Semyon Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic in Alicante, Smetana, Strauss, and Rachmaninov -alongside the artistry of Mao Fujita

Perhaps music expands to occupy the space, the time, surrounding it. That was the impression this audience member felt when listening to the Czech Philharmonic under the direction of Semyon Bychkov last night in ADDA, Alicante. The ensemble was utterly perfect, the rhythms of both Smetana and Rachmaninov, which an orchestra might interpret with either clumsiness or mannerism seemed to flow naturally and elegantly from the players.

The Rachmaninov Symphonic Dances in the second half has a very famous and much played first movement that is marked “non allegro”. To many conductors it seems that this seems to mean “allegro”. That way its main theme becomes boisterous, more dance-like. Semyon Bychkov clearly has directed this work many times and did not fall into the trap of rushing things. Neither did he consciously slow everything down. His reading of the piece seemed to create the space for the music itself to occupy. And the result was perfection of rhythms, of timing, of ensemble.

Personally, I have in the past always found the work ultimately disappointing. Autobiographical, yes. Rhythmic, yes. Lyrical, yes. Textured, yes. Experimental, maybe for Rachmaninov at the end of his compositional life. Symphonic, maybe. But as a piece, I have always found these disparate elements did not quite hang together. Under the direction of Semyon Bychkov, however, everything came together to what became the finest performance of the work I have ever heard. It made musical sense throughout. I was particularly struck by the similarity I heard during the second movement to Ravel’s La Valse in occasional phrases and sororities.

In the first half we had heard performances of three sections of The Battered Bride by Smetana. There was the Overture, of course, but also the Furiant and The Dance of the Comedians. The Bartered Bride Overture is one of the first pieces I can remember hearing on a Classics For Pleasure LP in the nineteen-seventies. Is rhythmic vitality and its overt exuberance were then its attractions, and these qualities endure over fifty years later. From the start, the rhythmic precision and overall ease the orchestra brought to the music was immediately audible. It is not surprising that the Czech philharmonic is at ease with Smetana, but in music nothing is ever taken for granted. There was not a mannerist or overstressed rhythm in evidence, but it was still played with real enthusiasm and not a little excitement.

But the evening actually belonged to the soloist in the concert’s second work, the Burleske for Piano and Orchestra by Richard Strauss. Now this is an early work, composed before Strauss’s mature style developed. It is packed with ideas and has quite a lot of notes that in many hands may become a form of gymnastics. But in the hands of Mao Fujita, the work became a showpiece for subtlety, not at all the occasionally “horrifying” experience that Johannes Brahms experienced.

Mao Fujita’s touch on the keyboard is deceptively light. His fingers hardly seem to touch the keys, but the sound he creates is superb. Add to that perfect phrasing and dynamics that only a true artist can achieve, and the piano in his hands becomes almost able to transcend the instrument. Mao Fujita seems thus to communicate directly with his listeners. The sound seemed to flow across the work’s rather abruptly transitioned sections. The “cadenzas” for solo piano were all delivered with musicality to the fore, never simply bravura. The program note explained that this was one of the most performed pieces for soloist and orchestra. In concert programmes over the decades, I think this was the first time I had heard it. I hope it is not the last time, and I certainly hope that this first time that I heard Mao Fujita’s playing is far from the last.

The soloist gave an encore that, apparently, he had played in Chicago a week before. It was a piano arrangement of the last scene of Die Meistersinger of Richard Wagner. Now this opened like a popular song arrangement and then progressed to the opera’s as well-known theme. It was a subtle piece of music and resisted the obvious temptation simply to show off. But it did precisely that, subtly. On the other hand, I have heard Semyon Bychkov conduct many times on radio and in recordings, but this was the first time in the concert hall. An enduing memory will be that if you create space for music, then it comes alive. 

The Only Story by Julian Barnes

The Only Story by Julian Barnes eventually is a disturbing read. The Only Story is a love story, but it is also a life reviewed from its point of ultimate failure. Could things have worked out differently? Would we have done that if we had taken a moment to reflect? Could we have avoided the pitfalls, the moments where things did not go well?

Paul and Susan fell in love. Nothing strange about that. People do it all the time. They live in the kind of middle class, home counties English village that never makes any headlines, but always hides its foibles behind privet hedges and soberly, but always perfectly painted front doors. Life there is quiet. Turmoil and disagreements are generally avoided, and on emerging are swiftly swept under a nearby carpet. In the 1950s, when this story is set at its beginning, carpets were rarely fitted, so lifting a corner to hide something was hardly a task. The consequences, however, could be.

The book has three parts, but no chapters. In essence, Paul is reflecting on his life, especially that shared with his lover, Susan. Each section reflects on events, feelings remembered, encounters shared. Maybe his memory has edited reality, or maybe it has enhanced it, amplifying whatever was felt or not felt at the time. He analyses his own psyche, his actions and reactions. There is much philosophizing, much psychological analysis, some of which might be imagined. Neither we, nor Paul, are quite sure. 

In this first section, Paul, like most people of his then age, was obsessed by being young. Lack of years, perhaps lack of experience was a fog under whose protection one felt one could act alone, as if youth were alone in the universe. The consequences would always come later, but they could not be foreseen, no matter how predictable they might be. 

Here is an example of Paul’s reflection. “He had a duty to see back to how she had been, and to rescue her. But this wasn’t just about her. He had a duty to himself. To see back and… rescue himself? No, that was stupidly melodramatic. His life had not been wrecked. His heart, yes, his heart had been cauterized. But he had found a way to live, and continued with that life, which had brought him to here. And from here, he had a duty to see himself as he had once been. Strange how, when you are young, you owe no duty to the future; but when you are old, you owe a duty to the past. The one thing you can’t change.”

The complication, you see, concerning Paul and Susan’s relationship is that at the start he was nineteen and she was forty-eight. Strange how the words seem less contrasted than the numbers. It did not go down well in the tennis club where they met, could not be hidden behind the privet hedge and would not fit under any carpet. How they met and developed a relationship occupies the first part of the book’s three sections. How things unfold in the following two sections is for the reader to discover. Let it be said that the path of love is never even, with pitfalls at every step. The trick, the young Paul might have said, is to step over them, to avoid them. As an old man looking back, he knows that the only story is how you cope with the things you didn’t see, can’t anticipate and didn’t expect. Those may floor you. The detail is whose floor?

The Only Story is not just about love. It is about what we do with our lives, the decisions we take or whether we can eventually live with them. Eventually, we all know where we are heading. The trick is to do something along the way. But when we love, we can be deluded into thinking that is the end, the purpose, the rainbow whose end we have found. As we age, we complicate. But looking back, our memory convinces that to have loved is the only story of that matters.

It was Susan, the lover, who “had pointed out that everyone has the love story. Even if it was a fiasco, even if it fizzled out, never got going, had all been in the mind to begin with: that didn’t make it any less real. And it was the only story.”

The novel’s complexity is almost unnoticed by the reader. Paul’s story is so vividly involving that the reader may not even notice that Julian Barnes sometimes slips between the “I” of a first person, to a “he” of the observed. Thus The Only Story could be lived by anyone, readers included.

Programa de mano de 19 nov 2026 - Denia International Piano Festival - Lovre Marušić

 

Blake Pouliot plays the Violin Concerto No1 of Shostakovich and the ADDA Orchestra under Josep Vicent triumphs with the First Symphony

The last time I heard the First Symphony of Dmitri Shostakovich in a concert hall was perhaps over fifty years ago. It is not that I have not been avoiding it. Broadcast on radio, a performance of the work is not at all rare, but I have not until now been in the right place at the right time to hear it in performance. Alicante’s ADDA Orchestra under their director Josep Vicent offered a performance of the work as part of the current season and coupled it with the Violin Concerto No. 1. So last night, we were to hear two works by Shostakovich, an acknowledged masterpiece alongside a graduation piece written by a nineteen-year-old.

I found it revealing how even the most familiar music can be transformed into something fresh and new in live performance. Though I have not heard the symphony recently in the concert hall, I have heard it broadcast repeatedly over the years. But in performance, the utter originality is breathtaking and the continual flow of the young composer’s ideas both surprises and frustrates. First appearing in the middle of the 1920s, this is music which seems not to be modernistic, nor neoclassical, nor atonal. Neither is it obviously Late Romantic. Stylistically, at least, it is quite original. There are dissonances certainly, but no matter how much Glazunov criticized the young Shostakovich for his excesses, we hear a work which, if anything, is rooted in Mahler, especially in its treatment of slower themes.

Faster sections illustrate just how focused the young man was, in that the themes have the feel of the mature composer and indeed could have been written at any time in his career. In much of Shostakovich’s music, these spiky themes are often cited as evidence of cynicism, but these particular spiky themes were written by a nineteen-year-old young man who clearly just thought that way. Programme notes on the evening stressed the fact that the first movement has a humorous flavour throughout. As the evening progressed, we had more evidence of the composer’s humour, but it seems that this quality was evident in his works from the start.

I can remember the programme notes which accompanied the performance I heard decades ago. It said that the inclusion of a piano “to fill out the harmonies” was a sign of the inexperience of the composer. I wonder if the same author would have written the same opinion about Symphony Nos. 5 and 7, both of which have piano parts. In fact, in this First Symphony, the piano part contributes in no uncertain way to the statement of themes, rather than filling out anything.

Overall, the symphony surprises with its multiplicity of ideas. This does lead to an overall lack of focus and it is, perhaps this lack of focus that gives away the youth of its writer. But you are only young once, and these ideas would later percolate through a lifetime of composition.

The First Violin Concerto is a masterpiece from Shostakovich’s maturity. Unusually, it has four movements, slow-fast-slow-fast and indeed, the first movement almost seems like a lento continuation of the First Symphony, so hard is it to pin down. The scherzo and the passacaglia that follow are more conventional, but beautiful. The finale is a romp, and the humorous composer gives free rein to celebrate, and provides an opportunity to “play your heart out”, which was gleefully taken up by the ADDA players. Everyone seem to be enjoying the release after the tension and brooding of the first movement. And it was in fact in that first movement that the evening suffered a minor flaw when, at least to my ear, the soloist and the orchestra momentarily diverged rhythmically. But it was only a moment in an otherwise perfect performance.

Blake Pouliot was the soloist and, apart from that passage in the first movement, both his playing, and his pace were superb. He was clearly enjoying the rhythmic drive that the ADDA Orchestra brought to the music. The ADDA audience was greatly appreciative of his efforts, to such an extent that he played two encores in very different musical styles. The first was his own arrangement of The Last Rose of Summer, whose folk song like melody rang out, but quietly and shrouded in gentle, subtle decoration. The second encore was the more conventional, the Gavotte en Rondeau from the JS Bach’s Violin Partita No. 3 in E Major. But the concerto and the two encores did provide a picture of Blake Puliot’s talent.

We also had two encores after the symphony, and these two orchestral encores showed off two other characteristics of the music of Shostakovich. The first was the Waltz No2. I have written before of this strange masterpiece, but it is worth saying again that this waltz with its hummable and memorable tune is in a minor key. So Shostakovich the enigma triumphs again, with a sad song appearing to be celebratory. Fascinating. Then we heard Shostakovich the comedian in the Galop from the Cheryomushky music. The ADDA Orchestra provided the vaudeville.

Gustavo Dudamel and Venezuela Youth Orchestra play Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony in Alicante

After almost a year involving two postponements that included military action against the state and then an earthquake, the Venezuela Youth Orchestra finally took the stage at ADDA, Alicante under the internationally famous directorship of Gustavo Dudamel. The experience was worth the wait.

The orchestra’s programme featured a single work, Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony, his seventh symphony. I have written elsewhere on the possible meaning contained in the piece, so I will not repeat myself here.

What was undoubtedly true about this particular performance of the work, and a qualification that would be heard quite rarely, was the extraordinary number of musicians on stage. This certainly gave the music extra power when it was needed. Precisely how many musicians were on stage is not important, but regular concert goer will be interested in the observation that the number of double basses reached double figures.

The Youth Orchestra of Venezuela is made up of players ranging from 14 to 19 years of age. I heard Jakub Hrůša say recently that he is not a follower of the “required age” theory about musical performance, stating that musician of whatever age will perform the most profound and the lightest scores as pieces of music. Differences in interpretation are not born of maturity: they are a product of what the music signifies – or indeed does not signify - to a performer at the time of the performance. We would not, for instance, demand that only 19-year-olds should perform Shostakovich’s First Symphony, to be heard in Alicante later this week, because that was the age of the composer when it was first performed.

But that said, what was truly impressive about this performance was the apparent musical maturity displayed by these players. Gustavo Dudamel’s reading of the score was conventional overall, but the speed at which he chose to open the work was surprising. Previously, I have been used to the tempo of the first movement’s opening from the recordings I have and the quick survey of these reveals that the composer’s tempo marking of allegretto usually allows space for the opening theme to make its sophisticated point. Gustavo Dudamel chose to open the work with what sounded like an allegro first movement, prompting me to think that the performers wanted to end the evening as quickly as possible, as a result of their hectic tour schedule. But, having made the point, the tempo did settle to an allegretto for the remainder of the movement. I was equally surprised by the senority of the woodwind chords early in the symphony. Initially, I felt that these had missed their point of balance, with perhaps a particular part underplayed.

But why am I concentrating on minor shortcomings of performance when the overall experience was so memorable? Ask a critic. Overall the musicianship of these young players was beyond criticism, and Gustavo Dudamel and the orchestra provided an experience that I am sure no-one in the audience will ever forget.

In the conflict climax of the first movement, the orchestra’s weight really did come into its own. Before that, the colour of the composer’s orchestration was displayed to the full, muted brass, pizzicato strings and spiky woodwind all sounded out clearly, never retiring, never dominating, all combining their textures to communicate a musical experience like no other.

It would be wrong to single out individual performances from such an array of talent, but I am going to do so. The horn section in general and its principal were outstanding, as was the diminutive pianist in this very important part within the orchestral texture. When the first movement explodes into conflict, the orchestral sound was quite outstanding. Throughout, the string textures were precise, but the way in which they added the story underneath the tumult was quite outstanding.

And at the movement’s end, the drum beat of dictatorship, of the false promises of populism is still there, reminding all of us that we can still be fooled. At the work’s end the three-note threat is also still in evidence, reminding us that dictators should always be feared, whatever their politics.

Personally, I find the symphony’s emotional core comes in the third movement. The sonorities here are different. Last night the Venezuela Youth Orchestra under Gustavo Dudamel played these to perfection. Up until now, despite having heard the symphony literally hundreds of times, I found it astounding to realize that the musical material of the symphony’s final three movements is largely derived from the opening themes. It somehow all made perfect sense.

There was an encore involving a quartet at the front of the stage. A miniature guitar, a harp, maracas and bass were joined by a solo violin to let rip with what was obviously a popular form in Venezuela. The orchestra accompanied, conducted by facial expressions and dance. And so we heard a performance of Alma Llanera by Gutierrez, which I am reliably informed by Wikipedia is derived from a dance called a jaropo and the piece is widely regarded as the unofficial Venezuelan national anthem. The musicians involved gave it their all, as did everyone else on the platform. It was a night to remember.  

It was a fitting and hopeful end to a concert that had been introduced as a memorial to the victims of Venezuela’s earthquake, and indeed the victims of Spain’s recent train crash. And let’s not forget the victims of war, no matter where or when.

Fabizio Meloni and Antonello D'Onofrio offer a clarinet and piano duo in Denia

 

The programme had to be revised following the fatal rail crash this week. We did not get the Khachaturian, but we did get two encores, one of Oblivion of Piazzolla and the other, I think, was the first part only of Seress’s Last Gloomy Sunday, but I could be wrong.

Sebastiani’s Paraphrase on Bellini’s Norma was a first for me. In over fifty years of concert going and the same time collecting recordings, this was the first example of the composer’s work that I have ever heard. Ferdinando Sebastiani was and Italian clarinettist to whom the Neapolitan style of playing is attributed. I could only fid one recording of the piece on the internet, which shows it is something of a rarity.

Fabrizio Meloni chose to open the concert with the clarinet beginning offstage. The familiar strains of Casta Diva emerged slowly from the wings.  The work’s second section is an allegro and this provided a showcase for Sebastiani’s clarinet writing.

The Haydn Sonata that followed was both witty and elegant. After many years of listening, I generally can’t find anything more to say about Franz Josef Haydn’s music, but its playing often does not bring out these essential elements. Antonello D’Onofrio’s playing did.

The next work was a complete rarity. It was an arrangement of a sonata by Poulenc for clarinet and piano, the more well-known Clarinet Sonata coming later. The work was billed as a World Premiere, which it undoubtedly was. The success of the piece was obvious.

Antonello D’Onofrio then played Rachmaninov’s 4 pieces Opus 3. The second of these pieces is the composition that made Rachmaninov’s name, the famous Prelude in C sharp minor. Here, embedded in the four pieces it was originally published alongside, it took its place elegantly and expressively, but without the overstatement that usually comes with it.

In another arrangement by Antonello D’Onofrio, we then heard Schnittke’s Suite The Clown and the Children. Now Alfred Schnittke’s output was massive. It also covered, as was his intention, many forms of music, from the most popular to the most esoteric. His First Symphony in the 1970s was heard some years ago on London’s South Bank under the baton of Vladimir Jurowsky, a concert I heard and will never forget. The elements are all there. Russian folk music, popular forms, jazz, pop, propaganda and dissonance. Schnittke wanted always to illustrate how we modern people are bombarded with content and that it is up to us to make sense of it. This suite was a case in point, marrying folk themes with pop and jazz with just a touch of the contemporary. Schnittke’s music, like the man and his age, remains an enigma.

The performers cut the Khachaturian that was on the programme and went straight to The Clarinet Sonata by Poulenc. We tend to forget that Francis Polenc was more like Alfred Schnittke in his age than we tend to admit. Fabrizio Meloni brought out all the stresses and strains of the piece as well as its lyricism.

The duo played Piazzolla’s Oblivion as an encore, with Fabrizio Meloni starting the clarinet pointed at the piano strings to engender extra resonance. Piazzolla’s theme emerged from there effortlessly. The last piece was offered in recognition of the loss of life in the recent train crash and the music was fitting.

The Düsseldorf Symphony under Adam Fischer play Mahler 3 - perfection

 

Normally, I don’t read reviews of a concert before drafting my own. This time is different. The Düsseldorf Symphony are currently on tour in Spain and last night they played in ADDA, Alicante, having previously played the same program in Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia. The single work in each of the tour concerts is the Symphony No. 3 of Gustav Mahler. Frankly, I came home so moved by the experience that I broke with my tradition and searched for reviews of the previous concerts on the Internet.

It seems from the reviews that Adam Fischer’s interpretation of Mahler is not universally appreciated. The criticism seems to seem to concentrate on his handling of the first movement of this symphony. There was a reference in one review to problems with the orchestral tuning. I find that hard to believe. It seems that to be a reviewer of classical music – whatever that might be! – it is necessary to talk primarily about another version of the same piece, rather than describe the specific performance.

As an audience member last night, it was obvious from the start that Adam Fischer has his own approach to this symphony. In the hands of less inspired conductors, the first movement becomes a rather conventional allegro when the marches appear. The slower material thus tends to take on the nature of an introduction to the eventual allegro. Mahler’s own title for the movement is Pan Awakes: Summer Marches In, signifying the Pan of mythology has something to do with the scenario. I am saying nothing unconventional if U state that this particular Pan is associated with the wild, shepherds and flocks, rustic music, and impromptus. This is the key, I think, to Mahler’s title and, indeed, Adam Fisher’s reading of the first movement.

In the slower sections of the first movement, Mahler effectively wrote chamber music, full of contrasting textures, sonorities and orchestral effects, often in surprising and striking combinations. Adam Fisher, by varying the rhythm here and there, and by inserting often quite long pauses, emphasizes the rusticity and the impromptu nature of music. And by this means the audience can hear essential elements, all the detail and really appreciate the texture. These elements combine together to evoke the feeling of an early morning or evening stroll across Alpine Meadows, where birds sing in the distance, where animals somewhere wander across the field of vision, but remaining distant, even out of sight. The emotions that such sounds evoke are close at hand, but nothing else is, apart from, of course, the emotional reactions they create. Then, when the marches takeover, outlines become clearer, more tangible.

Personally, I find Adam Fisher’s treatment of the first movement, utterly convincing. I heard sonorities I had not heard before. I became conscious of transitions that other conductors had clearly airbrushed out of their interpretations, and I was able to marvel at the unusual juxtaposition of instruments that we don’t expect to play together.

Mahler’s subtitles for the other five movements are derivations of this monumental first movement’s title. He is successively alluded to the world of flowers, animals, man, angels, and love. And throughout, Adam Fischer’s attention to the detail of the score seemed to emphasize these meanings. The minuet second movement was suitably delicate, the third scherzo-like in its abruptness and energy. In the fourth, mankind is revealed contemplative and reflective, whilst in the fifth the angels sing out in perfect harmony.

In the finale, we find Adam Fischer at his best. The long theme was played with little stress and emphasis, enabling it to expand into the space available with all its beauty. Too often, in my opinion, interpretations concentrate on making the material over-profound and overtly beautiful. The emphasis thereby required causes us to stop a marvel rather than go with the flow. And this flow is so mesmerically beautiful that, whenever I hear the symphony played, I feel as though I ought to stand up towards the end and acknowledge the breadth of the musical vision and its emotional power.

It was this, the emotional power that was enduring throughout the performance. I, for one, notwithstanding the criticism of other, will treasure the experience of Mahler 3 under Adam Fischer. It was, simply, one of the most emotional experiences I have had in sixty years of concert going.

I realise that I have not mentioned Catriona Morison, who sand the contralto part in the fourth movement superbly. I state again that this performance was not only memorable. It will live in my memory as long as I have such a facility!