Stefanie Irany, Josep Vicent and ADDA orchestra in Strauss, Berlioz and Tchaikovsky

Programa

Richard Strauss, Muerte y Transfiguración Op.24 23:00

Hector Berlioz, La muerte de Cleopatra 22:00

 I. C’en est donc fait! 03:00

 II. Ah! Qu’ils sont loin 07:00

 III. Méditation: Grand Pharaons 05:00

 IV. Non!...non, de vos demeures funèbres 03:00

V. Dieux du Nil 04:00

Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Sinfonía núm. 6 Op.74 46:00

I.                    Adagio -Allegro non troppo 18:00

II.                 II. Allegro con grazia 08:00

III.              III. Allegro molto vivace 09:00

IV.              IV. Finale: Adagio lamentoso 11:00

A new season brings an array of new faces. The composers and the works have figured before on programmes throughout the world. But one of the joys of music is that in performance it has the capacity to be different and fresher with each new hearing.

Personally, I cannot remember having heard The Death of Cleopatra in concert. I only recently became aware of the work via a broadcast recording. Now Berlioz is one of those composers who nearly always fails to impress me. The works come with a reputation for experiment, even overstatement, but too often I have found performances very much “of their time”. The fault, I now think, lay with the listener, who was always rather dismissive of this composer’s unique achievement. I realised my folly last night, sitting in the audience, as Stefanie Iranyi gave a spine-chilling performance of the work in front of Alicante’s ADDA Orchestra.

This music, so full of drama and expression, was also highly surprising. It turned unexpectedly, produced unfamiliar harmonies that seemed to communicate perfectly a sense of antiquity both beyond reach and understanding. It might have been because the ADDA audience was invited to participate in the story via projected text on the back of the stage. Line by line, the words appeared as they were sung, so we were able to share the drama and emotion of the piece more directly than if we had to read and follow the sound. Also, Stefanie Iranyi gave a thoroughly operatic performance which almost brought the ancient queen back to life.

Before the Berlioz, we had been treated to a performance of Richard Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration, a young man’s take on an imagined end of life. We were told in the programme that Strauss himself on his deathbed told onlookers that he had got it right all those years ago. Apocryphal or not, the young man’s take was ultimately positive, since the apotheosis of the piece is to find peace. Whether that peace was eternal or blissful, or just piecemeal, we will see. I am always impressed at the range and depth of sound that Richard Strauss could get from and orchestra.

And so to Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony, The Pathetique. I suppose there was a macabre thread running through the programme – death, death and death - but in Tchaikovsky’s case, the jury is still out as to whether the work is some form of suicide note.

It is a work that simply grows and grows. The more exposure to this symphony one has, at least in the concert hall, the better it gets. This is a work of profound intellect, great emotion and wondrous technique, both with the orchestra and with the structure of the piece. Personally, I could not care if Tchaikovsky did not follow the precise rigours of sonata form. By the 1890s he had clearly transcended such things. He had already become the kind of individual voice that would populate the twentieth century. It is just a pity that he never made it that far and more of a pity that the society that surrounded him had attitudes that were backward looking. And has anyone ever written an emotional leap like the one that happens between the last bars of the third movement and the opening of the fourth?

And what about the end of the work, with that repeated motif in the double basses? Did not Shostakovich use the same idea – even almost he same music! – at the end of the infamous fourth? It would be stupid to suggest that some music might be ahead of its time.

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.

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.