The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra with Narek Hakhnazarayan under Vasily Petrenko in Dvorak and Tchaikovsky at ADDA, Alicante

Mixing the familiar with the less familiar is a common programming tool. The popular work brings them in, and you broaden the audience’s taste - or even surprise them! - with the less well-known. That seemed to be the theme underpinning the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s approach to their concert in Alicante under Vasily Petrenko. Honorary Scouser, Vasily Petrenko, presented a Czech concerto and a Russian symphony by household names, Dvorak and Tchaikovsky, but whereas the cello concerto of the former is performed perhaps daily, the Manfred Symphony of Tchaikovsky rarely makes it onto the concert platform. It would seem to be a matter of resources and costs, because the work lasts for almost an hour, needs a large orchestra, including two harps and an organ, and also the composer conveniently provided lower cost alternatives in his last symphonies, which are easier to stage. In over fifty years of concert-going, this was my first Manfred.

Soloist in the Dvorak was Narek Hakhnazarayan. Now this work is so well-known, it is hard to find surprise in its delivery. What one can do is marvel at the remarkable control, married to perfect expression and phrasing demonstrated by a Narek Hakhnazarayan. Our soloist used to be a BBC New Generation Artist and he clearly has good relations with other British institutions, such as the RPO. Only in his early thirties, he is already in receipt of a national honour from his home country, Armenia. He must have played the Dvorak Concerto many times, but his approach displayed a freshness and vitality that completely won over this Alicante audience.

But what really caught the audience’s attention was the soloist’s choice of encore. There was even a ripple of applause at his announcement, and then he started playing the finale of the Suite for Solo Cello by Gaspard Cassado. Much less well-known than his near contemporary, Pablo Casals, Cassado was a composer as well as a cellist. He mixed the identifiable Spanish with late Romanticism, and enough contemporary hard edge to make his music much more than mere lollipop. Casado’s music is still not heard very much, and almost not at all outside Spain. Narek Hakhnazarayan was inspired in his choice, as well as in his playing.

And then we moved on to Tchaikovsky’s Manfred. The program notes referred to Berlioz and a desire to produce a programme symphony. Also mentioned was the fact that it was originally Balakirev’s idea. But this is quintessential Tchaikovsky, mixed with the dark heroism and mysticism of Byron’s heroic poem.

The result is a symphony of conventional shape and form, with four movements, complete with scherzo and slow movement in the interior. And does this work feel different from Tchaikovsky’s other symphonies, given its programmatic brief? The answer is “yes”, absolutely yes. But all the compositional characteristics of the composer are there, certainly recognisable but perhaps developed in a different way from what we are used to.

The Manfred Symphony is a perfect example of how good a composer Tchaikovsky was. Not only is Manfred convincing as absolute music, even for those who have no knowledge of Byron, but the skill is such that elements of the story’s narrative become clear via the music. There is a personal style in evidence, there is no doubt about that, but there is also the intellectual subtlety of writing to depict something else, something from some other imagination, reinterpreted. Tchaikovsky’s Manfred is an exciting, exhilarating piece that should be experienced as often as his fourth, fifth and sixth symphonies.

Surprise, surprise – Bergmann and Baldeyrou play Sibelius, Weber and Franck in ADDA, Alicante

Surprise, surprise might seem an incongruous title for the review of a concert which seemed to offer a-middle-of-the-road programme. Sibelius’s Finlandia began the evening – it often does. Call Maria von Weber’s Clarinet Concerto is not played in concert as much as it should be, but its inclusion raises no eyebrows. César Franck’s Symphony in D Minor, again, is not played very often, but it’s a work that everyone knows about, though for most concert goers it's hardly commonplace. So, given the familiar appearance of the program, what was surprising?

Well, the personnel were unfamiliar. We had our regular band, our ADDA orchestra, but our guest conductor was the Norwegian Pune Bergmann, who was making his debut in this hall. His entrance provided the evening’s first surprise. Rune Bergmann is a big man, but he is also quite amazingly jovial, his smile appearing to stretch right across the string section. It seemed like the celebration of Finland’s identity was being directed by a laughing, Norwegian mountain, laughing out of the sheer joy of the music, I hasten to add. Musically there were no surprises here, just our usual quality.

The second surprise came with our soloist, Nicolas Baldeyrou. Few concert goers ever hear a clarinet concerto. For most who do, it’s probably one written by Mozart, with Weber’s work coming a distant second in the list.

Now Weber’s Clarinet Concerto was doubly surprising. First the playing of Nicolas Baldeyrou was nothing less than outstanding. His understanding of the music alongside his wonderful communication with conductor and orchestra made this performance of the work I have heard in recordings and broadcasts innumerable times something completely new. Especially surprising was the slow movement, which times reached pianissimos that were on the limits of hearing, and as a result, all the more dramatic and poignant. This performance will live for ever in the memory, so beautifully crafted and played that it became a completely new experience.

The ADDA audience does tend to bring soloists back on stage for another bow. We are used to demanding an encore. But this ADDA audience’s reaction to Nicolas Baldeyrou was special. The communal recognition that this with something special was almost tangible. The demanded encore was given, and it was again a surprise.

It was the Habañera from Bizet’s Carmen, arranged for clarinet and orchestra. And it was more than a showpiece, more than a lollipop to quieten the crowd. Faultless playing, communicative ensemble, again combined to create a new, surprising experience from what was immediately familiar.

A symphony in name, Cesar Franck’s D Minor has only three movements, two of which are marked allegro, thought you would never know it. Not really a master of orchestration, Franck seems to have concentrated on the storytelling. The musical lines evolve like the narrative of a novel, so that this symphony becomes more like a tone poem than an argument. And, after living in the world of minor keys for most of its duration, the long first movement surprisingly, and without warning, suddenly finds its conclusion in a major key. It’s all quite baffling, like a believer questioning a faith that suddenly returns, dispelling doubt.

And yes, there was an encore. Rune Bergmann again turned to the audience and again smiled that broad grin. “Edvard Grieg La Mañana”, he said. It was the first piece of classical music I ever heard, but it wasn’t  in Spanish.

The familiar seen and heard anew – Ivan Fischer, Francesco Piemontesi and the Budapest Festival Orchestra in Schumann, Dohnanyi and Strauss

 

Some time ago, Hillary Hahn played the Sibelius Violin Concerto in Alicante’s ADDA hall in a way that I described as utterly new. Though I had heard the work many times, at least hundreds, this performance opened my eyes anew to its qualities, many of which I had clearly hitherto missed. The same quality of experience applied to Francesco Piemontesi’s interpretation last night of the Schumann Piano Concerto.

It’s a work I have perhaps heard not just hundreds, but thousands of times. Frankly, I don’t have much time for Robert Schumann for reasons I won’t go into. Let’s just say that I tend to tolerate his music’s presence on concert programs without really seeing the point. I tend to find his music over-planned, too self-conscious, perhaps over-eager to present a facade. I admit that he may not be the only artist at fault in such areas!

After Francesco Piemontesi’s performance of the Piano Concerto, however, I feel I may have just been missing the point over the years, or perhaps it might be that the norm in performance is to splash the canvas of interpretation too liberally with respect and too little with humanity. In the hands of Francesco Piemontesi, there was hardly a phrase of this piece that was not “interpreted”. Now sometimes that’s a euphemism for “over-played” or “over-done”. In this case, it meant the use of subtle dynamics, changes of pace, nuances of touch, all designed to bring the music to life. The overall effect was to render the solo part conversational, even personal. I doubt there was a member of the audience who did not feel that this was a personal occasion, shared only by themselves and the soloist. The sense of communication was all-pervading, with the orchestra and soloist never in conflict, always cooperating to create musical sense. And what orchestra playing it was!

Ivan Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra seemed to weave in and out of the textures of the piano, never conflicting, never competing and never overwhelming. And so, by the end, I felt literally as if I had heard the work for the first time, so different was the experience from my expectation.

The Budapest Festival Orchestra under Ivan Fischer began the concert with a performance of Dohnanyi’s Symphonic Minutes. Though less of an innovator than Bartok and perhaps less melodious than Kodaly, Dohnanyi shares the same heritage and his music, witty, sumptuous and yet also neo-classical deserves to be played more.

The second half of Richard Strauss presented a pair of tone poems, Don Juan and Till Eugenspiegel sandwiching The Dance of the Seven Veils from Salome. These two tone poems demand superb orchestral playing and coordination, and right from the opening bars of Don Juan, it was obvious that the Budapest Festival Orchestra both relished and warmed to the task. The result was stunningly vivid, spectacular and exhilarating. Salome’s dance was colourful and deliberately graphic. Then came a masterstroke.

At the start of the evening it was noticeable that Ivan Fischer had placed the basses at the back of the orchestra. This seem to create a balanced, even orchestral texture, through which detail was only enhanced. For Till Eulenspiegel, Ivan Fisher moved the horn section to the front to sit like a quartet of soloists around the podium. The effect was to amplify Till’s pranks, enhance the story and render the performance ultra-vivid, almost surreal.

An encore also broke the mould. Instead of an orchestral lollipop, three members of the Budapest Festival Orchestra played a piece of traditional Hungarian peasant string band music. Here were the quarter tones and strange harmonies of the type that Bartok, Kodaly, Dohnanyi and others had tried to record, in their estimation before they disappeared. Here they were alive, well and rapturously received. It really was an evening of surprises.

A triumph of programming - ADDA Symfonica with Ivan Martin under Yaron Traub play unfamiliar Scriabin and Tchaikovsky

Much thought nowadays is devoted to the construction of concert programmes. A mass audience, almost by definition, is dictatorial. The old favourites are always safe, and the need for posteriors on bucket seats often demands repetition of the hackneyed, the overplayed lollipops of popular taste. But there is also another side to programming these days, an approach that explores the repertoire and, at least, for part of the concert, challenges an audience to listen without expectation, or pre-judgment. Usually this is done by including a contemporary piece alongside a cobwebbed standard. Sometimes, as in last night’s concert in Alicante’s ADDA auditorium, it is achieved by exploring the lesser known, less played works of well-known names. It is rare, however, for a whole concert to be devoted to such less well-known early works.

In an all-Russian program, the ADDA orchestra under Yaron Traub played two works, written just three decades apart in the nineteenth century, Scriabin’s Piano Concerto from the 1890s and Tchaikovsky Symphony No.1, Winter Daydreams, from the 1860s. The truly inspired element of the programming was the shared significance of both these works in the careers of their creators.

Both works are seen as early works, written before the development of the composer’s mature style. In the case of Scriabin, of course, we could discuss precisely what that might have been at some length. Both works have become labelled as breakthrough works, in both cases the creator’s first orchestral success - again in Scriabin’s case this might be debatable! But together, they offer an audience a terrific insight into how these creative minds developed by locating, essentially, where they started from.

Scriabin’s Piano Concerto was written to show off his own virtuosity. It does sound rather like Chopin, even conservative in outlook, given that this style was already half a century old by the 1890s. The composer scored the piano to play close to continuously throughout piece, and there are a couple of places where the orchestra drowns the soloist, but then he would do that later in Prometheus, wouldn’t he? And here there’s no real cadenza, no real opportunity for the soloist to take centre stage, which is strange, given the composer’s self-serving motivation. Orchestration, at this point in Scriabin’s career, was clearly not a strong point, but the integration of soloist and orchestra in the work was its forward-looking aspect. Ivan Martin’s performance was beyond perfect and it was his contrasting encore of baroque trilling.

Winter Daydreams, the Symphony No1, was Tchaikovsky’s breakthrough work. Unlike Scriabin, at the same age, Tchaikovsky showed in this early work much that would become his mature style. There is even a passage for horns in this work which sounds like it came straight out of Nutcracker. And again, unlike Scriabin, Tchaikovsky’s regular use of long lines of theme give this work almost the feel of a novel with a linear plot. All the strong contrasts and outbursts, which were later to characterize his writing, are here already formed, part of the composer’s language.

It is a great program that can surprise through assumed, but misunderstood familiarity.

Surprise, surprise - ADDA with Christian Lindberg and Roland Pontinen

Concert programmes can often appear rather conventional at first sight. A well-known Romantic symphony in the second half, preceded by an equally well-known piano concerto, and, to start, a nod towards the contemporary. It all seems like it might be predictable, even though the first work might be a world premiere. But live music is never predictable. More often, it is surprising, and this concert was one of those, but the surprise itself was surprising.

The world premiere in this concert was Macabre Dances by Jan Sandstrom. The program notes explained that after the composer had suffered a stroke, he experienced a series of strange visions and dreams, apparently caused by his condition. This these gave titles to the movements, Horses in the sea, Stolen signature, Suburb in the east, Crawl in the Mona Lisa, and, finally, Finally. Throughout, there was a sense that the music was familiar, but it was accompanied by, overlaid with, stretched between or compressed within other unique and different elements in the way that made the entire experience unfamiliar, even strange. It was like seeing something you know well, and then realising that you don’t, in fact, know it at all. But the effect was not surreal: on the contrary, given the composer’s own program note, the work vividly portrayed the perceptual experience of a physical condition that none of us wants to have. The Mona Lisa movement was even given an encore at the end of the concert and, even on second hearing, its strangeness proved enduring. Its musical worth was only enhanced.

Roland Pontinen was soloist in the Liszt Piano Concerto No.1. Now this is a work that is both succinct and expansive. It’s succinct because it’s all over in under twenty minutes. It’s expansive because of the way musical ideas are shared across the solo part and the orchestra. The model, until then, had very much been rather formulaic, an opportunity for the soloist to show off with an accompaniment from a larger sound. But this concerto tried to create a tone poem where the soloist and the orchestra truly shared material. Guest conductor of the ADDA orchestra, Christian Lindberg, ensured that the elements all hung together. Roland Pontinen’s encore was a Chopin mazurka, a quiet, unspectacular way to underline his control and virtuosity. The ADDA audience listened with great intensity.

And then, surprisingly, there was a second encore of a quite different character. It may have been a set piece, but its comedy was born of musical virtuosity, and the audience lapped it up. Roland Pontinen and Christian Lindberg offered a Hungarian Dance of Brahms arranged, if that be the word, for piano and trombone. It was a farce, and all the jokes came off.

In the second half, this particular listener experienced an even greater surprise. Schumann’s fourth symphony, at least in the usual numbering, is a familiar work, whose twists and turns I thought were completely familiar. I was wrong. Played almost without a pause between the movements, the piece and phrasing told a linear, novel-like story. This surely was musical interpretation of the highest standard, and it is Christian Lindberg who takes the credit for the direction, but it was also the wonderful ADDA orchestra that performed perfectly.

ADDA hosts Jordi Savall and Le Concert des Nations in Elements and Furies

Sometimes a program does not seem attractive. Since I generally prefer more modern sounds, particularly contemporary music, a program that lives in the first half of the eighteenth century is not likely to attract, let alone promise something memorable.

I doubt that my tastes are not the norm amongst most concert audiences who tend to recoil at the thought of contemporary music being played. “Where are the tunes?” they ask.” Do you call that harmony?” I think, but never actually say in response, just listen. Just open up and hear if the composer has anything to say! And never mind the quality, just feel the width. There are textures and sounds that tunes would hide! Can't you feel it? It’s not a question I tend to ask of the eighteenth century, however, since to me so much of the music is all gloss, all decoration. At least that’s the stereotype I often think. And then there was Rebel, and Handel, and Gluck, and finally a clapping Rameau. And so the evening did turn out to be musically memorable.

The pedigree of the performers was beyond doubt. Jordi Savall and Le Concert des Nations are superstars in their field and a considerable way beyond that as well. They certainly pulled in the crowds, despite their sound being, perhaps, potentially a little small for this auditorium. By the evening’s end, however, one would not have noticed any shortfall.

Jordi Savall has spent a lifetime rediscovering anew old music and establishing a tradition for its performance. He and the orchestra played this program as if they were walking through familiar terrain, but of course the repertoire is vast, and the styles are widely varied. It takes real musicianship, vision, and imagination to bring a program like this to life and these expert performers, did exactly that.

The opening piece was Rebel’s Les Elements. Now this probably surprised anyone expecting wall-to-wall tunes, wrapped in conventional harmony. Written in 1737 and 1738, Rebel’s work was intended to portray the elements of the ancient world, air, fire, earth, and water, or at least their characters and properties in sound. But at the start, the composer wanted to convey Chaos, the disorderly universe as it existed in his imagination before a divine hand had imposed order. With this orchestra, a small band by modern standards, Rebel wanted to convey what a modern mind might hear as a big bang, but he chose to do it subtly, rather than with force. The musical shock of atonal music written early in the eighteenth century is profound. The work progressed, both dramatically and playfully, if not always coherently. The playing was perfect, the overall design somewhat opaque.

Then, we heard music by a German written in Italian style, conceived for a German monarch in England. The first suite of Handel’s Water Music is well known, but deservedly so. Again the opening is a real surprise, with Handel’s melodic and harmonic invention to the fore throughout the piece, which, despite its familiarity, is full of surprises.

Finally, we heard the ballet suite Don Juan ou Le Festin de Pierre (Don Juan, or the Stone Guest's Banquet) by Gluck. The work was listed almost as co-written by Gasparo Angiolini, Gluck’s choreographic collaborator. The work was first performed in 1761 and in it we could hear musical classicism alongside more decorative elements. It was always surprising. The music was vivid, and culminated in Don Juan’s descent into hell with a piece subtitled The Furies. It seemed we had come full circle in that musically we were almost back to the opening of Rebel's The Elements in places. Except that now, it was the power of the musical forces that was being unleashed.

An encore from Rameau was pure romp. In a short introduction, Jordi Savall coached the audience in a five beat twice-given clap to pick out a repeated rhythmic pattern in the work, and the ADDA audience starred by taking the cues in perfect unison. And everyone went home very happy.

 

Scriabin’s Divine Poem and Manuel de Falla played by Judith Jauregui is a revelation

Josep Vicent, artistic director, and conductor at ADDA, Alicante, decided to entitle the whole season of concerts ‘Divine Poem’. One must conclude that he really wanted to build this particular work into the orchestra’s repertoire. In last night’s concert, he and the ADDA Orchestra played the Divine Poem, effectively the Symphony No. 3 of Alexander Scriabin and it proved to be nothing less than a triumph.

This is very much a transitional work, or so we are told. Scriabin’s early work was heavily influenced by Chopin and Liszt. Then he discovered Wagner and other extra-musical influences, including Indian mythology, pantheism and the stimulus provided by an ego the size of a universe, and so his style changed, as we are told. The expressive, apparently unpredictable and vivid symbolism of the late piano sonatas seems not to relate to the early works, but a keen listener will, however, find progression, not change.

The Poem of Ecstasy and the Poem of Fire, orchestral works that followed the Divine Poem, were single movement pieces, more like the tone poems than symphonies. The Poem of Fire reflected the composer’s increasing tendency towards the grandiose in that it involves a large orchestra, a piano soloist, a full chorus, an organ, and, if it is done as the composer wished, an auditorium-wide light show and perfumes wafted in using wind machines. Personally, I have attended one such a performance, in London’s Royal Albert Hall in the 1970s. The program notes made Pseud’s Corner in Private Eye.

The projected work to follow these, a work that the composer promised to write but only had time to sketch was his Mysterium, a giant ego-trip in three movements that would have involved building a new concert hall in the Himalayas and mounting a week-long festival whose finale, so the composer thought, would be the end of the world. Death at forty-three from blood-poisoning prevented Alexander Scriabin from completing the project.

In 1972, the year of the centenary of Scriabin’s birth, his music was for a while in the spotlight. I bought John Ogden’s Sonata cycle, a disc of the two late poems and Svetlanov’s Melodiya, recording of the Divine Poem. I now have at least one recording of every work the composer wrote. But the Svetlanov Divine Poem is the only recording I have of this work. It’s not played very often.

Which is a surprise, because on the face of it, it’s a conventional symphony. It sounds like Rachmaninov in places and is very much in a nineteenth century idiom. It’s not as challenging at first hearing as a Mahler symphony, or a Strauss tone poem, for that matter. It’s quite melodic and reaches some amazing dynamic heights. It is certainly memorable.

But on this hearing, I found much more in the Divine Poem, a work I have been listening to for fifty years. Embedded in the second and third movements of the three movement  symphony are all the musical elements, the themes, the harmonies, and the orchestral juxtapositions, that would reappear in Ecstasy and Fire. They are all there! It became nothing less than revelatory to realize that there is nothing new in those later, often described as revolutionary works. It’s all there in the Divine Poem.

Josep Vicent’s reading of the score was, as ever, superb. The rich textures of Scriabin’s orchestration were all interpreted and played to perfection, and one thinks that the trombones and tuba have never worked so hard for a living! The performance was a total success, and I await the other works’ inclusion in future programs. ADDA’s habit of projecting images onto the back of the stage would work well for the Poem of Fire. The orchestra’s encore of the Prelude to act three of Lohengrin was an informed choice, since various passages in the Divine Poem clearly owed much to Wagner, not least the birdsong section in the first movement, we seemed to have flown in directly from Siegfried.

The Divine Poem came after a first half of music by Manuel de Falla. We began the evening with the Jota from El Sombrero de Tres Picos, and then we heard a stunningly beautiful performance of Noches en los Jardines de España, Nights In The Gardens Of Spain with Judith Juregui a soloist. Some of Manuel de Falla’s orchestral textures in the third movement were distinctly Scriabin-esque. Judith Jauregui’s playing of this work, which is a piano concerto in all but name, was exquisite and her encore of music by Mompou was an inspired choice.

Josep Vicent and ADDA keep on presenting concerts which transcend my abilities to write reviews. They are nothing less than memorable, every time!

Musical perfection - the Bamberger Symphoniker, Jakub Hrusa, and Patricia Kopatchinskaja

Many years ago, when I was a student, I, along with many others, bought a new stereo system and we regularly listened to chosen LPs to assess the relative merit of the purchases. One of the disks was Istvan Kertesz’s Dvorak Symphony No.8 on Decca. The recording and playing were both crisp, sure, and sonorous. The entries were decisive, the interpretations subtle, and the dynamics generous. Until last night, I thought I had heard the definitive interpretation of this familiar, but never disappointing, work.

The last night in question was a performance by the Bamberger Symphoniker under Jakub Hrusa who, for me, arrived with a certain reputation to prove. What was it about this conductor that now seems to have the world of classical music at his feet? Well, the list proved to be long - and included precision, dedication, vision, cooperation, and, above all, a sheer delight in music. I began with a question and by the end of the evening it, along with many others had been definitively answered.

This performance of Dvorak’s eighth symphony was more than memorable. The pianos were piano, and the fortes were forte. These are platitudes, perhaps, but nonetheless often and crucially such elements can be smoothed out to a generalized shape which hides the music’s detail, especially in a piece so well-known and as often played as this. Jakub Hrusa, from the very first notes of Beethoven’s Leonora overture number three that started the concert, was clearly someone who wanted to shape the sound, to make sense of the musical argument. It is this vision of the work’s shape and construction that makes the listeners’ experience complete. I cannot remember a performance of this Beethoven overture where the transitions were quite so clear and contrasted, where the dynamic changes added to the musical experience rather than merely punctuated it. And equally, it was the same with the Dvorak Symphony. The attention to detail, the continual consideration of the question of what the composer was trying to say produced a performance that was utterly memorable.

And so to the central work in the program. I like to save the best to the last. Igor Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto uses no bombast at its surface and its employees little which is merely an opportunity for the soloist to show off. But at the heart of the piece is a dialogue. often humorous, between the soloist and selected bands from within the orchestra, which itself behaves differently from a conventional concerto accompaniment. Stravinsky always concentrates and contrasts sonorities, grouping instruments into surprising combinations of timbre and harmony. The work progresses as a dialogue between the storytelling solo part, amid interjections and comments from the orchestra.

To work as music that communicates, this piece needs a soloist who can overcome the technical challenges with ease, whilst at the same time, maintaining a conversation with the different orchestral elements. Patricia Kopatchinskaja was not only able to do this, but also to raise the performance to a perfected artwork. One was not conscious of ‘soloist and orchestra’, one felt only that one had entered a music world, understood it’s highly personal language and shared its vision and thus become a partner in the experience, not a mere onlooker.

Patricia Kopatchinskaja’s performance of the Stravinsky Violin Concerto was one of the most memorable musical events. I can recall in over fifty years of concert-going. The playing was perfect, but that wasn’t the point. It wasn’t the virtuosic performance that made the difference. Such adjectives simply don’t apply when an experience is so completely absorbing that all you hear is the communication and the message, not just the voice that tells the story. Music, after all, can say things in ways that words can’t. That is why we listen to it. And I will be listening to this performance in my memory for the rest of my life, and happily so.

Patricia Kopatchinskaja made the point that much of Stravinsky’s music in the concerto takes the form of chamber music. And, as an encore, she unusually presented more chamber music in the shape of part of the violin and cello duo of Ravel, the Bamberger’s principal cello playing the second part. Like the Stravinsky, this work was full of humour and contrast, but here, Ravel also delved into the surreal. Music is a language, and the Bamberger orchestra, Jakub Hrusa, and Patricia Kopatchinskaja were simply its voice.

Folk song, dance and ritual - ADDA Simfonica with Ramon Tebar and Juan Perez Floristan

 

In another loosely themed concert, ADDA Simfonica played four works written in the forty years that spanned the dawn of the twentieth century. In different ways, these works address religious, folk and popular culture from central and eastern Europe, though the range of styles may have obscured whatever thematic links that may have cemented them. Under guest conductor Ramon Tebar, the ADDA orchestra opened the concert with the Russian Easter Festival Overture by Rimsky-Korsakov. The composer’s idea was to synthesize popular religiosity with the theatre to arouse feelings of nationalism. And so in an overture that lasts a quarter of an hour, the composer displays great technical prowess without really exploring many musical ideas. The playing was superb, the material less so.

The Hungarian composers Béla Bartók and Zoltan Kodaly were both personal friends and musical collaborators. They set out at the start of the twentieth century to note down and thus preserve the nation’s folk music, specifically the rural peasant songs that were likely to disappear under the tide of modernization. Both composers used much of the material they collected in their own compositions, sometimes literally via quotation and sometimes, especially in Bartok’s case, by implication via the extraction of a musical language. Thus the harmonies, scales and sometimes the themes themselves appear in the music.

Bartok’s first piano concerto is not overtly folkloric. It’s a work of the 1920s, written to provide a vehicle for the composer’s own playing, but also to allow him to clarify the stylistic character of his compositional style, which was a rejection of romanticism, atonality and neoclassicism. Bartok wanted to unite the discipline of Bach with the structure of Beethoven and the harmony of Debussy. But he wanted to achieve this using some of the tools he had wrought from the folklore tradition.

The result was a rhythmic, percussive First Piano Concerto that makes massive demands on the soloist. Some approach the work as if it were a gymnastic challenge, where the goal is the completion of the exercise merely without fault. But this concerto needs a soloist who can not only rise to the challenge but also interpret the nuances, register the contrasts. Juan Perez Floristan did that very well. Overall, the reading of the work, however, seemed to this listener to duck the opportunities to vary the tempi and the loosen the rhythms, thus losing any sense of jazz, which I personally think enhances this music. I admit that this criticism is nit-picking, however. The Debussy Prelude, the Girl With The Flaxen Hair was as Juan Perez Floristan pointed out, in keeping with the evening’s theme.

Zoltan Kodaly dealt with the folklore influences more literally than Bartok. His oft-performed work, Dances of Galanta, was inspired by a gypsy band in his hometown. The work’s five sections are played without a break and the music speeds up towards a breathless and spectacular conclusion. On this occasion witnessed some beautiful orchestral playing.

And speaking of beauty, what can match Richard Strauss’s music to Der Rosenkavalier? The music is obviously thicker in texture than what had gone before and it differed in being based on popular dance than on folkloric influence. From the first notes, there was suddenly more space in the music. The effect, of course, was deliberately theatrical and lusciously so.

The ADDA orchestra played the work expertly and allowed the humanity of the music to shine through its obviously technical demands. The solo contributions were faultless but what shone the brightest were the beautiful string tones that this orchestra now achieves. Der Rosenkavalier is a work that takes the process of human relationships seriously, whilst apparently dismissing their overall importance. What is important now will not seem will not cause the blink of an eye by tomorrow, or maybe in an hour. Enjoy what life presents and enjoy it now. But for many in this audience, the sheer beauty of this music will be an enduring experience.

Vienna surprise – Mitsuko Uchida and the Mahler Chamber orchestra play Mozart and Schoenberg in Alicante

 

After hearing Mitsuko Uchida and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra in Alicante’s ADDA concert hall, I was sufficiently surprised by what I had heard to be prompted to download a score as soon as I got home. I don’t think I have ever heard this music played in this way. The impression this event made on me was one of surprise.

The program did not promise a surprise, or even suggest one. On offer was a peculiarly Viennese sandwich, the bread from the first school of the city’s composers and the filling from the second. The two outer layers were both Mozart piano concertos, numbers 25 and 27, whilst the filling was provided by Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 1. All of these works are familiar, the Mozart concerti perhaps over-familiar, in that they are played, perhaps overplayed, by a multitude of soloists. The Schoenberg is less commonly included on concert programmes, especially in the style the Mahler Chamber Orchestra chose to present it, but it’s a piece that has been in the repertoire for over a century, so surely there’s nothing new here!

Let’s start with the Schoenberg. As the evening’s programme notes reminded us, the first chamber symphony caused a riot at its first performance in 1907. The music was clearly not what the audience was expecting and, always afraid of the new, they vented their disquiet. And yet this chamber symphony pre-dates Schoenberg’s adoption of the twelve tone system, let alone its later manifestation as serialism. This work is in late Romantic style, but now the key changes are more extreme, the harmonies more dissonant and, perhaps crucially, the ideas pass by faster, rather like a series of juxtaposed miniatures and fragments.

It sounds like a musical equivalent of Braque’s cubism, in that recognizable shapes are still there, but they are cut up, reassembled, overlapped in order to break up the lines and encourage listeners to savour the moment rather than anticipate the next. But there is surely also some of Schiele’s emotional aggression in this music. It remains a piece that challenges its audience to listen, though it does analytically conform to the ‘traditional’ symphonic structure.

Playing this work convincingly on stage needs expert musicians with the habits of the cooperative communication that makes chamber music such a joy. Only with all of these ingredients can performers make a success of this music. Some fifteen members of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra stood to play this piece and their performance was almost beyond perfect. Musical ideas were passed around with nods and smiles and the work’s complexity simply became the medium via which these arresting sonorities were communicated. A century can make a massive difference. Suffice it to say that this performance was greeted with cheers, not jeers.

So the filling in the sandwich was very tasty indeed. But what about the Mozart bread and butter that confined it? Well, this was the real surprise. Mitsuko Uchida was soloist and director for both concerti. This in itself is not so rare. But what was utterly surprising, even arresting, was the way the pieces were played. Yes, it was perfect. Yes, all the notes were there and all in the correct order. Yes, these pieces are familiar. But the phrasing and dynamics were chosen to emphasize the music’s emotional meaning, which was beautifully and implicitly communicated. I rarely associate Mozart’s music with emotional involvement. Usually, the sheer decorative elegance gets in the way of human contact, like a hard glaze that hides the material beneath. But this was something quite different and utterly original.

The score I consulted afterwards was that of the Piano Concerto No. 27. Had I ever heard the opening played so quietly? Had I ever heard the pauses inserted to make the sentences and paragraphs of this music make such complete sense? Well, the score did in fact say ‘p’ at the start. Unlike Schoenberg over a century later, Mozart did not use many expression marks to indicate performance style. This is often interpreted as meaning that everything should be played in a mechanical rhythm, with phrasing and emphasis only minimally applied. But in the hands of Mitsuko Uchida and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, this Mozart was vivid, emotional and above all communicative rather than showy. And, with deference to Mitsuko Uchida, the dynamics are all there in the score. The real difference was achieved via touch and phrasing, and all of this was a result of Mitsuko Uchida’s playing and interpretation of the score. As was the case with Mozart, himself, and this evening with Mitsuko Uchida, the surprise could be attributed to the presence of genius.

Direction of travel - Copland, Bartok and Bernstein in ADDA, Alicante

It is rare for a concert program to hang together as a unit both musically and intellectually. But the latest program from the ADDA orchestra in Alicante under the direction of Josep Vicent achieved this dual goal, and a whole lot more as well. 

There were many themes, but the enduring intellectual idea was surely the experience of the immigrant in the United States of America. The composers represented, Copland, Bartok and Bernstein, all had immigrant experience in their private reality. Copland’s family originated in Russian Lithuania, Bernstein’s in Ukraine and Bartok, of course, was himself Hungarian, but resident in the United States when he wrote his last piano concerto. Eugene Goossens, who provided the theme for the Copland variation that opened the program, was British, but he spent many years in the United States, and also in Australia. And, of course, Bernstein’s masterpiece, West Side Story, was set amongst the Puerto Rican immigrant community living in New York.

Immigrants can often feel like outsiders, excluded from local culture and therefore in search of their own identity. And this feeling of detachment, perhaps not exactly estrangement, came across musically in the works chosen. I found the musical similarity, not in the notes, but in the overall concept, of the second movement of the Bartok, the Copland Quiet City and the Somewhere theme from West Side Story a tightening thread that bound these works together.

Gentle but slightly dissonant string tones characterize Bartok’s night music, which can be described as “eerie dissonances providing a backdrop to sounds of nature and lonely melodies”. The third piano concerto’s second movement is in this style and forms the emotional heart of the peace. Bartok was not only exiled when he wrote this music, but also ill and penniless. No wonder the harmonies suggest unsettled, insecure feelings.

In Quiet City, Aaron Copland tries to depict New York at night, when a clearly lonely young Jewish man blows a trumpet through the silence. The answering call of the cor anglais is like an echo, but it seems to recall a former life now lost, rather than a playback of current experience. And then to Bernstein and Somewhere which, in the orchestral suite, concludes the piece with an unsettling clash of harmonies, suggesting not only estrangement from community, but also death.

Now these musical and intellectual threads, so beautifully drawn together by this orchestra’s perfect playing, did not arise by chance. This wonderful musical experience was clearly thought through by the inspired artistic director at ADDA, Josep Vicent. And not only did it work, but he created one of the most memorable concerts I have ever had the privilege of attending.

We started with a short piece, the Copland contribution to the Jubilee Variations. Eugene Goossens provided the theme, and ten other composers wrote one variation each. We heard just the one by Aaron Copland, two minutes of the composer being his most American.

Then the Bartok piano Concerto No. 3 followed, featuring Jose de Solaun as soloist. To describe this performance as memorable would do it an injustice. The understanding and communication between director, soloist and orchestra was palpable in a work that can sometimes not knit together. In this performance it came across as a perfect unit, perfected by the playing. The slow movement was particularly memorable. The pianist then played two solo pieces by Debussy as encores for an adoring audience.

Quiet City by Aaron Copland opened the second half. Josep Vicent placed the solo trumpet high on the balcony at the side of the stage and its answering cor anglais on the opposite side of the auditorium. It was a theatrical masterstroke, serving to emphasize the separateness and the loneliness of being a member of a minority amidst a sprawling and perhaps oppressive city.

And then the rip-roaring suite from West Side Story by Leonard Bernstein allowed the orchestra to show off its virtuosity, an opportunity that the ADDA orchestra grasped with abandon. But this piece, despite its mambo, despite its big band jazz, despite its finger clicking, is eventually tragic. Star-crossed lovers die and the loss is deeply felt in the music, to such an extent that a piece that in theory arouses and excites, eventually deflates with its gut-wrenching sadness.

And then the direction really came into its own. Josep Vicent had chosen to include two encores and they provided yet another layer to the musical and intellectual threads. First, he chose to repeat the mambo with just a little audience participation. This was the lollipop that again got the audience rocking. But then, we had the funeral march from Beethoven’s seventh symphony, a reminder perhaps of the tragedy that we befell the immigrant community in West Side Story. It was a memorable evening, including pop music highs, loneliness and estrangement, loss, and death, but its real triumph was the artistic direction that created it. And under that direction, surely the ADDA orchestra, via its superb playing and its inspired programmes, can already claim to be at the pinnacle of achievement.

Óscar Esplá – music in context

Some artists seem to be inextricably linked to places. Henry Moore’s legacy is in Leeds, where he studied, but was not born. Barbara Hepworth’s is in Wakefield, where she was born but did not live. And what about Picasso? There is Malaga, when he was born, Barcelona where he lived, but what about Paris, where he did much of his memorable work? Nuremberg equals Durer, South Kensington is Lord Leighton, a Paris suburb is Gustave Moreau, Zaragoza is Goya, Figueres is Dali, Stockholm is Milles, perhaps. The list includes the better known juxtaposed with the less familiar, deliberately.

All the examples above are painters or sculptors. What about writers? There are many associations, but not so many museums dedicated to a life and its work. Spain, for example, has Blasco Ibañez in Valencia and Miguel Hernandez in Orihuela, sites chosen here for their geographical and contemporary relevance.

But what about composers and musicians? Again, there are associations, but only a few dedicated museums. There is Puccini in Lucca, Tartini in Piran, Beethoven in Vienna and Mozart in Salzburg, for instance. Bayreuth is more Wagner’s memorial rather than record. Perhaps the relative paucity of permanent exhibitions dedicated to non-visual artists reflects the fact that painting and sculpture occupy space, whereas writing and music occupy time. The dramatist Shakespeare is a crossover who occupies both space and time, and he has a museum of sorts, but Shakespeare is always a special case.

In Alicante, the main road linking the waterfront to the centre of town is called Avenida Óscar Esplá. I had walked the street many times before I realized it was named after a composer. He was born in Alicante and lived there as a youth, before heading off to Barcelona to study engineering. He then turned to philosophy and finally music. But as an adult in the nineteen thirties, like many other Spaniards, he fled Franco’s internationally tolerated brutality. He was a dedicated teacher and active composer, but, as the Zaragoza pianist, Pedro Carboné, pointed out in his discussion of the composer’s work at this week’s concert, even in his hometown one would be hard-pressed to identify recognition of his achievement, apart from the name of that street. After decades of neglect, a week of concerts in Alicante’s ADDA concert hall offered the chance to hear his music and perhaps to reassess the significance of this neglected composer. Pedro Carboné gave the first of these concerts, alongside an extensive discussion of the man and his work. Pedro Carboné is himself a noted exponent of Esplá’s music, having recorded volume one of Esplá’s complete piano works for Marco Polo in 1998.

The music must precede the life. The achievement must be the starting point of any discussion of the man. As Carboné explained, Óscar Esplá was a deceptively complex composer. A surface gloss of apparently conventional harmony, simple lines and miniature forms initially suggest populism. Anyone who listens, however, knows within seconds that this first impression is quite false. Óscar Esplá’s principal inspiration probably did come from folklore, the folk music of the region which is Alicante. It is known throughout Spain is the Levante region, the place where the sun rises, known for its brilliance, its light, its colour and, significantly, its contrasts, mountain to sea, near desert to tropical garden, remote campo to sophisticated cities. For those outside Spain, incidentally, Alicante is a long way from what is generally termed ‘flamenco’. That was the inspiration of Manuel de Falla in Andalusia. Now Esplá and de Falla are near contemporaries, with de Falla the senior by ten years. They both started composing in their teens, and even began their careers with similarly inspired impressionistic piano pieces.

Superficially, there is a similarity between the unexpected features of flamenco and the scale that Esplá developed to use as the basis of the folkloric Levante. What they share is the almost blues-like modification of a couple of notes in the diatonic scale, changes that confuse the ear between conventional major and minor keys, classifications that actually don’t apply unless your aural expectations are fixed in what you already know. Others at the time did similar things elsewhere. Bartok used a Bulgarian scale in his early work, Debussy his whole tones, Vaughn Williams his modes and Schoenberg his everything equally. The scale, for a composer, has a similar effect to a painter’s palette, and throughout history there have been individual painters and schools associated with particular groups of colours and their use. Music, though it is often overlooked, has the same colouristic characteristics and these, sometimes, are based on the scales used to express the musical language.

In Valencia, when we think of colour and painting, we automatically think of Sorolla. His principal museum might be in Madrid, and he may well be known outside Spain for the work he created for New York, but Sorolla’s oeuvre is of Valencia, of the same Levante coast that extends south to Alicante. At first sight, Sorolla and the style he founded may appear sweet, rather populist, trite, somewhat kitsch and sentimental. But that would be a misinterpretation.

Impressionism is always close by, but so is expressionism in a form where the dreams are pleasant, never frightening. But there is also the simultaneous realism and experiment of Singer Sargent. The subject matter, however, remains folkloric, domestic in its Spanish outdoor form, depicting a long-suffering but apparently docile peasant contentedly living alongside comfortable middle classes and usually less than ostentatious aristocracy. Anyone who knows Spanish history will understand both the ironic and illusory nature of this apparent harmony. This art has a surface gloss, and apparent ease, but the vivid contrast of colour reflects not only the quality of Levantine light, the montane and plane, the arid and the lush, but also a potential for spontaneous combustion in the social tinderbox, where the traditional equals poverty and insecurity and the modern implies capital, exploitation and wealth for the already well shod, though, it must be admitted, this political dimension is never explicit in Sorolla’s work.

In music, colour may be sensed via harmonic contrast as well as via the scale chosen to communicate. The latter, in Óscar Esplá’s case, continually confuses major and minor, constantly prompts the listener to review the perspective, to flip between emotional states, perhaps to see two sides of every argument. It is sound that conveys a natural cubism. Pedro Carboné was keen to point out how Esplá was always trying to insert colour through the use of chromatic harmony, shifts of rhythm, divergence in the material, inserted deliberately to push the listener onto another, only sometimes parallel path with its own unique view.

But there is another element at work. Pedro Carboné repeatedly offered examples of how Esplá’s writing for the piano was holistic in that its effect has to be experienced in its totality, but also how it relies on the juxtaposition and superimposition of often trite material, in itself less than memorable. He played several examples where the left-hand figure was heard in isolation and then the right, sequentially. Separately these two musical lines provided little that was memorable and less that was individual, but played together they intermingled to invoke colour, contrast, even counterpoint. But that counterpoint is never expressed in the linear form with which we are familiar in Bach and others. It is present more in the sense of it creating a flow of repeated ideas, like a sequence of photos from an album that seem at first sight to be random but are later recognized as chosen.

At this time, the early decades of the 20th century, other composers were also experimenting with similar processes of juxtaposition. In Mahler we abruptly move from one view to another, mix the mundane with the sophisticated, but in general we do it sequentially, again like a sequence of scenes in a film with eventually a linear plot. In Ives, however, we are often presented with these different experiences superimposed to reflect the confusion of everyday life, to mirror how easily human senses can resolve apparently conflicting experience, but it remains a resolution that requires active participation by the listener. In the music of Óscar Esplá, we have the mix of the mundane and sophisticated, but we also often have them superimposed rather than sequential.

Earlier, Alicante was cited as the land of not-flamenco, but Alicante definitely is the land of the town band. Every town has one. These are not the brass bands of northern England, though they are often similarly linked to particular types of economic activity. These are symphonic bands, with woodwind as well as brass and they often march through towns in the frequent festivals. It is common to have three or four bands playing simultaneously in a procession within the hearing of a spectator, the individual pieces perhaps nothing more than the duple rhythm of the Valencian pasodoble.

But two or three at the same time conjures up the kind of musical experience that Ives was imagining when he heard a brass band walk past the string section in a different key, playing different and completely unrelated music. Here also we have an illustration of what Pedro Carboné was demonstrating with Óscar Esplá’s simple but contrasting left- and right-hand parts in his piano music. The different bands are not playing different kinds of music. They are not playing complex harmonies. The idiom of each piece is popular, even populist. But heard at the same time, two or three bands produce the kind of oral confusion of stimuli that everyday life often creates, a melee the listener’s mind must actively interpret.

Here we have, at long last, the essence of Óscar Esplá’s music. Above all it features coloristic effects of harmony and rhythm, mirroring the contrasts of the Levante region and its brilliant light. We have the popular and folkloric, but not simply as ends in themselves, or even used as deferential gestures. In Esplá’s music, these elements merge like simultaneous marching bands to reflect the complexity of everyday oral experience. But, above all, as in Sorolla’s painting, there is a sense of beauty, of impressionistic engagement with the attractive surface of life, whilst also perhaps acknowledging the unspoken tensions that pervade everything.

Recalling Óscar Esplá’s contemporaries in Spain reveals the niche, for that is what we must accept on his behalf, into which his music fits. Manuel de Falla was steeped in Andalusia and nationalism. His music often resorts to big statements on broad canvases. He never left his folkloric inspiration behind, but he always put his audience’s ear into his work, always strove to address the popular. Frederick Mompou is more similar to Esplá in style, but perhaps not content. Like Chopin, Mompou was a grandiloquent miniaturist. His music is generally simpler than Esplá’s, deliberately and intentionally simple, it must be said, but essentially backward looking. Mompou’s world is Chopinesque, an individual romantic response to the world of experience. Its understatement is its strength, but understatement is not a characteristic of Óscar Esplá. Roberto Gerhard, like Esplá, had to leave Spain under the dictatorship. Always more interested in the atonal, even serial technique, Gerhard’s music often sounds deliberately modernistic, seeking to extend Schoenberg’s ideas and as a result becoming internalized in the individual creator’s mind rather than recalling the aural world we inhabit. Esplá’s music is often atonal, but it becomes so via techniques of juxtaposition and superimposition and therefore by musical accident, not by ideological design. Joaquin Turina is also a prime candidate for comparison. Turina’s main musical influence was found in France, but his roots were solidly in Spain’s earth. He differs from Óscar Esplá, however, in his more conventional harmonies and his use of familiar musical forms. Also, Turina rarely superimposes simultaneous material in an expressionistic or impressionistic way.

So, what is it that characterizes this music of Óscar Esplá? First and foremost, the place he knew best is depicted here, its contrasts of light, landscape, campo and city, popular and elite culture, clashing, sometimes confused aural experience that must be deciphered. There is musical impressionism in that the material is often deliberately evocative of experience, flitting from scene to scene with immediate jump cuts, often indeed superimposing images to accomplish, if nothing else, a reflection of the complexity and colour of experience. There is also conflict, but it is the implied conflict we encounter in Sorolla’s painting. It is the conflict of potential rather than current difference, where elements coexist, but at the touch of a flame could ignite. In the music of Óscar Esplá, the conflict is not ongoing, but its threat is always there. This is amplified by his musical scale’s confusion of major and minor. Through it, we are constantly reminded that things might be capable of change, that there exist different perspectives, all of which are valid.

If there is expressionism also in this music, then we might do well to carry some images of Chagall in our head. Nothing is threatening. Life in the village goes on. But the head might be green, or upside down. And the bride and groom may just be floating through the sky while the guests ignore them. It’s colourful, it’s dreamlike, but it is disorientating, sometimes disconcerting.

Above all, Óscar Esplá’s music, at least in the ears of this listener, is most reminiscent of Ravel. Now this is a name that is significant in many ways. Ravel has achieved deserved international and lasting recognition for his original music, but the corpus of his work is far from extensive. He dabbled with the sonata and string quartet, but his reputation is built on his piano and ballet music, often written in the forms that he invented to invoke particular experience or emotional states. For me, Óscar Esplá’s music, if it needs a context, is best approached via the inspiration it shares with Ravel. Esplá’s technique of juxtaposition, however, extends and amplifies these elements and perhaps renders them more vivid as a result.

So surely it is time for Óscar Esplá, the one-time engineer and philosopher who became a composer, to take his rightful place, at least alongside his contemporaries such as de Falla, Gerhard and Mompou in Spain’s musical tradition. He was an exile in Belgium. Manuel de Falla went to Argentina and Gerhard to Britain, so there is nothing unique about his exile. Just as Weinberg is appearing from the deep shadow of Shostakovich, it is surely time for Esplá to emerge from the umbra of de Falla and Turina. His music is unique and, in its own way, revolutionary.

On Tuesday 14 September 2021 in ADDA, Pedro Carboné played movements one and four from Suite Levante, Three Movements for Piano, the Sonata Española and the Berceuse from Cantos de Antaño. On Wednesday 15 September, Marisa Blanes played the first three movements from books four and five of Lírica Española, and La Tarana from Cantos de Antaño, alongside similarly evocative and contemporary works by de Falla, Ernesto Halffter and Julian Bautista.

Fumiaki Miura plays Mendelssohn and Mozart with ADDA, Alicante - undertstated perfection

 

“Less is more” is an expression that I have often heard when I have proffered criticisms of the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Usually these words follow a criticism of mine where I use Mozart as an example of the predictability of the machinations of Classicism when contrasted with the fluidity and personal expression of nineteenth century Romanticism, or indeed the wholly personal world of twentieth century music. I have not usually given the Classical era a great deal of credibility, generally finding its products elegant, but rather repetitive and lacking in intellectual challenge. After an evening with Fumiaki Miura in ADDA, Alicante, I now understand the term “less is more” somewhat better.

Fumiaki Miura, without doubt, is one of the premiere rank of soloists currently populating the world’s concert halls. And it is rare, amongst this group of international superstars, to encounter a musical personality like that of a Fumiaki Miura, a talent that displays understatement, apparent humility and much reflection.

Fumiaki Miura’s program with the ADDA orchestra looked conventional. He opened with Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro Overture and then played Mendelssohn’s famous violin concerto. More Mozart opened the second half, but this was the less than familiar Little Night Serenade, K525. A stirring but entirely controlled performance of Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony finished the evening. But the originality in this program came from Fumiaki Miura’s role.

It has become commonplace in recent years for a soloist also to conduct. And on this evening that is what happened. Fumiaki Meera conducted the overture and the symphony, whilst he was both soloist and conductor in the concerto. The difference, and it was a crucial difference, came in the Mozart Little Night Serenade the start of the second half.

In K525 Mozart wrote a dialogue between two orchestras. It is neither a grand work not a serious dialogue, but it remains a small orchestra effectively being a soloist in front of a larger band. So here Miura Fumiaki was leading a small group of soloists, playing himself and directing at the same time. This was wholly original. And the piece itself worked beautifully, as did the director’s choice of treating all the small orchestra as soloists of equal stature. Hence my observation of humility.

And so, on an evening where nothing on the printed programme naturally appealed or excited this particular audience member, Fumiaki Miura’s performance and direction became the memorable aspect of a memorable concert. It must also be said that Fumiaki Miura’s own playing of the Mendelssohn concerto was rapturously received by the audience and the orchestra alike. His tone high up in the violin’s range is both sweet and accurate, with none of the occasional metallic timbre that can sometimes intrude in that upper register. His playing was also undemonstrative, displayed none of the pyrotechnics that are often associated with big name performers. This was music in its purest, wholly communicative form.

As an encore, the orchestra offered a short piece of Mendelssohn, more like chamber music for orchestra than a rousing lollipop to end an evening. This too worked beautifully, and an understated but thoroughly virtuosic evening of Classicism and early Romanticism delivered surprises throughout, as well as beautiful music. For this concert goer, this less was surely more.

Claus Peter Flor and Milan Symphony and Chorus in Verdi's Requiem, ADDA, Alicante

A performance of Verdi’s Requiem is more like a visit to an awe-inspiring monument than the experience of a piece of music. It’s a work that completely engages its audience from its very first hushed tones. In some ways, the experience feels like intimidation. This is a work that grabs a listener and demands to be heard, almost shackles its audience to its reality. Though the work is in many ways episodic, an intensity is maintained throughout. Thus, pinned to their seats by this barrage of sound and emotion, an audience hears every detail of this towering edifice. Perhaps it’s not an experience to be savoured weekly, but once heard, it will never, never be forgotten.

Personally it was decades since I last heard that his Requiem in concert before this performance by the Milan Symphony Orchestra and Chorus under Claus Peter Flor in ADDA, Alicante. I will never forget the first performance I heard, which was a student performance in the main hall of the Royal College of Music in London in the early 1970s. It remains an experience that I can still vividly recall, so clearly does it live on in the memory.

The orchestral playing by Milan Symphony Orchestra under Claus Peter Flor on this occasion was perfect. One had the impression that this partnership might just have performed this piece before! And, though mentioned last, the four soloists also had a good night. Camela Reggio, Anna Bonitatibus, Valentino Buzza and Fabizzio Beggi seemed individually and collectively to delight in the concentration and completely silent way that the all the ADDA audience listened to the performance, prompting the soloists to seek out all possible operatic details in these truly operatic parts.

This was a memorable performance of an unforgettable monument of a work. The evening did end with something of a surprise which, I think, will be remembered vividly by many. After the usual curtain calls, the extended warm applause that has become the hallmark of this ADDA audience, there were many who had noted that, though the chorus master, Massimo Fiocci Malaspina, had taken a bow and duly acknowledged the achievement of his charges, Claus Peter Flor did not specifically ask the chorus to take its own individual bow.

So, after the conductor and soloists had said their goodbyes for the evening and the leader of the Milan Symphony had led the orchestra of stage, the chorus began to disperse. There were many in the ADDA audience who had noted the special contribution of the chorus to the evening’s success and it was at this point that they showed their appreciation. There followed a completely spontaneous and deeply felt round of applause specifically for the chorus who stopped leaving the stage took time to bow. They seemed to be very appreciative of the recognition. This performance of Verdi’s Requiem will live a long time in the memory for all kinds of reasons.