BBCSO/ Rustioni/ Davóne Tines review – Black-tinged Anthem spins US nationhood

The UK premiere of a stirring joint concerto by five US artists refashioned patriotic songs, minstrelsy and poetry to present an alternative America built on inclusion

It may be 250 years since the Declaration of Independence but the question of what the United States is and, more importantly, where it is headed has never felt more pertinent. Leonard Bernstein, born to parents of Russian/Ukrainian heritage, wrote West Side Story as a plea for tolerance in a society riven with prejudice. It was a canny opener for this American-themed concert and a showcase for the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s brass and percussion in particular. Conductor Daniele Rustioni held back at first, as if wary of too much schmaltz, but by the hip-wriggling mambo the players had found their groove.

The UK premiere of the collaboration Concerto No 2: Anthem found bass-baritone and Barbican artist in residence Davóne Tines weighing the current state of the US in the balance and finding it sorely wanting. What if, he suggested, the nation code-switched, moving on from a bloody past built on the backs of immigrants and slaves to embrace a more inclusive society inspired by today’s Black American experience. In the brassy first movement, composer Michael Schachter’s arrangement of The Star-Spangled Banner puffed up the US national anthem until it choked on its own pomp and patriotism (probably a criminal offence in Trump’s America). But wait, argued the voice of poet Mahogany L Browne, what signifies freedom when “the noose is still hanging from democracy’s tree”?

Caroline Shaw’s contribution dissected fragments of musical Americana, from Simple Gifts to the excruciatingly racist minstrel song Pickaninny Heaven. Tyshawn Sorey’s discordant funeral march followed, leading into the stirring Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing, dubbed the “Negro national anthem” by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People back in 1919. With his rich, wide-ranging tones, Tines should have been the ideal advocate, but frustratingly the orchestrations were so loud, and the vocal amplification so wanting he could often barely be heard.

Rachmaninov’s Third Symphony, written during the composer’s US exile, made an odd bedfellow, riven as it is with nostalgia for a Russia that likely never existed. Rustioni and the orchestra gave it a barnstorming workout regardless, even if they failed to dispel the feeling of a Hollywood score in search of a film script.