Showing posts with label prokofiev. Show all posts
Showing posts with label prokofiev. Show all posts

Sunday, March 24, 2024

The Stavanger Symphony Orchestra with Andris Poga and Behzod Abduraimov in Matre, Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky

Orchestras on tour often take some of their home repertoire with them. In the case of the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Andris Poga in Alicante last night, this took the form on the published program of a contemporary interpretation of some famous nineteenth century pieces. The Norwegian composer Ørjan Matre has reworked some of Edvard Grieg’s Lyric Pieces for orchestra. I hesitate to say simply “orchestrated”, because the contemporary composer’s contribution is specific and significantly more than transcription. It’s tantamount to reinterpretation.

Alicante’s ADDA audience heard four of the pieces, beginning with the Arietta from book one. Almost as if to remind the audience of the piece’s origin, the composer starts with solo piano, and the orchestra almost apologizes for its presence as the piece proceeds. The textures and combinations employed are designed to communicate the context of the inspiration. The titles of the pieces, Arietta, Spring dance, Solitary traveller, and Butterfly give clues as to what Grieg might have been thinking and Matre creates beautiful illustrations by his wholly original and refreshingly light use of orchestral sound.

After the interval, the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra gave a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony. Now this a work the Alicante audience knows well, so it was with interest and anticipation that it was received. We were not disappointed. This was a strong, forceful reading of the score. The triumphalism of the finale certainly asserted itself, but this happened perhaps at the cost of a detail or two in the preceding narrative that became lost in the force of the orchestral sound. Such matters are a conductor’s choice and clearly Andris Poga wanted to stress the growth to confidence above the experience of insecurities that led up to the endpoint.

Set between the reinterpreted Grieg and Tchaikovsky’s triumphal finale was a real gem. Its not often that a pianist takes on the Second Piano Concerto of Prokofiev, but here Behzod Abduraimov did just that. And what a perfectly splendid job he made of it.

The start was slower than expected, with Prokofiev’s opening theme, meandering even when faster, almost breaking apart. But then the slower tempo allowed the music’s vast array of colours to shine through. By the time, Behzod Abduraimov had reached the massive first movement credenza, the complexity on the ear had become strangely simplified, and the pyrotechnics of the piano part seemed almost inevitable, merely a given in the overall argument. The essential shape of the music was thus preserved, and the audience was treated to truly communicative playing, and not mere virtuosity.

There are times when this music from 1913 sounds almost industrial. I am sure this was Prokofiev’s intention. The work, after all, was revised ten years later, so it is hard in the concert hall to imagine what the composer might have changed. Suffice to say that the joins do not show.

Behzod Abduraimov was magnificent. His playing was strong where it needed to be, occasionally explosive and often lyrical at the same time. His faultless solo part was accompanied by wonderful orchestral playing that really brought out every nuance of detail in the score. This is abstract music, but there are many passages that seem to refer to popular forms, albeit seen in a distorting mirror. And if you think even the opening theme might be simple, just try singing it to yourself. Good luck. It’s a perfect example of Prokofiev’s lyrical genius, where he concocted a singularly beautiful tune that sticks in the memory, but an idea that remains elusive and almost impossible to reproduce.

But at the end of the evening the orchestra returned home. As an encore, we had two of Grieg’s Lyric Pieces in orchestral versions. The Wedding Day At Troldhaugen for string orchestra was particularly successful.

Sunday, October 16, 2022

Campogrande, Prokofiev and Dvorak in Alicante

The placing of the world premiere alongside establish repertoire is not itself unusual. What was unusual about ADDA Sinfonica’s latest concert was the fact that the contemporary piece that started the concert was arguably the most musically conventional item on the programme.

Nicola Campogrande’s music paints wholly recognizable shapes in never jarring colours. It seems to live in familiar landscapes, often vistas that are reminiscent of film on television music. This is in no way a criticism, but I do think it is an observation that informs an approach to his style. His second symphony “A New World”, follows a conventional four movement structure, but diverges by not pursuing formal development and also by having the finale presented as a song. The whole piece lasts just fifteen minutes, which was about the time devoted to a discussion between the composer and Josep Vicent, the orchestra’s artistic director, at the start of the evening.

Nicola Campogrande explained that he began the work because he felt that the world needed a change, a new direction, clearly toward a greater amount of tolerance and cooperation, rather than division and conflict. A friend offered to write a poem that became the symphony’s finale. The message, if such a work can be summarized, is that we can build a better world if we simply accept what we are, where we are, and share things like music and singing.

Nicola Campogrande’s “A New World” proved to be as gentle on the ear as in its message from within the text. Again, this is not a criticism. We respond to suffering and pressure in our own individual way. It was, after all, Vaughan Williams, a favourite composer of mine, who responded to the carnage of the First World War with the Pastoral Symphony, a work that presents precious little played forte and boasts three slow movements. Piero Bodrato’s text presented a positive vision that we were invited to share, at least for the length of the piece. Stephanie Iranyi’s soprano voice proved perfect for this text and music.

The First World War link is important, because of the work that followed. Prokofiev’s First Violin Concerto was written in 1917 and its premiere had to be postponed because of Russias Revolution. Conceived in an era of conflict, this is another work that seems to commemorate via suggestion a vision of a different world. But Sergei Prokofiev’s imagination lived in a truly individual and ethereal universe, which only occasionally seems even to reference the terrestrial. Twenty-year-old Ellinor D’Melon’s playing as via a soloist captured every aspect of this masterpiece. She was delicate and brash, soothing and acerbic, loud and soft, always perfectly expressive. Alongside Josep Vicent’s perfect balance in the ADDA orchestra kept the piece overall a musical whole, while allowing the soloist to shine. It was indeed a memorable performance of arguably the greatest of all violin concertos. Ellinor D’Melon’s encore lightened the mood considerably. She offered Henri Vieuxtemp’s Variations on the Yankee Doodle, a piece that allowed her to show off in the conventional concerto style that the Prokofiev masterpiece largely denied.

There is perhaps nothing new to say about Dvorak’s New World. But at the end of the 19th century, this work referenced the still revolutionary Wagner, included folk tunes in serious music and used orchestral colours and power that many audiences might have found challenging. Above all, the New World of the title was itself in reference to the idea of freedom from Europes feudal shackles and staid empires. The performance, as ever with the ADDA orchestra, was full of expertise and enthusiasm, a perfect mix to make even the familiar memorable.

There was a little encore, of course. Bernsteins Mambo from West Side Story is a roof raiser. Thankfully the roof stayed on. Just.

Wednesday, May 4, 2022

Costa Blaca Arts Update - Dmytro Choni in Denia

 

Dmytro Choni is a pianist from Ukraine who has won the Santander competition and finished fourth in Leeds. Such results are irrelevant once a musician presents him or herself as a performer: the only thing that counts is a communication with an audience via the interpretation of music. On the evidence of this concert in Denia, Dmytro Choni has achieved near perfection in the art of performance.

Pianists often choose programmes that intend to show off technical brilliance rather than interpretive quality. At first sight, Dmytro Choni’s programme might appear to fall into this category. After all, it’s not anyone who starts an evening with the two Brahms Rhapsodies and then plays for an hour and a half to finish with a work as grand as the Dante Sonata of Liszt. There was even enough energy for an encore.

Those two Brahms Rhapsodies came across as more substantial pieces than I had remembered. Placed together, the contrasts and similarities became clear as they combined to mimic a single work. These were followed by perhaps the most taxing music on the programme. The Sarcasms of Prokofiev sound like Malevich meeting Picasso. Almost aggressively modernistic, these short pieces make a deep impression in the concert hall, since they seem to question what it is that we expect from music. They are atonal in parts, melodic in others, rhythmic here and there, broken elsewhere. Under the fingers of a pianist who does not actively associate with their intention, these pieces can dissolve into an amorphous mass of disconnected fragments. When played with sensitivity and design, as Dmytro Choni did, they become an abstract, surreal world where nothing can be assumed, but a world which we can inhabit. They surprise and enchant at the same time.

Dmytro Choni followed the Prokofiev pieced with the Sonata No1 of Ginastera. Written forty or so years after the Sarcasms, there are sections of this sonata that inhabit a similar sound world, underlining just how experimental was the vision of Prokofiev. Underpinning Ginastera’s music there is always at least an idea of an Argentinian dance, though usually of a much more energetic type than the languid tango. But here also, especially in the slow movement, there is a tendency towards the atonal, and much less stress of rhythm as musical content. In the other three movements, it was rhythm that left enduring impressions.

Book One of Debussy’s Images followed. Though harmonically Debussy’s sound world is now familiar to audiences, in its time it was nothing less than revolutionary. After the rhythmic drive of much of the Ginastera, Debussy’s sense of space impressed and this came across in the playing.

And the, having already earned his living several times over, Dmytro Choni ended the concert with Liszt’s After a lecture on Dante, Fantasia quasi sonata. It’s a vast piano sonata in everything but name and shares musical ideas with the Sonata Liszt did write. This is music on a grand scale and needs a pianist with vision and interpretive skill as well as the technical skills to render the experience musically credible rather than a mere test of dexterity. And this audience was treated to a superbly shaped picture of how Liszt responded to Dante, though it must be said that the pianist was tiring towards the end. Understandably so… It’s not every pianist who take on a programme like this!

The evening finished with an encore. It was inevitable, perhaps essential that this Ukrainian pianist would finish with some music from his homeland. The short, lyrical but reflective piece by Valentin Silvestrov was perfect, as was the rest of this superb recital.