Medea butchering her children and Cleopatra embracing the asp? Perhaps not the jolliest of evenings, but as Edward Gardner put it, with infectious enthusiasm, the first half of this LPO season opener featured a pair of rarely heard works fully deserving of attention.
Medea’s Dance of Vengeance, by Samuel Barber, is the denouement of a Martha Graham-commissioned ballet from 1955. Opening with discordant flutes and an insistent motto on xylophone, the mood progressed through a pallid dawn before taking flight in a wild, syncopated rout. Full of interest, the music played to the orchestra’s strengths, with its chamber-like textures and opportunities for solo contributions. Gardner teased out the biting dissonances lurking within Barber’s lush canvas, revelling in the twitchy Latin rhythms all the way to the final sickening crunch.
