Antonio Pappano, Yeol Eum Son and the London Symphony in Kendall, Liszt and Strauss in ADDA, Alicante

When it comes to star billing, in the world of so-called classical music, there is no bigger ticket than Antonio Pappano directing the London Symphony Orchestra. The maestro, who perhaps will forever remain linked to his day job for decades, as the musical director of London’s Royal Opera House, is to take up the role of Chief Conductor with the LSO next year. This concert, already performed this month in London in the Barbican Hall, albeit with a different soloist, marks the start of that cooperation. Alicante’s ADDA audience last night had the privilege of sharing its music.

The main work on the program was Richard Straus’s Also Sprach Zarathustra. It’s one of the composer’s early tone poems, and, perhaps uniquely in music, is not only based on a book, but on a work at philosophy, albeit presented as a fiction. Nietzsche’s ideas announced to the universe that there was no God. And thus human beings must develop a new way of relating to experience, a new way of relating to the world in order to live. It was the will that now asserted itself, not a faith.

Strauss’s tone poem opens with finale, a brass fanfare complete with organ that has become a pop classic. What follows is veritably an examination of the breadth of experience that a symphony orchestra can present. So vast is the range of sonorities wrapped within this half hour that often the listener has no idea where the sound is coming from. Split strings, soloists from the front desk, widely spaced harmonies for unlikely pairings, a double bassoon and a tuba competing for the bottom space, married to a complexity of orchestration that is sometimes almost bewildering, all this contributes to the effect of this remarkable work.

It is, however, fifty years since I last heard it in concert, and it might be fifty more before I attend again. For all its stunning sheen, there is also something lacking in its vision. Though Strauss insists on a programme of selected chapters from the book, too often I find alpine meadows, heroes, lions, dandy pranks, heraldic delusions, and even merry pranks surfacing. What is lacking, therefore, is an intellectual direction that justifies the title. It was Richard Strauss’s problem: the music he wrote is undeniably wonderful.

The playing of the LSO was utterly wonderful. The sound of this orchestra seems to be more integrated, more balanced than most. But when a solo voice is needed to stand out, stand out it does, and with elegance. The evening finished with an encore of an eastern European dance, which added almost a full stop to the open ending, perhaps a question mark, pianissimo pizzicato, of the tone poem.

Earlier, we heard Yeol Eum Son in Liszt’s Totentanz. “Tour de force” could equally have been its title, for it makes huge demands on the soloist. It seemed, however, that Yeol Eum Son hardly noticed, so complete was her control over Liszt’s taxing variations. It was a superb performance, appreciated by the audience to the extent that Yeol Eum Son offered some Moskovsky Sparks as an encore.

The evening had started with a work commissioned by the LSO from Hannah Kendall, a British composer, who seems to win competition prizes at will. Many of her works examine cross-cultural musical forms, and “Oh, flower of fire” was indeed related to cultural identity expressed through sound, and this identity’s search for a home. Scored for a large orchestra, the work rarely used tutti. There were long periods when all the strings were silent, and then, when they were called to play, only made passing phrasal comment.

But what this music was clearly about was the memory of West African music, as transplanted by slavery, the violent orchestral tutti, to the Caribbean. The doctored harps alongside percussion sounded like a kora being plucked in the marketplace. The violence of the orchestral interjections was surely calculated. And so, often at the limit of human hearing, surely implying the small voice of the oppressed, Hannah Kendall explored textures, sonorities and colours that were as surprising in 2023 as Richard Strauss’s surely were in 1896. In Hannah Kendall’s case, the philosophy was a more obvious part of the experience, perhaps because of the changes in human society, the rise of the individual, presaged by Nietzsche’s argument. Now we are more atomized.

At the end of the piece, Antonio Pappano actually conducted the audience. He clearly wanted silence to follow the last notes and an outstretched left arm with index finger extended kept everyone quiet for a good ten seconds.

Congyu Wang - 24 Oct Denia International Piano Festival

 

 

Congyu Wan's playing was explosive and at the same time tender. He has definitely thought about every phrase. But he does not over-shape or over-interpret. The emphasis is where it needs to be, the rubato is applied, but never overdone. The dynamics are wide, but never over-emphasised. He has a tendency with Chopin to slow the piano and accelerate the forte. In concert it works beautifully, but the approach might not get past a nit-picking reviewer on disc.

He chose to play the Chopin Nocturne and the Liszt Liebestraum together, deliberately holding off the applause at the end of the Chopin. The effect was to increase musical tension. The Denia audience was spellbound to silenece anyway! Quite memorable. The Earl Wild arrangement of the Vocalise transforms the melody into what sounds like another prelude to add to the Rachmaninov set. There’s a central section that is explosive. After that the Kreisler Libeslied sounds like a show-off piece, which is what it is, but the Rachmnaninov harmony saves it and, indeed, makes it interesting. The Gershwin preludes again sounded more pianistic than usual. Just a little research shows that Earl Wild reworked seven Gershwin Preludes – the usual performance does the three that Gershwin himself published under the title. These pieces were quite different. Highly pianistic and with recognisable melodies that kept poking through the notes. The overall effect was wonderful and simply put brought the house down.

After that, Congyu Wang then embarked on Gaspard de la Nuit. Now this is a challenge at the best of times. It is virtuosic in a way that perhaps only Ravel could write. It’s a style that is unique. It sounds literally like no-one else. But what demands he makes to mimic simplicity! One feels that Ravel always wanted to simplify, but the way his mind worked was just different from the rest of us. The pianistic elements don’t feel like decoration. They are essential elements in the music’s sense.

Congyu Wang’s playing was breath-taking. The emphasis here was in the contrasts. Slow-fast, quiet-loud, the contrasts seemed emphasised, but never mannered. Add to that the rhythmic tension that is always part of Ravel's thinking and the result is this masterpiece of the concert hall. He had really thought about the overall shape of the piece and that came across with clarity. Just what the rather strange mind of Maurice Ravel had in mind we will never know. What is clear is that the place he lived was not quite in this universe, such a transporting experience does his music offer - and this performance in particular.

And then, at the end of the programme, we heard Aldoraba de Garcioso. This is Ravel in “Spanish” mode and the audience will have been totally familiar with the musical phrases and harmonies that keep surfacing in this consciousness stream that is pure Ravel. The playing was again beyond brilliant, but always sympathetic, never spectacular just for effect. Congyu Wang is a true artist.

There followed three encores. Chopin, Debussy and more Chopin. The audience would have stayed for more, but after a programme like that at least one person involved deserved a rest.

 

 

 

 

Memorable? You bet! Joe Alessi plays Chick Corea’s trombone Concerto at ADDA, Alicante

The word memorable is much overused. It now tends to signify something that is rather bland, an experience unworthy of being labelled “world class”, “incredible”, “iconic” or some other meaningless malapropism. And if something is truly memorable, how long would we expect that memory to last? A minute? An hour? A lifetime?

Last night’s concert in ADDA, Alicante, was memorable. Its music alongside its experience will live in my own memory for the rest of my life. And it won’t be at the level of a distancing or fading recollection. This musical experience will forever be vivid, enhanced by Chick Corea’s wholly original score, and Joe Alessi’s skilled and committed playing.

Trombone concertos have been pretty thin on the ground until recent years. That is strange, because the instrument, also known as the sackbut, has been an orchestral feature for many centuries. In the past, of course, before the technological enhancements of the last two centuries, the instrument might have been used purely primarily for volume and had a reputation for clumsiness. A change of key might even need a different instrument. No more.

Chick Corea was a famous performer. His most familiar style was jazz, performing as a soloist or alongside the great names of the musical language. Chick Corea the bandleader and improviser we know from recordings, but Chick Corea the composer is less well-known. The trombone concerto that Joe Alessi commissioned from him turned out to be his last composition. Chick Corea apparently wanted to end the work quietly, but Joe Alessi plucked up the courage to ask him to change approach and up the excitement at the end. One would never have known there had been any change, so wonderfully did the work communicate its intentions.

What was so striking about the music was its apparently complete originality. Every phrase seemed to exist in a sound world new to the audience, to explore sonorities that even a concert goer with almost a lifetime of memories found not only surprising but striking. And these textures, generally, were delivered at a whisper, never a shout. Yes, there were jazz idioms, but there was also Charles Ives here (perhaps also walking around New York) and Copeland, amongst others. Presented as a stroll, followed by a couple of dances, punctuated by a little anguish, the music promised a relaxed meandering around tonal centres. But Chick Corea’s rhythms, let alone his harmonies, are rarely predictable. Rhythms break, and there are hooks sticking out that catch you as you pass. The listener is constantly lulled into assured familiarity only to be presented with sonorities and trips that keep the concentration fixed on where the next step might fall. The dances and the strolls therefore force you to notice everything, because it may trip you up.

Memorable it was. It’s a work and a performance that will live in the mind as long as I do, not least because of Joe Alessi’s wonderful performance. It was not just virtuoso. It was committed in a way that communicated his obvious and complete love of the piece. And the ADDA audience in its entirety shared the emotion and commitment of all of the performers, who, collectively, and Joel, Alessi in particular, made their work and our evening so utterly memorable.

Joe Alessi played what he described as a love song as an encore, perfect he said, for a daybreak stroll along Alicante’s waterfront. And then, buy popular request, we heard the coda from Chick Corea’s concerto a second time, its high note ending asking the soloist to work hard again. I am sure it was a labour of love.

The rest of the concert will live alongside the memories. Mussorgky’s Night on a Bare Mountain opened the evening. The unconventional music of Mussorgsky was revelatory, if not, always competent or coherent. The piece, however, is a complete success in its orchestral version. Not all visionaries of capable of perfection, as Repin’s portrait of the composer graphically illustrates. There is a lot going on.

And in the second half, we were presented with what promised to be the main event in the form of a performance of Stravinsky’s Firebird ballet, alongside a film by Lukas van Woerkum, which offered a suitably silent, balletic re-interpretation of the fairytale. The effect was spectacular, but personally, I found that the visual sometimes caught me not listening to the music. As ever, the ADDA orchestra under Josep Vicent played faultlessly and the interpretation was nothing less than both faithful and spectacular. The film did make me listen to the piece in a different way. It was memorable effect, however, on a memorable evening.

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 Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafaq

The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafaq is a novel about Cyprus and its recent history. Via the love affair and developing relationship between Kostas and Defne, the author examines the recent history of Cyprus during the post World War Two period. This era included several significant events, which are still playing out today.

Cyprus was a British colony. It was, and still is a British military base, which was why calls for independence in the 1950s and 1960s were covered so extensively in the British media. There were, in fact, two approaches that were dominant within Greek Cypriot society. One was union with Greece, the other independence. Neither, of course, was acceptable to the ethnically Turkish population of the island. Eventual unified independence from Britain lasted only until 1974 when Turkey invaded the north of the island, and divided it remains today.

All of this is relevant to the plot of Elif Shafaq’s novel, since the book describes a love affair between a Greek-speaking boy and a Turkish-speaking girl. They were, of course, both Cypriots, but language confers and confirms identity, and this liaison definitely crossed lines of taboo that were seen as uncrossable.

Add to that the fact that the place that allowed them to see each other was a bar run by a cross-community gay couple and thus here are assembled all the issues that a writer might want to address in the novel about Cyprus.

Also, at the center of this tale, ostensibly about Cypriot politics and inter-community relations, the character of a fig tree watches over things. The tree knows about jet lag, can talk to mice, parrots, birds in general and many other animals, as well as other trees. It does not seem able to communicate directly with people, however. There is a resolution of plot, which explains why the fig tree becomes a central element book, but the device is not at all convincing, and is perhaps over sentimental.

We meet Kostas and Defne via their daughter, Ada, who lives in London, and has suffered an outburst at school. She is of an age that initially does not suggest that she could be the daughter of the two young lovers, but history twists the young couple’s lives, and all is revealed. Defne has recently died and her sister is living with Kostas and Ada because the daughter has seemed to suffer.

Defne drank. She suffered guilt and there emerged a need to uncover the past. Kostas, rather surprisingly, became a botanist and truly values his trees. After a period of separation, they meet again, by which time Defne is trying to unearth remains of her island’s trajedy. Eventually, the reason for Ada’s outburst at school is examined, but hardly resolved.

The Island of Missing Trees is a beautifully told story about a couple whose love could not originally bridge the gap between the communities. The character of the fig tree seems to emerge, however, when the author deemed she needed to inform the reader of something related to plot, and that alone makes the book somewhat less than satisfying.

United States - Essays 1952-1992 by Gore Vidal.

I remember watching Gore Vidal on television, usually on one of those talk shows he seems to view with contempt. He seemed to be a living opinion. Switch him on and opinions stream out. But usually those opinions, though often partisan and colourfully stated, we’re always pertinent, well-informed and incisive, despite the fact that, verbally at least, he tended to play the Gore Verbose, often using five words where one would do. But what words they were.

In print, he is much more economical with language, and often delivers a point like a poniard stab. Succinct perhaps is a strange word to describe a book that runs just short of 1300 pages and around 600,000 words. But this is a collection of essays, criticisms and occasional pieces spanning forty years, 114 of them, loosely bound into three sections - State of The Art, State of the Union, and State of Being. Literary criticism forms the bulk of the material, with the politics the author became famous for largely intruding as asides and comments. There is very little here on the process of his own writing, so this is far from autobiography. When he does engage with his own work, it is often to answer criticism of what he wrote. In these instances, he does not pull the punches he throws.

The wit is certainly there, as are many of the super egos of US politics, media and literature, not to mention a sprinkling from Hollywood. But here Gore Vidal is mainly analysing the written word, both from his contemporaries and from the past. Here is my own selection of that wit.

On criticism. The best a serious analyst (of a novel) can hope to do is comment intelligibly from his vantage point in time on the way a work appears to him in a contemporary, a comparative, or historical light. 

On changing taste. The bad movies we made twenty years ago are now regarded in altogether too many circles as important aspects of what the new illiterates want to believe is the only significant art form of the twentieth century.

On education and Reagan. Obviously, there is a great deal wrong with our educational system, as President Reagan recently, and rather gratuitously, noted. After all, an educated electorate would not have elected him president.

On stars. In England, after Guelph-Pooters and that con-man for all seasons, Churchill, Bloomsbury is the most popular continuing saga for serious readers.

On Ford Madox Ford. Certainly, Ford never lied deliberately in order to harm others, as did Truman Capote, or to make himself appear brave and strong and true as did Hemingway, whose own lying finally became a sort of art-form by the time he got round to settling his betters’ hash in A Moveable Feast. Ford’s essential difference was the fact that he was all along what he imagined himself to be that latter day unicorn, a gentleman.

On attitudes. Today’s reader wants to look at himself, to find out who he is, with an occasional glimpse of his next-door neighbor.

On literacy. Having explained that rulers never wanted general literacy, on the grounds that it might provoke ideas of revolution. The more you read, the more you act. In fact, the French - who read and theorise the most - became so addicted to political experiment that in the two centuries sine our own rather drab revolution they have exuberantly produced one Directory, one Consulate, two empires, three restorations of the monarchy, and five republics. That’ what happens when you take writing too seriously. Happily, Americans have never liked reading all that much. Politically ignorant, we keep sputtering along in our old Model T, looking wistfully every four years for a good mechanic.

On empire. Historians often look to the Roman Empire to find analogies with the United States. They flatter us. We do not live under the Pax Americana, but the Pax Frigida. I should not look to Rome for comparison but rather to the Most Serene Venetian Republic, a pedestrian state devoted to wealth, comfort, trade, and keeping the peace, especially after inheriting the wreck of the Byzantine Empire, as we have inherited the wreck of the British Empire.

On ornithologists. To a man, ornithologists are tall, slender, and bearded so that they can stand motionless for hours, imitating kindly trees, as they watch for birds.

On a Moscow hotel. We had all met at the Rossya Hotel in Moscow. According to the Russians, it is the largest hotel in the world. Whether or not this is true, the Rossy’s charm is not unlike that of New York’s Attica Prison.

I confess I once stayed in The Rossya, and for more than one night. It was colossal and was demolished because its unimaginative glassed-in concrete box kept intruding into pictures of Red Square, Basil’s and the Kremlin. I was told not only which room to use, but also which entrance, with the qualification that “it might be difficult” if we use any of the other doors. Red rag to a bull… Yes, we accessed the place via one of those other entrances and we found that inside the place was a veritable rabbit warren, with floors in one part of the building not matching floors elsewhere. We got so lost that we had to find our way back outside and approach our room from our usual entrance.

It is an image that informs a review of this book, in that taken as a whole, it is a very long, arduous and at times repetitive read. I am sure that the publishers and certainly the author wanted these pieces to be read singly, and that way the ideas remain fresh.

Overall, we are reminded that the standard of debate, both political and literary, has declined since Gore Vidal left us these superb essays.

Denia International Piano Festival, 4 Oct 2023

István I. Székely

István is a concert pianist and internationally recognised teacher. He is Professor at the Conservatorio Superior Katarina Gurska in Madrid and professor at Franz Liszt Center for special talents.  He has been invited to give Master Classes in many countries and he is a frequent jury member in international competitions such as the Franz Liszt International Competition in Rome (Italy), the Takács Competition in Oberschützen (Austria). He is founder, president and artistic director or Ars Alta Cultural and via this group staged the first Gonzalo Soriano Piano competition in Alicante earlier this year. He is the winner of several awards in national and international competitions. Since the age of 15 he has given recitals in Europe, the United States, South America and Asia, such as Alexandria and New Harmony (Indianapolis, USA), the International Piano Festival in Bucaramanga, International Piano Festival in Barrancabermeja, the cycle "International Season in Manizales" (Colombia), and many more. He has performed in many notable venues such as the Palacio de Cibeles in Madrid, Palau de la Música in Valencia, Teatro Principal de Alcoy, congress center "Victor Villegas" in Murcia, in the "Adoc", in the University of Burgos, in the International Chamber Music Festival in Calpe, in "Dénia Classics", Aula de la Cam in Alicante, Teulada Auditorium, La Beneficencia in Valencia, in the Auditorio de la Diputación, "ADDA" in Alicante, Auditorium Mediterrania in La Nucia among others. He has performed in private concert for the Princess of Thailand S.A.R. Chulabhorn Mahidol. 

István es concertista de piano y profesor reconocido internacionalmente. Es Profesor en el Conservatorio Superior Katarina Gurska en Madrid y en el Centro Franz Liszt para talentos. Ha sido invitado a impartir Master Classes en muchos países y es miembro frecuente del jurado en concursos internacionales como el Concurso Internacional Franz Liszt en Roma (Italia), el Concurso Takács en Oberschützen (Austria). Es fundador, presidente y director artístico de Ars Alta Cultural y a través de este grupo organizó el primer concurso de piano Gonzalo Soriano en Alicante a principios de este año. Es ganador de varios premios en concursos nacionales e internacionales. Desde los 15 años ha dado recitales en Europa, Estados Unidos, Sudamérica y Asia, como Alexandria y New Harmony (Indianápolis, EE.UU.), el Festival Internacional de Piano de Bucaramanga, Festival Internacional de Piano de Barrancabermeja, el ciclo "Internacional Temporada en anizales” (Colombia), y muchos más. Ha actuado en numerosos espacios destacados como el Palacio de Cibeles de Madrid, Palau de la Música de Valencia, Teatro Principal de Alcoy, centro de congresos "Victor Villegas" de Murcia, en el "Adoc", en la Universidad de Burgos, en el Festival Internacional de Música de Cámara de Calpe, en “Dénia Classics”, Aula de la Cam de Alicante, Auditorio de Teulada, La Beneficencia de Valencia, en el Auditorio de la Diputación, “ADDA” de Alicante, Auditorio Mediterrania de La Nucia entre otros. Ha actuado en concierto privado para la Princesa de Tailandia S.A.R. Chulabhorn Mahidol.

Yaron Traub

Yaron Traub, a native of Israel, is one of the most recognized conductors in Spain, was Principal and Artistic Director of the Valencia Orchestra from 2005 to 2017. Since winning the Prize at the IV International Kondrashin Conducting Competition in Amsterdam in 1998, Yaron Traub has had a very interesting international career conducting some of the most prestigious symphonic ensembles in the world. During his twelve years of leadership of the Valencia Orchestra, he contributed decisively to the recognition of the Valencia Orchestra as a high-level ensemble and consolidated the regular presence of great international soloists alongside the Valencian ensemble.

Committed to education through music, Yaron Traub has strongly promoted pedagogical activities in the orchestra. As an exemplary extension of his commitment to education, Traub, together with his wife Anja, founded a bilingual international secondary school in 2012 with a strong focus on music, art and drama education.

Yaron Traub, natural de Israel, es uno de los directores más reconocidos de España, fue Director Titular y Artístico de la Orquesta de Valencia de 2005 a 2017. Desde que ganó el Premio en el IV Concurso Internacional de Dirección Kondrashin en Ámsterdam en 1998, Yaron Traub ha tenido una carrera internacional muy interesante dirigiendo algunos de los conjuntos sinfónicos más prestigiosos del mundo. Durante sus doce años al frente de la Orquesta de Valencia contribuyó decisivamente al reconocimiento de la Orquesta de Valencia como formación de alto nivel y consolidó la presencia habitual de grandes solistas internacionales junto a la formación valenciana.

Comprometido con la educación a través de la música, Yaron Traub ha impulsado fuertemente las actividades pedagógicas en la orquesta. Como una extensión ejemplar de su compromiso con la educación, Traub, junto con su esposa Anja, fundó una escuela secundaria internacional bilingüe en 2012 con un fuerte enfoque en la educación musical, artística y dramática.

Ars Alta Cultural, www.arsaltacultural.com

Presidente y Director Artístico - István I. Székely

 

facebook: ars.alta.cultural

email: arsaltacultural@gmail.com

Para recibir detalles de nuestras actividades y conciertos, envie un correo electronico á arsaltacultural@gmail.com

 

Pinchas Zuckerman with the Sinfonia Varsovia in Penderecki, Schubert and Beethoven – a real delicacy

The word “delicacy” can mean many things. It can signify refinement in a personality, something good to eat, or describe something too fragile to handle. Situations can be delicate, also, and perhaps Pinchas Zuckerman, despite his many years of the peak of his musical and performing powers, felt that last night’s concert in Alicante qualified as a rather “delicate” occasion.

The Sinfonia Varsovia’s advertised conductor, Tatsuya Shomono, had to cancel his leadership of this concert, which had originally planned a performance of Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony, after the first half when Pinchas Zuckerman would play the Beethoven violin concerto. But the conductor was ill and could not travel. So Pinchas Zuckerman picked up the baton as well. Or, rather, he didn’t, because he didn’t use one!

A change of program saw the Beethoven Concerto moved to the second half, and the new first half presented works by Penderecki and Schubert. The Sinfonia Varsovia string players opened the evening with Penderecki’s Chaconne In Memoriam Pope John Paul II. And they played it without a conductor, with apparently all the delicate communication skills of a chamber ensemble. Delicate also applied to the music, which seemed to examine, and then re-examine feelings of loss. Played thus, seemingly without active direction, save for a gesture, or a bow stroke from the lender, the Penderecki Chaconne began this evening in a thoroughly original way, though quietly, without show, with delicacy.

Pinchas Zuckerman then conducted Schubert’s Symphony No. 5. In this work, a young Schubert takes his compositional lead from Mozart and Haydn. The music exudes control, form, structure and process, rather paroxysms of emotion. And, as such, it worked beautifully, allowing the orchestra again to play like a chamber group with elegance, poise and, yes, delicacy.

After the interval, Pinchas Zukerman, was soloist and director for Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. Now I have often heard the soloist treating this work as if it is a grandiose statement, as if every phrase needs staccato attached. And so this evening’s performance by Pinchas Zuckerman came as a real surprise, almost like a breath of fresh, delicate air. He stressed the shape and phrasing of this music and, crucially, demonstrated how the soloist blends with, interacts with, and times contradicts the orchestral accompaniment.

I first heard Pinchas Zuckeran in London’s South Bank about half a century ago and I don’t remember the concert. But I will remember this location, especially for the refined, and subtle delicacy that he brought to the music and the occasion.

Visibly tired by the end, he kept returning to the platform since the ADDA audience never wants to let anyone have an easy time. He did offer an encore, a short cradle song, to which he invited the audience to “Sing along”. It was a grand, memorable, delicate gesture.

 

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.

Surprise, surprise – Bergmann and Baldeyrou play Sibelius, Weber and Franck in ADDA, Alicante

Surprise, surprise might seem an incongruous title for the review of a concert which seemed to offer a-middle-of-the-road programme. Sibelius’s Finlandia began the evening – it often does. Call Maria von Weber’s Clarinet Concerto is not played in concert as much as it should be, but its inclusion raises no eyebrows. César Franck’s Symphony in D Minor, again, is not played very often, but it’s a work that everyone knows about, though for most concert goers it's hardly commonplace. So, given the familiar appearance of the program, what was surprising?

Well, the personnel were unfamiliar. We had our regular band, our ADDA orchestra, but our guest conductor was the Norwegian Pune Bergmann, who was making his debut in this hall. His entrance provided the evening’s first surprise. Rune Bergmann is a big man, but he is also quite amazingly jovial, his smile appearing to stretch right across the string section. It seemed like the celebration of Finland’s identity was being directed by a laughing, Norwegian mountain, laughing out of the sheer joy of the music, I hasten to add. Musically there were no surprises here, just our usual quality.

The second surprise came with our soloist, Nicolas Baldeyrou. Few concert goers ever hear a clarinet concerto. For most who do, it’s probably one written by Mozart, with Weber’s work coming a distant second in the list.

Now Weber’s Clarinet Concerto was doubly surprising. First the playing of Nicolas Baldeyrou was nothing less than outstanding. His understanding of the music alongside his wonderful communication with conductor and orchestra made this performance of the work I have heard in recordings and broadcasts innumerable times something completely new. Especially surprising was the slow movement, which times reached pianissimos that were on the limits of hearing, and as a result, all the more dramatic and poignant. This performance will live for ever in the memory, so beautifully crafted and played that it became a completely new experience.

The ADDA audience does tend to bring soloists back on stage for another bow. We are used to demanding an encore. But this ADDA audience’s reaction to Nicolas Baldeyrou was special. The communal recognition that this with something special was almost tangible. The demanded encore was given, and it was again a surprise.

It was the Habañera from Bizet’s Carmen, arranged for clarinet and orchestra. And it was more than a showpiece, more than a lollipop to quieten the crowd. Faultless playing, communicative ensemble, again combined to create a new, surprising experience from what was immediately familiar.

A symphony in name, Cesar Franck’s D Minor has only three movements, two of which are marked allegro, thought you would never know it. Not really a master of orchestration, Franck seems to have concentrated on the storytelling. The musical lines evolve like the narrative of a novel, so that this symphony becomes more like a tone poem than an argument. And, after living in the world of minor keys for most of its duration, the long first movement surprisingly, and without warning, suddenly finds its conclusion in a major key. It’s all quite baffling, like a believer questioning a faith that suddenly returns, dispelling doubt.

And yes, there was an encore. Rune Bergmann again turned to the audience and again smiled that broad grin. “Edvard Grieg La Mañana”, he said. It was the first piece of classical music I ever heard, but it wasn’t  in Spanish.

Normal People by Sally Rooney

Sally Rooney’s Normal People is a hugely successful and very widely read novel about millennials. It concentrates on the relationships that develop in a group of school graduates as they transition from school to university, concentrating on and then majoring in their sex lives. It does this not to the exclusion of all else, but its preoccupation is overt and is as all-consuming for the reader as it probably was for the characters.

At the novel’s core are the ongoing, developing, changing, breaking, tortuous, steamy, lustful, intellectual, repeated, animal though never committed relationships between Connell and Marianne. They are from Sligo, went to school together and then migrated together to Trinity College, Dublin. So much for their similarities.

Amongst the differences one is of paramount importance. Connell is male and Marianne is female, a contrast that sees them come together fruitfully and often in combination to qualify several of the adjectives that described their relationship in the last paragraph. Important amongst the differences, but largely unexamined in the novel, is the fact that Connell is working class while Marianne is middle class. Connell’s academic interests are in literature, whilst Marianne specialises in politics though, it must be recorded, largely without focus, except for occasional side-forays into issues related to the Middle East. Both high-flying students seem to spend more time sleeping that is not sleeping and drinking that is drinking than they devote to reading, or indeed the thought of it.

Connell’s mother cleans for Marianne’s household and apparently is not overpaid. Strangely, though we never learn many of the details, neither Connell nor Marianne has a father in attendance. Connell’s mother might just have got pregnant on a short fling of youth, while Marianne’s father died, presumably some time ago, because she never really shares a memory of him. Whether this common heritage might have had some psychological effect on either of the two adolescents, we never learn.

Connell and Marianne come together, drift apart, take up with others, break off, re-encounter. It’s rather a procession at times. What seems to form a thread is that both always seem to be more worried about how their behaviour affects themselves rather than others. Noone ever seems to know what they themselves want, though everyone seems to get precisely what they ask for. There’s plenty of booze, plenty of sex, a change of personnel and more of the same. There’s an excursion to Sweden with stereotypical kinky photo shoots, more bust ups, arguments, reconciliations which never seem to refer to the past and occasionally there seems to be a kind of sincerity, though all without speech marks.

All pretty normal, perhaps, but always engaging.

Thirty-Five Poems by Herbert Read

Thirty-Five Poems by Herbert Read, I repeat

Stavesacre – a larkspur plant or its seeds

Benison - benediction

Sodality – fellowship, concgregaion, association for chairty

Cincture – belt or girdle

Lanthorn – lantern

Herbert Read, in the veritable slim volume, starts in the First World War. He is not particularly well known as a war poet, but he has been honoured as such. For him, it seems that the confrontation with daily horror led not only to the recognition of the absurdity of conflict, but also an appreciation of its political futility.

… Our victory was our defeat

Power was retained where power had been misused

And youth was left to sweep away

The ashes that fires had strewn beneath our feet.

 

The poetry is often rooted in the tangibly real, so much so that it sometimes seems to deny the possibility of an imagined ideal.

 

… Now chaos intervenes

and I leave not gladly but with harsh disdain

a world too strong in folly for the bliss of dreams.

 

He was a noted anarchist and was politically and philosophically sophisticated. But sometimes the simplest argument is stronger.

… your god has not this power. Or he would heal

the world’s wounds and create the empire

now left in the defeated hands of men.

 

He does not, however, appear to be an atheist overall. He does allow himself occasionally to inhabit a heaven he often seems to deny.

 

This good achieved, then to God we turn

for a crown on our perfection: God we create

in the end of action, not in dreams.

 

There is only reality, however. The experience of that reality, in all its natural beauty is here. It presents experience which is worth recording merely for what it is, But reality, also, just might not be the only thing we might encounter.

 

Fate is in facts: the only hope

an unknown chance.

We got rhythm – Josep Vicent and the ADDA orchestra in Ravel, Adams and Reveueltas

Concert programs nowadays are often themed. Sometimes the idea is obvious, sometimes trite, but even attempting to present such a program is preferable to a parade of pop classics. Sometimes real imagination has gone into the selected words, and the link may not be obvious. Whether or not the works chosen by Josep Vicent in last night’s ADDA concert in Alicante were consciously selected to illustrate a theme of the rhythm of popular dance, as transformed by composers who did not take instructions literally, is irrelevant. But that was the theme that came across to this captivated listener.

The evening potentially was a challenge for those concertgoers who live mainly in the repertoire already known to them, but no one attending this concert went away in any way challenged. Indeed, everyone left enlightened by the experience.

The ADDA orchestra opened with Ravel’s La Valse. Now this is a regularly misunderstood work, not least originally by those who commissioned it! It still suggests a dance, which is what it is. And yet, it isn’t. It might start like a dance, but it ends like a nightmare. It’s a waltz dreamed up by a composer at the height of his imaginative powers, and it is a thoroughly surreal work, not at all what it might seem at first hearing. In fact, this is one of those works that seems to change with repeated listening. First impressions retain the sweet theme. Later familiarity stresses the dissonant clashes.

Using a large and powerfully scored orchestra, a gentle dance theme transforms into a war-like threat, literally a nightmare of oppression, all delivered with a smile as the dagger goes in. If I have a criticism, which I don’t, I might suggest the work’s power is best delivered by not interpreting each phrase manneristically. When the line of the waltz predominates, the side-roads of the musical argument, the diversions that give the piece meaning, are rendered all the more powerful. In this performance, Josep Vicent chose to stress every phrase, almost to isolate it. And beautiful it was, certainly exciting, but the whole experience possibly suffered because the side-roads became the main route. The orchestral playing by our resident ADDA orchestra, as ever, was breath-taking.

And then we heard Absolute Jest by John Adams with the Casals Quartet as soloists. This is a work where John Adams takes well-known Beethoven and reinterprets it by interleaving it with his own material, ostensibly to re-create childhood experiences of his hearing the late quartets of Beethoven so often.

Now it must be remembered the Beethoven regularly used dance rhythm in his work. Like Ravel in La Valse, he often stretched these rhythms into musically interesting but absurd forms. And in Absolute Jest this double take adopts a third layer as John Adams interleaves his own material that both contrasts with and complements the original. The effect is utterly surreal. It’s like encountering the familiar in a place you have never visited. As in La Valse, these are not familiar phrases in a changed context, they are memories of the familiar where almost nothing makes sense, as in a dream. Apart, that is, from the rhythm, which, like a home key for Haydn, keeps reasserting itself and thus keeping the strangeness of the experience at home, rendering the whole doubly surprising.

As an encore, the Casals Quartet played the second movement of Beethoven’s Op135. It is a piece that Absolute Jest featured prominently amongst its quoted material. Standalone, it’s a piece that reminds an audience of just how revolutionary a composer Beethoven was. It is a piece that hardly exists. What is the theme? What is the harmony? All four players, like characters in Chekhov, seem to play only the subtext of a plot, and yet it comes together because insistent rhythms create lines. It is perhaps the most intangible thing Beethoven wrote.

And then, in the second half, we heard a real rarity. Silvestre Revueltas wrote film music for The Night of the Mayas. Paul Hindemith presented some of the music as a suite, and then José Ives-Limantour reassembled the material to form what might be seen as of four movement symphony. Using popular dance rhythms and re-imagined pre-Columbian sounds, Revueltas produced music as surreal is the Ravel that began the concert. The difference for a European audience was that the waltz form was familiar, but the dance forms and rhythms in the Revueltas were not. Here Mayan dances are presented and convince musically, despite the fact that neither the composer, nor perhaps anyone else, knew what they had sounded like. It is possibly patronising to say that, however, because Mayan culture is still very much alive!  

Convincing, however, it was. Extended passages where the percussion stood alone with only minimal commentary from the orchestra were perhaps the most memorable, simply because they were so different from what had gone before. And always we had the rhythm, that essential quality to which to evening had seemed to be dedicated.

As an encore, Josep Vicent and the ADDA orchestra offered the final part of Ravel’s Bolero. Another popular form, another rhythm, a three in a bar complicated by a composer who knew how to stretch the imagination! Another surreal image wrapped in incessant rhythm. Brilliant.