BBCNOW/Djupsjöbacka Review – Tower’s Love Returns is an uncommonly engaging piece | classical music

TThe BBC National Orchestra of Wales is marking the 250th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence with a series of concerts, with the UK premiere of Love Returns by 87-year-old American composer Joan Tower at the heart of the program with Finnish conductor Thomas Djupjupka.

Tower is best known for Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, and in this work, a concerto for alto saxophone, she produces an unusually attractive piece. Its title relates to Tower’s use of the melody from her own piano piece, A Love Letter, written in memory of her late husband, as the basis for a different theme and structure, as different from the traditional concerto form as possible, and gradually developing and accelerating in tempo over the entirety of six sections. The only departure from this is in the fifth of the six: a saxophone solo, brilliantly played by soloist Stephen Banks. His sometimes sharp, sometimes honeyed tone was wonderfully expressive throughout, with virtuoso passages matched by aching lyricism, with Djupsjöbacka ensuring that the tower’s orchestral textures provided the perfect balance for the solo lines.

In the second half, Weber’s Second Symphony in C major and Paul Hindemith’s symphonic transformation of the themes for Karl Maria von Weber provided a masterful pairing. BBCNOW’s woodwind players enjoyed Weber’s delightful instrumentation and operatic verve, with the lively Djupsjöbacka making a strong case for the rarely programmed symphony. Hindemith, written in the United States in 1943, is a reimagining of Weber’s themes rather than an enthusiastically faithful tribute, a kind of concerto for orchestra: each section gets its turn in the spotlight. Loud and sometimes a bit corny, much of it is quite enjoyable, not a word often associated with Hindemith.

When Britten’s American Overture – an early work thought dead and buried – was unearthed after three decades in the New York Public Library, he requested its destruction. Since he was a committed pacifist, he would surely have been horrified to find him here opening this performance at a time of Trumpian warmongering. Britten’s not great by any means, so the less said the better.