RLPO / Thomas Jung, Philharmonic Hall, review: a marvellous relaunch of Liverpool's concert life

We sometimes talk about hearing music with new ears, generally when a conductor or soloist has worked some magic, bringing out lines here, subduing others there, or rebalancing the texture so as bring familiar colours into unfamiliar relationships.

There was something of that in this opening, Thursday-evening concert of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra’s season. With no more than 35 musicians, spaced the length and breadth of the Philharmonic Hall stage, it was as though there was simply more air in the music. Being sensitised in this way to sounds coming from unusual directions was like going back to avant-garde ensembles of the Sixties and Seventies. So in fact, maybe “old ears” would be nearer the mark.

But of course the new-ears feeling was also to do with my hearing live orchestral music in concert for the first time in six months. It was almost as though we were having head bandages removed, even if the reality was that we were all wearing masks and sitting safely more than sneezing distance apart – an audience of 240 in a hall that can seat 1700.

Having only an hour or so’s music, without interval, seemed to foster unusually intense concentration, both on stage and in the auditorium. That was certainly the impression in the Mozart D major Divertimento, with the 22 players arranged one to a desk, the upper strings standing. The freedom of body language and the mutual responsiveness were a joy to behold.

Normally I might say that conductor Thomas Jung moulded the music with exceptional sensitivity. Well, he did, but it felt even better, as though it was the musicians themselves doing the moulding, and all without the slightest hint of self-consciousness.

Arvo P?rt’s Fratres requires a different kind of sensitivity if its disembodied processional is to make its mark. The version for violin solo, strings and percussion is particularly problematic, because the solo part is distractingly virtuosic. Thankfully, Thelma Handy’s technical command and her colleagues’ concentration gave a truthful account of the music, and its atmosphere of benediction could not have been more appropriate to the occasion.

Not allowing the Beethoven year to go un-celebrated, the programme concluded with his Fourth Symphony. In the outer movements, there was a slight impression of the orchestra not wanting to grant the conductor the full measure of his tempi. But that may simply have been the fractional drag that can creep in when players used to sitting in a close unit are so widely dispersed. In the end, it detracted little from the energy and joy the symphony always radiates.

Goodness knows how many committee hours must have gone into making the whole thing happen – not just within the orchestra but between it and its funders, which include the Arts Council and Liverpool City Council. Fingers firmly crossed for future socially distanced concerts of this type, which the newly announced lockdown apparently doesn't prevent.