Claudio Constantini and Josep Vicent deliver surprises in music by Gershwin and Beethoven in ADDA, Alicante

 

Sometimes a conventional concert program springs surprises when, as an audience member, you least expect it. This evening’s main surprise was the soloist, Claudio Constantini, who is one of the very few “classical” musicians who has made his name across genres on two different instruments, the piano and the bandoneon. Peruvian by birth, but educated in Finland, the Netherlands and France, he has never lost his passion for Latin American music and indeed the popular forms of that music. Having been nominated in 2019 for a Latin Grammy for his playing of Gershwin, it was fitting that in this concert the first half was devoted to the American composer.

We began with the Cuban Overture whose rhythms seemed to infect the whole evening with energy. This is by no means a light introduction to a concert. From the beginning, it is a major piece that might be considered as a tone poem for orchestra. It features Cuban rhythms (it was originally titled Rumba), and Caribbean percussion instruments. Gershwin wanted these at the front of the orchestra, but last night in ADDA a compromise was struck, with percussion at the back of the stage but regularly featuring large, projected onto the back wall of the auditorium. The musical effect of the piece combined with the expert playing of the ADDA Orchestra we sheer delight.

Then we heard Claudio Constantini as soloist in Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blue. Approaching a work such as this, which in many respects can present a parody of itself, can be problematic. For my personal taste, in the hands of classical musicians, there is often not enough risk taking. In the hands of popular interpreters, the music often comes second behind the performer’s ego. This particular performance, however, was memorable both because the harmonies and rhythms were properly stretched to excitement, but also because the playing was accurate and respected the score. Claudio Constantini’s playing of the solo part illustrated the fact that he has he has he has played it before. His dynamics and timing were exquisite.

Now usually, the ADDA audience demands an encore from a soloist. Often performers appear reluctant to offer one. Not so Claudio Constantini, who needed no repeated curtain calls to come back on the stage with a bandoneon. He played one of his own compositions with string accompaniment, a tango of sorts, a milonga perhaps, where the cadences often sounded like Piazzolla. Superb. Quiet. Very successful.

In part two we heard a performance of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, No. 6. But this was different from any other performance of Beethoven 6 that I personally have heard.

ADDA programmes often list the movements of a piece alongside their timings. Last night’s programme did list the movements but gave only the duration of the whole symphony. Josep Vicent clearly decided that this performance of the work would have no pauses at the movement breaks and so we heard forty minutes of music without a break. It worked beautifully and Beethoven’s vision of rural life did come across as a vast picture of both landscape and people’s place within it. This playing of the piece without a break was a real surprise, and it was truly memorable.

Gimenez’s The Marriage of Luis Alonso closed the evening, and Josep Vicent encouraged the audience to accompany by clapping.

L’enfance du Christ. Op 25 by Hector Berlioz: Mark Elder conducts the Valencia orchestra and chorus in Castello - a surprising understatement

 

Having just heard a performance of L’enfance du Christ. Op 25, I realize how little I know about the music of Hector Berlioz. His Symphonie Fantastique has figured on several programmes over the years. as has the Roman Carnival Overture. Apart from a recent performance of La Mort de Cléopâtre and Les Nuits d’été, that had been the extent of my concert exposure to the composer’s music. But over fifty years of concert going I have never been to a performance of the Trojans, or the Requiem, or, for that matter L’enfance du Christ.

Berlioz is often associated with grand gestures of orchestration. And grand gestures in general. At least that is the general impression. Not knowing L’enfance du Christ and having heard it only once or twice in recordings, I was therefore surprised to find just an orchestra of double woodwind, backed up by horns on three trombones for part one, but no trumpets. Even the chorus in part one was only male voices. In parts two and three, we did have a full chorus, but the brass disappeared completely from the stage, replaced by harpist. It was hardly the orchestral forces that one would expect from an over-the -top composer like Berlioz!

And, having now heard a complete performance of this work, I can state that in no uncertain terms it is an understated piece, very far from the overstatement that is expected from the composer. It does have a particularly striking and unusual passage in part three, but it is surprising in a doubly surprising way. More of that later…

The performers with the Orquestra de la Communidad Valenciana and Cor de la Generalitat Valeciana under Marc Elder, with soloists Laurence Kilsby, Kate Lindsey. Gordon Bintner, Willaim Thomas and Matthew Rose. The setting was the Auditori de Castelló de la Plana before an audience that received this rather quiet work with rapt attention. Musically, however, the work is not what a casual listener might expect, being remarkably subtle in its construction whist at the same time daring in his harmony.

There are passages that sound like they might have come straight from a Bach chorale side-by-side with music that audibly presages Debussy. Especially in the first part, I personally found the passages sung by Matthew Rose as Polydorus highly reminiscent of Debussy, particularly of Pelleas et Melisande. But that might be just the effect of the French language to merge the musical progression into an apparently seamless experience.

Laurence Kilsby’s tenor as narrator was beautifully clear throughout and Willaim Thomas singing the part of Herod was darkly threatening. Kate Lindsey and Gordon Bintner as Mary and Joseph were at times operatic, as they needed to be, and the singing of the chorus was completely in tune with the nature of the music that we heard. The offstage voices here were behind a curtain at the back of the stage in this performance, and their ethereal resonance was superbly done. Mark Elder, for whom the music of Berlioz is something special, chose slow tempi throughout, which allowed the reflective beauty of some surprising harmonies to show through.

And so to the strange part. In the middle of part three of the oratorio, Berlioz writes a trio – perhaps signifying the holy family? – where the performance becomes chamber music. Spotlit and not conducted, two flutes and a harp play an interlude of several minutes and the music here is simply divine. It is so surprising, so memorable for someone like me who has consistently ignored the work that this sound will live on for the rest of my life.

In this work, L’enfance du Christ, Hector Berlioz seems to kneel reverently throughout in whispered prayer. He might, on occasions, appear to want to up the tempo or increase the volume, but he always holds back, and always puts lyricism and communication before effect. It will not be long before I listen again.

The Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra under Michael Waterman play Puccini, Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky in a memorable concert

Sometimes, not often, a concert program stands out as inherently interesting. I thought that when I saw the Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra’s offering last night in Alicante’s ADDA auditorium. The works on offer were by three of the most played composers, but their form in each case was unusual. Giacomo Puccini is justly famous for his operas, but a string quartet in an arrangement for string orchestra…? There followed the String Quartet No8, Op110, perhaps the best known of Dmitri Shostakovich’s fifteen string quartets, arranged in an equally famous version for string orchestra by Rudolph Barshai. And then Tchaikovsky’s underplayed string sextet Souvenir of Florence in a new arrangement for string orchestra by the evening’s concert master and director, Michael Waterman. It’s not often in decades of concert going that I have been privileged to hear a string sextet, certainly many fewer times than I have heard a string orchestra.

I Crisantemi is a piece of six minutes or so written by Puccini for string quartet. The music is delicate, as delicate in places as a flower petal. But it is also lyrical, and, as one would expect from Puccini, the music is song like. It was written alongside Manon Lescaut and at times the string writing is very reminiscent of the intermezzo from that opera. I Crisantemi seems to be an exercise in understatement, but this is not to suggest that it makes anything other than a powerful piece in performance. The arrangement for string orchestra lost none of the music’s delicacy.

Dmitri Shostakovich dedicated his eighth quartet, Op110, to victims of war, but musically it’s about only one thing: “Me… Me… Me…” The four notes, DSCH in German notation, D, E flat, C, B natural in English, form the composer’s musical signature, and, in this twenty-minute quartet, which sounds like it has several movements played without a break, this signature motif provides almost all the material that the composer uses. At times, it is bleak and depressed, at times upbeat and dancing, at times angry and threatening: the quartet number eight almost mesmerize listeners into a trance. Rudolph Barshai was a founder member of the Borodin Quartet and later made a career as a conductor, spending many years directing the Moscow Chamber Orchestra. He also prepared a Chamber Symphony, Op110a, from the Shostakovich eighth quartet. Not only did the composer approve of Barshai’s arrangement, but he also actually gave the piece its name. This is music of almost frightening intensity, whose final pianissimo actually increases the tension transmitted to the audience. There is no tranquil ending here for a work that in effect rips open the emotions of its listeners. And in this performance by the Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra, raw meat was exposed.

In total contrast, the gay abandon of Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir of Florence is filled with joy, exuberance, dance, and beauty. It sounds like a piece that a composer might rattle off very quickly, so spontaneous does it sound. But Tchaikovsky was a composer with considerable craft, and he was still revising it some two years after its initial composition. Michael Waterman’s version for string orchestra retained the fresh sound that this piece achieves when played by a sextet, the extra players in the arrangement adding depth, but neither weight nor clumsiness to this vibrant music. It has to be said that it was largely down to the skill and togetherness of this ensemble that they brought brilliance to this music. A four-movement structure suggests that the composer might have something symphonic in mind and, indeed, Tchaikovsky’s approach reminded me of the Mendelsohn string symphonies. Perfect ensemble, and a very skilful arrangement combined to make this performance utterly memorable.

There was a short encore, another arrangement, this time of a motet, Locus Iste by Bruckner. It was another quiet work that again demonstrated that in a good hall with an attentive audience, a handful of players can fill the place with music. I repeat the experience was utterly memorable.

Rune Bergmann conducts the ADDA orchestra in Alicante in Mozart and Sibelius and a moment to reflect

Last night’s concert in ADDA with our resident orchestra under Rune Bergmann, our invited director, was memorable for perhaps regrettable reasons, none of which were musical. Regret came at the end, and more of that later.

The program was a conventional one: overture, classical symphony, and then a Romantic one, much loved and much played. The program did not disappoint and as ever our ADDA orchestra brought the music to life with virtuoso playing, enthusiasm and ensemble.

We began with Mozart’s Overture to the Magic Flute. After its slow introduction, the composer projects real energy through fugal music before pausing for a central section in which Masonic chords in the brass intervene. In the late eighteenth century, this might have been seen as a revolutionary gesture, perhaps reminding those in the audience of what was currently happening in France. It would not have provided them with the kind of comfortable listening that the piece provides today. Those brass interludes are nothing more than a “Look out!” perhaps reminding everyone that status counts for nothing, perhaps to remind people of how lucky they were to be alive. Mozart himself was not alive by the end of the run of the Magic Flute.

The Prague Symphony that followed is Mozart’s 38th Symphony. It was one of the pieces that introduced me to listening to music that was not pop, because there was a recording of it in my school’s small record library. To this day, I cannot either predict or understand the slowing of pace in the first movement, where the string lines cross over a rhythmic structure like punctuation. All I know is that every time I hear the piece, which is quite often, it takes me by surprise. Rune Bergmann’s pace with this piece, and indeed, overall across the concert, was brisk, giving the music extra drama here and there.

This Sibelius Symphony No.1 that we heard in the second half is a concert hall standard. Having just written that, I checked and I have not heard it live in concert for at least fifteen years! (Live television, excluded!) It is a work that is always impressive, but for me, personally, lacks identity. In it, I sense the composer is still searching for a musical identity that only crystallized later. Here we have passages straight out of Tchaikovsky, some folk influence, some undiluted late Romanticism. In fact, the symphony is brim-full of ideas, to such an extent that the music seems to be episodic. But one what wonderful episodes they are.

Rune Bergmann chose a very fast tempo in the scherzo and equally fast for sections of the finale, a speed which emphasizes musical contrast, less so the inherent lyricism. But it was a memorable performance of a familiar work.

And then the regret. ADDA’s artistic director, Josep Vicent, who had been listening to the concert, took a microphone and reminded the audience of the recent rail accident in Spain that claimed many lives. He asked for respectful silence, and the ADDA audience observed it faultlessly.

There was always going to be an encore. Conductor Rune Bergmann went up high to a box and low strings introduced his playing of the Norwegian bukkehorn in what I think was a performance of Michael Strand’s Men går jag över engarna (But I walk across the meadows). Anna Nielsen, invited concertmaster for the evening, then took up the melody in song. She was joined on stage by Rune Bergmann and the bukkehorn to conclude the work. It is a simple song, rather sad and folksy, musically modal and thus fit the requirements perfectly. Like the Masonic chords in the Mozart, this reminded everyone how lucky they were to be alive and provided a deeply personal and reflective experience for all involved, on stage and off.

ADDA Cameristica play two pieces for winds and then a Mahler version of a Beethoven String Quartet in a concert of pure musical joy

These days, one always expects a lot from any performance by members of the ADDA Orchestra and one is never disappointed. This subgroup, called ADDA Cameristica, gave a free concert last night in the Sala Ruperto Chapi featuring the kind of program that a commercial concert would simply not present, because commercial considerations would preclude it. As a consequence, the likelihood that music lovers would ever have a chance of hearing pieces of this kind, especially those included in the first half of this ADDA concert, is minimal. Certainly in over fifty years of concert going, I have never had the privilege of hearing the Strauss Serenade performed as a chamber music piece.

This was a concert of under an hour of music but involved two quite different ensembles. In the first half we heard two pieces of music for a wind band, one of which also had percussion. Jesse Passenier’s Overture for 13 winds and percussion was a world premier performance of a piece that uses jazz idiom alongside formal structures in its ten-minute duration. It is based on two sections that are then repeated with variation. A slow, highly textured section gives way to a rhythmic and staccato dance-like second section, where the percussion adds weight. These two sections are then repeated with variation to complete the work. Writing a piece for thirteen winds and percussion is a very laudable exercise, but one wonders whether the composer would ever have expected to hear it professionally performed.  Memorable were the shared textures that the contrabassoon and the bass clarinet created. This was an exciting work that should be played often.

Richard Strauss’s Serenade for thirteen winds is a masterpiece. The programme listed the work as Opus4, but I think it is Opus7. The Suite Opus 4 is considerably longer that the ten-minute piece we heard. The fact remains that Richard Strauss was just seventeen when he wrote it. If it is played at all, it tends to be played at the opening of a symphony concert, in which these gentle sonorities become somewhat lost in the oversized acoustic. It was then a revelation to hear the piece played in a small auditorium designed for chamber music. It is a youthful work, written by teenager for his father. It is a masterpiece, albeit in Richard Strauss’s terms, a miniature. The four horns that are that are demanded by the composer are worked quite hard, but these players of the ADDA Cameristica were faultless.

The second half of the concert was played by a string orchestra. And it was significant string orchestra, including two double basses. I point this out because the work played was Mahler’s string orchestra version of Beethoven’s Opus95 String Quartet. Now there are no basses in a string quartet, so Mahler did a little more than merely make more copies of the string parts.

And what work this is. It sounds as if it had been written for a string orchestra in the original. Beethoven’s often surprising use of rhythm and dynamics really did work extremely well in this larger setting. It was a memorable performance worthy of repeated hearings. Wonderful.

 

Nacho de Paz in Valencia conducts Scriabin and Messiaen and achieves revelatory sounds

Nacho de Paz had a challenging program to conduct in his concert with the Orchesta de València. It’s not that the music was especially difficult, it’s just that the three works included in the program are not often played together. The workload in rehearsals must have been tremendous, but it was time well spent because these performances were memorable.

In his pre-concert talk, however, Nacho de Paz explained that the two composers whose works we heard both held universe-explaining obsessions, albeit of radically different kinds, and thus both composed according to their philosophy.

The main attraction for me personally was the Scriabin Poem of Ecstasy. The composer at the time of its composition was becoming obsessed with theosophical ideas, where a synthesis of ideas, religions and human experience were raised to a force which could drive the universe. The Poem of Ecstasy predated his work on The Mysterium, that vast unfinished work, whose first performance in the Himalayan foothills in India might just bring an end to the universe, the composer thought. The Poem of Ecstasy, an orchestral piece in one movement, otherwise known as the composer’s fourth symphony, was much closer to the fundamental core of human experience. It has clear sexual meaning and, when all said and done, without sex there would be no humans. Nacho de Paz, in his pre-concert talk, seemed to ignore this angle, concentrating on Scriabin’s exploration of the multiple harmonics that naturally spring from a long note. For Nacho de Paz, the massive apotheosis of the Poem of Ecstasy was a symbol of Scriabin achieving a kind of mathematical perfection by synthesising the mathematical possibilities of harmonics. My view is that it represents a purely physical, not mental experience. The performance of the work regularly achieved the composer’s intended dynamics, thus rendering the experience of listening quite physical.

The other two works on the program were both by Olivier Messiaen. Now Olivier Messiaen was a devoted Christian, a Roman Catholic, who constantly strove to reveal a spiritual truth through his musical composition. The fact that audiences often find his work hard to appreciate is his apparent rejection of form in his work. Messiaen’s music rarely conforms to what anyone expects from a concert piece. It is always meditative and possibly also intensely personal, even when, for instance in the Nine Meditations on the Holy Trinity, he is exploring the transliteration of text in the music. He called the system he invented a “communicable language”, but often audiences find that they have never learned his language.

The two works on offer in this concert were Les Offrandes Oubliées and L’Ascension. The former is the more conventional concert piece, but in the end, when the music literally dissolves into silence, the effect is strange in that the music does not seem to embody emotion. It simply exists.

L’Ascension’s four movements are effectively a concerto for orchestra. The first movement concentrates on brass, the second on wind and the last strings. Messiaen explores the sonorities just like any other composer would when trying to show off what an orchestra can do, but doubly baffling then is the decision to use only the strings in the last movement and then only part of the strings on the platform. Harmonically, Messiaen’s music is always recognizable. His signature is complex and, for the casual ear, it is perhaps unintelligible. Repeated listening, however, reveals patterns that the composer uses time and again, but they remain unconventional. The complications of dissonant notes in ecstatic chords always seems to cast doubt into the meaning of the music, doubt that still might have troubled the composer.

Overall, the concert was a triumph. It presented three twentieth century masterpieces on a single programme, works that presented composers grappling with the philosophies that drove them. Harmonies used by both composer were truly ecstatic. But by then end of L’Ascension, the slow progression of the music was surely a vision of the infinite that no human being can comprehend.

Ruben Jais and Roberta Mameli surprise with Haydn and Mozart at ADDA Alicante - a concert to remember

 

The anonymous role that expectation plays in our lives is vastly important. Expectation satisfied can often result in a feeling of self-confirmation, that feeling that comes with sensations of “I told you so, and I was right”. On the other hand, expectations not met can sometimes be associated with poor experience, associated with thoughts such as “I knew this was a bad idea”. Just occasionally, one sets off with expectations that are not met, and the result is tantamount to revelation. “What on earth have I been missing all these years?”

Last night I went to ADDA in Alicante with preconceived expectations. On the bill were Haydn and Mozart, composers who I spend many hours listening to, or not listening to might be a better description. In both cases, I hear a lot of their music but rarely pause to listen. That is one of the joys of going to concerts, to be presented with music that one often ignores or is ignorant of. We thereby run the risk of being surprised. Last night in ADDA, at least in the first half of the evening, the music not only did not conform to expectations, but the experience was so rich that it may even have changed my listening habits.

Alongside the ADDA orchestra, there were billed two other musicians, an invited conductor, Ruben Jais and Roberta Mameli, a soprano soloist. All last night’s performers brought an enthusiasm and no little skill of execution to produce a performance that were not only as good as can be imagined, but they may have even been revelatory, at least for this hardened concertgoer.

We began with Haydn’s aria Berenice, che fai? with Roberta Mameli as soloist. The aria is in fact from one of Haydn’s operas. Joseph Haydn wrote fourteen operas. Why on earth are they never performed, especially since the librettists he worked with include Goldoni? Roberta Mameli’s singing of this aria was powerful, dramatic, exciting and vocally superb. There is a lot of sturm und drang around in this music, but it is perfectly crafted and allows the soloist adequate room to show off, while retaining sufficient musical sense not to be merely a showpiece. A program note reminded the audience that Haydn had become a musician via singing, and the composer’s handling of the voice and orchestra combined managed to convey just the right balanced blend of anger and elegance to convince. Roberta Mameli's performance conveyed every scrap of meaning it was possible to extract from both text and music. This was singing of the highest quality in the form of a surprise called Haydn opera.

What followed was a real ear-opener. A Haydn symphony in the first half of concert programmes is not unusual. They are usually mid-nineties onwards, with occasional forays into the eighties and even the seventies. But not the pre-fifties! That is specialist fare. I do often research the music prior to concert, but this time I had not troubled my recordings, since my expectations had convinced me what to expect. The program note did surprise in that it described a series of Haydn mid-career symphonies all composed in minor keys. But surely this was music to order from Esterhazy employers. What could have motivated Joseph Haydn to melancholy?

The reality of Haydn’s Symphony No49 La Passione unfolded. It was nothing less than revelatory. Not only did this music not meet my expectations, but it completely shattered them. They had told of elegance, dance-like rhythms and more icing than cake. And how utterly unrelated was the reality! The first movement never really seems to exist, except in gentle comments around a theme that seems never to be stated. It could not have been more different from what I unexpected. A strange second movement followed, and then even a downbeat minuet before a finale that tried and tried to establish a major key but eventually failed. The symphony provided a musical experience of such surprise that at home I immediately accessed a recording of it and listened to it twice again. There is a lot in this music, both musically and intellectually, and it provided an experience as rounded as any I have had in a concert hall for some time. Hence a New Year’s Resolution to explore more of the symphonies of Joseph Haydn.

But the experience was surely as much as a result of Ruben Jais’s vision for the music, as it was a result of compositional skill. In music, no matter how good the writing, it still has to be interpreted and performed, and it is these qualities that an audience remembers.

In a more familiar second half of the concert, we heard two works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The Symphony No25 again explores sturm und drang, with what at the time must have sounded like a procession of dissonance. And in the early Exultate, Jubilate, Mozart conceived a show-off piece for a singer that also makes musical sense and provides a rousing end to any programme. This was especially the case as Roberta Mameli’s voice achieved levels of dynamics alongside purity of tone and musical interpretation that rendered this very familiar piece a real surprise. A standing encore of Corelli’s Christmas Cantata brought the evening to an equally surprising end, because, after all the sturm und drang that had preceded it, these overtly gentle Baroque sounds were truly elegant and relatively simple at the same time.

It is not often that expectations are so completely shattered with utterly surprising results. I will certainly never again listen to the music of Joseph Haydn with my previous assumptions. This was a truly memorable evening.