A Long Way from Home - Peter Carey

A Long Way From Home is a novel that takes the reader a long way from any comfort zone. It is challenging in many ways and perhaps it is only a determined reader armed with perseverance who will unearth its depths of experience.

The basics are easy. We are in Australia in the 1950s, specifically in Bacchus March, a small town in Victoria, which is specifically and perhaps crucially not an urban environment. We meet Mrs Irene Bobs, married to Titch, and we encounter a range of the foibles that afflict families for good or ill wherever families might be. We also meet the unlikely character of Bachhuber, with professed German ancestry. He comes with an extra special mix of family foibles.

The early part of the book can be opaque. Switching between different points of view, but without major stylistic clues, the lives of people in Bacchus March and those of their parents and ancestors elsewhere emerge out of the mists of gossip, history and half-truth. There is a strong sense of competition, of doing business, of eking every morsel of value out of everything that might be tradable. There is discussion about how to establish a dealership for the cars that are becoming a way of life for expel who previously might not have considered owning one. There is certainly money to be made, but how?

Somehow a plan emerges that entails participation in the Redex Trial, a round Australia trip that will be covered by press and watched my eager spectators along the route. It's a route, however, that passes through many underpopulated areas, the crossing of which present challenges to the participants. We follow the Bobs and Mr Bachhuber in their progress through the rally and, it might be said, the book only really takes off once the race - sorry, it's not a race - starts.

Eventually, we see the aftermath of a successful campaign as the rally car and its occupants complete a continental circle down the west coast and back to Victoria. Along the way, we encounter past and present of the characters' and the nation's identity.

Central to this novel is an interplay between identity and power. A prime theme is the reality of life as experienced by Australia's indigenous people and the origins of that reality in the colonial past. This history has engendered learned behaviour as well as legal and cultural practices that seem to offer a self-justifying order to life. Things are that way because things are that way. Don't argue. But what happens when someone does argue, or does break a mould?

Bachhuber goes along for the ride with the Bobs, initially as navigator. But it is not long before we learn that his ability to get them to a place does not imply that he might be accepted when he arrives there. Despite his professed German heritage, he turns out to be black, or half black, or half white, or whatever fraction a prejudiced observer might want to ascribe. It means he can't buy a beer in bar and can't mix with those he encounters. Along the route, Bachhuber finds the reality of his parentage and leans that the German roots go only as deep as his father might have planted them.

But amidst this search through a nation's past, there are other relationships of exploitation and power, not least those between the sexes. Titch Bobs does not survive the exigencies of the rally for too long and Irene takes over the driving. She wears overalls, dresses like a man, and receives comments and treatment that identify the reduced status of her sex.

But she is a very good driver and does well in the race that is not a race. She does well in meeting all challenges, mechanical, psychological and personal that the race presents. Her relation with Bachhuber, who continues along the road with her after Titch temporarily disappears from the scene, develops, but it's greatest product seems to be the rising jealousy of her husband, whose ownership seems to be in question.

Thus, we have multi-layered aspects of exploitation based on race, sex and not least generation. None of these is resolvable, of course, but it is the relation between Australia's present and past that appears to be the one that can be changed. The experience, however, in A Long Way From Home remains somewhat opaque. Nothing is ever clear because everything is filtered through the confusion of each character's point of view, and this is always changing, perhaps even negotiable. The result is thoroughly moving, but the circular trip is less than continental and the journey is less than life-changing.

Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan

Unusually, I am not going to write a full review of this. To say I was disappointed by the book would be an understatement. It was clear what Ian McEwan was trying to do. His problem was that it didn’t work, couldn’t develop a focus and meandered to its own detriment.

We have a Mr Friend, who plays at making money on stock markets. He buys an intelligent robot called Adam (yes, there are Eves as well) and lo and behold it’s better at the job than he is. It’s also better at seducing his girlfriend. The relationship that develops between the two humans and the android is purportedly at the centre of the novel, but this keeps being crowded out by what regularly seems to extraneous subplots. Quite early on in the book, this particular reader was caused to judge inaccuracy when the principal character described buying a personal computer in a decade before they existed. I thought it might be a mistake, but it was part of an idea that permeated the book and permeated unsuccessfully.

The rationale was that Alan Turing had not died in the 1950s, but had lived on the extend computing, information technology and robotics beyond where it did in fact reach by the end of the 1960s. This allowed a fully formed robot that satisfied the Turing test during the 1970s. This then allowed Ian McEwan to rewrite the history of Margaret Thatcher’s tenure in office, create a defeat in the Falklands War and examine where British society might have finished.

But there was also a false conviction in a rape trial, a vendetta pursued by the accused against the accuser, which was Mr Friend’s girlfriend. The complications merely got in the way of any plot that might develop. When the robots started showing signs of paranoia and self-harm, this seemed to be just another side angle on what was a list of asides. Overall, this was not a successful read.

ADDA Simfonica and Trio Vibrart in Beethoven

Again the program looked familiar. The only thing that appeared not to be predictable was the playing. And on that score, the ADDA orchestra under Joseph Vicente, fronted by Trio Vibrart, we surely need not have worried. Indeed, the combination led only to celebration.

The program was all Beethoven. And Beethoven from that period of his creative life when he was actively pushing the boundaries of classical form to the limit in the establishment of musical Romanticism.

The second half was devoted to a performance of the Eroica Symphony. It is difficult to say anything new about work that is a pillar of European culture, a work that is so often performed and recorded. But what was really memorably original about this performance was its audience. It wasn’t that the orchestra played badly and that our collective interest wandered. Far from it! The concentration of this ADDA audience was almost audible at times, or inaudible, if you see what I mean. The quiet passages were listened to with such concentration and silence that every nuance of even the quietest music shone clearly through.

Beethoven’s design thus became completely visible. Obviously, this symphony was written to pay homage to Napoleon, but then the replacement of a triumphal march for a funeral march rendered the piece heroic, rather than laudatory. And what more, in this performance, specifically as a result of its audience’s concentration, the music allowed Beethoven’s purely personal statements to be experienced clearly and intimately. It is often said that the Eroica’s finale was Beethoven’s defiant gesture to his worsening deafness, but in this performance, the suggestions of doubt and insecurity were clearly in evidence. The result was a truly rounded and complete experience, full of vulnerability and self-doubt, as well as energy and heroism. How many pieces with a complete funeral march movement were ever branded triumphal? I simply don’t know. Here, and as much because of the audience’s concentration, we saw the full picture. An encore came from a movement from Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony, and it sent everyone home lighter.

The first half and been a complete gem. Beethoven’s Triple Concerto is often problematic in performance. The solo parts are probably not big enough to warrant booking three top-rated soloists. On the other hand, if the playing is less than perfect, or of the featured ensemble does not gel, the sense of a shared chamber music experience, which surely the composer intended but on a larger scale, would be lacking.

In this performance, the ADDA orchestra was fronted by a trio that regularly plays chamber music together, Trio Vibrart, Miguel Colom on violin, Fernando Arias on cello and Juan Pérez Floristán on piano. Individually, they were more than capable of playing concerto-like roles, but they also brought the cohesion of a chamber group to the music. This had the effect of thoroughly integrating the ideas, thoroughly integrating the chamber music of the soloist group with the chamber music-like orchestral interventions and accompaniment. The performance was not only a success: it transcended the concept of success.

As an encore, the Trio Vibrart offered an arrangement of one of Ginastera’s Argentinian Dances. The contrast that this folk-inspired, ever-so-slightly modernistic music presented brought the whole memorable evening together. Bravi to all concerned, especially the audience!

Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonia under Paavo Järvi with Maria Dueñas in Schubert and Bruch

When you have been to a lot of concerts - when you reach a certain age! - real surprises are quite rare. Even new works fall into expected groups when you have heard a lot of them. In over fifty years of concert-going, I cannot remember a performance of Schubert’s Symphony No. 1, let alone a concert with Schubert’s Symphony No. 2 on the same programme.  Surprise? Will it come from a program advertising Schubert and Bruch? Well, yes, if it also includes the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonia Bremen with Paavo Järvi with Maria Dueñas as soloist.

Let’s start with the Schubert symphonies. Number one had his first performance some seventy years after it was written in 1813. During his lifetime, Franz Schubert heard little of his music performed before a paying audience. This is immediately one in the eye for anyone who justifies taste via popularity. Here we have perhaps the greatest European composer of all time who managed to have just a handful of his works performed in public during his lifetime. A populist would have to declare him and his work worthless. Things were obviously different at the start of the nineteenth century. But is public exposure any easier now? At the start of the nineteenth century, Schubert could at least invite his friends to a recital. Salons were all the rage. In the twenty-first century, how many unhittable videos are posted on the Internet? And are they all bad? Conversely, it what gets the hits automatically good?

The first symphony was the work of a sixteen-year-old. And yet it sounds mature, in spite of orchestral writing that on occasions advertises immaturity and lack of experience. But what is in the work is the unusual mixture of dance and celebration with dark self-doubt that would come to characterise the composer’s later works. The work runs to half an hour and feels like a deliberately serious statement by a young man who knew he had talent, but still could not see a definitive way to express it. Would things change?

After the break, we also had a performance of Schubert's Symphony No. 2. This is surprising music, along with the First Symphony, but there is greater maturity in the writing. The sound world seems to be that Mendelssohn, rather than Haydn, Mozart or Beethoven. But Schubert wrote his first two symphonies in 1813 and 1814 to 1815 a decade before Mendelssohn wrote anything of note. I remain wedded to the idea that no one is ever born before their time. A public, however, can become fixed in a culture that prevents it from appreciating the novel, however, and that tendency can render some creative geniuses to appear to be ahead of the time. So it probably was with Schubert. Unknown and unheard, he was already writing revolutionary music a decade at least before it became institutionalized by Mendelssohn. This time, these early symphonies by Schubert formed the real surprise of this concert.

Bruch’s First Violin Concerto is never a surprise. Unless, that is, it is played by someone like Maria Dueñas. No matter what reputation precedes, perfect artistry transforms even the most familiar music into something unique and even surprising.

María Dueñas pulled everything out of this music. Too often a piece like Bruch’s concerto is played for its populist kudos, with all the edges shaved to smooth, presented to pacify an expectant crowd rather than energise them. Maria Dueñas gave it everything, often attacking phases with a confidence that I personally have not heard before. Isn’t it amazing when something so familiar can be transformed by performance into a complete surprise. Brava!

In total, the ADDA audience demanded and received three encores, two from María Dueñas, and one from the orchestra. The orchestral offering at the end was the Andante Festivo of Sibelius. Like the Valse Triste, this piece ostensibly offers a celebration in a minor key promoting reflection. It is a beautiful piece, amplified by its understatement. Maria Dueñas gave two encores, one solo, and one with the orchestral strings. The first was an arrangement of Fauré’s Après Un Rêve, which was, after the Bruch concerto, sweet on sweet. Then, solo, she gave a performance of Applemania by Igudesman which, on the face of it, is a show-off piece designed for competitions. In the hands of María Dueñas, it was music, simply beautiful music.

The Gonzalo Soriano International Piano Competition in Alicante announces its winners

 

For the second time, Caroline and I have completed an edition of the Concurso Internacional de Piano de la Ciudad de Alicante Gonzalo Soriano con el Conservatorio Jose Tomas.  One hundred and eleven candidates from over thirty countries came to compete in four age categories and the final prizes were awarded last Saturday night.

Over four days, we directed candidates to play before the judges. We heard a particular Liszt Transcendental Study and Chopin Etudes many times. We heard the First Sonata of Prokofiev once and the Sixth twice. Someone – just one entrant – played a Shostakovich Prelude and Fugue, though those by Bach appeared regularly, but were never repeated. We heard music by Rautavaara, Carl Vine, Malipiero, Christian Helsing and a lot of Beethoven. The Rachmaninov was wall-to-wall. The Medtner stood out. Nobody played anything English, but of course there was a lot of Albeniz.

But the music aside - which it never should be - the most impressive aspect of the week was its performers. More than a hundred young people, some of them not so young, since the D category admitted participants up to 32 years old, played their best (some I am sure would not agree) in order to get a foot on at least one rung of a career ladder of unknown height. It’s a horrible business, but it is undeniably a business. People compete. People have to compete. Celebrity is currency and celebrity exists in a market where talent might not count, but probably does, and therefore recognition, and even work comes to no one unless that individual competes. To win seems like a confirmation of talent. To lose feels like its denial. But overall, luck place an important part, though luck is never quoted in the results.

Luck? When celebrity comes as a result of a video presence on the internet then luck might count. But when it comes to playing a piano, the only possible route to success goes via hours, days, months, and years of practice. And the most enduring memory of organizing a piano competition is to realize that the vast majority of these hundred plus competitors from six years old to thirty spend most of their lives practicing, the major challenge in a pianist’s life being always what the individual called "me" can achieve.

Shunta Marimoto, who won the senior category, seems to be someone who communicates with the world via the keyboard of a piano. Almost uncontrollably nervous before a performance, he seems to enter a different universe the moment his fingers touch the keys. Then there is magic. Always, it seems. A hundred or more of the people go through the same routine and the result is different. This, possibly, may be talent, or the manifestation of it. All the best arguments seem to be circular.

Ellisiv Tundberg, after a stunning performance of a sonata movement by Carl Vine in the semis, played Rautavaara and Franck in the final. Her playing of Cesar Franck’s Prelude, Choral and Fugue was the first time I have ever understood the music. Often it is played almost as a challenge, but in her hands its lyricism could shine through, but never as sentiment. Quite superb.

During the week, it was in category B that the biggest surprise came at the level, almost, of revelation. Luca Newman from the UK is a diminutive teenager. When he plays the piano, his age or stature do not matter. He has talent, application, dedication, and real artistry. What a privilege it is to be close to these young performers.

It is, however, hard work. I am just a paper and people pusher. I am just an organizer. But without this structure, the talent show would not find a stage, and would therefore not be on show. Thanks to Istvan Szekely for having thought it all up. Thanks also to Markus Schirmer, Tania Kozlova, Elena Levit, Luca Torrigiani, Uros Tadic, Gaia Caporiccio and Denise Lutgens for judging through the week. And nothing could happen without the wonderful staff from Conservatorio Jose Tomas. Being involved is, however, an exhausting privilege. I wish good luck to all who took part.

Detail at https://www.arsaltacultural.com/

ADDA Simfonica in Bernstein and Mahler with Josep Vicent and Josu de Solaun

Some concerts are different from the norm. Some turn out to be different, some look different from the start. Last Friday in ADDA, Aliante, our concert fell into both categories.

The start looked conventional enough with an overture. But this was Bernstein, and upbeat Bernstein to boot. As the evening progressed, this celebratory, overtly smiling music became a focus for the theme of ‘false hilarity’ that underpinned the rest of the program. Though the Candide Overture is upbeat, and it is an audience please, its origins are on Broadway, a place that, for the stage, peddles the same kind of illusory happiness that creates sparkling plastic dreams on film in Hollywood. It was a perfect start, played perfectly, and received with much enthusiasm.

But then the mood changed. On the backdrop, we saw a painting by Edward Hopper, whose canvases at first sight seem to be technicolour stills from the black-and-white of Hollywood’s golden era. But a closer look reveals that usually no one is talking to anyone else. No one is even noticing where they are. Their environment is stripped of many of the accoutrements of modern life, indicating a colourless life, lived in a rainbow. The people seem self-absorbed, but neither happy nor reflective. They are, it seems, anxious. Alongside a passage capturing the spirit of Auden’s poem, which talked of going for a drink with a chance encounter, and then feeling a sense of false hilarity, the image was the perfect introduction to the world of what followed, which was Bernstein Symphony No. 2, The Age of Anxiety.

This is an enigmatic work. It claims to be a symphony, but equally it could be a piano concerto. Josu Solaun was the soloist. His playing was the perfect balance of detachment and energy that the work demands. There are many periods of silence, interspersed with percussive passages. In the hands of a pianist not thoroughly in sympathy with the work’s overall character, this part can easily become across as disjointed and incoherent. In the right hands, it is a portrayal of an individual’s experience of the modern age of anxiety, false hilarity mixed with anxious self-absorption, reflection not softened by religious belief. This is a tough world that, even when it invites you in, leaves you isolated.

Bernstein’s Age of Anxiety is not a work that will bring the house down. But in ADDA, Alicante last Friday, it did. It is certainly a work that will be remembered by an audience privileged to hear it. But it won’t send them home humming an earworm. But of course Candide will. The contrast is at least part of the point.

If the first half was something of a surprise, then the second half exceeded. We heard three movements from different Mahler symphonies under the general title of The Echo of Being. The music came from the third movement of the Symphony No. 4, the Totenfeier from Symphony No. 2 and the fourth movement from Symphony No. 9. The idea was that these would accompany The Echo of Being, a three-sectioned film made by Lucas van Woerkum based on the life of the composer. Each section concentrated on one member of a three- person family, a mother, a dying daughter, and a father.

Musically, and surprisingly, this hung together. The slow movement start is tender, but underpinned by alienation and, when the outburst comes, bitterness, which then transforms into regret. The violence and anger of the Totenfeier here becomes the suffering of illness with all the resentment this brings. Then, the valedictory fourth movement of the Symphony No. 9 seems to approach the unknown of death, but from the standpoint of thinking you know who you are. There is a familiarity about the unknown experience, perhaps a false heaven arrived at before death claims life. The illusion becomes complete, and the survivor survives, alone.

By the end of the concert, the ADDA audience was in suitably reflective mood. As the dying tones of the fourth movement of Mahler nine drifted towards silence, so did the audience. At the end, Josep Vicent left the audience to enjoy this beautiful sensation of shared quiet. It was prolonged and memorable. And so was the joy of those minutes. There was nothing false or hilarious about this profound experience.

I forgot to mention Josu de Solaun’s encore. The Debussy Prelude was certainly lighter than what had gone before, but it was no less disturbing. What was utterly impressive was the fact that the Solaun could play pianissimo in front of an audience of over a thousand, where everyone could hear everything perfectly and no one missed a note.

The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen

I was unaware of Veblen’s ideas until a recent edition of In Our Time on BBC Radio 4 devoted an hour of discussion to his life and work. So stimulating did I find the discussion that I immediately found a copy of The Theory of the Leisure Class and read it. 

Thorstein Veblen’s ideas crystallised in the last quarter of the nineteenth century when the infamous “robber barons” of emergent American capitalism were at the height of their power and ownership. Not only did they form a social class, but these multi-millionaires also created social norms that many desired to emulate. A measure of success in the popular mind became how closely an individual might aspire to emulate their lives of great riches and, at least when viewed from the outside, great leisure. Conspicuous consumption, following their example, became an economic goal and a measure of success. Veblen related this tendency of upper social classes to remnants of “barbarianism”, stemming from “tribal” societies. Everything was related to ownership resulting from conquest and warfare, in which the defeated were enslaved so that the victors could benefit from the fruits of their labour. On page two, Veblen identifies broad occupations and activities in contemporary society that derive from this ancient tendency. “These non-industrial upper-class occupations may be roughly comprised under government, warfare, religious observances and sports.” The label “non-industrial” differentiated these people from the vast majority of the population, who laboured cooperatively for the common good by producing things that increased human capabilities and well-being.

There thus develops in Veblen’s work a theory of economic production and distribution that is derived from psychological traits and has sociological implications. He extends his ideas about non-cooperative barbarism and “predatory” tendencies to illustrate how making oneself useless can become a sign of ultimate power and success. Though the social class that is guilty of this flagrant over-consumption of goods and services is demonstrated as being anti-social, as far as the interests of the industrial classes are concerned, Veblen never alludes to any possible conflict that might arise. This is what differentiates his ideas from those of Marx.

The psychological and behavioural aspects are explored, alongside and their consequences for economic and social class differences. He develops a theory of “manners” that allow members of the upper classes to identify themselves to one another. “There are few things that so touch us with instinctive revulsion as a breach of decorum; and so far have we progressed in the direction of imputing intrinsic utility to the ceremonial observances of etiquette that few of us, if any, can dissociate an offence against etiquette from a sense of the substantial unworthiness of the offender. A breach of faith may be condoned, but a breach of decorum can not. “Manners maketh the man”.” Again, he is not doing any of this in order to poke fun or satirise individuals. He does, however, make it clear that the existence of the upper classes does work against the interests of the industrial classes, who are labouring to make everyone’s life better.

The industrial classes, though privately desiring to emulate their social betters, however, at least try to maintain their own values. “The popular reprobation of waste goes to say that in order to be at peace with himself the common man must be able to see in any and all human effort and human enjoyment an enhancement of life and well-being on the whole … Relative or competitive advantage of one individual or comparison with another does not satisfy the economic conscience and the form of competitive expenditure has not the approval of his conscience.” 

Conspicuous consumption amongst the ownership classes drives them to value political ideas, laws and social practices that allow them to maintain their lifestyle. This inevitably results in political and social conservatism. “This conservatism of the wealthy class is so obvious a feature that it has even become recognised as a mark of respectability.” Privately, the industrial classes still aspire to the conspicuous consumption and leisure of the wealthy and so have a tendency to espouse their conservatism in the hope that one day they might achieve similar status.

All forms of religious establishment, military rank, political and even sporting success are manifestations of this over-consumption to the detriment of the industrial class, throwbacks to the barbarism and predatory nature of a society based on conflict. But here I find a weakness in Veblen’s argument. He does not see capitalist consumerism’s pursuit of individualism as necessarily fostering the creation of the leisure class. Furthermore, he assumes that pre-industrial, pre-scientific, societies are all based upon predation, but offers scant evidence to illustrate this.  

As a fan of “classical” music, I was intrigued by a passage that defined the term. ““Classic” always carries this connotation of wasteful and archaic, whether it is used to denote the dead languages or the obsolete or obsolescent forms of thought and diction in the living language, or to denote other items of scholarly activity or apparatus to which it is applied with aptness.” Capitalism cannot sell “classical” music. Calling it thus, even when the label only applies to about sixty years in the thousand-year history of European-style music is thus clearly a way of marginalising it.

Veblen’s ideas are now in sharp focus because of environmental degradation. The role of “consumption as status” needs to be uppermost in everyone’s mind. The less consumption, the less pressure is placed on the environment. The consequence of lower consumption would probably be the collapse of capitalism and it is this aspect, this consequence of his theories that is sadly rather lacking from Veblen’s work.

The Stavanger Symphony Orchestra with Andris Poga and Behzod Abduraimov in Matre, Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky

Orchestras on tour often take some of their home repertoire with them. In the case of the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Andris Poga in Alicante last night, this took the form on the published program of a contemporary interpretation of some famous nineteenth century pieces. The Norwegian composer Ørjan Matre has reworked some of Edvard Grieg’s Lyric Pieces for orchestra. I hesitate to say simply “orchestrated”, because the contemporary composer’s contribution is specific and significantly more than transcription. It’s tantamount to reinterpretation.

Alicante’s ADDA audience heard four of the pieces, beginning with the Arietta from book one. Almost as if to remind the audience of the piece’s origin, the composer starts with solo piano, and the orchestra almost apologizes for its presence as the piece proceeds. The textures and combinations employed are designed to communicate the context of the inspiration. The titles of the pieces, Arietta, Spring dance, Solitary traveller, and Butterfly give clues as to what Grieg might have been thinking and Matre creates beautiful illustrations by his wholly original and refreshingly light use of orchestral sound.

After the interval, the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra gave a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony. Now this a work the Alicante audience knows well, so it was with interest and anticipation that it was received. We were not disappointed. This was a strong, forceful reading of the score. The triumphalism of the finale certainly asserted itself, but this happened perhaps at the cost of a detail or two in the preceding narrative that became lost in the force of the orchestral sound. Such matters are a conductor’s choice and clearly Andris Poga wanted to stress the growth to confidence above the experience of insecurities that led up to the endpoint.

Set between the reinterpreted Grieg and Tchaikovsky’s triumphal finale was a real gem. It’s not often that a pianist takes on the Second Piano Concerto of Prokofiev, but here Behzod Abduraimov did just that. And what a perfectly splendid job he made of it.

The start was slower than expected, with Prokofiev’s opening theme, meandering even when faster, almost breaking apart. But then the slower tempo allowed the music’s vast array of colours to shine through. By the time, Behzod Abduraimov had reached the massive first movement credenza, the complexity on the ear had become strangely simplified, and the pyrotechnics of the piano part seemed almost inevitable, merely a given in the overall argument. The essential shape of the music was thus preserved, and the audience was treated to truly communicative playing, and not mere virtuosity.

There are times when this music from 1913 sounds almost industrial. I am sure this was Prokofiev’s intention. The work, after all, was revised ten years later, so it is hard in the concert hall to imagine what the composer might have changed. Suffice to say that the joins do not show.

Behzod Abduraimov was magnificent. His playing was strong where it needed to be, occasionally explosive and often lyrical at the same time. His faultless solo part was accompanied by wonderful orchestral playing that really brought out every nuance of detail in the score. This is abstract music, but there are many passages that seem to refer to popular forms, albeit seen in a distorting mirror. And if you think even the opening theme might be simple, just try singing it to yourself. Good luck. It’s a perfect example of Prokofiev’s lyrical genius, where he concocted a singularly beautiful tune that sticks in the memory, but an idea that remains elusive and almost impossible to reproduce.

But at the end of the evening the orchestra returned home. As an encore, we had two of Grieg’s Lyric Pieces in orchestral versions. The Wedding Day At Troldhaugen for string orchestra was particularly successful.

St John Passion in ADDA Alicante with Ruben Jais and Coro Labarocco de Milano

It is at least forty years since I heard a concert performance of a Bach Passion. It is probably a decade since I heard a complete performance. I am not a believer in Christian myth. I cannot participate in a performance of such a work as the composer anticipated that its intended audience might. For me, it’s a story, some of which might actually have happened. That makes a performance of the work very similar to anything else based on the text of a story, such as an opera, oratorio or song. So my appreciation of the work is solely from the perspective of someone interested in music.

But Bach’s Passions were not works assembled as a singular artwork. The purpose was clear: to tell a story, but also to provoke religious sentiment. This second objective is not possible for me, but then I do know enough about the events to realise what the intention might have been.

The music is necessarily episodic. Three different forms predominate. These are, of course, choral sections, where the singers are largely cast in the role of the voices of the people. Then there are the dramatis personae who have solo roles, some of which are expanded into arias, which, frankly, are present purely for the musical, not dramatic effect. And then, listed last but certainly not least, there is the role of the evangelist, the storyteller. The part, usually sung by a tenor voice, without vibrato or affectation, so that every word can be heard, is crucial. Without it, there would be no story. And, in this performance, in Alicante’s ADDA auditorium, the amazing performance of Bernard Berchtold in the role brought the evening literally to life.

There was a slight flaw in the staging, however. The solo arias were delivered by members of the chorus. Though they did have a featured platform from which to project, this was set at the back of the orchestra, immediately in front of the rest of the chorus. I understand the logistical difficulties of bringing the solo voice to the front of the stage, but equally placing it behind the orchestra perhaps diminishes the voice’s presence in the hall. It was clearly audible, but for me these sections, which should stand out, did not. In the second part, we heard the two violins accompanying an aria at the front of the stage, whilst the voice was almost at the back.

Structurally, the music now seems more modern than I remember. JS Bach’s practice of pitting solo voices against selected instrumental sonorities seems to be very contemporary. There were the violins, of course, but a particularly successful passage has a bassoon predominant and oboes, flutes and cors anglais play significant roles.

But I have to reserve the real praise for Bernard Berchtold’s performance as the evangelist. The voice was perfectly suited to the role. The delivery was interpretive and conveyed both meaning and nuance. The crystal clarity of the sound was always interesting to listen to, and the voice did not tire, as many often do, in this long and exacting role. I am sure that Bernard Berchtold has sung this role before, and I am equally sure that he will be offered many more opportunities to do so.

Coro Labarocca di Milano gave a controlled but committed performance throughout. Johannes Held’s Jesus was convincing and the ADDA orchestra offered their usual perfection. Ruben Jais was also perfection, in a quiet way.

The Desconstruction of Mahler: ADDA under Josep Vicent with Patrick Messina in Adams, Brahms and Berio

This was a very special concert. It will live in the memory for as long as breath continues. It was nothing less than a triumph of artistic direction on behalf of Josep Vicent. All three featured works were, in their own way, quite recent, given the often-backward-looking character of concert programmes.

The evening began with a short, modern masterpiece. The program notes suggested that in our era, true myth (an oxymoron if ever there was one) is found not in characters of ancient Greek epics, but in the celebrities that populate our minds during waking hours. John Adams’s opera, Nixon in China, characteristically set recent events to music on a stage. Part of the opera’s point is that those figures involved in making history also have lives to live. John Adams cast Chairman Mao and his wife as dancers and the music to accompany this is The Chairman Dances, a Foxtrot for Orchestra.

It begins with a minimalist-sounding incessant rhythm, but in a moment of true magic, transforms itself into an almost sentimental dance, as if the celebrities forget themselves for a short time, and suddenly become human. Order does reassert itself as responsibilities and public faces re-emerge. The orchestral sound of this piece is vivid and multi-layered, but it does remind us continually that the clock rules rhythm, and perhaps our lives. It certainly rules the dance.

Second on the ADDA programme was Brahms’s Clarinet Sonata Opus 120. But this version was orchestral, the arrangement provided by Luciano Berio in 1986. Berio did not change Brahms’s original concept, but filled it out, so it occupied bigger space, even suggesting the concerto form. He was faithful to Brahms’s intention and this intimate, highly personal and lyrical work is now capable of filling a concert hall, though gently and in its original character. Patrick Messina as soloist gave a perfect (there is no other word) performance, totally controlled, completely in sympathy with the music. It was a performance with a humility that brought out the intentional understatement of the work. As an encore, we were treated to a more classical use of the clarinet with string accompaniment, again an arrangement.

The second half was given to a single work, a performance of Luciano Berrio’s Sinfonia for orchestra and amplified voices. The voices in question were London Voices, who seemed wholly at home with the highly multidimensional and unusual format of the piece.

Berio’s concept seems to grow spontaneously out of the experience of a twentieth century city. Charles Ives had at the start of the century chose impressionistic experience to portray the complexity of modern life. In his Sinfonia, Luciano Berio offered similar experience, but one on speed by comparison with that of Ives. An apparent jumble of sights, sounds, intellectual stimuli, musical references, passing comments and literary memories appear and combine to create a vivid, surreal collage, which deliberately does not hang together. It doesn’t because modern life is itself multidimensional, confused, confusing, stimulating, threatening and tender all at the same time. If I have one minor criticism, it is that the spoken text of the voices was not sufficiently prominent. Whether this matters is a matter of opinion. When visual art, for instance, features a raft of text, surely its effect is lost when viewers have to both read it and translate it. It may be the same with the words that Berio featured in this work. The word Majaskowsky did, however, hang in clean air. The text, by the way, is as collage-like as the music. It’s not a narrative, and is influenced by, amongst others, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. Absurdity rules. This was thoroughly memorable music, and it was stunningly performed by the singers and musicians alike. 

In this performance, Josep Vicent chose to play this work in its original four movements. Berio did add a fifth, but I think the logic might have been to create space for the encores, which in their way added to the collage-like experience. Berio quotes extensively from Mahler in his Sinfonia. As an encore, this led to a performance of the Adagietto from the fifth symphony. After the apparent anarchy of the Berio, the long lines made a peaceful and beautiful contrast. Then, when we all thought the pastiche could not get richer, London Voices, with the accompaniment of a brushed drum, gave a fugue in a cappella jazz style with an upbeat rhythm. Let’s not try to explain. Let’s just listen.

Manuel de Falla's La Vida Breve in Alicante with Sandra Fernandez and Miguel Ortega

La Vida Breve by Manuel de Falla is a problematic work. Its problem stems mainly from the fact that it is an opera that lasts just over an hour. Productions of it generally have to be combined with another short work. Now there is no shortage of one act operas, but there is a shortage of companies willing to juxtapose two works of inevitably different styles on one programme. Opera North in Leeds did it in 2015, staging it alongside Gianni Schicchi of Puccini in a tragic-to-ridiculous pairing. It worked, but not every opera company is as keen to take risks as Opera North. Bluebeard’s Castle is an obvious pairing, but the emotional territory is perhaps too similar to that of La Vida Breve. Just how many women does an audience want to kill off in one evening? And so it is via concert performances that audiences are most likely to experience Manuel de Falla’s early opera, and so it was in ADDA, Alicante last night, under the direction of Manuel Ortega.

Opera in the concert hall bring the music to front stage. Yes, the singers are there, and they have to perform, but usually there is little action. It has to be admitted that even in a full staging of La Vida Breve it might be hard to find much action. A femme fatale is in love with a man above her social class. She laments the fact that lonely birds die, that lone flowers wither. A chorus extols the virtue of working for a living, stressing the identity that shared tasks can promote. But they do repeat the fact that it is better to be born the hammer rather than the anvil, a none-too-subtle reference to the difference in social class between the two lovers, Salud and Paco. Salud’s lover, Paco, does dessert her. He marries someone else, a woman from a social class similar to his own. No doubt there were family ties to cement and faces to be saved. Salud finds the prospect of solitude lethal. There is not a great deal in the libretto, and what there is repeats the standpoint of the principal characters quite a lot.

So with the music and singing centre stage, what are we to make of the performance? Well, it was excellent. Certainly committed. Certainly both lyrical and exciting. Sandra Fernandez as Salud was inevitably and almost permanently centre stage. Both her voice and her expression were finally tuned to the role. She came across as a faithful, committed and sincere lover, who almost worshiped Paco. His rejection, therefore, went to the heart of her beliefs, the essence of a very identity. Francesco Pio Galasso as Paco sang the role with both passion and virtuosity, but the role is problematic. Throughout Paco looked and sounded sincere, but he went off and married someone else. What was Paco intending to do? Keep face with society while keeping Salud as his piece on the side? Like Steva in Janacek’s Jenufa, Paco is a role that does not engender sympathy.

Angel Odena and Marta Infante as Salud’s family members gave stunningly expressive performances. There was real character in both their roles, despite the fact that their texts are neither extensive nor varied.

And so to the music. For Manuel de Falla, La Vida Breve was an early work, and one can hear how much the young composer was still searching for a voice. The flamenco style cadences that characterized his music are here, but there is also the language of symbolism, a little Bartok of Bluebeard or Wooden Prince, perhaps, some of Schreker as well. There is some Debussy. They were passages when I felt this could be Pelleas and Melisande. There is a little Wagner and some Strauss in the orchestration via the splitting of the strings. But perhaps the most revolutionary episode comes when the music becomes flamenco, and the characteristic gravelly singing erupts, accompanied by a guitar. It would be an intervention, but Manuel de Falla is already skilled enough as a composer to weave the transitions to and from these interludes into the overall scoring and concept. Pedro Jimenez “Perette” and Basilio García gave perfect performances of this music.

La Vida Breve thus comes across as a convincing work, spectacular in its orchestration and at times in its musical ideas, but one dimensional as a drama. This is not a criticism. It has some very good company on the opera stage in this category. It is a work that deserves to be heard more often.

Something special - Pablo González, Francesco Piemontesi and the Dresden Philharmonic in Beethoven and Strauss

Something special was experienced by the ADDA audience last night. On the face of it, the concert was almost conventional, as concerts sometimes can appear on paper. There was to be a Beethoven piano concerto followed by a Richard Strauss tone poem, it all sounded possibly a little run-of-the-mill. But don’t be fooled by appearances. This was undoubtedly something special.

Let’s start with Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto as interpreted by Francesco Piemontesi. As the program notes underlined, this work was Beethoven’s big break with the past, at least, as far as his concerto writing was concerned. This work was not to follow the eighteenth-century model of elegance before challenge. This third piano concerto of Beethoven has a really symphonic feel. The dialogue between the soloist and orchestra, contrasts strongly, here argumentative, here supportive.

And Francesco Piemontesi’s playing, brought out all the subtleties, without once resorting to gimmick or bravura. What was obvious from the opening orchestral passage to the work’s end was a sense of cooperation between the soloist and orchestra, a sense of communication and sharing, despite, on occasions, the music demanding, strong contrast. Francesco Piemontesi gave a brilliant performance, topped by a significant encore.

The orchestra was the Dresden Philharmonic, under the baton of Pablo González. Unusually Pablo González opened the second half with a short verbal presentation about Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben. The work is clearly something special in the eyes of Pablo González. He described it as at least one of the greatest of all musical creations. And he stressed that this was not the Richard Strauss Don Quixote, although he went on to describe the piece as surreal and satirical, both of which might apply to the way a modern mind appreciates Cervantes’s novel.

And the performance was indeed something special. This is a piece that orchestras often play as if it were a gymnastics exercise. But here the romanticism and lyricism were stressed, and the music flowed rather than exploded. Here we had pauses to emphasize transitions, changes in dynamics that brought out all the textures in this multi-layered work. And we really did hear all the complexity of the aural colours that this great work projects.

As an encore, Luis Alonso got married again. This quintessence of popular Spanish music brought the house down.

 

The Hallé Ochestra, Kachung Wong and Liza Ferschtman in Brahms and Shostakovich in Alicante

 

The Hallé Orchestra has a very long history and tradition. Part of its tradition is to develop long and lasting relationships with its principal conductors. If history provides the pattern, then Kachung Wong from Singapore can look forward to many years based in Manchester. And on the evidence of this performance in Alicante’s ADDA auditorium, the relationship will endure. Kachung Wong’s conducting was more than precise and more than detailed. He chose to conduct the second half from memory, which, given the complexity of the scoring, was a feat in itself.

In the first half, we had heard the Hallé and Lisa Ferschtman in the Brahms Violin Concerto. This is a work that is played and heard so often that it rarely surprises. But on this occasion, two things stood out.

First, there was the playing of Liza Ferschtman alongside the lyricism and romanticism of the interpretation. The soloist’s stress on dynamic range and lyricism was superb. Overall, the interpretation had a lightness of touch coupled with a stress on the personal touches of Brahms. The storytelling in the work came to the fore.

Also, Lisa Furman’s chose not to play the Joachim credenza. The one we heard - by Auer? - was more lyrical and more directly related to the expressive music of the first movement. It also added to the stress on the expressive quality of the experience. Lisa Ferschtman offered an encore of a solo caprice, which again was beautifully interpreted.

The second half featured the Symphony No. 5 of Dmitri Shostakovich. To prepare for the event, I had listened to the fourth symphony of the day before. It was in response to the criticism from on high of the forced the composer to present the fifth as a Soviet artist’s response to just criticism.

And what was strange was that I kept hearing references to the fourth in the fifth. There is one section in the first movement that I heard as a direct quote. And then there’s the end of the first movement, where the celeste seems to remind everyone of the end of the fourth symphony.

And there is nothing easy or compromised about the fifth symphony’s slow movement. Despite is obvious appeal, the music is very complex, and, for the most part, bleak. Where the composer did offer solace to his masters, was in the finale, where triumphal chords, frankly, do not reflect what preceded them. Overall, the symphony is an enduring masterpiece.

An encore inevitably followed. This was Nimrod from Elgar’s Enigma, with somehow sounded different when played by an English orchestra.

Fumiaki Miura, Josep vicent and ADDA Simfonica in Ravel and Shostakovich

This was a concert of two halves, both superb, both contrasted, both within and between. Shostakovich in the first half and Ravel in the second provided the between contrast between. The works chosen, two by each composer, provided the contrast within.  To the second half first.

Ravel’s Daphne and Chloe Suite No2 is a concert hall favourite. It is a post-impressionist splash of colour, like Matisse cutouts dancing around their own space. But it’s also symphonic: it feels like the colours develop and transform, though strangely they do not seem to merge, except in the opening sunrise. Josep Vicent used two locations for the wordless chorus, one group, at the rear right of the stage as the audience saw it, and the second in a box, higher and further to the right, above the stalls. The effect was akin to surround sound. The orchestral playing in this work, and the one that followed was outstanding, with all the timbre and textures of the music glowing in their own right.

Ravel’s Bolero has been described as the music of madman. Ravel’s own assessment of the opinion was that it was correct. The work is so well known that I will say nothing about the music itself, except to point out one aspect which Josep Vicent chose to stress. The drum rhythms are usually insistent and ever-present in this piece. There are performances where the audience hears very little else. But this was not one of them. Josep Vicent had the drum’s contribution in dynamic balance with the rest of the instruments. At the start, the drum was barely audible above the pizzicato strings. As a result, the superb orchestral playing was able to communicate all the textures the composer chose to exploit, and these became the focus. That magical passage where a horn and celeste play together sparkled like Christmas lights. We even got an encore of the final sections, just in case we had missed it first time round.

In the first half, the ADDA audience heard two works by Shostakovich. The Jazz Suite No1 was played by an ensemble including saxophones, trumpets, trombone, violin, bass, various percussion, an upright piano, a banjo, and a slide guitar. As always with the music of Shostakovich, the listener is never quite sure whether to take anything seriously. He always seems to be looking over his shoulder to judge reaction, except, of course, when the subject with himself, when he wallows in DSCH, as in the Eighth Quartet or the Tenth Symphony. The personal signature motif, however, seemed to be lacking from both the Jazz Suite and what followed. The textures and witticisms of this music came across vividly, as did its inherent self-doubt mixed with tragic whimsy. It was, after all, Shostakovich.

The piece that ended the first half of the concert was something completely different from the rest of the evening. This was Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No2 with Fumiaki Miura as soloist. This particular concerto is not played often and dates from thirty years after the rest of the programme. Like much late Shostakovich, such as the Viola Sonata, quartets and symphonies, it seems almost distracted. This is music made of lines that don’t seem able to decide where to go, never mind join up. It’s an unsettling experience, full of questions that are not even finished, let alone answered. Unlike the other works in the program, however, this second violin concerto by Shostakovich does invite further listening. The almost chamber music feel of the orchestration, where particular sounds stand out unexpectedly, is surely part of what the composer was trying to achieve. And what would you make of the interjections from a tom-tom that seem to interrupt and threaten? The solo part often seems to be screaming, but quietly, almost trying to hide its nervous agitation.

All of this complexity was perfectly interpreted and conveyed by Fumiaki Miura, the soloist for this performance. It’s not performed as much as other concertos, so Fumiaki Miura understandably chose to have a score in sight. But his interpretation of this narcissistic, self-conscious, self-referential. perhaps self-mocking music was as close to perfect as I could imagine. And that drum? Is it fate knocking on the door, or the police? Or is it Shostakovich waking up the audience?

Despite all the brilliance of Daphnis and Chloe, the firework show of Bolero and the witticisms of the Jazz Suite, it is Fumiaki Miura’s playing of this enigmatically understated work that will last in the memory. And, just to add to the surrealism, he played the Vieuxtemps Variations on Yankee Doodle Dandy as an encore. Memorable.