La Leyenda del Príncipe y el Lago Helado: Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky in ADDA, Alicante with Orfeón Donostiarra and Silvia Tro, plus Beethoven!

I last heard Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky in April 1985. It was a performance of the complete film score alongside the film itself, recently reconstructed, in London’s Royal Festival Hall. The orchestra was the London Philharmonic and the conductor was Mstislav Rostropóvich. I could remember the venue and the music, but not the performers or the date. Those were filled in by artificial intelligence. That would also be the last time I saw the film.

Last night’s performance by the ADDA orchestra under Josep Vicent featured the cantata that Prokofiev constructed out of his incidental music to Eisenstein’s film This choral work has since become a concert hall regular, perhaps the major cantata of all twentieth century music. Performances are not offered very often, however, because it is a work that needs a lot of resources, large numbers of human beings and, if it is to be done well, lots of rehearsal time.

This performance, subtitled “La Leyenda del  Príncipe y el Lago Helado”, of the purely musical work was accompanied by a brief passages from the film, projected above the heads of the Orfeón Donostiarra chorus. There was enough visual material to provide context, but no more. In any case, Prokofiev’s cantata score does not follow the film’s action sequentially, only thematically. Rest assured that this is a massive work and, for many concert goers, it is probably a one-in-a-lifetime experience. Not only does it demand a large orchestra and a full chorus, it also has a soloist, mezzo-soprano Silvia Tro this evening, to sing an orchestral song towards the end. Silvia Tro’s performance of this patriotic text was moving, though its propaganda message was better left untranslated.

From the start, indeed, we can hear that this is a Prokofiev score because of the filled out and emphasised bass. The orchestration is simply spectacular and the ADDA orchestra delivered perfectly all the unexpected and frankly surprising textures. Even the opening chords, delivered softly offer the listeners something of a surprise.

Josep Vicent had placed the percussion not at the back, because Orfeón Donostiarra were there. Hence the players of extensive percussion section were immediately behind the violins. This brought all the percussive colour to the fore, and the effect was spectacular. At the start of the battle on the ice scene, it seemed as if the assembled army on stage had come alive as a single insect-like force, scratching its way towards the audience. Simply spectacular.

Truly spectacular had been the first half of the concert. Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony is clearly a favourite of Josep Vicent and the ADDA orchestra. I have heard them perform it at least three times and, if it were on offer again today, I would be first in line for a ticket. I will limit my description of the piece, because it has featured regularly in ADDA concerts.

This was playing of the very highest quality. Not only was it accurate and controlled, but it also came across a slightly reckless, even improvised. But of course, it was not, but this performance had the quality of experiment at breakneck speed. The performance of Alexander Nevsky was both welcome and spectacular. But it was Ludwig van Beethoven who stole this music show.

 

A concert of surprises - Beethoven Piano Concert No4 and Symphony No4 featuring Joachim Gustavsson and Antonii Baryshvskyi

What could possibly be surprising about a concert whose program listed two works by Beethoven, both numbered four, one a piano concerto and the other symphony? Well, the answer is just about everything. To start with, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4 is certainly not the most played of his symphonic works. I am sure I have heard it in the concert hall before, but I am also sure it was more than four decades ago. The fourth piano concerto, on the other hand, is a regular inclusion on concert programmes, and I have heard it several times in the last decade and countless times via recordings. But it has never sounded quite like this.

The first surprise, though it was announced in advance, was the identity of the soloist. Antonii Baryshvskyi played the concerto instead of Judith Jauregui, who stepped down on medical advice. In addition, the evening’s conductor was Joachim Gustafsson, a guest of the ADDA Simfonica, was making, I believe, his first appearance with the orchestra.

The fourth piano concerto of Beethoven is a masterpiece. It has that amazing concept of a slow movement where the quiet piano competes with angry strings and wins them over by gentle persuasion. It is perhaps one of the most original pieces of music ever written. In the hands of Antonii Baryshvskyi, the movement attained perfection.

But so did the first and third movements. Antonii Baryshvskyi’s style throughout was sensitive and accommodating of an orchestral sound that refused to dominate. This was real human dialogue between soloist and orchestra. In fact, the orchestral textures throughout - except, of course, for the strings in the second movement - were light and played softer and with less attack than would be the norm. The overall effect was to render the whole work profoundly human and humble. Then, given the nature of the argument of its second movement, this approach rendered the experience utterly moving from the first note to the last. Surely everyone present was deeply affected by this perfect music making.

Antonii Baryshvskyi chose to play different credenzas from any that I have previously heard. This concerto has several cadenzas written by various composers and pianists. I did not recognize the ones that the pianist chose, and conclude, therefore, that they were his own. It was both surprising and startling to have contemporary-sounding cadenzas appearing in such familiar music, but nothing was out of place. Everything made perfect musical sense. Joachim Gustavson’s muted approach to the music allowed the experience to develop and the space thus created was emotionally very special. Antonii Baryshvskyi then played two encores. The first was Chopin’s Revolutionary Study – how apt, given what we had just heard! - and the second, again I speculate, was probably his own work. The ADDA audience gave him the warmest possible applause in recognition of something profoundly special.

So after the familiar cast anew in the first half, the second half embarked upon the less familiar fourth symphony. The fourth symphony’s opening could pass for Mahler and the rest is hardly less revolutionary for the first decade of the nineteenth century.

Beethoven wrote the work after the Eroica and before the anger of the fifth. It is a work that could be superficially classed as a tranquil interlude between two great statements. But anyone who listens to this music will conclude that it is wholly original and indeed visionary. There were times when we might have been listening to Mendelssohn, forty years early!

Again, Joachim Gustavsson’s reading of the music was perfect. The music seemed actually to be human, so much did it seem to breathe. Anyone unfamiliar with this work, and there will be many, even amongst regular concertgoers, should listen intently to its argument because it makes perfect sense. The rhythmic variations Beethoven used in the scherzo are reminiscent even of the seventh symphony. This was a performance that will live in the memory forever.

The evening’s third encore was something completely different, the Intermezzo from Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana. Like everything else on this wonderful evening this was a surprise.

Beethoven, Bruch and Mendelssohn in ADDA Alicante with Max Bragado-Darman - a concert of surprise and excellence

 

This was a program that seemed so middle-of-the-road that attendance might mean getting hit from both directions, from both predictability and familiarity. A programme comprising Beethoven, Bruch and Mendelssohn sounds both predictable and familiar and there are certainly some concert goers who are attracted by these promises. But here the familiarity disappears with closer inspection.

OK, the Beethoven Egmont Overture is frequently played. It is, however, so full of wonderful energy that it can be heard of fresh every time. The unpredictability here started with the opening chords. I have not heard this piece in concert for some time and the textures of the opening phrases seemed utterly new to me. I had never before noticed such harmonies. And these were written in 1810! From the very first bars, thanks to a conductor whose clearly intimate knowledge of the repertoire allows him to draw a listener’s attention to detail without losing overall shape, this concert was going to be familiar perhaps, but certainly not predictable. The final passages of the overture were even repeated at the end of the evening as an encore, and, even second time through, the work’s conclusion was still full of energy and invention.

A Bruch concerto followed. But, as the evening’s program notes pointed out, this was neither a popular violin concerto nor a Scottish fantasy. It was in fact, the double concerto, opus 88, originally written for clarinet and viola, but reshaped by the composer himself for violin and viola. This is mid-Romantic music written as late as 1911. It is backward looking in its apparent willingness to revisit well-trodden paths, but then it is also modern in the way that the soloists share material with the orchestra in the form of a dialogue, if a dialogue can have three contributors, without the need to place the soloists on a showing- off pedestal. The result, especially in the hands of Max Bragado-Darman and the ADDA orchestra and the evening’s soloists, Sarah Ferrández on viola and Maria Florea on violin, was an intimate experience, an examination of melody and texture. The soloists played a little Bach counterpoint as an encore.

Then, in part two, we came to the main course, which was Mendelssohn’s last symphony, number five, The Reformation. Familiar it might be, but I checked, and I have not heard it in the concert hall for over fifty years. Familiar it also may be because of other composers having mined it. Phrases in the violins during the first movement are pure Parsifal from the end of Wagner’s creative life. The theme of the slow movement reappears as a waltz in Shostakovich’s Jazz Suite a hundred years later. And the sonorities of the chorales in the finale might even be reminiscent of Copland!

But, to make musical sense, a symphony needs to be performed with sufficient vision for the intellectual progression to make sense, or, if that be the point, to emphasize its chance and randomness. The latter qualities are not part of Mendelssohn’s oeuvre and the ADDA Orchestra had a director in Max Bragado-Darman whose overview of the music was so perfect that it became transparent. Only the composer’s inspiration shone through, but this was surely this evening’s conductor’s mission and, as such, it was both surprising and memorable. This was a performance by all of the very highest quality, never predictable, and whose familiarity led to respect.

Esther Yoo, Lahav Shani and the Munich Philharmonic in Mendelssohn and Bruckner in ADDA Alicante

What new observations might one have of an event featuring Mendelsohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor and Bruckner’s Symphony No9? These are both works that I have heard many times over the years and several times each in the concert hall. Recordings of them exist in myriad interpretations - especially the Mendelssohn, which, along with concertos by Beethoven, Brahms, Bruch and Tchaikovsky, is amongst the most played violin concertos in the concert hall. Audiences, however, are renowned for liking what they know, so, despite the regularity of its performance, this particular concerto features in most concert seasons of most orchestras.

What is new about every presentation of a work, no matter how often it is played, is the performance. And on this occasion, the soloist was Esther Yoo and the orchestra was the Munich Philharmonic, under their soon-to-be resident conductor Lahav Shani. Esther Yoo’s playing with superb, committed, expressive, and always engaging with the music, never merely playing the notes. Unusually, Lahav Shani chose to conduct without a score. Often, even the most accomplished and experienced conductor uses a score when directing a concerto, perhaps to underline that if anything goes wrong, it is the responsibility of the soloist. But on this occasion, Lahav Shani showed he knew the music so completely that the presence of the score would have been simply redundant.

This was indeed a spirited, and at times a thoughtful performance of a work that always has the potential to become a cliché. The performers ensured, on the other hand, that this utterly familiar work became an original, fresh statement. Esther Yoo’s performance was warmly received by the ADDA audience, and she offered an unaccompanied sarabande by JS Bach as an encore.

And what more is to be said about Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony? Unfinished it might be, stopping at the end of a slow movement placed third, though it still lasts more than an hour. Personally, I find that I can always admire Bruckner’s music from afar, but I find repeatedly that it never invites me inside its world. The composer, apparently, was writing cathedrals in sound, giant blocks of stone and glass piled high. And, as if we were looking up at a ribbed and vaulted Gothic roof, we know that it is heavy, and we know that it is solid, but in detail, it is often light and often even soaring.

Again, Lahav Shani chose to conduct without a score, but his attention to detail throughout was precise and expressive. The Munich Philharmonic definitely makes a sound commensurate with the demands of this work, and on many occasions the tutti actually felt physically massive. But this orchestra is also completely subtle in its playing, and the textures provided by the composer’s orchestration were always to the fore.

In Alicante, we are used to an orchestra that is totally committed to the musical experience, and it is therefore the highest praise possible for this audience member to say that the Munich Philharmonic was at least as good as our regular experience. It goes beyond praise to know that many of those present thought that this orchestra surpassed our norm. Now that is something new.

Historias de la Guerra - Josep Vicent, Yol Eum Son and ADDA Simfonica play Gershwin's Piano Concerto and Shostakovich Eight

This was a concert of two very unequal halves, at least in length, let alone style. The two parts were equal when it came to their standard of performance, however. A program that pits Gershwin against Shostakovich, especially in the latter’s most bleak form, is always going to present a contrast, and a both delightful and thoughtful contrast it proved to be.

Now I admit that I am biased. I first heard Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony in London under Kiril Kondrashin in the early 1970s and the work has stayed firmly in my listening habits ever since. It is not, however, a work to which I listen regularly, maybe once a month at most, because it remains a harrowing experience, no matter how familiar one becomes with its argument.

Shostakovich’s three war symphonies deal with conflict in number seven, victory, albeit hollow, in number nine and raw suffering in number eight. Such subject matter makes number seven, paradoxically, the most accessible of the three with its self-delusion of an apparently triumphal ending. Number nine is so hollowly cynical that it becomes a talking point rather than a musical experience. Number eight, on the other hand, is visceral in its content and thus disturbing in concert. But, from time to time, it is good to be disturbed, to be reminded of the consequence of certain kinds of human behaviour. The fact that it is human behaviour is obvious, by the way, since other life forms do not make bombs.

The concert’s first half offered contrast with the anticipated suffering that was to follow. It was a performance of Gershwin’s Piano Concerto by Yol Eum Son. This is music of sheen and gloss. As piano concertos go, this one is dressed up for a night out and is packed with references to the popular culture of the time, the roaring twenties, the jazz age. But there is enough in the solo part to link it with works in the same genre by Bartók, Prokofiev, or even Rachmaninov in its simultaneously percussive and lyrical style. There are times, unfortunately, where the soloist becomes overwhelmed by Gershwin’s rather heavy orchestration, but that is clearly how Gershwin wanted things. Despite sometimes being eclipsed, Yol Eum Son played with such perfection that her performance was at times breathtaking, both technically brilliant, and musically considered. The experience was further refined by Josep Vicent’s direction of the ADDA orchestra. The rehearsal time had clearly been well used, with the orchestra entering the idiom of Gershwin’s work as well as playing the notes. With an orchestra of the standard of Alicante’s ADDA, however, this might be possible without rehearsal!

Overall, the Gershwin Piano Concerto shows off everything that is good about the composer’s music - directness, melody, rhythm and good-time sheen - alongside everything that is less than wonderful, being the broad brush of the composer’s orchestration and the frequent dominance of effect over content. But this program was perfection as far as this work was concerned. Yol Eum Son finished with the piano arrangement of Gershwin’s Summertime by Earl Wild.

And so to the Shostakovich, which was written barely twenty years after the Gershwin, two decades that had seen Gershwin’s celebrating world view become depression, and then war. If the first part of this concert approached perfection, then the second part definitely achieved it.

Josep Vicent clearly programmed this work to coincide with the eightieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, a point he made while addressing the audience at the end. But also this work clearly occupies a special place in his musical thoughts. He chose a very slow tempo in the opening movement and thoroughly respected the composer’s dynamics amongst the strings. It is often overlooked that the first violins only enter when the marking is pianissimo. This allowed him to stress the changes in dynamics and rhythm that followed to dramatic effect. And in this symphony, Shostakovich uses his often-explored technique of a long moderato with a central allegro climax, and then a denouement, usually featuring a solo instrument. In this case, it is the cor anglais accompanied by a sustained tremolo that often causes string players to tire. Here, this perfect was – yes – perfect played, paced and interpreted.

Personally, I find that the work’s core, however, is the fourth movement, the slow, highly internalized examination of grief and loss. This is music that invites you into its world. As an audience member, you have to become part of the performance because this music forces you to confront the emotional cracks that Gershwin, for instance, would simply paint over. It is also why this Symphony, to my ear, works only when heard in concert since this participatory element, this communication between performers and listeners is less intense in a recording.

At the end of the Eighth Symphony, Shostakovich allows the music to settle into its own sleep. Everything dies away, but we are left very much alive with the memories that it provoked. The audience’s silence at the end of the work was indeed part of its effect and surely part of its performance. Well done the ADDA audience! A performance of this work will last in the memory forever, if the work is played well and with commitment. Needless to say that this performance by Josep Vicent and the ADDA Orchestra satisfied in every aspect.

Shostakovich’s Eighth surely does not need an encore. But if it is to have one, Josep Vicent chose a perfect ending in Ravel’s Pavane for a Dead Princess. This works still concentrates on loss, but the Ravel offers a little sweetness to round off a savoury meal. And Ravel’s subtle orchestral touches really do enhance the musical experience, reminding us of the fact that Gershwin once asked for classes from Ravel to improve his technique.

 

Cappella Andrea Barca and Sir András Schiff play Bach and Mozart in Alicante

 

CAPPELLA ANDREA BARCA

SIR ANDRÁS SCHIFF, DIRECTOR Y PIANO

Johann Sebastian Bach, Concierto de Brandemburgo nº5 en Re Mayor (BWV 1050)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Concierto para piano núm. 25 en Do mayor, K.503

Johann Sebastian Bach, Triple concierto para flauta, violín, clave y cuerda en La menor (BWV 1044)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Concierto para piano núm. 24 en Do menor, K.491

Sir András Schiff is renowned worldwide for his interpretation of the music of Mozart and Bach. I admit at the start that I respect the music of both composers and even recognize the gargantuan achievements of both. But rarely do I feel anything other than respect when I hear performances of their work. Sometimes, performances rise above my prejudice, and I am always delighted by these insights into the musical personalities of Bach and Mozart that a musician can reveal. It’s not that I actively dislike this music, it’s just that it rarely surprises me. So it was with preconceived expectations that I approached last night’s ADDA Alicante concert.

The program presented by András Schiff and Cappella Andrea Barca, the orchestra the soloist himself constructed to play alongside him, included two works from each composer. All four works were called concertos, but the Bach versions each featured three soloists. The works in question were the Brandenburg Concerto No5 and the Triple Concerto, BWV1044.

Besides having a significant part for a keyboard soloist, these two works also feature solo violin and solo flute. Indeed, the central slow movement of each work features only the three soloists, so here both works become chamber music.  Cappella Andrea Barca’s leader Erich Höbarth was the violin soloist in both works. The orchestra’s two flautists Wolfgang Breinschmid and Wally Hase took turns to solo in the Brandenburg and the Triple respectively.

It is rare for me to criticize anything, but this will be one occasion when I do so. The flautists were both wonderful. Their playing was faultless and was delivered with obvious enthusiasm and commitment. Erich Höbarth, I am sure, is an accomplished violinist, but in the ADDA Hall last night, it was difficult to hear his part. This may be quite harsh, since the violin soloist is often playing along with the first violin part, but even on those occasions when he was playing alongside only the other two soloists, such as in the two slow movements of both concertos, his contribution remained barely audible. Now a flute can be an assertive voice, but neither flautist was playing in such a way as to deliberately drown out a colleague, let alone the leader of their own orchestra!

The two Mozart works were piano Concerto No24 and No25. The first one is a rather gentle affair to my ear, presenting a simple, perhaps over-simplified theme in a very simple way. Number 25 has more substance and is longer than its predecessor. András Schiff both directed and played the solo part with great ease. A grand piano is a perfect way of communicating a Mozart concerto, but many keyboard players would choose a smaller voice for the Bach works. In the hands of András Schiff, however, a lightness of touch and an obvious sympathy with the performers meant that the keyboard never dominated. One really felt that this orchestra loves playing with András Schiff and that everyone loves this music. But there again, there were times when there was more than a hint of “we have been here before”.

The audience demanded an encore and András Schiff delivered a Bach fugue. Everyone went home happy.

 

 

Josep Vicent directs ADDA Simfonica in Rimsky-Korsakov and Bizet, Scheherazade meets Carmen

 

When you go to concerts regularly, there are works that tend to appear frequently. After the first few times in the concert hall, there is always a temptation to say “not again” and avoid the evening. On the other hand, the irregular concertgoer is often attracted by these familiar works, and without fail including them in a programme will put bums on seats. Both opinions are wrong. Not only is the unfamiliar more likely to provide memorable experience, but the familiar is also experienced anew every time it is performed. If the work is played well and generously interpreted, there is always something original to be found.

This preamble thus introduces a review of ADDA Simfonica’s concert of last Saturday which featured Rimsky-Korsakov Scheherazade and Bizet’s Carmen Suites.

Scheherazade is a symphony in all but title. Alternatively, it might even be heard as an approach to a violin concerto, a kind of Ein Heldenleben before its time. Its four movements roughly follow a symphonic mould, but there the analogy disappears. The music is in fact, much more like Wagner than Brahms, with not only a programme, but also musical germs which are heard like leitmotifs. Josep Vicent was clear in his notes that the composer himself did not consider these thematic motifs as anything other than ideas stemming from the natural development of the material. But in fat they are a tad too literal to be anything Wagner-style leitmotifs,

Josep Vicent’s interpretation with our beloved orchestra stressed both the realism and the dynamics of the piece. Though an expert orchestrator, Rimsky-Korsakov’s style does at times appear to be rather “on” or “off”, there being apparently very little between pianissimo and full tutti. And in those tutti, the orchestral sound is thick, deliberately so, and undeniably rich, with the tuba always filling out every possible space beneath.

And what a performance this was - captivating, exciting, certainly dynamic, but always subtle. Anna Nilsen’s violin playing from the leader’s chair was exquisite, as was every contribution from the harp. It was a program that certainly re-opened my ears anew to a work that I have heard many times.

And speaking of the familiar, Bizet’s Carmen Suites that followed were surprisingly subtle in terms of orchestration compared to the first half. When, I wonder, was the last time a concert review described Bizet’s orchestration as light? It is. After all, a relative judgment.

Music works in strange ways. As a child, Bizet’s music for Carmen became familiar via a television advertisement for a brand of petrol and to this day whenever I hear the massage I silently sing-along with these wrong words, thus preserving a brand name for gasoline that still exists. So for me, the familiarity got the better of the experience with this music. But the performance was nothing less than excellent. The tunes flowed, the drama was tense, and the music was always centre stage.

There was an encore. Josep Vicent and the ADDA orchestra had recently played Brahms. Ironically, given this evening’s programme, the conductor announced that no matter how many times his music is played, there is always some space for more Brahms. The audience was then treated to a passage from a symphonic slow movement. The experience was a theme for the evening.