★★★★☆
The stout patriots of Dorset will doubtless be cheered by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra’s announcement that it will be playing a good old-fashioned English ton of Walton and Elgar in its 2016-17 season. For its final Poole programme of this season, however, it was firmly in Mittel-European mode, with Kirill Karabits, its Ukrainian chief conductor, leading a rambunctious performance of Mahler’s First Symphony.
It wasn’t subtle, but this hall doesn’t do subtlety. The Lighthouse’s platform is wide and shallow, so the violin sound is dissipated while brass and percussion come roaring over the top like a fly-past of bombers. You inevitably lose some of Mahler’s intricate counterpoints, but the compensating factor is brute thunder. The scherzo was like a series of hammer blows, though with mid-term relief from a trio played with gorgeously schmaltzy Viennese slithers. And the finale’s climax must have sent hearing aids into emergency lockdown throughout the hall.
The test in this symphony, however, is how the conductor paces those outer movements, which continually simmer and subside and simmer again before erupting. This was where Karabits particularly impressed.
He doesn’t yet have the trick of making the constant tempo changes sound as if they are evolving organically — as, say, Abbado did and Haitink does — but he does know when to move the music on and when to let it unfold more graciously. And how confident the Bournemouth players sounded, particularly the horns and trumpets.
Thank goodness the Mahler was good, because to my ears what preceded it was lamentable. I can’t remember enjoying Brahms’s Violin Concerto so little. Technically, tonally and interpretatively Guy Braunstein sounded out of his depth. What do I know, though? The former Berlin Philharmonic concertmaster received such acclaim that he played an encore.