Carl Orff's Carmina Burana in Cluj

The Academic College – Auditorium Maximum, Cluj-Napoca

Choir and Orchestra of the Transylvania State Philharmonic

Gergely Madaras conductor

Andreea Guriță Novac soprano

Andrea Mirchev tenor

Geani Brad baritone

Carl Orff - Carmina Burana

Sceptical about yet another Carmina Burana, and yet I need not have worried. There was nothing else available, so I booked it.

The hall has a rounded end and at first sight would focus the sound. Well it did, but in a very musical way. What we heard was a quite brilliant acoustic, when every sound was crisp and clearly defined. Add to that the tempi choice of the conductor, Georgely Madaras, and the mix was perfect.

The tempi were all quite fast and he used quite a lot of accelerando. The music seemed to chase itself along and early on I was worried that the baritone would get left behind. Appropriately, the tenor wore a white jacket and the soprano a red dress. These soloists were all more than competent and really acted out the roles they sang. The tenor had the right mix of humour and pain to be convincing.

Above all the chorus made the evening. They were together, responsive to the tempi changes and very enthusiastic. The orchestral playing was brilliant, and the audience lapped it up, finishing with one of those applause sessions in unison that are so popular in eastern Europe.

BBC National Orchestra of Wales plays Grace Williams, Saint-Saens and Elgar under Jaime Martín with Akiko Suwanai

 

Last night’s concert in ADDA, Alicante was given by BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Jaime Martín with Akiko Suwanai as soloist. On the face of the published schedule, they were just two works, the third violin concerto of Saint-Saens and Elgar’s Enigma Variations. A little short, one might think… Well think again!

The evening’s programme scheduled a third work, a substantial piece as well. It was Grace Williams’s Sea Sketches for string orchestra. At nearly twenty minutes, this rendered the concert’s length substantial at least.

Written in 1944 by its Welsh composer, Sea Sketches predates Britten's Peter Grimes, which, of course, includes the now separately performed Sea Interludes. Sea Sketches by Grace Williams comprises five movements that explore the sonorities of a string orchestra, as well as giving an impressionistic portrait of the sea in five different pictures– in wind, in song, with mysterious sirens, breaking on the shore and becalmed in summer. The textures of Grace Williams’s writing for strings stressed the coolness of a windy beach, with neo-classical flavours hardening the language of late Romanticism. One might think of Britten’s string writing when listening to Sea Sketches, but Grace Williams in the piece speaks to an audience with her own voice and communicates her own personal feelings. Grace Williams died almost fifty years ago, and her music richly deserves a wider audience.

Akiko Suwanai was soloist in Saint-Saen’s Violin Concerto No. 3. Her playing was simply breathtaking. From the work’s quiet opening and then into the opening allegro, she gave everything the work needed. If Saint-Saens was anything, he was a composer of technical mastery, and in this concerto there is both real dialogue between the orchestra and soloist and, indeed, that dialogue is always audible. The composer’s handling of the orchestra is nothing less than expert. A listener is always aware of its power to dominate, always conscious of its lines of argument, but also confident that none of the soloist’s statements will be drowned.

The slow movement was pure delight after the energy of the opening. Its longer lines allowed Akiko Suwanai to show the lyrical side of her playing, and she used the opportunity to give a beautiful performance, stressing the elegance of this music. The final allegro is again full of energy and Akiko Suwanai’s playing reproduced the communication of the first movement. It was a superb performance of the spectacular music. Akiko Suwanai gave the audience a little unaccompanied Bach has an encore. As she played alone, it was interesting to note how attentively even the orchestra listened.

Elgar’s Enigma Variations is so well-known seems unnecessary to say any more about it. But the work as a whole is not as well known as the Nimrod variation, which is often played stand-alone. It is decades since I last heard a live performance of the entire work, and I was struck by the extreme dynamics, the composer demands.

A challenge of variation writing is to keep an audience interested in the familiar. Elgar’s solution in Enigma is to present the theme and then fourteen variations which exploit the full range of orchestral possibilities. Each variation is ostensibly a portrait of an individual and the composer ups the pace by keeping the variations short, except of course, for Nimrod, which is always too short for an audience from an audience's point of view.

What had turned out to be quite a long concert finished with a Russian encore, Glinka’s Russlan and Ludmilla Overture. It was played with real gusto and enthusiasm, as was everything else we heard. What a delight, also, to hear a British Orchestra playing two works by British composers on a foreign tour.

Josep Vicent and the ADDA Orchestra programme one of the twentieth century’s major works and a concerto by Campogrande featuring Meta4

 

The challenge of reviewing a performance of a work that one is deeply fond of is to remain objective. Well, I have already failed to be so. I first came across the Symphony No. 4, The Inextinguishable by Carl Nielsen when I was in my late teens. I have been listening to it regularly since then, so I must have heard it several hundred times. One might have thought that over the years its effect would grow less intense, its originality might have blurred, its surprise diminished. Not so.

Live performances of the work – except on radio – have been rare. It must be forty years since I last heard it in the concert hall. In a near lifetime of concert going, I have never heard the composer’s first or second symphony in concert. I have heard the Espansiva once, the fourth maybe twice and the fifth maybe four times. The enigmatic sixth, Sinfonia Semplice, once only. At home, I regularly listen to recordings, but Nielsen in the concert hall is something of a rarity.

Thank you, thus, to Josep Vicent and the ADDA Orchestra for programming the work and performing it with such commitment. For me. It was the highlight of the season and did not disappoint.

Written in 1916 and containing the composer’s references to The First World War, The Inextinguishable is a revolutionary work despite being musically conservative and sharing with Nielsen’s other works a considerable debt to Johannes Brahms. Carl Nielsen became one of music’s most original voices and it is in this symphony that we hear some of his most profound musical statements.

The fourth, for instance, has four conventional movements. But they are played without a break. Nielsen developed the idea of “progressive keys” in which music starts in one key and ends in another, thus suggesting in the listener’s ear an idea of “progress”. In the case of the fourth symphony, this is enhanced by playing the movements without breaks. And within those movements the musical material is very varied. Other composers might have used the progression of keys for entirely musical reasons, but in Nielsen there is this added layer of a journey for the listener. And the effect is subtle. Carl Nielsen never wanted to lead his audience by the nose through a “programme”. The effect is personal, even Romantic, and utterly convincing.

Two timpanis go to war occasionally in this work, and the orchestra manages to overcome their anger by being level-headed and positive, thus reflecting the composer’s fundamental optimism. In the fourth symphony, this optimism still triumphs, whereas in the fifth symphony, this optimism still comes through in the end but for all of forty minutes, the music is in minor keys, only finding its way to a major key in the closing coda. But by the time Carl Nielsen wrote the sixth symphony, cynicism had got the better of his optimistic spirit, and that is why the work remains problematic.

But still in the fourth Symphony, the compositional style is late Romanticism. It is still the individual that matters, though Nilsson is modern enough to frame the experience in current events in the external world. He is musically conservative enough to use fugues, but they bite with sharp edges, their counterpoint being jagged and modernistic. But within this conservative approach to composition, the composer manages to present material that is succinct, to the point and always subservient to an overall idea. The music is almost Neo-Classical despite being written before the term was invented!

But above all, there is energy in this music. The energy is “life energy”, which the composer thought would shine through current difficulties and result in positive outcomes. As a symphonist, the conservative Carl Nielsen became overall a thoroughly modern individual, ultimately wearied by the life he so desperately tried to affirm. How modern is that?

In the first half of the concert, we heard Josep Vicent’s selection of Manuel de Fallas’s Three Cornered Hart and Liberi Tutti, Nicola Campogrande’s Concerto for String Quartet, and Orchestra. The ADDA audience has heard the former work regularly and it never fails to rouse. The latter work featured the now superstars of Meta4, who performed brilliantly, if at the same time a little anonymously. Personally, I found the work always interesting, but eventually disappointing. Its generally minimalist style seemed to concentrate on creating a sheen of sound which was in itself convincing but also seemed to envelop the soloists in an overall orchestral sound which rather hid their significant and substantial contribution. The problem for me was not in the performance but in the handling of the musical material.

Overall, I found the Nielsen still much more modern, despite its being written over a century ago.

Escandinavia – ADDA hosts Joan Enric Lluna and Joana Carneiro in Grundman, Bach and Schumann

 

The concert was subtitled “Escandinavia”, a label that some of the audience found a little confusing. But a program note clarified that the Symphony No. 2 of Robert Schumann is also often called Escandinavia as a nickname. Despite being premiered in Dresden in 1845, it was also dedicated to King Oscar of Norway and Sweden – hence the nickname.

Baffling labels aside, there was nothing in this program to challenge a concert-going audience, apart from possibly a world premiere of a piece by locally resident composer, Jorge Grundman. The History of a Smile for clarinet and orchestra was listed as his opus 96, no less. The orchestra in question turned out to be strings and a percussion section of a vibraphone and a marimba. These latter instruments played a significant part in creating a soundscape for the work, while, if anything, the full complement of strings was, if anything, underused.

But this is essentially a show piece for solo clarinet, though it would be stretching things to say it was a concerto. Minimalist structures are heard here, with many figures relying on minor scales or modes around a bass pedal. The overall effect is perhaps rather monotonous, but, given the minimalist inspiration, that is part of the point. Joan Enric Lluna’s playing was superb, as were the two encores he offered, both his own compositions and forming two parts of his Homenaje á Maestro Rodrigo.

Joana Carneiro’s conducting of this opening work was itself astounding in that she prompted every detail of the score. It came, therefore, as no surprise to read that she often specialises in contemporary music. When she moved onto Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3, she was equally precise with music that demands above all precision. Now this is every well-known music, especially the second movement, the Air, which is often heard as a standalone piece. The ADDA Orchestra’s playing, especially that of the trumpet, was breathtaking.

And in the second half we heard a Romantic symphony that epitomises the mid-nineteenth century approach to music. It is often levied as a criticism against minimalism that the music is all process, not product. Anyone thinking that this is a characteristic of modern music should listen to the Symphony No. 2 of Robert Schumann, where the composer’s assumptions of form, modulation and orchestration are more than evident. In the end, it is a satisfying work, but, for all Schumann’s reputation for unpredictability, this particular concertgoer tends to find his approach formulaic. It’s a personal opinion.

The orchestral playing, the conducting, and the solo playing were all superb. The program also held together beautifully and as a whole it was also superb.

L’Écume des Jours by Edison Denisov from Lille Opera on OperaVision

 

I do not usually review anything outside of direct experience. Theatre, opera, and concerts, yes, because they are experienced at firsthand. I make an exception for books, because reading is so personal that each different reader may find a different world within pages visited by others. Film, recordings and television I regard as packaged and, though I might record what I have seen, I do not write reviews. There are exceptions, notably the operas Eros and Psyche by Rosicky and Von Einem’s Der Prozess - The Trial, both of which were live performances made available by the wonderful work of OperaVision. The exception has come around again, this time in the form of Denisov’s L’Écume des Jours, an opera also broadcast by OperaVision.

Premiered in 1986, Opera de Lille recently presented the work, and it is available on the OperaVision website until September 2026. I encourage opera lovers everywhere to try it, and anyone interested in contemporary music should make a make a point of listening, perhaps on several occasions.

Edison Denisov’s music does not have many performances in the concert halls of western Europe and North America. Personally, I can see a straight line of influence through the twentieth century – the Soviet century – starting with Shostakovich, continuing through Schnittke and terminating with Denisov. Seen together, the work of these three composers seems to illustrate the history and fate of the Soviet Union from its creation to its demise. Right from the Symphony No1 of Dmitri Shostakovich, with its almost confident modernity anticipating the Constructivism in art that would follow, through to the disparate multiplicity of style and form that characterizes Denisov’s music, there was generally an increasing loss of confidence in the ideal and increasing resort to cynicism on behalf of the composers in order to express what they were feeling.

Listen, for instance, to each composer’s first symphony, and compare them. As recently mentioned, Shostakovich was generally upbeat, though as a composer he was never particularly optimistic. Later, always prone to pastiche, in his case circus, music and jazz often invade the gloom, the first symphony limits itself to what might be achieved by a young genius. It is forward looking, if not quite confident.

Contrast that with the first symphony of Arnold Schnittke. The vision is equally grand, but now there is evidence of cynicism, some use of the random, inclusion of electronics and frequent use of popular forms, though these are generally integrated and interwoven. There is less confidence than in Shostakovich and more cynicism, but the overall impression is that the individual can still make a contribution, though the outlook is bleak.

In Denisov’s first symphony, equally grand in vision as the two already mentioned, it seems that recognizable forms and shapes have been subsumed into confusion, a thoroughly competent confusion where the composer can express what he wishes but cannot settle mentally into a particular style or groove. Everything is disparate – at least on the surface. The concerns of previous generations of composers are still there are still here, but they are packaged together, as if the composer cannot decide what should take precedence. The despair seems here closer to the surface, the energy of cynicism that both Shostakovich and Schnittke is here dissipated to despair. It sounds as if Edison Denisov lacks the commitment to espouse as a particular style and consciously dithered the sound.

And said we come to L’Écume des Jours in the production by Opera Lille. Based on Boris Vian’s surrealist novel Froth On The Daydream, we meet Chloë, who is clearly not well. She turns to Isis, her friend and lover, and pleads for one last chance to meet a boy and be happy. Such a boy appears in the shape of Colin. Chloë and Colin hit it off, though Chloë has to disguise herself in a pink dress and wear a wig to hide the fact that she that her treatment has caused her to lose her hair. Chloë is in fact suffering from water lily in the lung and her treatment is to be surrounded with flowers.

Serious surreal encounters ensue, which involve mice, people emitting smoke, a doctor who prepares a treatment by severing his own tongue and piercing his own arm, a character who cuts off his arm with a knife, and various other visual treats.

Initially, the flights of fancy are vaguely shocking and part humorous, but as the opera progresses, they become darker and more threatening. A real crucified Christ appears regularly, accompanied by his own choir, and a character called Alise asserts her substantial presence on the proceedings.

The opera’s denouement is a lethal injection for Chloë to end her suffering, and we are left at the end with Isis, Chloë and Colin reclining on a hospital bed, with Chloë dying But with Isis placed centrally, we realise that she is suffering the most. The opera seems to be saying that the real suffering is felt by those who experience bereavement, not death.

Denisov’s music is perfect for the scenario. It comes and goes, makes its point, then disappears. When popular forms appear, they threaten rather than or relieve. Eventually, these characters are tossed around by events like rudderless boats in a storm. They are part of and party to the events, but they are never in control. Chloë is dying, Colin, to some extent, exists only because Chloë wished him to. It is Isis, the person in the middle of the love triangle who suffers, and it is she who is alive and will continue to live. The shortest straw, perhaps.

L’Écume des Jours is a rarity. Opera lovers should give it a go. Do not be daunted by the apparent disconnectedness of most of the music. After two hours, it will all make sense in the sense that it remains nonsense. The above is what I took from the experience in a single sitting. There will be more.

Bassem Akiki conducts and the direction of Anna Smolar is amazing.  Josefin Feiler, Cameron Becker, Katia Ledoux, Elmar Gilbertsson, Edwin Crossley-Mercer, Natasha Te Rupe Wilson, Robin Neck, Maurel Endong, Matthieu Lécroart have important parts in the cast. Do experience L’Écume des Jours on OperaVision.

Martha Argerich, Charles Dutoit and the Orchestra Della Svizzera Italiana present a star-studded concert in ADDA, Alicante

 

Star billing often does not live up to audience expectations. Such events tend to attract attendees who are more interested in seeing a star name than in listening to what that performer might be able to do. There was not one minute like that in the entire evening last night in ADDA, Alicante, where we were privileged to hear music made by Martha Argerich and Charles Dutoit.

They are both getting on in years. Martha Argerich is 84 and Charles Dutoit 90, but no one who listened to the music they made would have had any inkling of their advancing years, so fresh and eager were both in their music making.

 Martha Argerich’s name would grace any concert in any auditorium. Here she played the first concerto of Beethoven, the same work that opened her concerto-performing career just 76 years ago. It is hard when listening to this music to imagine that it was written before 1800. This is fresh, sophisticated, jolly, and serious at the same time, and displays the kind of integration between the orchestra and soloist that was to shape and so completely change the form so completely from the elegance and decoration of the eighteenth-century model.

Though it was not Beethoven’s first attempt at the form - we know that he was in intensely self-critical - it has a freshness and directness that belies its complexity. Here Beethoven wanders wide from the declared C major and makes abrupt transitions, both rhythmic and harmonic. This can make a performance of the work seem disconnected, but not, of course, in the hands of Martha Argerich, who first recorded the work over 40 years ago.

The followed an encore. Scarlatti’s Sonata K1 41 is a piece that Martha Argerich plays regularly as an encore. What her right hand has to do in this piece is both fast and intricate. But the effect is above our musical: there is no show here, only quality.

The orchestra and Charles Dutoit had started the evening with a performance of Ravel’s Mother Goose. Now Ravel’s music is always surprising. Here, Charles Dutoit chose slow tempi that stressed both of the beauty of the phrases and the detail of the orchestration. Nothing in music exists, of course, if the musicians are not up to the task. In this concert, the Orchestra Della Svizzera Italiana was not only up to the task, their playing and integration as an ensemble sculpted every phrase to perfection.

In the second half, Charles Dutoit directed the Orchestra Della Svizzera Italiana in the fourth symphony of Mendelson, the Italian. At 90 years of age, Charles Dutoit keeps gestures to a minimum, but what he gets from his players is superb. And it was especially joyful for the audience to witness how much the players were enjoying the experience, a response, which kept the music, both lyrical and vibrant. Charles Dutoit announced that the encore would be a piece that was “very well known”, and it was. Perfection.

Handel's Giulio Cesare In Egitto in Valencia is a triumph for all concerned, singers, designers, directors, technicians and especially musicians

 

Giulio Cesare In Egitto is an opera by Handel dating from approximately 1724. The word “approximately” must also be applied to the operas of George Frederick Handel because he was nothing if not a pragmatist. He regularly rewrote or edited passages to accommodate the particular skills or shortcomings of whatever singers he had at his disposal. For a composer who wrote over forty Italian operas, some of them almost household names, we would expect that opportunities to hear his work in major houses are frequent. Though I personally have not sought performances of the composer’s work, I admit that the last time I heard a performance of one of the operas was forty years ago in London when the English National Opera did Xerxes. I recall that I attended two performances, because it was a superb production. So it was with some misgivings that I approached this production in Valencia of Giulio Cesare In Egitto. My musical tastes have changed over the years and I was not sure that the experience would measure up to expectations -  or perhaps the real fear was that it would!

The reluctance was not musical. Handel’s melodic gift is one of the most dependable things in European music. Basically, I worried that a three-and-a-half-hour baroque opera would not sustain my interest in a hall like Les Arts, Valencia, where the presence of a baroque orchestra might just be lost in the sheer size of the place. I need not have worried. A seat in row five meant that everything was perfectly audible, though I imagine that some passages of this production might have been less than audible in the gods.

And speaking of gods, they were remarkably absent in this libretto. Though the sets regularly featured pyramids and ibises, there were a few references to any religious differences that might have existed between Egypt and Rome. Indeed, the setting was the Ptolemaic period, so indeed there may have been not have been many differences, at least as far as emperors and generals were concerned.

At the start, Caesar is victorious. Tolomeo, ruler of Egypt, has had Pompeo, the opposing general in the recent battle, beheaded, and, thinking the trophy of the head would please Caesar, he has his henchman, Achilla, present it to Caesar. To perform the task, Achilla is dressed like a cross between a jester and an ogre. Caesar is revolted, as is Cordelia, Pompeo’s wife and Sesto, his son, who vows to avenge the death of his father. In this production Sesto’s youth is emphasised by his inability to lift the sword that he wields as a threat.

Cleopatra, not satisfied with playing second fiddle to her brother, then sets about a plot to remove him from the throne and bring Caesar along with her, thus uniting power and cementing her position. Much of the opera’s plot revolves around the way Cleopatra uses her guile and looks to win Caesar over to her plan. It is essential, therefore, that Cleopatra can not only sing, she needs to act supremely well, without once hamming it up.

One of the major successes of this imaginative production was to use two Cleopatras, one of whom sang. Cleopatra, the seductress, wore a long frilly dress, while Cleopatra the schemer wore a business suit. The two Cleopatras were made up to appear very similar and swapped clothes here and there, depending on what the music was conveying. In a moment of absolute magic, Cleopatra, as an inconsequential servant, seduces a snoozing Caesar. But he is on stage, while Cleopatra sings from within the audience, dressed as the seductress. At the scenes denouement, the second Cleopatra appears on stage to stand in triumph over Caesar, but she, the non-singing character, is dressed as the schemer. Ultimate conquest is achieved. Both the drama and the beauty this scene conveyed was one of the production’s triumphs.

By the end, Pompeo’s death is avenged, Tolomeo gets his comeuppance and Cesar and Cleopatra are married to everyone’s delight, even the characters who also who have been recently killed.

Baroque opera is not renowned for either action or drama. Indeed in Giulio Cesare In Egitto, the norm is for one character to present an aria expressing their current emotional state and the dilemmas that they imagine. This focuses the attention of the audience on two things: musicality and production. Musicality underpins the credibility of the character and production contextualises their thoughts and makes sense of everything.

The musicality was masterfully executed by Mark Minkowski, who clearly has a genuine penchant for this form. The tempi he chose and especially the dynamics he employed were nothing less than masterful, and the Valencia Orchestra was not only up to the challenge, but the players also seemed to relish the opportunity to show off their prowess. The pianissimo passages in particular were riveting. Here, in this great theatre before an audience of more than thousand, a character with orchestral accompaniment was able to sing quietly and be heard by everyone. It made all the characters, above all, human and their expressed psychological dilemmas real. Only rarely have I heard a production of an opera where as much obvious planning has gone into integrating what we heard and saw. It is one thing to plan on another to execute, but the cast of Giulio Cesare In Egitto did it all. Everything, ultimately, had to make sense and it did!

And the production needs to be highlighted. It is hard to single out a particular aspect, so the triumvirate of director Vicent Boussard, designer Frank Philipp Schlossman and costume designer Christine Lacroix must all be mentioned, as indeed must the lighting of Andreas Grűter. All these elements came together in an utterly convincing whole that always integrated, never separated the audience from the meaning as interpreted by the characters on stage. It is rare to find such obvious harmony of purpose across all aspects of an opera production.

Visually, the staging used a mock screen, outlined in white and was therefore almost cinematic. Occasionally, a black panel would slide across the front to divide the stage in two. This was used to emphasize a particular character’s isolation. It also provided a stunning way to chang scene, with the lighting effects following the movement of the panel across the stage. Also innovative was the use of the moving panel to facilitate the entry and exit of protagonists. It all added up to a seamless and wholly credible production where each aspect complemented the whole and never intruded. This was a significant achievement. In addition, we had singers and musicians within the audience, a violinist on stage in a musical duel with Caesar and above all wonderful playing from the orchestra.

And I have not mentioned the singers! Marina Monzó as Cleopatra quite stole the show. Her singing was perfect for the role, and she also managed to portray the two roles of seductress and schemer perfectly. Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen as Caesar was also perfect, if at times a little less than audible if singing backstage. Caesar’s foray into the audience after Cleopatra’s seduction was pure magic. Sara Mingado’s Cordelia and Arianna Vendittelli as Sesto were in some respects cameo roles but nevertheless came across superbly as three-dimensional characters. Cameron Shahbazi’s Tolomeo, camp and gay in the extreme, was utterly convincing and Jen-Philippe McClish as Achilla and Bryan Sala as Curio were also superb. Achilla’s inconsistency and constant wavering were communicated superbly.

This was an utterly memorable visit to the opera, and an opportunity to revisit the world of baroque opera in the hands of Handel. It was memorable in every aspect, music, singing and staging, and I stress again that it was the integration of these elements that was so successful. I hope it is not forty years until the next Handel opera.