseph Phibbs’s Flame and Shadow, which the Britten Sinfonia had premiered the previous week at the Brighton festival. Taking its title from a collection of poems by the US writer Sara Teasdale, it’s an impressively accomplished sequence of movements, full of thoroughly idiomatic string effects, but perhaps just a bit too well mannered; it really could have been written in 1953, too.
