Review: At the Aldeburgh Festival, Nicholas Daniel plays the Pied Piper of Cool (Bachtrack)

The star in the east of England, fixed there by Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears, is marking its 75th anniversary this year. One of the celebrants was the ever-flamboyant oboist Nicholas Daniel, who flew in on butterfly wings – probably from a gig in Hamelin – to give an enthralling contribution to the festivities. His masterful unwinding of Vaughan Williams’s Oboe Concerto in A minor was the centrepiece of a programme that included works by the Holsts, daughter and father, and was evidence, if ever it were needed, of the power of his expressive genius.

It is easy to hear Vaughan Williams’s concerto as elegiac, passionate, skittish and even a little mystical. However, Daniel’s manner of playing it brought to mind Miles Davis during his Cool period. His tone, his phrasing, even the way he held his oboe seemed calculated to conjure up an image far removed from the pastoral idyll that this work usually evokes. In the slow movement I was lulled into feeling the sultry air to which Davis smooches in Sketches of Spain. The atmospheric and characterful playing of the Britten Sinfonia lent limpid support to Daniel’s smooth lines and animated arabesques – washes of muted colour to the one and a string of fine-grained interjections to the other. The sight of the piper, resplendent in his cloak of lapidary brilliance and set against the monochrome arc of the ensemble, was suitably celebrational.

The abiding image of the evening was Daniel’s encore. He brought out his cor anglais and played Colin Matthews’s arrangement of the last movement of Britten’s Nocturne. The sound he made was so soulful one might call it a kind of blue.

Christopher Woodley, 14 June 2024

Read this review in full at Bachtrack