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.

Amores percussion, Maria Maica, Elia Casanova in Alicante and International Chamber Orchestra in Alfas del Pi

 

Three concerts in four days…

Despite Spain’s rising number of coronavirus cases, concert halls are open. The audiences wear masks, seat suitably distanced, regularly disinfect their hands, have their temperatures checked and wait in an orderly fashion to be dismissed at the end. 

In one of the more memorable musical evenings, part of ADDA Alicante’s contemporary music festival, percussion group Amores with sopranos María Maciá, and Èlia Casanova presented a programme of Stockhausen and Hildegard of Bingen. It’s not often that works separated by 800 years are programmed side by side. And it is even less likely they will connect with the narrative. Three plain song pieces by Hildegard von Bingen were performed by Èlia Casanova and these were interposed with ten of the Tierkreis, twelve zodiac pieces by Stockhausen. This constituted thirteen pieces and so the concert was called Thirteen, Dreizehn.

Now this number, with its connotations of bad luck, the devil and betrayal, seemed to be significant in the concert’s narrative. As the evening progressed, a transformation took place which, eventually, was seen not as a transformation at all, merely a nuance of interpretation.

Assisted occasionally by a synthesizer Èlia Casanova began by singing Hildegard‘s plainsong on Christian texts. She wore white, though with a thin black veil, and apparently sang from an open book of light. She also, just once, used a musical box, which also served to remind the audience that the Stockhausen pieces were originally written for that medium.

At the end of Èlia Casanova’s first piece, María Maciá, dressed all in black, appeared. It was clear from the very moment of her entry that that this is a very different version of womanhood from the contemplative nun that was Hildegard of Bingen. María Maciá then sang, alongside the percussion trio, four of the ten chosen zodiac pieces. There followed another Hildgard plainchant, three more Zodiac pieces, another plainchant and then the final three Zodiac signs, the last one featuring both sopranos, united in their mutual transformation.

The sung part of Stockhausen‘s music consisted of vocalized seductive syllables and sounds associated with each astrological sign, including in Pisces singing underwater! What you can probably see coming is these two different versions of womanhood seemed to influence one another, transforming the purity of Hildegard into something more earthy and earthly. This also happened musically, as the last of the plainchant developed an accidental here or there, adopted a rhythmic character and was thus transformed into a pop song, jazz singing or even blues.

The transformation was complete, both personal and musical, but the musical changes had been minimal, reminding us of the fundamentally modal character of popular music to this day. And so an unlikely juxtaposition made perfect narrative sense.

The two concerts of La Socieded de Conciertos de la Musica Clasica were structured more conventionally. Violinist Joaquin Palomares led the International Chamber Group in both concerts, but in different formats, a quartet which never actually played as a quartet and an octet that behaved at times like an orchestra.

In the quartet concert, we had the Sonata opus 3 no.4 for two violins of Leclair, Beethoven’s Sonatensatz duo for viola and cello, the Madrigals of Martinu for violin and viola and finally the Mozart Divertimento No1 K39b for string trio.

And then on the Saturday we heard the octet in Elgar’s Serenade, Tchaikovsky’s Nocturne for cello and orchestra, Ernest Bloch’s Prayer for the same grouping and Piazzolla’s Tango Ballet.

The evening was completed by a performance of Mendelssohn’s Octet which, as ever, created its own space and time. Four days, three concerts and almost every work in a different musical style.