Michael Collins and the City of London Sinfonia at the National Concert Hall, Saturday 12th April.

Michael Collins is known as one of the world’s finest clarinetists, but on the evidence of this evening’s concert he is also a very fine conductor. The City of London Sinfonia join him this evening in the National Concert Hall.

The programme centres on core classical repertoire, with two famous works by Mozart and one by Beethoven. It is the new piece on the programme, a work for clarinet and orchestra by the young Welsh composer Gwilym Simcock, that causes the evening to sag a little. His On a Piece of Tapestry is competently orchestrated and contains some nice ideas. The main problem lies in the fact that it is overlong, with large chunks of material repeated for what appears to be very little reason. Its unnecessary length is compounded by the blandness of some of the material. Essentially the piece is quite boring, and maybe a little too inoffensive – but might hold the attention of an audience if it was shorter. The playing throughout is superb.

The highlight of the first half of the concert (as you might expect) is Collins’ interpretation on basset clarinet of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto in A major. One of the all-time masterworks, this concerto is one that also needs a supremely gifted performer to make it work. Collins catches the extraordinary combination of insouciance, punkish dexterity and sublime beauty in this work perfectly in a performance to rival the best recordings. The orchestra have their only slight hiccup of the evening in the opening movement, where there are some very minor tuning problems in the violins. These were too small to affect enjoyment, and the playing was beautiful in any case.

Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 in F major (Pastoral) crowns the concert in spectacular, monumental fashion. Collins and the City of London Sinfonia deliver a world-class performance of this symphony. Like all the best performances of Beethoven, this goes some way towards exposing the structure of the work, without neglecting to exploit its expressive possibilities.

Programme

Mozart – Overture to The Magic Flute
Simcock – On a Piece of Tapestry
Mozart – Clarinet Concerto in A major

Beethoven – Symphony No. 6 in F major (Pastoral)