The Philharmonia with Suzuki and Queyras in Schumann and Dvorak - another case of "no superlatives"

Some time ago, for a review of the concert in Alicante’s ADDA auditorium, I used the headline “No superlatives”. I chose the words not because I wanted to question the quality of the experience, but quite the opposite. The concept of “superlative” was itself transcended by the quality of the music and performance in that concert. Indeed, a superlative only makes sense when a comparison is to be made. But to what can we compare perfection? Last night the ADDA audience experienced another “No superlatives” concert. Perhaps I am reverting to my north of England Yorkshire stereotype where the judgment “I couldn't fault it” represents the highest possible praise.

The concert in question was delivered by superstars. Jean-Guihen Queyras was the cello soloist and Masaaki Suzuki conducted the Philharmonia Orchestra. I lived in London for twenty years and the Philharmonia, known then paradoxically those years ago as the New Philharmonia, was always my personal orchestra of choice whenever I scanned the monthly South Bank agenda. Last night, the richness and dynamics of the orchestral sound were stunning, as was the orchestra’s control of rhythm and phrasing, so important in the evening’s principal work, Dvorak’s Eighth Symphony.

If the orchestra noticeably excelled, then Masaaki Suzuki was surprisingly anonymous. There can be no greater compliment to a conductor to admit that you really did not notice him or her. Masaaki Suzuki appeared to let the music flow naturally, seamlessly, to such an extent that at times he seemed superfluous. We might all aspire to such transparency, but achieving it demands true artistry, true and supreme ability. When, to accompany an encore, Masaaki Suzuki return to the platform to conduct a lyrical Slavonic Dance by Dvorak carrying a triangle, which he threatened to play. Only then did the attention focus on him and him alone. He used the instrument almost as a tease, still allowing the dulcet tones of Dvorak’s melody to shine.

In the first half we had heard Jean-Guihen Queyras play the Robert Schumann Cello Concerto. Specifically here, superlatives do not apply. Neither can the label “virtuoso” be attached to the performance, whose quality was way beyond such words. The three movements are played without a break and the composer’s imagination was clearly running wild at the time. Personally, I often find Schumann’s music rather impenetrable, but not in this performance.

As an encore Jean-Guihen Queyras played the Sarabande from Bach’s Cello Suite No. 4, preceded by a short Ukrainian melody. The music had a life of its own thanks to these amazing performances. Again, no superlatives.

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.