Verdi produced his last work, the ‘Four Sacred Pieces’ when he was 85. At the same age now, John Joubert is still going strong and refusing to put down his pen.
Future works are on the stocks, but Sunday saw the world premiere of a substantial offering in the shape of a Cello Concerto, commissioned by Raphael Wallfisch and performed by him and the Northern Chamber Orchestra in this delightful church. The BBC broadcast the proceedings early the same evening as part of Music Nation, a weekend-long launch of the London 2012 Festival Countdown.
At the best part of half an hour the concerto is a major addition to a somewhat restricted repertoire of masterpieces for the instrument, and there are some touching subconscious outreachings to some of them. But the strength of personality of the work is present in every bar of these two movements, each beginning with a searching cello solo, the second a cadenza reflecting on past material and paving the way for a frequently waltz-like reworking of what we have already heard.
The tone of the work is mellow, the cello outpourings evoking a kind of visionary wisdom as the structures continue to aspire ever upwards both in tessitura and in dynamic levels. Melodies unfold with inevitability, textures are clearly layered (towards the end there is a marvellous moment where the soloist’s busy activity almost disguises the fact that a solo string fugue is developing behind him, a mutiny quelled only by a return to the opening material).
Wallfisch delivered the idiomatic solo writing with magisterial commitment and a great deal of emotional involvement, communicating so persuasively to a rapt audience.
Despite scoring for the most compact chamber orchestra, Joubert draws a whole range of colours from the players, not least a resourceful deployment of the horn duo. And the NCO, tiny but so powerful in this splendid acoustic, responded to his demands gratefully under the enthusiastic, expert and reliable young conductor Jonathan Berman.
