"It sounds as if someone had smeared the score of Tristan while it was still wet." Thus spoke an early critic of Schoenberg's Verk larte Nacht (Transfigured Night). The composer's debt to Wagner is obvious, but he has taken Wagner's language and made it his own so that he can express that peculiar sense of morbidity which infected the end of the 19th century. The sweeter the fruit, the closer it is to being rotten.
The poem by Richard Dehmel, which inspired the work, is helpfully printed in the programme; it is a sickly little drama of reconciliation which nevertheless impressed the composer and helped to give the music its emotional charge.
Listening to the ICO, conducted by Bruno Giuranna, one soon forgot the poem, so fascinating was the sheer opulence of the sound, so cogent the transformations of the musical material, so varied the emotional responses. The members of the orchestra played as if each had a personal interest in the outcome. Nobody in the audience could have been unaware that this was a great performance of a great work: not only the night but the morbidity was transfigured.
Beside such a masterpiece, Mozart's little serenade, or Kleine Nachtmusik, is an apotheosis of innocence. The performance was bright and crisp but could have done with a greater sense of spontaneity, emphasising the freshness as well as the familiarity.
Fionnuala Hunt was the soloist in Schubert's Rondo in A. Schubert seems to have shunned the concerto and there is no sense of rivalry between soloist and band to vivify the music. It unfolds a succession of polite tunes and is never less than agreeable; the performance, too, was agreeable, and perhaps the soloist could have allowed herself a little latitude in her interpretation, bringing an element of adventure to the occasion.