Music of the Spheres: Aurora Orchestra at the Queen Elizabeth Hall review ****

Aurora Orchestra, Nicholas Collon (conductor), Pekka Kuusisto (violin), Kate Wicks (production design), William Reynolds (lighting design) 

Queen Elizabeth Hall, 5^th June 2019

• Max Richter – Journey (CP1919)
• Beethoven – Molto Adagio from String Quartet in E minor, Op.59 No.2 (Razumovsky)
• Thomas Adès – Concerto for violin & chamber orchestra (Concentric Paths)
• Nico Muhly – Material in E flat
• Mozart – Symphony No.41 (Jupiter)
• David Bowie – Life On Mars

‘There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres.’ – Pythagoras

You get your money’s worth from the Aurora Orchestra. A concept, linking music and the cosmos, the “music of the spheres”, (which preoccupied the big minds of Greek philosophers and those that seized upon their ideas in the Renaissance), a light show, animation, narration courtesy of Samuel West and this Orchestra’s trademark, memorised, largely standing, performance of a classical music classic, this time from the Classical period, in the form of Mozart’s Jupiter. All for a tenner.

The QEH was packed and for once the Tourist was one of the older patrons rather than one of the young’uns. Whoever is in charge of the AO’s marketing deserves a pay rise, though Gillian Moore, (who can always be seen at these gigs – good on her), and the rest of the music team at the SouthBank Centre also seem to have nailed the programming at the QEH and Purcell Room since the re-opening.

Now I enjoyed the show. Or at least all the various elements especially the lighting, (at times the floor was lit up like Heathrow on a busy Friday evening). However the concept, whilst long on design came up a little short on ideas. No matter. It was, at the end of the day, the music that mattered most. And, on that front, the AO and chums delivered.

I have bored you at length about the glory of the Jupiter elsewhere following relatively recent outings from the Philharmonia under Philippe Herreweghe and from the Australian Chamber Orchestra. Both were on modern instruments, though HIP informed, and both were high on drama. The AO’s take was in a similar vein. High on energy and exuberance and high on happiness. You wouldn’t know Wolfgang was on his last legs, dragged down by family misery, from this interpretation. Nicholas Collon played a bit fast and loose in places with tempi, but deliberately; in the Andante cantabile to underline the mystery of the string harmonies and in the five way fugal Finale, to spotlight the initial theme based on a motif derived from plainchant “The Creator of Light”. See space/religious stuff in line with the evening’s theme.

However the main event for the Tourist was “Concentric Paths”, Thomas Ades’s Violin Concerto Op 24, which was premiered in 2005 by the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. It comprises a slow central movement, Paths, sandwiched by two faster movements, Rings and Rounds. As usual with Ades the score is rhythmically complex, endlessly inventive, with a wide dynamic range, especially right at the top of the register, and combines cycles for violin and for the small scale orchestra, which complement and occasionally clash, but together create an atmosphere of constant. circular motion. Back to the theme see. Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto coped with everything Mr Ades threw at him and the AO were sublime with notable contributions from the flute and piccolo of Jane Mitchell and Rebecca Larsen. Mr Kuusisto encored with one of the deceptively simple, but oh so effective, post minimalist pieces from Nico Muhly’s Drones and Violin.

The evening kicked off with a new commission from another post minimalist Max Richter, Journey (CP 1919). It consists of a series of repeated rising lines, Part-like, which pulsate at different speeds. It doesn’t really resolve, just keeps going up and it is intended to be played in darkness. The relationship between the lines is intended to reflect the way that ancient astronomers mapped the orbits of the visible planets and the properties that their modern successors have identified in pulsars. Pleasant enough but since there is no real development a few minutes was probably enough. Mr Richter studied with the genius Luciano Berio and, in his solo albums to date, he has collaborated with the estimable likes of Tilda Swinton, Robert Wyatt and Wayne McGregor, and has plundered the likes of John Cage, Antonio Vivaldi, Gustav Mahler, phone ringtones and various heavy duty poets in his work. The boy plainly likes a concept and a bit of political commentary but doesn’t seem to take himself too seriously. And he has no qualms about film and TV composition. His score was used for Nosedive, still one of the Tourist’s favourite Black Mirror episodes.

A little bit of a music lesson from big Sam to introduce the Molto Adagio from the No 2 Razumovsky courtesy of a scratch string quarter drawn from the AO. It is, as the programme says, “a work of radiant and mysterious beauty”. Not best served by the context. Extracting it from the complete work and setting it in this busy evening didn’t do it any favours. It’s Beethoven so cannot be criticised but I’ve heard it played better.

Now if I tell you that the encore was a version of Life on Mars, initially from Sam Swallow on piano, before the AO gradually joined with an orchestral accompaniment, with a giant glitter ball, you will get some idea of just how hard the team worked to press those cross-over buttons. It should not have worked but it did. Mr Swallow is a go-to fella when it comes to orchestral arrangements of pop and rock with an eclectic client list. The most important of which is Echo and the Bunnymen, who, as I am sure you already know, are the greatest rock’n’roll band of all time.

Nice ending to a cracking evening. Can’t say I care for the next leg of the AO’s outreach programme, some Berlioz, but next year they are back here with Pierre-Laurent Aimard for an evening of Beethoven. Tempting. Unfortunately in all the Beethoven 250 year brouhaha of next year they have been trumped by no less than Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique who will be rattling through their version of the Choral. Which might just be the standout gig of the year.