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.

The Gonzalo Soriano International Piano Competition in Alicante announces its winners

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gustavo Gimeno and the Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana in Sibelius and Mahler

Gustavo Gimeno conducted the Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana in the latest concert of ADDA’s Pasions season. The program juxtaposed two symphonies that were premiered about thirty years apart by composers who were both born in the 1860s. The contrast, however, was immense.

Composed almost at the end of Jean Sibelius’s creative life, the Seventh Symphony is much more revolutionary than it might appear at first sight. Its compressed form is perhaps more reminiscent of a tone poem than a symphony, but at twenty minutes duration, its single movement is longer than many eighteenth century symphonies that advertise multiple sections. And here there is a sense of development, even evolution as motifs come and go, resurface and transform in this seemingly organic form. The whole takes on the feeling of a valediction, with the trombones effectively waving goodbye, hardly animated, but certainly determined, to a creative life that was soon to be retired.

Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony is a very moving work, full of wonderful, slow textures, where sounds seem to melt at the edges as they brush past one another. The Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana under Gustavo Gimeno’s direction, played the work sympathetically, always keen to bring these textures to the fore.

Gustav Mahler’s First Symphony, by contrast, came at the start of his composing career. Its gestation was protracted, and the composer revised the score almost each time it was played during its first five years.

The result, however, is an often-played masterpiece. Only two of Mahler’s symphonies, the first and fourth, are of half concert length, and the fourth needs a soloist. This makes the first symphony the easiest of the composer’s output to programme, and so one feels that its presence might sometimes be perfunctory. An orchestra wants Mahler on its curriculum vitae, and the first offers the least resistance.

But there was no such pragmatism on show for Gustavo Gimeno and the Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana, who had clearly rehearsed the piece at length. Here we had a reading and performance that stressed detail and contrast. Mahler’s juxtaposition of light and heavy, light and shade, loud and soft, fast and slow were perfectly communicated and played. But this was no mannerist display of the possible for possibility’s sake. Here all the lines were well drawn, and the overall shapes made sense, musically at least, which is often not the case with this intentionally episodic work.

It was so detailed that the musical allusions came to the fore. The funeral march’s juxtaposition of popular song alongside Jewish celebration was clear and also stark, and it seemed to be delivered with the wry smile that no doubt the composer wore while writing it. Also evident was the similarity at one point to the Fifth Symphony’s Adagietto. Also notable in the scherzo, just before the contrasting slow trio, there stood out of figure in the cellos, just a series of repeated notes, that were lifted verbatim by Shostakovich into his fourth symphony. No perfunctory presence for this symphony for that great composer.

Mahler’s rousing finale was delivered by standing brass and horns, but it was the whole orchestra that shone. Gustavo Gimeno was careful to present each section of the band for acclaim at the end. They had all deserved the applause.

 

Josep Vicent conducts Beethoven and Montsalvatge in Alicante

 

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is one of those works I can hear anytime I want. I play it to myself in my head - at least, I think I do. It's a work I and many others have heard so many times, I sometimes wonder what might be gained from hearing it again. On this occasion, I need not have worried.

This is always a concertgoer’s dilemma, at least, if you are a concertgoer like me, who always craves new and original experience. There are many concertgoers, perhaps even a majority, who want only to hear what they know, hence the rather repetitive and perhaps, at least to me, the rather stultified and predictable nature of a lot of programmes.

As a season-ticket holder, however, one does tend to go to whatever is billed, and on Sunday, 10 December 2023, Josep Vicent and the ADDA orchestra chose to play Beethoven Nine.

I tried to remember the last performance of the work I attended. It must have been that Promenade Concert over twenty years ago that I attended with an old college friend, when an original instrument group performed it. “It’s being sung on the original voices,” said my friend with more than a smile. We were a long way from the stage in London’s Albert Hall. The work, of course, filled the space. More often than not an overlooked but regularly visited friend is full of surprises when we do finally make contact.

And it was true with this performance of Beethoven Nine. There were even surprises in Josep Vicent’s reading. The opening bars, for instance, are so often played with the first violins cutting forte through the general tremolo. Here they were subdued, understated. In the last movement, when the famous theme establishes itself on wider strings after cellos and basses have introduced it, Vicent had the woodwind come almost to the fore with its argumentative counterpoint. Thirdly - and what a masterstroke! - the presence of the chorus on the stage meant the timpani had to move. Vicent brought it almost to the front of the stage alongside the violas and cellos. The timpani, of course, plays a thoroughly significant role in the work, and not only in the groundbreaking second movement, where it played melody for perhaps the first time. The four soloists, Erika Grimaldi, Teresa Iervolino, Airam Hernández and José Antonio, were all more than up to their tasks. Positioned just ahead of the chorus, they sang with remarkable clarity, volume and commitment.

But the real star of the show was the chorus, Orfeón Donostiarra. The chorus were not just committed to the task, they sang as if their lives depended on it. But they were always totally musical, never prone to stress volume rather than tone, always accurate, with every dynamic change respected. The amazing quality of their work was recognized by the audience’s loud cheers at the end, a gesture that was both noticed and appreciated by everyone present.

In the first half we had Montsalvatge’s Cant Espiritual de Joan Maragall, a twenty minute work for chorus and orchestra. Maragall’s words concentrate on the prospect of life after death, in contrast to Schiller’s which, as we know, are really interested in the here and now. Montsalvatge’s music, understated neoclassicism, mixed with modernism and popular song, came across as the perfect foil to the grandiloquence that was to follow. But in Beethoven’s case, the grandiloquence works every time. It’s grandiloquence with consequences and there’s not an empty second in the experience. In our current world, we need more, not less calls for brotherhood and sisterhood amongst all people.

 

Pimchas Zukerman plays Elgar with Orchestra National de Lyon under Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider in ADDA Alicante

When writing reviews, the pressure to express opinion often leads to overstatement. It is a position. I usually try to avoid, and I do so by concentrating on the positive aspects of the object under review. I will do the same here.

To say that everyone went away happy from this evening of Elgar and Brahms would be an understatement. They had been treated to an outstanding performance by an outstanding violinist. They had also been delivered a going-away lollipop in the form of the ever-popular Nimrod variation from Elgar’s Enigma to round off the evening.

Pinchas Zukerman is now seventy-five years old. He has been making music in public for over five decades of his life, and if anything, he seems to get better with time. There are few pyrotechnics to see in his playing. But when the eyes are closed, the true force of expression becomes clear in all of its colours.

The Elgar Violin Concerto that started this evening was beautifully played. Its complexity of argument, where orchestra and soloist seem regularly to exchange roles and material, seems like an intellectual process at times, an intellectual process that is conducted purely via emotion. This Elgar concerto is a thoroughly modern piece, dressed in nineteenth century form, as evidenced by the unconventional techniques the soloist is directed to use. Brahms, and indeed Mendelssohn are here, but so is the idea that violinist and orchestra combine and compete in dissecting a musical argument. This is no simple showpiece for a soloist to fill with emptiness.

And the communication between artist and orchestra this evening between Pinchas Zukerman and the Lyon Orchestra was superb. The soloist even joined in with the first violins here and there to keep himself busy. His tone throughout was a joy to hear, as was his obvious understanding of the problematic score. Elgar was always a showman, but his lack of personal confidence always persuaded him to be retiring. He considered himself an outside, an underdog who was always trying to gain entry to an establishment that he felt shunned him. It is rather strange, contradictory even, given that his music is now seen as thoroughly “establishment”. Personally I hear this dichotomy in the music, as exemplified so often at the start of his pieces, which sound is if we are entering into the middle of a conversation that was already underway before we arrived. It’s as if the composer is apologising before he has said anything!

After the interval, the Lyon Orchestra played the Symphony No. 1 of Brahms. It’s an orchestral standard, which, surely, most full-time professional orchestra have played many times, and can probably render convincingly from memory. It can be a challenge, not least for a member of the first violins who lost a string. She proceeded to play through the piece as if the problem did not exist. Remarkable and congratulations!

Personally, I don’t have much to say about the Brahms Symphony, except that if it had been written in the age of recording technology, Johannes Brahms would have been labelled a plagiarist. History, however, might mark the influence of Beethoven in his music as “inspiration”. It was an inspiration, as we know, that caused the composer, great difficulty, and perhaps this symphony had to be written to unleash creativity that otherwise would have found no voice. 

Another great ADDA evening.

Jesús Reina, Pierre Bleuse and ADDA Alicante in Ravel, Strauss and Mozart

For the third time this season, Alicante’s ADDA audience heard a major piece by Richard Strauss. The Violin Concerto is an early work, written when the young man was a teenager and still searching for a mature voice. As a consequence, it does remind one of Brahms, Mendelssohn here and there, amongst others.

But its overall conception is quite different. For a start, there is no obvious cadenza. Even at sixteen years of age, Richard Strauss was trying to write a concerto where soloist and orchestra were to combine to deliver an integrated musical experience. This was never conceived as a vehicle to allow a soloist merely to show off. And so it needs to be performed cooperatively, with the soloist always mindful of the orchestra’s contribution.

On this occasion, the soloist was Jesús Reina, a musician who devotes much of his time to playing chamber music in small ensembles. If anyone would be sympathetic to this need for integration, then, surely, he would be. The audience was not to be disappointed. He was so completely sympathetic to the orchestra’s role that he often turned during the time when he was not contributing to face the orchestra and actually listen to what they were playing. The result was a truly integrated work, with a musical argument coming to the fore. Pierre Bleuse’s direction also allowed the perfect balance to develop.

The concert had begun with the orchestral version of Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin. Now this work is often played almost as if it were conceived as an eighteenth-century concerto grosso, rather than an homage to the form from the point of view of a twentieth century composer.

This performance crafted by Pierre Bleuse was different. The shape was still there, but the hard, staccato edges seem to be softened. The strings seem to be offering commentaries rather than statements. The result was a beautifully balanced, surprising and thoroughly post-impressionist, twentieth century piece. It paid homage to the past while saying something quite new. It is such a familiar piece, but what a surprise!

Mozart’s G Minor Symphony occupied the second half of the concert. It is hard to find anything new to say about the work, but it is also a work that does not need novelty. It is so well crafted, so perfectly conceived, that it makes its own points every time it is played.

Pierre Bleuse’s direction brought out every aspect of Mozart’s score. It was serious, threatening, lyrical, playful, and always inventive. A real treat brought the evening to a close in the shape of Chabrier’s Habañera, a surprisingly subtle an interesting little piece. Another surprise!