During the course of the various Kurt Weill retrospectives that have featured strongly in concert schedules over the last year, one of the composer's best works hasn't surfaced quite as frequently as one might expect, namely the Concerto for Violin and Wind Instruments. Written in 1924, it is by far the most popular of Weill's orchestral works. The Proms have redressed the balance a bit with a blistering performance from the great Dutch violinist Isabelle Van Keulen and the BBC Scottish Orchestra under its Principal Conductor Osmo Vanska.
It's a tricky piece to get right, its detractors arguing that a preponderance of influences leads to an inherent lack of stylistic unity. The Concerto does, it is true, nod in the direction of Schoenberg, Stravinsky and Busoni (Weill's teacher) before the snappy sardonicism of the mature composer emerges, but here one is struck by its homogeneity of tone and the impressive gradation of its emotional content. It's inherently bleak, a possible reflection of Weill's angst at the emergence of the political far-Right (Mussolini had just gained power in Italy). The wind ensemble seems permanently about to mutate into a military band, its arrogant trumpetings goading the soloist into a response which is by turns shocked and enraged. Lyricism is brief, humour scarce.
Written for the Hungarian virtuoso Joseph Szigeti (he never played it), it makes formidable demands on the soloist. Van Keulen, dark-toned, vehemently expressive, is superlative throughout, while the BBC Scottish Orchestra's wind ensemble perform with an uncompromising, steely grittiness.
Vanska flanked the work with two of the 20th century's great exercises in colouristic tone painting, Ravel's Mother Goose and Stravinsky's Petrushka. Ravel's fairy-tale suite was swathed in a limpid, tremulous sexuality, its sudden flashes of darkness hinting at burgeoning adolescence. Petrushka was spectacular, though Vanska didn't always quite get to the heart of it in a performance that veered closer to pathos than genuine tragedy. The soul-shattering isolation of Petrushka in his cell didn't quite tear you in two as it should, though the fairground scenes, spiky and intensely driven, swirled with an exhilarating, Dionysian clamour.
