A dream of a concert: Tomas Brauner and Senja Rummukainen join ADDA Simfonica in Smetana, Prokofiev and Martinu

“Such stuff as dreams are made on, we are all spirits and are melted into air” are words that ought to remind us of the ephemeral, temporal nature of human life, that such good things must come to an end. Music lasts for the duration of the concert, but the memory lives on, especially the memory of this concert.

This idea of the dream of life must apply especially to one such as Bohuslav Martinu who suffered illness for much of his childhood. Infirmity found him viewing the world outside from the confines of a plain room at the top of a church tower. Such were the early years of the composer Martinu. Perhaps this is why his music seems continually seems to dream, seems to reach out for what might seem to be beyond reach, apparent, but just beyond experience.

Safranek in his biography of Martinu reminds us that the thematic germ of the first movement of his Fourth symphony, that theme which appears time and time again, is for the composer an expression of nature. Safranek also points out that this inspiration from the bucolic came to the composer in a dark apartment on 58th St. in New York City. The composer was in exile and had wandered for years. To wander is perhaps to wonder, to wonder what might have been, to dream.

Personally, I always find dreaming in the music of Martinu. I also always find surrealism, but not the nightmare vision of Dali or the riddles of Magritte. It’s more like Chagall mixed with Tanguy. Scenes appear at random, often unexpectedly juxtaposed for no particular reason, apparently randomly, or set against an infinite landscape that seems to disappear as soon as it is noticed. It is this dream-like world that seems to be a backdrop for Julietta and his other stage works and is created in abstraction throughout Martinu’s music. One of the strongest sensations of being taken to another world in music came for me personally during the sequence in act one of the opera when a driver falls asleep while in control of an express train. I even went to a second performance of the same production and the passage had the same effect, only more intensely.

The ADDA audience in Alicante was last night delivered such a dream. Martinu’s Fourth Symphony was played by ADDA’s resident orchestra under the baton of Tomas Brauner, the evening’s Czech guest. To say that Tomas Brauner understands Czech music would be an understatement, almost bordering on disrespect. Right from the tremolos at the start of the work, to the full tutti at the end, the ADDA audience was transported into a different world, a dream world as real as any reality, but rendered into an experience from which, frankly, it is hard to emerge. Not that one would want to wake from the bliss of such surely enduring memory. To say that this dream will live forever is no understatement, at least as far as this particular reviewer is concerned, until, of course, spirits melt into air. The complete and unashamedly joyous nature of this music surely seems to tell everyone to live the dream. It will cease soon enough, so enjoy it while you can, directly and without guilt.

Martinu brought many influences into his creative world. There is Czech folklore, popular culture, and jazz at least. Not to mention a touch of neo-classicism, whatever that might be. I hear Janacek as aural cubism, but not Martinu. His musical world is very much more joined up, more rational.  But the ecstatic is always within the composer’s reach, we feel, always within the composer’s thoughts. The music constantly grasps for a heaven on earth, but never quite grabs it. That seems to be the point. There is always that cadence that returns us to where we came from, but musically it rarely does. It always progresses, though it may sound like it returns to its starting place. Thus grounded, the next attempt to elevate is always there and always immediate.

Tomas Brauner’s reading of the score was quite simply perfect. The dynamics were stretched, the delivery was direct, despite the fact that the material was often ephemeral. This surely is Martinu’s style, his true voice, and Tomas Brauner communicated everything with remarkable energy, colour, imagination and flair.

And, for this particular fan of Czech music, how refreshing it was to have an all-Slav program. We started with Smetana’s Greatest Hit, The Moldau from Vltava. This is so well known it surely cannot surprise. But surprise it did: it surprises with every hearing because of the quality of the writing. Doubly surprising in this reading was the piece’s second section, when dance rhythms which I have previously hardly noticed were stressed and came to the fore. Here, they were pointed and sharp, where so often they are smoothed out, cut off from their roots.

Then we had a performance of Prokofiev’s Sinfonia Concertante, Op. 125. Finnish cellist, Senja Rummukainen was soloist in what in another life would have been called a cello concerto.

In the review of ADDA’s last concert in the Pasiones season, I said the performance by cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras was unlikely to be bettered in a lifetime. Well, last night, just a few days later, Senja Rummukainen played so utterly perfectly that I have to challenge the permanence of last week’s opinion. But how can one compare late Schumann with late Prokofiev? The musical worlds are so completely different, they might even communicate in a different language.

Senja Rummukainen's playing throughout was complete perfection. Not only did she accomplish the technical feats, but the wit, unpredictability, occasional brutishness and lyrical invention of Prokofiev also shone. So what might a reviewer write about the second movement of the piece, which drew warm and amazed applause from an audience that normally waits religiously until the end? The gesture was utterly spontaneous and born of a mixture of admiration and emotional response. She played the Theme and Variations of Sibelius as an encore, a piece of lyricism, understatement, and control, the perfect foil to the opposites of Prokofiev that we had just heard.

The whole evening was finished off with one of the Dvorak Slavonic Dances. This time it was an upbeat celebration played at breakneck speed. The audience was thus left to pursue its own dreams. Dream on. The reality was pure dream, but the experience will surely last.