Leticia Moreno plays Fazil Say's 1001 Nights in the Harem with ADDA orchestra under Josep Vicent in Alicante

Last night’s concert in ADDA featured a program of unusual style. The main work on offer was a half hour violin concerto, and there is nothing strange about that. This, however, was a violin concerto with a difference. But the rest of the program comprised three works by Ravel, two of them excerpts and the third, that strangely familiar experience we call Bolero. Throughout this concert featuring effectively a Spanish-Turkish sandwich, a thread linking these works was their “orientalism”, that nineteenth century concept blending mysticism and magic in the eyes of then colonial Europeans. But the orientalism imagined by Ravel was here contrasted with the voice of a contemporary Turkish composer, whose claims to authenticity were surely justified, despite his having studied in Germany and his liking for jazz. In this world, after all, everything is syncretic.

The concert started with Ravel, the Feria from Rhapsodie Espagnole. The orchestral sound, textures and ensemble were perfect throughout. This was Ravel at his most joyous, and perhaps once forgetting manacles that kept his asceticism to the fore. The playing of this piece, so familiar, was exceptional, and was duly noticed by and remarked upon, via applause and acclamation, by the audience.

In the second half, a second Ravel excerpt, the Ouverture de Féerie from Shéhérazade was, by contrast, much more restrained, much more of a conscious recreation of a scene in the composer’s mind than a depiction of a place and time.

Then, to complete the Spanish-Turkish sandwich, we heard a performance of Bolero. It is such a strange piece of music that I doubt anyone other than its composer understands what it is doing. The composer himself said there was no music in it. In some ways, it is an essay in orchestration, which is eventually one orchestral tutti played in slow motion with a drum beat. Here, the master orchestrator has the majority of the strings played pizzicato for half the piece, and some of the strings remain pizzicato until near the end. In Ravel’s music, however, you can always hear the harp.

But despite the strangeness of this music, basically two repeated melodies varied only in dynamics in texture, it has gained remarkable popularity. And this performance, as ever by the ADDA Orchestra under Josep Vicent was greeted with cheers of appreciation.

The main part of the Turkish filling in this sandwich came from the evening’s main work, which was 1001 Nights in the Harem, a violin concerto by Fazil Say. In this world, the composer mixes extended violin technique, Turkish percussion, a traditional song in the slow movement and a multiplicity of understated orchestral textures to create the quiet world in which Sheherazade might have told her bedtime stories. Leticia Moreno, who was soloist, gave a truly memorable performance of this monumental solo part in which she is rarely silent throughout the half hour duration of piece. Some of the scrapes and scratches of the first movement perhaps had the audience worried that she would have no bow left by the end, but all was well. This is virtuosity that rarely involves simply showing off. Much of the solo part is very quiet, accompanied by mere orchestral punctuation. Here is a concerto where the soloist must feel like a specimen under a microscope. There is simply no room for error whatsoever and every detail is audible. The fact that the orchestra and the soloist gave such a faultless performance of this strange and reflective work is testament to everyone concerned, Josep Vicent. Leticia Moreno, the ADDA orchestra and ADDA audience, attentive as ever. I did listen to Kopatchinskaja with Pappano in 2024 in the same work before writing this this review and I could spot no difference in interpretation or playing. Both were faultless, followed similar tempi and phrasing.

There were two encores. Having taken her bow at the end part one, Leticia Moreno returned to the stage to play Piazzolla’s Oblivion with orchestral accompaniment and then we had the final section of Bolero repeated. This was one to remember.

Costa Blanca Arts Update - Shostakovich 5 and Symphonie Espagnole in ADDA, Alicante

The fifth Symphony of Dmitri Shostakovich was reportedly “a Soviet artist's creative response to justified criticism”. That past criticism came as a result of official displeasure at the direction the composer’s work had taken in the opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and, crucially, in the unperformed fourth symphony, a work the composer withdrew when it was in already in rehearsal. He waited twenty-five years before he eventually heard it. After a performance of this extraordinary fourth symphony under Gergiev, the audience at Alicante’s ADDA auditorium waited just two weeks to hear the fifth, the composer’s symphonic self-correction, from the ADDA orchestra under Josep Viicent.

And it was the similarities between the two apparently contrasting works that provided the most vivid memories for this listener. The fifth returns to the conventional four movements of the symphony, rather than the fourth symphony’s three. But together, the opening moderato and the scherzo are like the vast first movement of the fourth. The next movement of both symphonies form their respective emotional cores, intellectual in the fourth and self-pitying in the fifth. The finales of both works offer unconvincing apotheosis and the only major difference comes at the end. Both symphonies offer a triumphal statement of achievement in orchestral tutti and it has to be said they are both hollow and lack self-belief. But at the end of the fifth the major chords offer an apparent resolution, a statement of optimism, albeit false, whereas the fourth drifts into an agnostic cessation of existence with the merest of whimpers. Strange it seemed, however, to hear the celeste bring to an end the fifth’s first movement, albeit without the obvious question mark that concluded the fourth.

Josep Vicent’s tempo in the finale tested everyone. Originally marked as allegro non troppo, Vicent’s pace could have been described as presto. And his judgment proved memorable, because it brought to life both the urgency and impetuosity that underpins the music. By the end the ADDA string section might not have thanked him so enthusiastically, because it did make their job more taxing. A final observation must be that I have never heard this music without an error at some point amongst the French horns. This performance was therefore a first, because they were perfect.

Earlier, the audience had been treated to a performance of dazzling virtuosic communication by Leticia Moreno of the Symphonie Espagnole by Edouard Lalo. Now this is a work that wears its emotions on its sleeves. Here we are closer to Offenbach than Wagner and often refreshingly so. The solo violin part is more taxing than many concertos and there are not many bars of rest for the soloist in this five-movement work that lasts more than half an hour. The rapturous reception for Leticia Moreno’s playing was perhaps even understated because her projection of the solo part was nothing less than stunning. It was quite hard to take in such genius all at once!

And what artistic presence she displayed by playing an encore that offered musical as well as stylistic contrast. With the accompaniment of Carmen Escobar’s harp orchestrally-placed harp, Leticia Moreno gave a controlled and restrained account of Manuel de Falla’s Nana from the Popular Songs. Musically and philosophically this was almost the antithesis of the grandiloquence that had preceded it. This little encore underlined Leticia Moreno’s virtuosity. It would have been much easier had she tried again to show off. Here, less was certainly more.