BBCSSO/Volkov review – brisk and

beautiful Beethoven but Lewis premiere is

hard to like
Royal Albert Hall, London
The soundscape of George Lewis’s Minds in Flux was full of interest but ultimately felt
aimless and discursive. The second half’s Beethoven fared much better

Tim Ashley
Fri 27 Aug 2021 12.03 BSTLast modified on Fri 27 Aug 2021 12.43 BST

The first half of Ilan Volkov’s Prom with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra was given
over to the world premiere of Minds in Flux, a substantial piece for orchestra and live
electronics by George Lewis, the American composer and musicologist, whose work folds
into itself jazz and multimedia as well as classical and experimental music.

Minds in Flux meditates on complex ideas of cultural pluralism and decolonisation, depicting
“an unstable interregnum, the soil that nurtures change,” as Lewis puts it in a somewhat
cryptic programme note. Site specific, it also explores the spaces and resonances of the Albert
Hall, as digitally enhanced orchestral sound, mastered at consoles at the back of the arena,
swirls and ricochets round the auditorium.

Eruptions of rhythmic violence alternate with moments of uneasy calm. Violin harmonics
over harp and tuned gongs (a lovely effect) are contrasted with splintered fragments of jazz.
Towards the end a thumping ostinato gradually builds towards an anticipatory climax that
suddenly collapses into an echoing void and leaves us hanging. Admirable at times but also
hard to like, the piece as a whole arouses mixed feelings, and until that ostinato coalesces
almost out of nowhere, too much of it feels aimless and discursive, despite the attractions of
its soundscape.

After the interval came Beethoven. Lucy Crowe was the well nigh ideal soloist in the concert
aria Ah! Perfido, her voice, with that wonderful gleam at the top, big enough to carry real
dramatic and emotional weight, yet flexible enough to cope easily with the anguished
coloratura towards the work’s close: there was some exquisite soft singing, too. Volkov then
gave us the Second Symphony in a performance strong on drive and energy. Speeds were
brisk, rhythms exactingly, often thrillingly precise, though other interpreters have brought
greater elation to the coda of the first movement, and the scherzo was fractionally too hard
edged to my taste. It was played with great beauty and scrupulous attention to detail.