Richard Strauss composed Don Juan when he was 25, which perhaps explains the youthful exuberance of the score. In the Hallé's performance with guest conductor Lu Jia, the work became a Technicolor romp more evocative of Errol Flynn as Robin Hood than Mozart's antihero Don Giovanni. The uneasy eroticism that follows the flamboyant opening was captured to gorgeous effect in sections with prominent glockenspiel and solo violin. Lu Jia's physical gestures were restrained, and the music's subtlety was manifest in his suppression of emotion in the tragic coda.
Aftertones is a setting of three Edmund Blunden poems, by the Hallé's resident composer Colin Matthews. Unlike better-known first world war poets, Blunden combines the horrors of war with a wistful memory of the shattered pastoral. In The Estrangement Matthews set out his intentions clearly: a central role for the Hallé Choir, and strenuous emotions confined within tightly controlled declamatory music. The full force of the orchestra corresponded with more dissonant climaxes of violence in the poetry.
The Aftermath describes destruction in the battlefield. The ghostly, pianissimo strings and crashing gong evoked thorns supplanting white blossoms. The strings and harp introduction to Death of Childhood Beliefs was exquisite, an exploration of beauty mingled with grief. Its echoes suggested that memories of that violence are close to being forgotten. Lu Jia got the balance between message and music perfect. As a war composition, this was more of an optimistic, timely reminder than a Requiem.
The evening concluded with less philosophical entertainment. Brahms's Piano Quartet in G minor was arranged for orchestra by Schoenberg in 1938. Lu Jia's expansive direction of the busy orchestration remained just the right side of pompous, recognising that Schoenberg must have had his tongue in his cheek when claiming that he had attempted to remain "strictly in the style of Brahms and not to go further than he himself would have gone". The comic textures of glockenspiel, xylophone, tuba and brash trombones certainly implied that Schoenberg was having the last laugh.
