Ethel Smyth’s music features prominently in this year’s Proms, and the centrepiece of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s concert with their chief conductor designate, Kazuki Yamada, was her Concerto for Violin and Horn, written in 1927. Reflective in mood and post-Romantic in idiom, it’s a striking, bittersweet work that flanks a meditative central Elegy with two ambiguous allegros that blend wit and brilliance with plunges into nostalgia and regret.
Getting the piece right in performance can be tricky as the unusual combination of instruments can result in problems of balance, with the horn swamping the violin, if the conductor isn’t careful. Yamada, however, admirably ensured even-handedness. Elena Urioste (violin) and Ben Goldscheider (horn) were the soloists, the innate nobility of his phrasing judiciously offsetting her more effusive lyricism. The Elegy, in which Smyth develops two parallel melodies in tandem, giving neither prominence, sounded gorgeous, and the big, accompanied double cadenza that dominates the finale was done with engaging flamboyance and considerable bravado. Yamada, meanwhile, discreetly underscored the almost Italianate warmth of Smyth’s orchestration with its rippling harp and lovely woodwind writing. It was a most beguiling performance.
