The archetypal concerto, as refined and more or less conclusively defined during the 19th century, is a dialogue between a soloist and an orchestra, who interact on more or less equal terms. But in Follow Me, the violin concerto that Ondřej Adámek composed for Isabelle Faust in 2017, and which Faust brought to Britain with Thomas Adès conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, those traditional roles are assigned in a distinctly different way, and the relationship between the violinist and the orchestra seems closer to that of predator and prey.
By the end of Adámek’s work the solo violin has been driven from the platform, its final plaintive phrases sounding from a distance, while the orchestra, especially its assertive brass, is given full rein. What has started out as an almost symbiotic relationship between violin and orchestra, the one complementing the other’s phrases, has become anything but, and instead seems a rather uneasy, bullying one. Yet the three-movement work, which has the ghost of a traditional fast-slow-fast concerto haunting it, contains some undeniably vivid writing for both the soloist and an orchestra, in which a large array of percussion (including the rarely encountered lion’s roar) is very prominent. Faust delivered the hugely demanding solo writing with her usual virtuosity and total commitment, her phrasing as honeyed and supple as it might have been in a more familiar work.
Symphonies by Beethoven, the First and the Fourth, topped and tailed the concert. With such a demanding work as the centrepiece of the programme they could have been routinely efficient performances, but these were anything but routine. The First in particular was transformed by the urgency with which Adès approached it, every rhythm pin-point sharp, every dynamic contrast fiercely underlined, to leave the symphony’s Haydnesque beginnings far behind, while the Fourth was disarmingly witty and exhilarating, with superb solo woodwind playing (from the flute and bassoon especially), and faultlessly crisp strings.
