The force of music, as strong as that of life itself, was Carl Nielsen's theme in his Fourth Symphony. He named it The Inextinguishable to encapsulate the nature of that force, which he saw as the determining evolutionary factor. The way that the symphony's four movements become linked in a single continuous flow is a reflection of that evolving process.
While Nielsen's intention in explaining this concept was partly to deter listeners from imposing a narrative programme, the notion of a strong force and, moreover, a force for good, implies a conflict with a force for evil. The composer's instruction to place two timpanists at either side of the orchestra for the final Allegro, with its sense of titanic opposition, seems to reinforce that interpretation.
Conductor Kees Bakels chose to ignore that directive in his performance with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, instead placing his timpanists more or less side by side, behind the woodwind. To make a positive virtue of Colston Hall's confined stage was a bold move. Although it lessened the stereophonic effect that so heightens the impact of recordings of the work, it brought the elemental drama centre stage, focusing attention in a more spectacular way than anything in the more prosaic rendering of Prokofiev's Suite Love for Three Oranges that had opened the concert. But it was a simple gesture, typical of Bakels's modest approach, that characterised the spirit of the symphony performance. Acknowledging the audience's enthusiastic applause, Bakels took the score and kissed it, deflecting any implied glory back to Nielsen himself.
The fire with which the young Macedonian pianist Simon Trpceski plays also seems to be inextinguishable. An incredibly fluent technique allowed him to make light of the difficulties of Saint-Saëns's Second Piano Concerto. More significantly, it helped underline the accumulative tension of the work, whose movements go against convention by adopting progressively faster speeds. The grace of the Bachian opening is succeeded by a mischievous central scherzo, and the phenomenal speed at which Trpceski took the final Tarantella suggested the wild frenzy of a dance with death better than any more cautious musician.
