Programa de mano de 19 nov 2026 - Denia International Piano Festival - Alberto Nosé

 

Blake Pouliot plays the Violin Concerto No1 of Shostakovich and the ADDA Orchestra under Josep Vicent triumphs with the First Symphony

The last time I heard the First Symphony of Dmitri Shostakovich in a concert hall was perhaps over fifty years ago. It is not that I have not been avoiding it. Broadcast on radio, a performance of the work is not at all rare, but I have not until now been in the right place at the right time to hear it in performance. Alicante’s ADDA Orchestra under their director Josep Vicent offered a performance of the work as part of the current season and coupled it with the Violin Concerto No. 1. So last night, we were to hear two works by Shostakovich, an acknowledged masterpiece alongside a graduation piece written by a nineteen-year-old.

I found it revealing how even the most familiar music can be transformed into something fresh and new in live performance. Though I have not heard the symphony recently in the concert hall, I have heard it broadcast repeatedly over the years. But in performance, the utter originality is breathtaking and the continual flow of the young composer’s ideas both surprises and frustrates. First appearing in the middle of the 1920s, this is music which seems not to be modernistic, nor neoclassical, nor atonal. Neither is it obviously Late Romantic. Stylistically, at least, it is quite original. There are dissonances certainly, but no matter how much Glazunov criticized the young Shostakovich for his excesses, we hear a work which, if anything, is rooted in Mahler, especially in its treatment of slower themes.

Faster sections illustrate just how focused the young man was, in that the themes have the feel of the mature composer and indeed could have been written at any time in his career. In much of Shostakovich’s music, these spiky themes are often cited as evidence of cynicism, but these particular spiky themes were written by a nineteen-year-old young man who clearly just thought that way. Programme notes on the evening stressed the fact that the first movement has a humorous flavour throughout. As the evening progressed, we had more evidence of the composer’s humour, but it seems that this quality was evident in his works from the start.

I can remember the programme notes which accompanied the performance I heard decades ago. It said that the inclusion of a piano “to fill out the harmonies” was a sign of the inexperience of the composer. I wonder if the same author would have written the same opinion about Symphony Nos. 5 and 7, both of which have piano parts. In fact, in this First Symphony, the piano part contributes in no uncertain way to the statement of themes, rather than filling out anything.

Overall, the symphony surprises with its multiplicity of ideas. This does lead to an overall lack of focus and it is, perhaps this lack of focus that gives away the youth of its writer. But you are only young once, and these ideas would later percolate through a lifetime of composition.

The First Violin Concerto is a masterpiece from Shostakovich’s maturity. Unusually, it has four movements, slow-fast-slow-fast and indeed, the first movement almost seems like a lento continuation of the First Symphony, so hard is it to pin down. The scherzo and the passacaglia that follow are more conventional, but beautiful. The finale is a romp, and the humorous composer gives free rein to celebrate, and provides an opportunity to “play your heart out”, which was gleefully taken up by the ADDA players. Everyone seem to be enjoying the release after the tension and brooding of the first movement. And it was in fact in that first movement that the evening suffered a minor flaw when, at least to my ear, the soloist and the orchestra momentarily diverged rhythmically. But it was only a moment in an otherwise perfect performance.

Blake Pouliot was the soloist and, apart from that passage in the first movement, both his playing, and his pace were superb. He was clearly enjoying the rhythmic drive that the ADDA Orchestra brought to the music. The ADDA audience was greatly appreciative of his efforts, to such an extent that he played two encores in very different musical styles. The first was his own arrangement of The Last Rose of Summer, whose folk song like melody rang out, but quietly and shrouded in gentle, subtle decoration. The second encore was the more conventional, the Gavotte en Rondeau from the JS Bach’s Violin Partita No. 3 in E Major. But the concerto and the two encores did provide a picture of Blake Puliot’s talent.

We also had two encores after the symphony, and these two orchestral encores showed off two other characteristics of the music of Shostakovich. The first was the Waltz No2. I have written before of this strange masterpiece, but it is worth saying again that this waltz with its hummable and memorable tune is in a minor key. So Shostakovich the enigma triumphs again, with a sad song appearing to be celebratory. Fascinating. Then we heard Shostakovich the comedian in the Galop from the Cheryomushky music. The ADDA Orchestra provided the vaudeville.

The Düsseldorf Symphony under Adam Fischer play Mahler 3 - perfection

 

Normally, I don’t read reviews of a concert before drafting my own. This time is different. The Düsseldorf Symphony are currently on tour in Spain and last night they played in ADDA, Alicante, having previously played the same program in Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia. The single work in each of the tour concerts is the Symphony No. 3 of Gustav Mahler. Frankly, I came home so moved by the experience that I broke with my tradition and searched for reviews of the previous concerts on the Internet.

It seems from the reviews that Adam Fischer’s interpretation of Mahler is not universally appreciated. The criticism seems to seem to concentrate on his handling of the first movement of this symphony. There was a reference in one review to problems with the orchestral tuning. I find that hard to believe. It seems that to be a reviewer of classical music – whatever that might be! – it is necessary to talk primarily about another version of the same piece, rather than describe the specific performance.

As an audience member last night, it was obvious from the start that Adam Fischer has his own approach to this symphony. In the hands of less inspired conductors, the first movement becomes a rather conventional allegro when the marches appear. The slower material thus tends to take on the nature of an introduction to the eventual allegro. Mahler’s own title for the movement is Pan Awakes: Summer Marches In, signifying the Pan of mythology has something to do with the scenario. I am saying nothing unconventional if U state that this particular Pan is associated with the wild, shepherds and flocks, rustic music, and impromptus. This is the key, I think, to Mahler’s title and, indeed, Adam Fisher’s reading of the first movement.

In the slower sections of the first movement, Mahler effectively wrote chamber music, full of contrasting textures, sonorities and orchestral effects, often in surprising and striking combinations. Adam Fisher, by varying the rhythm here and there, and by inserting often quite long pauses, emphasizes the rusticity and the impromptu nature of music. And by this means the audience can hear essential elements, all the detail and really appreciate the texture. These elements combine together to evoke the feeling of an early morning or evening stroll across Alpine Meadows, where birds sing in the distance, where animals somewhere wander across the field of vision, but remaining distant, even out of sight. The emotions that such sounds evoke are close at hand, but nothing else is, apart from, of course, the emotional reactions they create. Then, when the marches takeover, outlines become clearer, more tangible.

Personally, I find Adam Fisher’s treatment of the first movement, utterly convincing. I heard sonorities I had not heard before. I became conscious of transitions that other conductors had clearly airbrushed out of their interpretations, and I was able to marvel at the unusual juxtaposition of instruments that we don’t expect to play together.

Mahler’s subtitles for the other five movements are derivations of this monumental first movement’s title. He is successively alluded to the world of flowers, animals, man, angels, and love. And throughout, Adam Fischer’s attention to the detail of the score seemed to emphasize these meanings. The minuet second movement was suitably delicate, the third scherzo-like in its abruptness and energy. In the fourth, mankind is revealed contemplative and reflective, whilst in the fifth the angels sing out in perfect harmony.

In the finale, we find Adam Fischer at his best. The long theme was played with little stress and emphasis, enabling it to expand into the space available with all its beauty. Too often, in my opinion, interpretations concentrate on making the material over-profound and overtly beautiful. The emphasis thereby required causes us to stop a marvel rather than go with the flow. And this flow is so mesmerically beautiful that, whenever I hear the symphony played, I feel as though I ought to stand up towards the end and acknowledge the breadth of the musical vision and its emotional power.

It was this, the emotional power that was enduring throughout the performance. I, for one, notwithstanding the criticism of other, will treasure the experience of Mahler 3 under Adam Fischer. It was, simply, one of the most emotional experiences I have had in sixty years of concert going.

I realise that I have not mentioned Catriona Morison, who sand the contralto part in the fourth movement superbly. I state again that this performance was not only memorable. It will live in my memory as long as I have such a facility!

 

Programa de mano de 31 oct 2026 - Denia International Piano Festival - Fabrizio Meloni y Antonello D'Onofrio

 

 

Carmen in Valencia - Charles Castronovo and Vasilisa Berzhanskaya lead a cast in search of a production

 

The current production of Bizet’s Carmen in Valencia Les Arts seems to be in constant danger of falling between two chairs. “Stools”, you say, but “chairs” is apposite because chairs figure large in this particular staging.

The promotional photograph that ostensibly summarizes the production shows Carmen in a traditional flamenco dress confronting Escamillo, who is arraigned in his toreador outfit. These might be stereotypes, but they are conventional in a staging of Carmen. The still is from act three. Contrast that image with what the audience sees at the start, which is an unadorned black stage on which there is a square raised platform, covering most of the area, with the only evidence of props being a haphazard pile of chairs at the back. Symbolically, the raised platform is the square outside Carmen’s cigarette factory in Seville. The chairs are regularly moved to create different spaces.

Personally, I prefer directors to experiment when staging opera, as long as historical accuracy is preserved. It would be stupid to set Andrea Chenier in anything but the French revolution, for instance. But in the case of Carmen where the plot revolves around a coquettish woman who cannot make up her mind and an army corporal who lacks judgment and is easily lead is not specific to any particular epoch. Carmen, therefore, can be staged at any time, but place is important because of the Spanish flavour of the music.

But I am being over conventional. What if the Carmen is not coquettish, nor a flirt (whatever that is…) and plays the role as if she is in control the whole time? It seems that this was the kind of Carmen that we encountered in acts one and two in this production. She thus is a more modern woman, who still does not know what she wants. But would that modern woman dress up in traditional garb for a fiesta? Would that modern woman be so shocked by a prophecy arising from a card deal?

What worked in acts one and two was the drabness of the set. These working-class people are portrayed living their drab lives and therefore the excitement of a fight at work or an affair with an army corporal just might brighten things up. Perhaps because of the drabness of day-to-day existence everyone goes over the top when the chance to show off comes around at the fiesta. The presence of Escamillo, however, belies that working class setting, because he would have been a star, unless he was not very successful, in which case he would not have lasted very long and would not have developed a reputation.

In act two, the raised platform is transformed into a bar where we see the lowlife of an inner city. This is where Escamillo delivers his toreador song. The stage is still largely black, and the chairs are moved again to create places for the eager punters to sit. In act three, the chairs are centre stage again for a ballet sequence, which in this Carmen is a flamenco dance done by women. This is surely a reference to the original staging of the opera at the Opera Comique where a dance routine was de rigueur.

Then in act three, we have the fiesta and everyone gets dolled up. Suddenly, we have massive colour provided by firework bursts of confetti over the assembled townsfolk. Carmen up until now has worn T-shirt and trousers, and then a jacket over tights and a basque, suddenly dons a flowery full-length dress and wears her hair, until now lank, coiffured. It appears that Ted Huffman, who directed, suddenly got cold feet, and became worried that a “traditional” Carmen audience would want colour and costume. Suddenly, also, Carmen, who has been aloof and assertive to the level of cynicism until now, is vulnerable. Don José carries out his deadly act via strangulation with his belt, rather than with a “traditional” knife.

Overall, this production tried to be something different but did not carry things through. Carmen, as a character, suffered and throughout we did not see the presence that we expect from the role. Hence my assertion that the production fell between two chairs, neither “contemporary” nor “traditional”.

The evening, however, was perfectly enjoyable, despite the confusion over the production. Charles Castronovo as Don José was utterly superb. Vasilisa Berzhanskaya has sung Carmen before, but perhaps not as low-key as this time. Ruth Iniesta as Micaela received special applause for her two interventions. Davide Luciano as Escamillo was impressive. These performances were sound, that of Charles Castronovo was outstanding, but the lack of credibility of the overall concept rendered the individual performances just that – individual.

 

Mathis Cathignol offers a surprise at the Denia International Piano Festival

Despite my attending literally thousands of concerts in the past, each new offering still has the potential to surprise, to go where music has never taken me. The experience does not often do so, despite the fact that it rarely disappoints. Also, approaching a concert that I am responsible for makes me nervous and makes me also less able to relax to absorb whatever is on offer. After organising well over five hundred concerts, it remains the case that each new one is a challenge and that challenge can militate against personal enjoyment. Without the support of skilled people, musicians and technicians alike, the presentation of a concert would be impossible, and I have to record the fact that in Denia last night we had the best of both professions.

A program, however, can create expectations, but in the case of the latest Denia International Piano Festival concert, Mathis Cathignol, a young pianist from France, offered Granados, Fauré and Chopin. One the face of things, this was not going to surprise, but by the end of the concert, Mathis Cathignol had played so elegantly and so poetically that the surprise lasted from the first note to the last.

Mathis Cathignol is a 26 year-old French pianist. Before the concert, he asked whether it was normal or acceptable to have music open on the stage. My reply, as ever, was that he had to decide. I have learned over the years to go with a musician’s flow and not try to impose anything. In the event, he played the Granados and the Fauré from scores, but the Chopin from memory. Eventually, all that matters is the musical communication and more than a hundred people in the audience were left in no doubt about the quality of that.

Mathis Cathignol started his concert with three pieces by Granados. A Frenchman playing Spanish music to an audience in Spain is taking a risk. But Mathis Cathignol’s playing left no one unconvinced of his ability to communicate via this language. The playing, and with it the expression was exquisite. The phrases, even the specifically Spanish in a Spanish idiom, were played beautifully. What’s more, the music made perfect sense. Too often in Granados and other Spanish composers, a pianist can emphasize the stereotype and thereby lose contact with the overall effect. Mathis Cathignol did not fall into this trap and indeed his shaping of Quejas, o la Maja y el Ruiseñor was exceptional. It is a piece that I personally have heard many times, but Mathis Cathignol’s interpretation completely renewed the experience.

I do go to a lot of concerts, and I cannot remember any recent program that included three substantial pieces by Fauré for piano solo. On the face of it, this programming was conventional, but on reflection, I admit that it was something special. For me, Fauré is a quintessentially impressionist composer, and the three nocturnes completely fit the bill. Mathis Cathignol was poetic and expressive, managing to convey subtlety of tone, harmony and shape that sounded truly faithful to the composers intention.

The Chopin that followed was more of a concert piece. But in the hands of Mathis Cathignol, it became more than a series of show off variations and became a rounded, playful examination of what variation form could deliver.

In the end, the young French pianist played Liszt’s Chapelle de Guillaume Tell from the first year of pilgrimage, Années de Pèlerinage I. As an encore, it was a substantial piece and its reception in the hall suggested that the audience wanted even more.

Mathis Cathignol is already an accomplished pianist, whose musical communication is sound. He plays with a lightness of touch which is astounding but can also deliver pace and volume apparently at the same time. He also has the element of surprise which promises greatness.

Nicola Kos and Danijel Gašparović open the fourth Denia International Piano Festival with works by Beethoven, Papanopulo, Moszkowski and Ravel

 

Last night Nicola Kos and Danijel Gašparović opened the Denia International Piano Festival with a concert of music for four hands. The Croatian pianists included in their varied programme a piece by Boris Papandopulolo, the giant of twentieth century Croatian musical life, whose music remains almost unknown to Western European audiences, despite his having published over four hundred works during a lifetime of music making.

Papandopulo’s compositional style started with Croatian folk music, but he was from the start a sophisticated, eclectic composer, who could draw on many of the styles of European music. As he got older, his music became more dissonant, and he even sought in influence from jazz. Nicola Kos and Danijel Gašparović included the folk inspired but highly complex and rhythmic Dance Suite by Papandopulo.

Each of the suite’s four movements drew spontaneous applause from the Denia audience who, over the years, has shown itself to be open to the exploration of the music of lesser-known composers. On this occasion, the often fiery rhythms, and broken harmonies of these dancers provided excitement in what was eventually essentially a celebration of folk tradition in the hands of a sophisticated composer.

The concert opened with Beethoven’s Opus 6, his Piano Sonata for Four Hands. This is a short work in two movements with light, playful, dance like motives, which were a perfect contrast with the intensely rhythmic twentieth century dances that followed.

In a second half on a Spanish theme, we heard Moskovsky Spanish Dancers Opus12 and then the enigmatic Rhapsodie Españole of Ravel. This latter piece is more often heard in its orchestral version, but at the heart of the work there is a habanera which was originally composed in 1895 for two pianos but was never published separately. In 1907 Ravel composed three other pieces to accompany it and so today the Rhapsodie Españole is a four-movement piece which contains much quiet and reflective music, especially in the first two movements. As ever, with Ravel, it says much about its composer, less about its inspiration.

Nicola Kos and Danijel Gašparović finished with an encore of Dvořak’s Slavonic Dance Opus72 No2 whose gentle, swaying rhythm brought the evening to a close. The next concert in the Denia International Piano Festival is on 8 October and features French pianist Mathis Cathignol in works by Granados, Fauré and Chopin.

Josep Vicent and the ADDA Orchestra programme one of the twentieth century’s major works and a concerto by Campogrande featuring Meta4

 

The challenge of reviewing a performance of a work that one is deeply fond of is to remain objective. Well, I have already failed to be so. I first came across the Symphony No. 4, The Inextinguishable by Carl Nielsen when I was in my late teens. I have been listening to it regularly since then, so I must have heard it several hundred times. One might have thought that over the years its effect would grow less intense, its originality might have blurred, its surprise diminished. Not so.

Live performances of the work – except on radio – have been rare. It must be forty years since I last heard it in the concert hall. In a near lifetime of concert going, I have never heard the composer’s first or second symphony in concert. I have heard the Espansiva once, the fourth maybe twice and the fifth maybe four times. The enigmatic sixth, Sinfonia Semplice, once only. At home, I regularly listen to recordings, but Nielsen in the concert hall is something of a rarity.

Thank you, thus, to Josep Vicent and the ADDA Orchestra for programming the work and performing it with such commitment. For me. It was the highlight of the season and did not disappoint.

Written in 1916 and containing the composer’s references to The First World War, The Inextinguishable is a revolutionary work despite being musically conservative and sharing with Nielsen’s other works a considerable debt to Johannes Brahms. Carl Nielsen became one of music’s most original voices and it is in this symphony that we hear some of his most profound musical statements.

The fourth, for instance, has four conventional movements. But they are played without a break. Nielsen developed the idea of “progressive keys” in which music starts in one key and ends in another, thus suggesting in the listener’s ear an idea of “progress”. In the case of the fourth symphony, this is enhanced by playing the movements without breaks. And within those movements the musical material is very varied. Other composers might have used the progression of keys for entirely musical reasons, but in Nielsen there is this added layer of a journey for the listener. And the effect is subtle. Carl Nielsen never wanted to lead his audience by the nose through a “programme”. The effect is personal, even Romantic, and utterly convincing.

Two timpanis go to war occasionally in this work, and the orchestra manages to overcome their anger by being level-headed and positive, thus reflecting the composer’s fundamental optimism. In the fourth symphony, this optimism still triumphs, whereas in the fifth symphony, this optimism still comes through in the end but for all of forty minutes, the music is in minor keys, only finding its way to a major key in the closing coda. But by the time Carl Nielsen wrote the sixth symphony, cynicism had got the better of his optimistic spirit, and that is why the work remains problematic.

But still in the fourth Symphony, the compositional style is late Romanticism. It is still the individual that matters, though Nilsson is modern enough to frame the experience in current events in the external world. He is musically conservative enough to use fugues, but they bite with sharp edges, their counterpoint being jagged and modernistic. But within this conservative approach to composition, the composer manages to present material that is succinct, to the point and always subservient to an overall idea. The music is almost Neo-Classical despite being written before the term was invented!

But above all, there is energy in this music. The energy is “life energy”, which the composer thought would shine through current difficulties and result in positive outcomes. As a symphonist, the conservative Carl Nielsen became overall a thoroughly modern individual, ultimately wearied by the life he so desperately tried to affirm. How modern is that?

In the first half of the concert, we heard Josep Vicent’s selection of Manuel de Fallas’s Three Cornered Hart and Liberi Tutti, Nicola Campogrande’s Concerto for String Quartet, and Orchestra. The ADDA audience has heard the former work regularly and it never fails to rouse. The latter work featured the now superstars of Meta4, who performed brilliantly, if at the same time a little anonymously. Personally, I found the work always interesting, but eventually disappointing. Its generally minimalist style seemed to concentrate on creating a sheen of sound which was in itself convincing but also seemed to envelop the soloists in an overall orchestral sound which rather hid their significant and substantial contribution. The problem for me was not in the performance but in the handling of the musical material.

Overall, I found the Nielsen still much more modern, despite its being written over a century ago.

Rune Bergmann conducts the ADDA orchestra in Alicante in Mozart and Sibelius and a moment to reflect

Last night’s concert in ADDA with our resident orchestra under Rune Bergmann, our invited director, was memorable for perhaps regrettable reasons, none of which were musical. Regret came at the end, and more of that later.

The program was a conventional one: overture, classical symphony, and then a Romantic one, much loved and much played. The program did not disappoint and as ever our ADDA orchestra brought the music to life with virtuoso playing, enthusiasm and ensemble.

We began with Mozart’s Overture to the Magic Flute. After its slow introduction, the composer projects real energy through fugal music before pausing for a central section in which Masonic chords in the brass intervene. In the late eighteenth century, this might have been seen as a revolutionary gesture, perhaps reminding those in the audience of what was currently happening in France. It would not have provided them with the kind of comfortable listening that the piece provides today. Those brass interludes are nothing more than a “Look out!” perhaps reminding everyone that status counts for nothing, perhaps to remind people of how lucky they were to be alive. Mozart himself was not alive by the end of the run of the Magic Flute.

The Prague Symphony that followed is Mozart’s 38th Symphony. It was one of the pieces that introduced me to listening to music that was not pop, because there was a recording of it in my school’s small record library. To this day, I cannot either predict or understand the slowing of pace in the first movement, where the string lines cross over a rhythmic structure like punctuation. All I know is that every time I hear the piece, which is quite often, it takes me by surprise. Rune Bergmann’s pace with this piece, and indeed, overall across the concert, was brisk, giving the music extra drama here and there.

This Sibelius Symphony No.1 that we heard in the second half is a concert hall standard. Having just written that, I checked and I have not heard it live in concert for at least fifteen years! (Live television, excluded!) It is a work that is always impressive, but for me, personally, lacks identity. In it, I sense the composer is still searching for a musical identity that only crystallized later. Here we have passages straight out of Tchaikovsky, some folk influence, some undiluted late Romanticism. In fact, the symphony is brim-full of ideas, to such an extent that the music seems to be episodic. But one what wonderful episodes they are.

Rune Bergmann chose a very fast tempo in the scherzo and equally fast for sections of the finale, a speed which emphasizes musical contrast, less so the inherent lyricism. But it was a memorable performance of a familiar work.

And then the regret. ADDA’s artistic director, Josep Vicent, who had been listening to the concert, took a microphone and reminded the audience of the recent rail accident in Spain that claimed many lives. He asked for respectful silence, and the ADDA audience observed it faultlessly.

There was always going to be an encore. Conductor Rune Bergmann went up high to a box and low strings introduced his playing of the Norwegian bukkehorn in what I think was a performance of Michael Strand’s Men går jag över engarna (But I walk across the meadows). Anna Nielsen, invited concertmaster for the evening, then took up the melody in song. She was joined on stage by Rune Bergmann and the bukkehorn to conclude the work. It is a simple song, rather sad and folksy, musically modal and thus fit the requirements perfectly. Like the Masonic chords in the Mozart, this reminded everyone how lucky they were to be alive and provided a deeply personal and reflective experience for all involved, on stage and off.

ADDA Cameristica play two pieces for winds and then a Mahler version of a Beethoven String Quartet in a concert of pure musical joy

These days, one always expects a lot from any performance by members of the ADDA Orchestra and one is never disappointed. This subgroup, called ADDA Cameristica, gave a free concert last night in the Sala Ruperto Chapi featuring the kind of program that a commercial concert would simply not present, because commercial considerations would preclude it. As a consequence, the likelihood that music lovers would ever have a chance of hearing pieces of this kind, especially those included in the first half of this ADDA concert, is minimal. Certainly in over fifty years of concert going, I have never had the privilege of hearing the Strauss Serenade performed as a chamber music piece.

This was a concert of under an hour of music but involved two quite different ensembles. In the first half we heard two pieces of music for a wind band, one of which also had percussion. Jesse Passenier’s Overture for 13 winds and percussion was a world premier performance of a piece that uses jazz idiom alongside formal structures in its ten-minute duration. It is based on two sections that are then repeated with variation. A slow, highly textured section gives way to a rhythmic and staccato dance-like second section, where the percussion adds weight. These two sections are then repeated with variation to complete the work. Writing a piece for thirteen winds and percussion is a very laudable exercise, but one wonders whether the composer would ever have expected to hear it professionally performed.  Memorable were the shared textures that the contrabassoon and the bass clarinet created. This was an exciting work that should be played often.

Richard Strauss’s Serenade for thirteen winds is a masterpiece. The programme listed the work as Opus4, but I think it is Opus7. The Suite Opus 4 is considerably longer that the ten-minute piece we heard. The fact remains that Richard Strauss was just seventeen when he wrote it. If it is played at all, it tends to be played at the opening of a symphony concert, in which these gentle sonorities become somewhat lost in the oversized acoustic. It was then a revelation to hear the piece played in a small auditorium designed for chamber music. It is a youthful work, written by teenager for his father. It is a masterpiece, albeit in Richard Strauss’s terms, a miniature. The four horns that are that are demanded by the composer are worked quite hard, but these players of the ADDA Cameristica were faultless.

The second half of the concert was played by a string orchestra. And it was significant string orchestra, including two double basses. I point this out because the work played was Mahler’s string orchestra version of Beethoven’s Opus95 String Quartet. Now there are no basses in a string quartet, so Mahler did a little more than merely make more copies of the string parts.

And what work this is. It sounds as if it had been written for a string orchestra in the original. Beethoven’s often surprising use of rhythm and dynamics really did work extremely well in this larger setting. It was a memorable performance worthy of repeated hearings. Wonderful.

 

Ruben Jais and Roberta Mameli surprise with Haydn and Mozart at ADDA Alicante - a concert to remember

 

The anonymous role that expectation plays in our lives is vastly important. Expectation satisfied can often result in a feeling of self-confirmation, that feeling that comes with sensations of “I told you so, and I was right”. On the other hand, expectations not met can sometimes be associated with poor experience, associated with thoughts such as “I knew this was a bad idea”. Just occasionally, one sets off with expectations that are not met, and the result is tantamount to revelation. “What on earth have I been missing all these years?”

Last night I went to ADDA in Alicante with preconceived expectations. On the bill were Haydn and Mozart, composers who I spend many hours listening to, or not listening to might be a better description. In both cases, I hear a lot of their music but rarely pause to listen. That is one of the joys of going to concerts, to be presented with music that one often ignores or is ignorant of. We thereby run the risk of being surprised. Last night in ADDA, at least in the first half of the evening, the music not only did not conform to expectations, but the experience was so rich that it may even have changed my listening habits.

Alongside the ADDA orchestra, there were billed two other musicians, an invited conductor, Ruben Jais and Roberta Mameli, a soprano soloist. All last night’s performers brought an enthusiasm and no little skill of execution to produce a performance that were not only as good as can be imagined, but they may have even been revelatory, at least for this hardened concertgoer.

We began with Haydn’s aria Berenice, che fai? with Roberta Mameli as soloist. The aria is in fact from one of Haydn’s operas. Joseph Haydn wrote fourteen operas. Why on earth are they never performed, especially since the librettists he worked with include Goldoni? Roberta Mameli’s singing of this aria was powerful, dramatic, exciting and vocally superb. There is a lot of sturm und drang around in this music, but it is perfectly crafted and allows the soloist adequate room to show off, while retaining sufficient musical sense not to be merely a showpiece. A program note reminded the audience that Haydn had become a musician via singing, and the composer’s handling of the voice and orchestra combined managed to convey just the right balanced blend of anger and elegance to convince. Roberta Mameli's performance conveyed every scrap of meaning it was possible to extract from both text and music. This was singing of the highest quality in the form of a surprise called Haydn opera.

What followed was a real ear-opener. A Haydn symphony in the first half of concert programmes is not unusual. They are usually mid-nineties onwards, with occasional forays into the eighties and even the seventies. But not the pre-fifties! That is specialist fare. I do often research the music prior to concert, but this time I had not troubled my recordings, since my expectations had convinced me what to expect. The program note did surprise in that it described a series of Haydn mid-career symphonies all composed in minor keys. But surely this was music to order from Esterhazy employers. What could have motivated Joseph Haydn to melancholy?

The reality of Haydn’s Symphony No49 La Passione unfolded. It was nothing less than revelatory. Not only did this music not meet my expectations, but it completely shattered them. They had told of elegance, dance-like rhythms and more icing than cake. And how utterly unrelated was the reality! The first movement never really seems to exist, except in gentle comments around a theme that seems never to be stated. It could not have been more different from what I unexpected. A strange second movement followed, and then even a downbeat minuet before a finale that tried and tried to establish a major key but eventually failed. The symphony provided a musical experience of such surprise that at home I immediately accessed a recording of it and listened to it twice again. There is a lot in this music, both musically and intellectually, and it provided an experience as rounded as any I have had in a concert hall for some time. Hence a New Year’s Resolution to explore more of the symphonies of Joseph Haydn.

But the experience was surely as much as a result of Ruben Jais’s vision for the music, as it was a result of compositional skill. In music, no matter how good the writing, it still has to be interpreted and performed, and it is these qualities that an audience remembers.

In a more familiar second half of the concert, we heard two works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The Symphony No25 again explores sturm und drang, with what at the time must have sounded like a procession of dissonance. And in the early Exultate, Jubilate, Mozart conceived a show-off piece for a singer that also makes musical sense and provides a rousing end to any programme. This was especially the case as Roberta Mameli’s voice achieved levels of dynamics alongside purity of tone and musical interpretation that rendered this very familiar piece a real surprise. A standing encore of Corelli’s Christmas Cantata brought the evening to an equally surprising end, because, after all the sturm und drang that had preceded it, these overtly gentle Baroque sounds were truly elegant and relatively simple at the same time.

It is not often that expectations are so completely shattered with utterly surprising results. I will certainly never again listen to the music of Joseph Haydn with my previous assumptions. This was a truly memorable evening.

Gülsin Onay at the Denia International Piano Festival gives an exquisite performance

 

At 8pm on November 26, 2025 in the Centro Social in Denia, we heard Gülsin Onay play the piano.

Programa 

Johann Sebastian Bach - Partita No. 1 in B flat major, BWV 825

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Sonata in A major, KV331

Ahmed Adnan Saygun - 2 preludes in Aksak rhythm, op.45 nos.4 & 12

Frédéric Chopin - Sonata in B minor, op.58

I am breaking a self-imposed rule not to review concerts that I have been partly responsible for presenting. In the past, there were a lot of opportunities to do so, and I became repetitive. But the reason for this departure from the norm is to pay some homage to the exceptional talent, artistry and musicality of Gülsin Onay, who performed for us last night in the Denia International Piano Festival, courtesy of a group that I assist with, arsaltacultural.com.

On the face of it, the concert did not look like it was to be so memorable an experience. Notwithstanding two short pieces by a contemporary Turkish composer, the program looked rather conventional, a Bach partita, a widely played Mozart sonata and the Op58 Chopin sonata. But appearances can be deceptive. With live music, there is always the possibility that it will surprise and, on this chilly evening in November, there proved to be nothing conventional about the playing of our soloist, Gülsin Onay.

From the moment she started the Bach Partita No1, BWV825, the audience could collectively sense that they were in the presence of a true artist. The touch, the phrasing, and the sheer musicality of the playing immediately communicated that Gülsin Onay was a supreme storyteller. The plot of the musical story was always uppermost in her playing of the Bach Partita, which in other hands can so often seem like a procession of unrelated notes, if played unsympathetically. Here, the shape of the story, the juxtaposition of dances with harmonic and rhythmic complexity was crystal clear, so clear that many people listening were really experiencing the music for the first time, no matter how many times they had heard it before.

The Mozart Sonata, that followed, K331, is also well known. The Alla Turca rondo that forms the finale is recognizable to those who don’t even know the music of Mozart. And in the hands of this Turkish pianist, the concordance of music and performer was perfect. Indeed, the whole piece was couched in remarkably un-Mozart-like emotion. The description only holds for pianists who follow the dots religiously and do not interpret them, and this charge could never be levelled against Gülsin Onay. This is not to say that she took liberties with the score. She didn’t. But she played the everything with the insight of a true musician, a real artist.

A complete change of style was needed from Gülsin Onay for two preludes in Aksak rhythm, op45 nos4 & 12, by Ahmed Adnan Saygun. They were rhythmically interesting, rather percussive pieces, and the ease with which Gülsin Onay made the transition to a different musical world is surely testimony to the quality of her relationship with this composer’s work over the years.

But it was her playing of the Op58 Sonata of Chopin that really convinced this audience of the pianist’s artistry. It should have come as no surprise since the program notes stated that she had been awarded a state medal by Poland for her interpretation of Chopin.

Here was a work that I have heard perhaps thousands of times. On the basis of last night’s performance, however, I did not even know it, because almost every note, every phrase seemed new. It was as if we had Frederick Chopin in the auditorium explaining exactly what each phrase of the Sonata meant. The communication was that direct, and like all good stories, it captivated everyone until the last note. It was a performance of such a virtuosity and artistry that I cannot recall, after 50 years of listening to music, anything that was ever equal to it.

Gülsin Onay received a standing ovation and responded by playing two encores. Ondine from Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit is a piece that many pianists would prefer not to attempt. In her hands, it was a door to enter the private universe of Maurice Ravel, so perfectly did each phrase fit into the space revealed by Ravel’s imagination. And then the Op9 No2 Nocturne of Chopin brought the evening to a close. Again it was a familiar work, but it is rarely played like this, with communication, not mere beauty of sound uppermost. By the end, I found myself saying that Gülsin Onay was simply one of the finest pianists I had ever heard.

Več Makropulos at the Royal Opera House in London, a triumph for Ausrine Stundyte and a convincing re-interpretation by Katie Mitchell

Več Makropulos is really a play with musical accompaniment. One wonders whether the singers would think the same! It was also the debut in the opera house of the telephone, which features in act one of any production. But here it played a central role in the establishment of a feminist interpretation of the work, an interpretation that eventually proved both successful and relevant.

Janacek’s opera was completed in 1925 and staged in 1926. The difficulty of updating the text means that most productions of the work stay in the 1920s of it’s original conception. Here in 2025 in this production the setting is contemporary, which means that when Elina Makropulos finally reveals her age, she has to add an unscripted hundred to the written 337 years. The only problematic detail that arises from the time shift revolves around the patrimony and matrimony of the central characters. In 2025 we have DNA testing to establish lineage, whereas in 1925 such things were unknown. The problem, however, has no impact on the story, since DNA testing takes time, and time, even for a 437-year-old woman, is here in short supply since the action of Vec Makropulos surely takes place over one or two days.

The long running legal case about the inheritance of an estate between the Prus and Gregor families might have been settled before a century had elapsed, let alone two, if the family lineage had been established. The lack of any will kept the dispute alive, so to speak. But until the arrival on the scene of Emilia Marti, who seems to be well informed about the history of the families, no-one involved had any idea that Baron Prus in 1827 had fathered an illegitimate child following a relationship with an opera singer called Ellian MacGregor. Emilia Marti - Ellian MacGregor 200 years on - knows the location of a will in a drawer ostensibly containing letters written by Prus to his lover. The will leaves the estate to the illegitimate son, but there is a problem with the name. As an illegitimate child, the birth registry was unable to record a true father’s name. The singer MacGregor, wary of scandal that might be attached to her fame, used Makropulos as the surname -her own original family name - but entered the name of her long dead father, Ferdinand alongside. Over years, the Mac dropped away and the family name became Gregor, but there existed no definite linkage between the illegitimate son and the name Gregor, and crucially no tangible link to prove that Baron Prus was the father. DNA testing could establish a link, but not in 48 hours.

There is also another document associated with the will. It is a single sheet and written in Greek. It is a recipe for the elixir of life that Ferdinand Makropulos prepared for the emperor Rudolf in the sixteenth century. Emilia Marti - the same woman who as a sixteen-year-old Elina Makropulos was the guinea pig for the elixir, is now reaching the end of it’s effect and, after 437 years, she needs another dose. It is her mission to track down the document that she gave to her lover 200 years before, believing that she would never need it again. Originally, she had fallen ill and the emperor refused the potion, called her father a fraud, had him imprisoned and executed. She recovered, escaped to Hungary and lived on in relative obscurity. “No-one knew I would live for a hundred years…” Then she became a singer and had several careers, several lifetimes.

437 years is a long time. Elina Makropulos has had many identities, gone through many relationships and has had several children. She is now tired of what men might do to her and for some time has preferred the company of women. But she is not one for a quiet life. She has been a famous singer throughout and has lived life in the fast lane. She drinks heavily, takes class A drugs intravenously and is into every sexual expression possible with her female partners. At the start of this production using a split stage, while Vitek and Gregor and Prus discuss the court case in a hotel cafe, Emilia Marti is on her mobile in her room setting up a date with Krista via text messages. Krista comes to the hotel and she and Emilia make love. Krista’s lines in act one describing her infatuation with Marti are here delivered by phone from Marti’s bathroom. It is utterly credible. Though the elevation of the written minor role of Krista into a significant character who drives events was a major risk, the credibility of the result is testament to the genius vision of the director, Katie Mitchell.

When Marti joins the others in the cafe to discuss law, Krista stays behind in the hotel room, riffles through Martin’s bags in search of valuables and communicates her findings via texts to her boyfriend Janek, Baron Prus’s son, who researches and values possible loot.

Thus we have a perfect storm. Everyone on stage is now in competition with everyone else in order to establish advantage, both personal and financial. These are all people who are not nice to one another. The fact that Krista shoots Janek, rather than him committing suicide after a tiff with his father, might stretch credibility, but Krista now regards him as a liability that might threaten her own chances, which are now identified as staying with Emilia Marti to take advantage of her wealth and celebrity. It all makes such sense, given these characters’ propensity for lethal competition.

There are several aspects of the libretto that give rise to a feminist interpretation. Emilia Marti reveals the multiple scars, physical scars, that men have inflicted over the years. She feigns sleep when Gregor tries to rape her. She regards having sex with Prus to get her hands on the elixir recipe as a purely business transaction. It’s all there, despite having been written by the potentially misogynistic Leo’s Janacek. So all this production does is emphasize a thread of the characterization, rather than invent it.

There are several points here where time stands still or at least runs slow. The action on stage mirrors this, and these moments happen when Marti, feeling the weight of years, starts to run low on energy. Jakub Hrůša’s phenomenal understanding of the score allows him to bring this off musically by adjusting tempi, without interrupting the musical flow or sounding clumsy even in an ear that knows the score.

In the denouement, Marti has the elixir formula from Prus, has told Gregor his history, has declared her original name, Elina Makropulos, and has finally run out of energy. It is Krista, the opportunist, who receives the elixir when Marti declares she is no longer interested in a life that has delivered only suffering for so long. Krista can profit and she does, totally, and in this production in character.

Performances do matter, however dominant the plot and Ausrine Stundyte as Emilia Marti plays a more than pivotal role. Not only is she on stage almost all the time, but she is also more often than not singing. In this production, when Emilia Marti is not centre stage, she is still on stage and still acting. As conceived in this production, the role thus becomes demanding throughout the one and a half hours of the three acts, played here without any interval. Sean Pannikar as Gregor is almost impossibly wild and flighty, and John Reuter as Prus is quietly confident, assertive, powerful but almost always wrong. A special mention should be made of Alan Oke who sung Count Hauk-Sendorf, the old man with dementia who remembers wild Spanish adventures with a woman called Eugenia Montez. Who else? Heather Engebretson and Daniel Matousek who play Krista and Janek had to act quite a lot. Their parts did not require them to sing a lot, but in this production their relationship is central to the plot and they are both on stage for a good deal longer than their vocal parts might suggest.

An experiment in reshaping a masterpiece it was. And the experiment was successful.

Torino - Andrés Orozco Estrada conducts RAI Torino in Rossini, Mozart and Berlioz with Michael Barenboim as soloist

There were some famous musical names associated with Orchestra Sinphonica della RAI, Torino in last night’s programme. Previous conductors of the orchestra had surnames Pretre and Sinopoli and the night’s soloist was a Barenboim. The current principal conductor of Orchestra Sinphonica della RAI, Torino is Andrés Orozco Estrada and it was he who directed them in this concert in Alicante’s ADDA auditorium.

The concert began with one of the most well-known and rousing of Rossini’s overtures. Everyone knows the theme of the William Tell Overture’s final section, but Rossini was always episodic in his compositional style and the quiet sections that preceded allowed the orchestra to show off some of its solo playing. Starting a concert with the sound of a solo cello is hardly likely to be a showstopper, but that is clearly what Rossini wanted for his master work, perhaps indicating that all heroes have first to be born and many of them humbly.

Michael Barenboim was then soloist in Mozart K218 Violin Concerto. This, especially after the tutti at the end of the William Tell Overture was quiet, playful, witty and precise. I can never imagine that Mozart, even as a nineteen-year-old was taking his audience seriously when he wrote these notes. I always feel that the phrase “This is what they can cope with” must have been running through the composer’s mind. Basically, I don’t trust Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It has been a lifelong relationship, and there have been undoubted pleasures along the way.

Michael Barenboim and the orchestra’s playing, however, left nothing to be desired. It was sophisticated, accurate, witty and cute in places, secure and reflective in others. The composer’s ability to balance the solo part in the context of the orchestral accompaniment is a real achievement, for this orchestral part is no mere accompaniment, it presents a real dialogue with the soloist. Michael Barenboim gave the audience an encore of a movement of solo Bach in acknowledgment of warm applause.

The second half featured one work, Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. I confess the Berlioz is another composer whose music remains utterly baffling to me. It remains spectacularly baffling, however. Andrés Orozco Estrada had the third movement begin with woodwind played from high in the royal box, thus rendering the sound “far off”. The tubular bells that feature in the final movement gave a special sonority that I don’t recall from other performances of the work. But for someone who made his name for his orchestration to have called for two harps, just to keep them silent for most of the time, is beyond imagination. Perhaps he wrote the parts and then forgot about them. The orchestral playing was superb throughout, however, especially the muted horns, the brass, percussion and woodwind. Passages in the central movement were surely written by Mahler, sixty years before their time.

The orchestra offered a little piece of Italy to this audience in Spain as an encore. The Intermezzo from Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana is a superb way to follow the over-the-top Berlioz.

Denia International Piano Festival Programme 2 oct Duo Bringuier-Monakh

 

Edmon Levon conducts the Valencia Youth Orchestra in Coleridge-Taylor, González Gomá, Rossini and Tchaikovsky, with Ignacio Soler

 

In human affairs, enthusiasm is often associated with youth, whereas competence that approaches perfection is usually only possible in maturity. Occasionally - just occasionally - the two qualities are combined in a single and therefore memorable event. Here, it was the music making of the Valencia Youth Orchestra. It married enthusiasm and perfection in a musical evening that all involved, musicians and audience alike, will never forget.

The Valencia Youth Orchestra can recruit players up to their mid-twenties, so here we are talking about musicians who are on the verge of their careers. In this concert, they were directed by their current guest conductor, Edmon Levon, who also introduced each piece to the audience.

The performers began with a piece by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, an English composer, less well known in Spain than in the United Kingdom, where he is undergoing a revival that is reviving his music from an anonymity achieved by a hundred years of neglect. Despite playing for a US president and having packed out the Royal Albert Hall for years on end with his Hiawatha, his music must now be re-discovered. A movement from his African Suite had more than enough to spark interest in his always melodic music.

Enrique González Gomá, whose Ofrenda a Colombina followed, is a little-known composer even in his native Spain. He was a Valencian by birth, from Tavernes, born in 1899 and living until 1977. After the bravura and frenzy of an African dance, González Gomá’s piece offered a significant contrast. Quiet and reflective, even impressionistic, this music explores textures to evoke feelings. The effect was both magical and surprising.

In comparison to what proceeded it, Rossini’s Bassoon Concerto is quite a well-known work, though in over 50 years of concert going, I was hearing for the first time in performance. Ignacio Soler as soloist was both faultless in execution and as enthusiastic about the music as the orchestra he fronted. Rossini’s treatment of the form was distinctly operatic, with the bassoon often sounding like a singer delivering an opera aria in Rossini’s distinctly bravura, if sometimes rather predictable style. The quality of invention in his music, however, is undeniable, even if at times one feels as though one may have heard it before somewhere else!

The enthusiasm of the audience reaction prompted Ignacio Soler to present an encore, for which he was joined by two of the bassoons from the orchestra to play the Tango by Martinez. In this piece, a perhaps cliché tune is passed skilfully between the three players. The sonority of the bassoon trio is utterly surprising, and the ensemble suggests improvisation, even in its absence.

In the second half, the Valencia Youth Orchestra played one of the symphonies that define music. Tchaikovsky Pathetique, Symphony No. 6, is not just a staple of the orchestral repertoire, it is one of its mainstays. This is a work that not only never disappoints, but it also actually grows with repeated hearings.

It is music that, I believe, is ruined by applause between movements. The transition, especially from movements three to four, is crucial to the work’s emotional argument and all tension associated with being “right up there” one moment and “right down there” in the next is dissipated by audience intervention. Edmon Levon, I suspect, agrees with this, and when the audience applauded after the first movement, he half turned to acknowledge but in a single gesture managed to communicate that the end of the work would be more appropriate.

Tchaikovsky 6 is a mammoth work that demands real musical maturity alongside perfection of ensemble. There were one or two rhythmic stutters in the fast third movement, but nothing to detract from the experience. Personally, I found the horns of the opening of the fourth too loud, but I am splitting hairs.

The audience reaction to this great music was nothing less than ecstatic. Thus, we were treated to an encore. What to play after a work like Tchaikovsky 6 is a problem. Edmon Levon contrasted Tchaikovsky’s emotional paroxysms with Ravel’s detachment. We heard the final section of the Mother Goose suite, and its largely modal harmonies were quite surprising after the symphony’s outbursts. We had a real Valencia bash to finish, a piece that the orchestra played largely undirected, with Edmon Levon taking a seat in the stalls. At the end, the whole orchestra stood, still playing. The audience followed suit, applauding.