Beethoven, Bruch and Mendelssohn in ADDA Alicante with Max Bragado-Darman - a concert of surprise and excellence

 

This was a program that seemed so middle-of-the-road that attendance might mean getting hit from both directions, from both predictability and familiarity. A programme comprising Beethoven, Bruch and Mendelssohn sounds both predictable and familiar and there are certainly some concert goers who are attracted by these promises. But here the familiarity disappears with closer inspection.

OK, the Beethoven Egmont Overture is frequently played. It is, however, so full of wonderful energy that it can be heard of fresh every time. The unpredictability here started with the opening chords. I have not heard this piece in concert for some time and the textures of the opening phrases seemed utterly new to me. I had never before noticed such harmonies. And these were written in 1810! From the very first bars, thanks to a conductor whose clearly intimate knowledge of the repertoire allows him to draw a listener’s attention to detail without losing overall shape, this concert was going to be familiar perhaps, but certainly not predictable. The final passages of the overture were even repeated at the end of the evening as an encore, and, even second time through, the work’s conclusion was still full of energy and invention.

A Bruch concerto followed. But, as the evening’s program notes pointed out, this was neither a popular violin concerto nor a Scottish fantasy. It was in fact, the double concerto, opus 88, originally written for clarinet and viola, but reshaped by the composer himself for violin and viola. This is mid-Romantic music written as late as 1911. It is backward looking in its apparent willingness to revisit well-trodden paths, but then it is also modern in the way that the soloists share material with the orchestra in the form of a dialogue, if a dialogue can have three contributors, without the need to place the soloists on a showing- off pedestal. The result, especially in the hands of Max Bragado-Darman and the ADDA orchestra and the evening’s soloists, Sarah Ferrández on viola and Maria Florea on violin, was an intimate experience, an examination of melody and texture. The soloists played a little Bach counterpoint as an encore.

Then, in part two, we came to the main course, which was Mendelssohn’s last symphony, number five, The Reformation. Familiar it might be, but I checked, and I have not heard it in the concert hall for over fifty years. Familiar it also may be because of other composers having mined it. Phrases in the violins during the first movement are pure Parsifal from the end of Wagner’s creative life. The theme of the slow movement reappears as a waltz in Shostakovich’s Jazz Suite a hundred years later. And the sonorities of the chorales in the finale might even be reminiscent of Copland!

But, to make musical sense, a symphony needs to be performed with sufficient vision for the intellectual progression to make sense, or, if that be the point, to emphasize its chance and randomness. The latter qualities are not part of Mendelssohn’s oeuvre and the ADDA Orchestra had a director in Max Bragado-Darman whose overview of the music was so perfect that it became transparent. Only the composer’s inspiration shone through, but this was surely this evening’s conductor’s mission and, as such, it was both surprising and memorable. This was a performance by all of the very highest quality, never predictable, and whose familiarity led to respect.

Esther Yoo, Lahav Shani and the Munich Philharmonic in Mendelssohn and Bruckner in ADDA Alicante

What new observations might one have of an event featuring Mendelsohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor and Bruckner’s Symphony No9? These are both works that I have heard many times over the years and several times each in the concert hall. Recordings of them exist in myriad interpretations - especially the Mendelssohn, which, along with concertos by Beethoven, Brahms, Bruch and Tchaikovsky, is amongst the most played violin concertos in the concert hall. Audiences, however, are renowned for liking what they know, so, despite the regularity of its performance, this particular concerto features in most concert seasons of most orchestras.

What is new about every presentation of a work, no matter how often it is played, is the performance. And on this occasion, the soloist was Esther Yoo and the orchestra was the Munich Philharmonic, under their soon-to-be resident conductor Lahav Shani. Esther Yoo’s playing with superb, committed, expressive, and always engaging with the music, never merely playing the notes. Unusually, Lahav Shani chose to conduct without a score. Often, even the most accomplished and experienced conductor uses a score when directing a concerto, perhaps to underline that if anything goes wrong, it is the responsibility of the soloist. But on this occasion, Lahav Shani showed he knew the music so completely that the presence of the score would have been simply redundant.

This was indeed a spirited, and at times a thoughtful performance of a work that always has the potential to become a cliché. The performers ensured, on the other hand, that this utterly familiar work became an original, fresh statement. Esther Yoo’s performance was warmly received by the ADDA audience, and she offered an unaccompanied sarabande by JS Bach as an encore.

And what more is to be said about Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony? Unfinished it might be, stopping at the end of a slow movement placed third, though it still lasts more than an hour. Personally, I find that I can always admire Bruckner’s music from afar, but I find repeatedly that it never invites me inside its world. The composer, apparently, was writing cathedrals in sound, giant blocks of stone and glass piled high. And, as if we were looking up at a ribbed and vaulted Gothic roof, we know that it is heavy, and we know that it is solid, but in detail, it is often light and often even soaring.

Again, Lahav Shani chose to conduct without a score, but his attention to detail throughout was precise and expressive. The Munich Philharmonic definitely makes a sound commensurate with the demands of this work, and on many occasions the tutti actually felt physically massive. But this orchestra is also completely subtle in its playing, and the textures provided by the composer’s orchestration were always to the fore.

In Alicante, we are used to an orchestra that is totally committed to the musical experience, and it is therefore the highest praise possible for this audience member to say that the Munich Philharmonic was at least as good as our regular experience. It goes beyond praise to know that many of those present thought that this orchestra surpassed our norm. Now that is something new.

Historias de la Guerra - Josep Vicent, Yol Eum Son and ADDA Simfonica play Gershwin's Piano Concerto and Shostakovich Eight

This was a concert of two very unequal halves, at least in length, let alone style. The two parts were equal when it came to their standard of performance, however. A program that pits Gershwin against Shostakovich, especially in the latter’s most bleak form, is always going to present a contrast, and a both delightful and thoughtful contrast it proved to be.

Now I admit that I am biased. I first heard Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony in London under Kiril Kondrashin in the early 1970s and the work has stayed firmly in my listening habits ever since. It is not, however, a work to which I listen regularly, maybe once a month at most, because it remains a harrowing experience, no matter how familiar one becomes with its argument.

Shostakovich’s three war symphonies deal with conflict in number seven, victory, albeit hollow, in number nine and raw suffering in number eight. Such subject matter makes number seven, paradoxically, the most accessible of the three with its self-delusion of an apparently triumphal ending. Number nine is so hollowly cynical that it becomes a talking point rather than a musical experience. Number eight, on the other hand, is visceral in its content and thus disturbing in concert. But, from time to time, it is good to be disturbed, to be reminded of the consequence of certain kinds of human behaviour. The fact that it is human behaviour is obvious, by the way, since other life forms do not make bombs.

The concert’s first half offered contrast with the anticipated suffering that was to follow. It was a performance of Gershwin’s Piano Concerto by Yol Eum Son. This is music of sheen and gloss. As piano concertos go, this one is dressed up for a night out and is packed with references to the popular culture of the time, the roaring twenties, the jazz age. But there is enough in the solo part to link it with works in the same genre by Bartók, Prokofiev, or even Rachmaninov in its simultaneously percussive and lyrical style. There are times, unfortunately, where the soloist becomes overwhelmed by Gershwin’s rather heavy orchestration, but that is clearly how Gershwin wanted things. Despite sometimes being eclipsed, Yol Eum Son played with such perfection that her performance was at times breathtaking, both technically brilliant, and musically considered. The experience was further refined by Josep Vicent’s direction of the ADDA orchestra. The rehearsal time had clearly been well used, with the orchestra entering the idiom of Gershwin’s work as well as playing the notes. With an orchestra of the standard of Alicante’s ADDA, however, this might be possible without rehearsal!

Overall, the Gershwin Piano Concerto shows off everything that is good about the composer’s music - directness, melody, rhythm and good-time sheen - alongside everything that is less than wonderful, being the broad brush of the composer’s orchestration and the frequent dominance of effect over content. But this program was perfection as far as this work was concerned. Yol Eum Son finished with the piano arrangement of Gershwin’s Summertime by Earl Wild.

And so to the Shostakovich, which was written barely twenty years after the Gershwin, two decades that had seen Gershwin’s celebrating world view become depression, and then war. If the first part of this concert approached perfection, then the second part definitely achieved it.

Josep Vicent clearly programmed this work to coincide with the eightieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, a point he made while addressing the audience at the end. But also this work clearly occupies a special place in his musical thoughts. He chose a very slow tempo in the opening movement and thoroughly respected the composer’s dynamics amongst the strings. It is often overlooked that the first violins only enter when the marking is pianissimo. This allowed him to stress the changes in dynamics and rhythm that followed to dramatic effect. And in this symphony, Shostakovich uses his often-explored technique of a long moderato with a central allegro climax, and then a denouement, usually featuring a solo instrument. In this case, it is the cor anglais accompanied by a sustained tremolo that often causes string players to tire. Here, this perfect was – yes – perfect played, paced and interpreted.

Personally, I find that the work’s core, however, is the fourth movement, the slow, highly internalized examination of grief and loss. This is music that invites you into its world. As an audience member, you have to become part of the performance because this music forces you to confront the emotional cracks that Gershwin, for instance, would simply paint over. It is also why this Symphony, to my ear, works only when heard in concert since this participatory element, this communication between performers and listeners is less intense in a recording.

At the end of the Eighth Symphony, Shostakovich allows the music to settle into its own sleep. Everything dies away, but we are left very much alive with the memories that it provoked. The audience’s silence at the end of the work was indeed part of its effect and surely part of its performance. Well done the ADDA audience! A performance of this work will last in the memory forever, if the work is played well and with commitment. Needless to say that this performance by Josep Vicent and the ADDA Orchestra satisfied in every aspect.

Shostakovich’s Eighth surely does not need an encore. But if it is to have one, Josep Vicent chose a perfect ending in Ravel’s Pavane for a Dead Princess. This works still concentrates on loss, but the Ravel offers a little sweetness to round off a savoury meal. And Ravel’s subtle orchestral touches really do enhance the musical experience, reminding us of the fact that Gershwin once asked for classes from Ravel to improve his technique.

 

Cappella Andrea Barca and Sir András Schiff play Bach and Mozart in Alicante

 

CAPPELLA ANDREA BARCA

SIR ANDRÁS SCHIFF, DIRECTOR Y PIANO

Johann Sebastian Bach, Concierto de Brandemburgo nº5 en Re Mayor (BWV 1050)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Concierto para piano núm. 25 en Do mayor, K.503

Johann Sebastian Bach, Triple concierto para flauta, violín, clave y cuerda en La menor (BWV 1044)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Concierto para piano núm. 24 en Do menor, K.491

Sir András Schiff is renowned worldwide for his interpretation of the music of Mozart and Bach. I admit at the start that I respect the music of both composers and even recognize the gargantuan achievements of both. But rarely do I feel anything other than respect when I hear performances of their work. Sometimes, performances rise above my prejudice, and I am always delighted by these insights into the musical personalities of Bach and Mozart that a musician can reveal. It’s not that I actively dislike this music, it’s just that it rarely surprises me. So it was with preconceived expectations that I approached last night’s ADDA Alicante concert.

The program presented by András Schiff and Cappella Andrea Barca, the orchestra the soloist himself constructed to play alongside him, included two works from each composer. All four works were called concertos, but the Bach versions each featured three soloists. The works in question were the Brandenburg Concerto No5 and the Triple Concerto, BWV1044.

Besides having a significant part for a keyboard soloist, these two works also feature solo violin and solo flute. Indeed, the central slow movement of each work features only the three soloists, so here both works become chamber music.  Cappella Andrea Barca’s leader Erich Höbarth was the violin soloist in both works. The orchestra’s two flautists Wolfgang Breinschmid and Wally Hase took turns to solo in the Brandenburg and the Triple respectively.

It is rare for me to criticize anything, but this will be one occasion when I do so. The flautists were both wonderful. Their playing was faultless and was delivered with obvious enthusiasm and commitment. Erich Höbarth, I am sure, is an accomplished violinist, but in the ADDA Hall last night, it was difficult to hear his part. This may be quite harsh, since the violin soloist is often playing along with the first violin part, but even on those occasions when he was playing alongside only the other two soloists, such as in the two slow movements of both concertos, his contribution remained barely audible. Now a flute can be an assertive voice, but neither flautist was playing in such a way as to deliberately drown out a colleague, let alone the leader of their own orchestra!

The two Mozart works were piano Concerto No24 and No25. The first one is a rather gentle affair to my ear, presenting a simple, perhaps over-simplified theme in a very simple way. Number 25 has more substance and is longer than its predecessor. András Schiff both directed and played the solo part with great ease. A grand piano is a perfect way of communicating a Mozart concerto, but many keyboard players would choose a smaller voice for the Bach works. In the hands of András Schiff, however, a lightness of touch and an obvious sympathy with the performers meant that the keyboard never dominated. One really felt that this orchestra loves playing with András Schiff and that everyone loves this music. But there again, there were times when there was more than a hint of “we have been here before”.

The audience demanded an encore and András Schiff delivered a Bach fugue. Everyone went home happy.

 

 

Orfeón Donostiarra, ADDA, Josep Vicent serve two staples of twentieth century music in Alicante - Orff's Carmina Burana and Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe

 

How does one review a work in which one section is so well-known that it is perhaps better known as an aftershave advert on television than is a piece of music? How might one describe again an experience that has already been played through on multiple occasions? Here is the problem for this reviewer of last night’s concert in Aliante, in which the ADDA orchestra under Josep Vicent alongside Orfeón Donostiarra presented two utterly familiar masterpieces of twentieth century music. Let’s start with the aftershave

Given the opening paragraph, “old spice” is perhaps a good label from which to start. Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana is perhaps an example of old spice. Since it’s rapturous reception in Nazi Germany in 1937, it has continued to spice up concert programs in more ways than one. The composer chose to set these medieval poems, not only because they were interesting in themselves, but also because they were rather iconoclastic. Although written by clerics and monks several hundred years ago, they are at least tongue-in-cheek, anti-clerical, and anti-church. They are also bawdy and celebrate sex and drinking. Rabelaisian might be a relevant word.

But they do their iconoclastic work in the conventional format of a cantata with soloists, though only three of these, not four. One of them, usually sung by a tenor, has the utterly thankless task of playing a roasting swan with a skewer inserted in such a way that it changes the voice to falsetto. Though food seems to be the preoccupation, one is reminded of the medieval church’s propensity for making bonfires. The part was convincing sung by Rafael Quirant, who is a countertenor, who inspired genuine pathos amid the implied mirth.

Milan Perišić’s baritone was superb throughout. This is the meat of the soloists’ contribution, and his approach was genuinely and convincingly operatic. He generated superb dynamic contrasts at times and was thoroughly in control throughout. The soprano sung by Sabrina Gárdez, had two major contributions towards the end, and during the second, the voice has to live alone amongst those assembled vast forces. It has to modally meander its way through a solo without accompaniment, and then meander back again to finish in the right place. Many do not succeed, but Sabrina Gárdez did. During this sequence, one reflects how rarely in this work anyone sings anything without unison accompaniment.

And, speaking of singing, Orfeón Donostiarra visiting Aliante again did a wonderful job on the text. Their collective subtlety of expression brought out what was in the work to express. Much of this choral writing seems to have the character of plain chant with rhythm, so often there simply isn’t the opportunity to show off harmonic complexity. Rhythmically, it’s a very different story and our choir was perfect.

So what does one do musically with it? The quiet sections have to be quiet and lyrical, while the fireworks need to be loud, spectacular and perhaps augmented by both speed and volume. Josep Vicent chose to mix in both at the end of tutti phrases and everything worked beautifully.

The other part of the evening was devoted to another resident of the concert hall repertoire, the second suite of Daphne and Chloe by Ravel. There is nothing literal about this music. Everything is mere suggestion, an expression of whatever internal reality or myth Maurice Ravel was wont to experience. As ever with Ravel, it is hard to pin this music down. It has to be experienced live and its effect, though lasting, even permanent, does not prompt the retention of earworms. A wordless chorus does much more than add emphasis and volume to the beginning and end. In the dawn sequence, especially, they add harmonic texture and colour.

What is utterly fascinating to see how the composer’s mind worked. In the opening dawn sequence, the violins are playing a repeated, barely audible arpeggio, which suggests darting insects, barely visible through the mist. This is music of truly sophisticated complexity, containing sound that has to be experienced and cannot be hummed, unlike Carl Orff’s masterpiece, which in comparison, does to the audience what the skewer does to the swan.

 

Helsinki Philharmonic under Saraste play a Sibelius programme

 

Jukka-Pekka Saraste conducted the Helsinki Philharmonic orchestra in a program devoted to the music of Sibelius. Now a Finnish conductor with a Finnish orchestra playing Finnish music might sound like it could turn out to be a cliché. But these people know precisely what they are doing with their national composer. Clearly, the Helsinki Orchestra plays a lot of Sibelius, but they also clearly never tire of the task.

The concert started with a work not published in the program. The previous concert had been cancelled in the aftermath of the devastating floods that had hit the Valencian region. As a mark of respect for those who have suffered, the orchestra opened with the Valse Triste of Sibelius. It was a gesture appreciated by the audience.

The first half of the concert then got underway with Jan Söderblom, the Helsinki Philharmonic leader playing the First Serenade for violin and orchestra, Opus 69a. This is a thoroughly understated work. The Second Serenade, more substantial and more musically interesting came third on the program with Jan Söderblom again as soloist.

In between, the orchestra’s principal flute, Niamh McKenna, was soloist in the Nocturne No.3 from Sibelius’s incidental music to Belshazzar’s Feast. So it was with these three short pieces, featuring solo violin, flute, and then violin again that the concert started. If I have a criticism, which I accept is the level of nitpicking, I would suggest that these three pieces should have been presented with the flute first or last, allowing the two serenades to be played back-to-back. It was in this form that the Helsinki orchestra premiered in 1915, a concert which also featured the original version of the fifth symphony.

The performance of Finlandia that followed saw several extra musicians take to the stage and the familiar cords did ring out. Finlandia is a thoroughly moving experience and no matter how many times it is played, it always has a rousing effect on an audience. This was no exception.

The second half was taken with a performance of the Fifth Symphony, though in its revised version, not the original of 1915, which is never now played. And the fifth is perhaps the composer’s most popular work, alongside the Violin Concerto. With such a well-known work, it would be easy to fall into the trap of mouthing platitudes, but this performance was anything but that. The music was fresh, as fresh as Sibelius himself would have wanted when he said that whereas modern composers were offering up cocktails, he only wanted fresh spring water. The music was both clear and refreshing.

There was also an encore, the Alla Marcha from the Karelia, which needed even more musicians on stage

ADDA Alicante under Josep Vicent begin a new season with Bruckner's Seventh Symphony

 

Anton Bruckner was born in 1824, meaning this year is his bicentenary. In recognition of this, the new season of Alicante concerts opened with a performance of his Seventh Symphony by the ADDA orchestra under the artistic director, Josep Vicent.

This is a mammoth work that lasts over an hour. The first two movements alone exceeded forty minutes. As a result, as with this evening, it is often played alone, with no other work either before or after it to offer musical contrast. With such immersion, an audience ought to feel bathed in the musical style to such an extent that the experience is all enveloping.

But nothing involving Anton Buckner is ever that that simple. He was a paradoxically simple man, yet simultaneously outrageously complex. Deeply religious, but with an often-expressed passion – unrealised - for young girls, he seemed to offer up to the world a riddle that could never be solved. A professor in Vienna and a teacher of many years, he never attained sufficient confidence in his own abilities to finish definitively most of his works. Near constant revision, often prompted by the lukewarm praise of others, left multiple versions of many of his works. This can give much scope for conductors to pick and choose, to incorporate this revision or ignore another. Definitive Bruckner is an oxymoron.

And with the work of Anton Bruckner, no one is going to notice very much, given that by design the music often swerves, changes direction or delights in apparent non sequiturs quite often. Bulow described the composer as “half genius, half simpleton” and he had the reputation, even in society events, of turning up dressed like a peasant. He was an enigma, was overtly sensuous with the sound of his music, but deeply religious, and lived, generally speaking, the life of an ascetic. His express motivation was to write music to celebrate the glory of God, in both scale and depth.

The ADDA programme notes quoted Wilhelm Furtwangler saying that Bruckner composed Gothic music that had mistakenly been transplanted into the nineteenth century. Stylistically, the music is far from Gothic, but perhaps its architecture is not. Personally, I would go as far as describing the symphonies as cathedrals, where the parts only come together when the whole is considered from afar. There are no grab quotes from these symphonies, except perhaps in the scherzi, and even these are heavy on process rather than melody.

A possible problem with the cathedral analogy is perhaps that the composer had forgotten to include a door. It is possible to experience this music and feel permanently shut out. Yes, the edifice is impressive. Yes, it towers above us. But does it ever reveal its interior?

Having discussed the work, what about the performance? Well, it was faultless, committed, subtle, and even communicative. The Wagner tubas did not play a wrong note all evening, which is rarely the case with this notoriously mind-of-its-own instrument. Their sound, booming and enveloping, when added to a full orchestra created a special world, which the audience eagerly inhabited.

Josep Vicent drew every morsel of texture from the score and the resulting detail, even within the tutti, was simply vivid. In recognition of the work’s dedication to Ludwig II of Bavaria. The concert bore the subtitle “Legend of the mad king”. It wasn’t a legend, but it was a great start to a new season.

ADDA Simfonica with Irene Theorin under Josep Vicent in Strauss and Shostakovich

 

Concerts seasons often parade a procession of “great works” calculated to promote ticket sales. Anything less well known is often regarded as risky because audiences, though they tend not to know what they like, always like what they know. Performances of great works often become mundane acknowledgments of the work’s existence, without getting to grips with its substance. Audiences go home happy, ticket sales are satisfactory, and the works of thousands of composers never see the light of day.

So would the program of the Four Last songs of Richard Strauss followed by Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony fall into this perfunctory category? It might. But in Alicante’s ADDA concert hall last night, it definitely did not. Indeed, this is never the case when it comes to the playing and interpretation of ADDA Simfònica under Josep Vicent. Last night, the audience was surely in the presence of living greatness, not just past achievement. During last week, I met a friend whom I knew would also be going to hear the music and expressed the opinion that Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony was a life-changer. I understated the reality. And you might be wondering why a concert review opens like this… I hope to make that clear later. First, the facts.

The hall was packed to hear Iréne Theorin sing the Four Last Songs of Richard Strauss and the ADDA Simfònica under artistic director Josep Vicent play the symphony. To say that this audience loves its resident orchestra would also be an understatement. Every player is applauded onto the stage and off it, every time. This adoration is individual recognition, communally expressed, of both the work the orchestra does in presenting taxing programmes and also the quality of the experience they regularly deliver. ADDA Simfònica is now a great orchestra, and their artistic director is the leading light.

We began last night with Richard Strauss’s songs, with Iréne Theorin as soloist. The opening phrases might have suggested that she might have a little too much vibrato for this work, but like many initial fears this proved groundless. This is a work that needs control and expression, rather than power or decoration, and Iréne Theorin not only delivered, she excelled. There was a slight surprise when at the end of the fourth song, when the valedictory trills on the flute were played rather softer than is often the case. In the context of the work, this low-key wave of goodbye fitted perfectly. It is not surprising, given the soloist’s experience in performing the music of Richard Strauss that Iréne Theorin’s interpretation proved nothing less than exceptional. We did have an encore. It was one of Strauss’s orchestral songs, which ultimately gave Iréne Theorin an opportunity to demonstrate a little of her power.

And then what more can be written about this symphony? Let’s take for granted that it was played wonderfully, was interpreted to perfection and was received in absolute silence with every note absorbed by its audience.

For me personally, the opening movement has a clear programme. The complexity and sophistication of ordinary life in Leningrad is portrayed in the opening section in music that regularly changes key and rhythm. The simple message of the opposing theme portrays the idea of fascism. Keep it simple and keep saying the same thing. People will believe you. It starts small, indeed it does. But with each new adherent, the ideology grows into something that creates a powerful need to impose itself on everything. Ideologically this is the fascism of the 1930s. Musically, it is the ideology of pop, being populism, not popularity. That comes later. Just try getting away from pop music… And, I might add, I don’t mean Indian pop, or Tanzanian pop. I mean an international pop, nearly always in sung in English, where the visuals trump the aurals. Here I return to the idea at the start of the piece, because it is a marketing necessity that the product should always be presented that way. Make sure there are no surprises, and then you will not offend. And you will sell more worthless product.

At the end of the first movement, after the idea of fascism has led to huge conflict, the sophisticated life of those who don’t want everything to be the same returns, but it is exhausted. Though the movement ends lyrically, the fascist tendency is still there, perhaps in the form of a dictator, perhaps acknowledging that this desire to impose the conformity of a group is part of us all. At the end of the symphony, when the triumphal but unconvincing fanfares ring out, proclaiming what is clearly a rather hollow victory, the memory of conflict, complete with its conformity-imposing mechanical rhythm is still there. But is it now at least the rhythm of the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth?

The symphony’s central movements are full of reflection, lyricism, nostalgia, desolation and nightmare. It is an acknowledgment of the excellent design of the ADDA hall to record that even pianissimo pizzicati can be heard anywhere. We assume, of course, as ever, that there is near total silence from the audience. There always is.

My introduction of the work to the work came from Leonard Bernstein’s CBS recording with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Throughout, he uses significantly slower tempi than we heard last night. It’s a different take on what is, after all, a personal experience. On this recording, there is a moment during the first movement, when the sophistication of the people returns after the war, after the exhaustion is expressed and the desolation is recorded, when the sophistication represented by the strings returns with renewed but exhausted energy. On the recording, just before this entry, Bernstein issues a long side of relief which was picked up by the microphones. Personally, I cannot listen to this music without hearing that unscored sigh. I heard the reissue of the same recording a few weeks ago, and the engineers have removed the sigh.

At the start of the symphony last night, Josep Vicent decided to project images of the siege of Leningrad on the backdrop, closing the sequence with a statement that there were currently fifty conflicts in the world and that collectively we wanted to be ambassadors of peace. I said earlier that the Leningrad Symphony is a life-changer, and it still is, no matter how many times it is heard. Let’s put the people back into music, no matter how much we crave standardized products. Experience is unique. And this one was no exception. And it will live a lifetime.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.