This concert by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra was dominated by the same work that opened the season the previous week: Richard Strauss's Alpine Symphony. Not far short of an hour long, in one continuous movement, this detailed evocation of a full day's mountain hike makes exhaustive use of a huge orchestra, including wind and thunder machines, cowbells and organ, as well as a brief but spectacular contribution from 12 offstage horns.
The Alpine Symphony has been dismissed as a collection of wonderful effects and not-so-wonderful tunes. That's not entirely unjust: two of the leading themes don't just teeter on the brink of corniness but plunge in head-first. But some of the orchestral effects are breathtaking: the multi-layered, cascading waterfall, the magnificent storm, and perhaps best of all, the astonishing opening tone cluster - a descending three-octave scale of B flat minor, with every note sustained by the strings. It shimmers and pulsates like a mountain viewed through heat haze. All this came over brilliantly in the CBSO's performance.
Conductor Sakari Oramo has a special flair for balancing complex textures and bringing out the leading lines so that they sing rather than just declaim. His strong sense of line kept the music moving when Strauss's imagination faltered. Even the Bing Crosbyish Sunrise theme carried complete conviction.
Oramo showed the same skill in Alban Berg's more densely written Three Pieces for Orchestra - scored for forces only slightly less vast than Strauss's. The Berg was unusually clear throughout, and the performance grew in strength and intensity towards the final, violently despairing March. Even more vividly than Ravel's better-known La Valse, Three Pieces evoke images of Vienna in terminal decline - fragments of dance and courtly music drift weirdly in and out of the teeming musical nightmare.
But it was the Strauss that dominated the evening, even if it isn't ultimately as significant or as emotionally searching as the Berg. It certainly eclipsed memories of the first piece, Mozart's compressed, one-movement Symphony No 32 in G. This is a fine piece, with a muscular springboard of a theme to set it all in motion. But the large, bass-heavy string section used by Oramo weighed the music down, despite all his efforts to drive it forward - rather like mud collecting on a runner's shoes. Even in Mozart, success isn't guaranteed.
