Campogrande, Prokofiev and Dvorak in Alicante

The placing of the world premiere alongside establish repertoire is not itself unusual. What was unusual about ADDA Sinfonica’s latest concert was the fact that the contemporary piece that started the concert was arguably the most musically conventional item on the programme.

Nicola Campogrande’s music paints wholly recognizable shapes in never jarring colours. It seems to live in familiar landscapes, often vistas that are reminiscent of film on television music. This is in no way a criticism, but I do think it is an observation that informs an approach to his style. His second symphony “A New World”, follows a conventional four movement structure, but diverges by not pursuing formal development and also by having the finale presented as a song. The whole piece lasts just fifteen minutes, which was about the time devoted to a discussion between the composer and Josep Vicent, the orchestra’s artistic director, at the start of the evening.

Nicola Campogrande explained that he began the work because he felt that the world needed a change, a new direction, clearly toward a greater amount of tolerance and cooperation, rather than division and conflict. A friend offered to write a poem that became the symphony’s finale. The message, if such a work can be summarized, is that we can build a better world if we simply accept what we are, where we are, and share things like music and singing.

Nicola Campogrande’s “A New World” proved to be as gentle on the ear as in its message from within the text. Again, this is not a criticism. We respond to suffering and pressure in our own individual way. It was, after all, Vaughan Williams, a favourite composer of mine, who responded to the carnage of the First World War with the Pastoral Symphony, a work that presents precious little played forte and boasts three slow movements. Piero Bodrato’s text presented a positive vision that we were invited to share, at least for the length of the piece. Stephanie Iranyi’s soprano voice proved perfect for this text and music.

The First World War link is important, because of the work that followed. Prokofiev’s First Violin Concerto was written in 1917 and its premiere had to be postponed because of Russia’s Revolution. Conceived in an era of conflict, this is another work that seems to commemorate via suggestion a vision of a different world. But Sergei Prokofiev’s imagination lived in a truly individual and ethereal universe, which only occasionally seems even to reference the terrestrial. Twenty-year-old Ellinor D’Melon’s playing as via a soloist captured every aspect of this masterpiece. She was delicate and brash, soothing and acerbic, loud and soft, always perfectly expressive. Alongside Josep Vicent’s perfect balance in the ADDA orchestra kept the piece overall a musical whole, while allowing the soloist to shine. It was indeed a memorable performance of arguably the greatest of all violin concertos. Ellinor D’Melon’s encore lightened the mood considerably. She offered Henri Vieuxtemp’s Variations on the Yankee Doodle, a piece that allowed her to show off in the conventional concerto style that the Prokofiev masterpiece largely denied.

There is perhaps nothing new to say about Dvorak’s New World. But at the end of the 19th century, this work referenced the still revolutionary Wagner, included folk tunes in serious music and used orchestral colours and power that many audiences might have found challenging. Above all, the New World of the title was itself in reference to the idea of freedom from Europe’s feudal shackles and staid empires. The performance, as ever with the ADDA orchestra, was full of expertise and enthusiasm, a perfect mix to make even the familiar memorable.

There was a little encore, of course. Bernstein’s Mambo from West Side Story is a roof raiser. Thankfully the roof stayed on. Just.