Owen, Manchester Camerata, Takács-Nagy, Stoller Hall, Manchester review - more Mozart made in Manchester

Manchester Camerata spent eight years performing and recording a complete edition of Mozart’s piano concertos with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet as soloist, together with conductor Gábor Takács-Nagy, and inevitably there was the question: what next?

Their next step has been the four horn concertos, and their soloist is the enthusiastic and polished Martin Owen. As with the piano concertos, these are not period performances – everyone plays on modern instruments – but they are historically informed, and the dynamics and sound qualities of a chamber orchestra are often an ear-opener to the nature of the music.

Fuse that with Takács-Nagy’s nervous energy and attention to the details of shape and phrasing (those essentials of classical style), and you have an approach that’s always rewarding. It can have elements of a high-wire act, too, as everything is out there and every player exposed, but the results are often like a breath of fresh air.

I missed the previous concert, in which concertos no. 1 and 2 were aired, but the third and fourth made an impressive case for Owen and Takács-Nagy’s approach.

Martin Owen (pictured left) wets his lips during the opening ritornello of no. 3, and when his solo comes it’s smooth and inviting. We may be missing the effects of hand-stopping and tuning that playing Mozart on a natural horn provide (as he was well aware of the differences of tone involved on each note in the repertoire), but the articulation is cool and ever-melodic. There’s an impressive build-up to the closing themes of the first movement’s exposition, and Owen has an intriguing approach to his cadenza: he pauses between phrases, as if thinking up what to do next, giving the impression of improvisation. The Romanza central movement is given a gentle and seemingly awe-struck treatment of its simple, song-like theme, and the jigging finale bounds along, with a witty pianissimo entry from the soloist as he leads to the last ritornello.

Concerto no. 4 is the one everyone knows – or at least knows the tune of the last movement rondo. I can’t hear it without recalling the words attached to it by Michael Flanders and Donald Swan:

“I once had an urge and I had to obey it

To buy a French horn in a second-hand shop;

I polished it up and I started to play it

In spite of the neighbours, who told me to stop …”

and so on.

There’s more to it than that, of course. Here the substantial first movement is carefully built in weight to the close of the exposition, and Owen’s cadenza, like in no. 3, has that improvisatory quality plus a some nice echo effects (as you might hear out in the countryside on a summer’s evening in 1786 when the horns are a-tooting to scare off the foxes). In the Romanza, Takács-Nagy brings delicacy and some delicious contrasts in surprising contexts from the orchestra, and there’s a lovely soft return to the tune after its minor episode. The finale, likewise, introduces one reprise pianissimo, and (unlike Flanders and Swan) Owen gives us no cadenza at the pause mark, but a sly, slow beginning to the final romp. Reynard, it seems, might have got away with it after all.

The concert’s second half was Beethoven’s Symphony no. 7. I don’t think I’ve heard Takács-Nagy conducts the Camerata in a Beethoven symphony before, and the virtues of hearing this with 24 strings, rather than the 40 or so you might get when a symphony orchestra decides to go light on numbers in the cause of supposed authenticity, are many. He had all who could standing up to play, which may have helped bring a sense of physicality in the performance, as vigour and incisiveness were there in abundance.

Perhaps they were trying a little too hard at the outset, as the first movement’s declamatory opening section (poco sostenuto, says Beethoven, as if anyone knows what that really means) didn’t come together too well, but by the end of the work the orchestra, led by Caroline Pether (see picture), were firing on all cylinders, and all Takács-Nagy’s speeds were all well chosen.

When strings are in the numbers Beethoven probably expected, the role of the wind players comes into fresh focus – which the Camerata principals are well able to exploit in characterful style, and there are nuances in the textures often lost among the big battalions. The contrasts and explosive “fp” effects in the first movement made real impact: perhaps the only weak spot was the weight of the bass line from the cellos and basses, who – of necessity sitting down – were given an extra platform of their own to perch on. Did it absorb some of their sound rather than amplifying it?

The measured tread of the second movement was spritely, not funereal, and yet an atmosphere of calm was held, and the counterpoint engagingly woven when it came. The Scherzo really was a presto, with the emphases powerful and the strings incisive, even percussive … and the finale an inspiring send-off for a happy audience. 

• · More classical reviews on theartsdesk