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14 October 2008
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ReviewsClassical Music Reviews from around the world 'Armide' keeps fires burning for a Baroque opera revivalThéâtre des Champs-Élysées, Paris: In an age when opera tends to be pretty much the same from one major city to the next, there is something gratifying about the way Paris has warmed to the operas of Jean-Baptiste Lully, the Baroque composer whose five-act "lyric tragedies" from the age of the Sun King form the cornerstone of French opera. Revivals on the order of "Thésée" last season and, currently, "Armide" at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées have made it possible for people to experience here, at least intermittently, something altogether different from the fare at home, just as they did in the 17th and 18th centuries. Helsinki Phil/MustonenFinlandia Hall, Helsinki: In the week of his 80th birthday, the Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara was celebrated both as composer of the week on Radio 3 and, at home, in a festive concert given by the Helsinki Philharmonic, conducted by Olli Mustonen, that featured the European premiere of Rautavaara's 30-minute, four-movement orchestral work called Tapestry of Life. Philharmonia/Mackerras, BrendelRoyal Festival Hall, London: To see a capacity Festival Hall audience - more than 3,000 people - surge to its feet at the end of a classical conerto is a rare thing. This is London, not LA. But Sunday's concert was a unique and touching occasion: the final public performance by Alfred Brendel in the city in which he has lived for four decades. It was a stunning exit too! The Burial at ThebesThe Globe, London: There is no rule-book for composing an opera, but if there was, Rule One might be: “Do not collaborate with Nobel Prize-winning poets.” For her new opera, The Burial at Thebes, Dominique Le Gendre worked with not one, but two: Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott. To judge from the London premiere, the composer was the poor relation; the programme even put Heaney’s name before Le Gendre’s, surely the wrong way round for an opera. La Tragédie de Carmen/RusalkaHackney Empire, London: English Touring Opera's autumn repertoire consists of Dvorák's Rusalka and La Tragédie de Carmen, Peter Brook's digest of Bizet, first seen in 1981 in Paris. Given that the latter reduces the original to a terse theatrical game for four singers and chamber ensemble, it seems, on the surface, the perfect work for ETO to take to the smallish venues that other companies ignore. Hallé/ElderBridgewater Hall, Manchester: he composer Colin Matthews has called for a moratorium on Mahler and says that he has no wish to attend further performances unless they can be "made to seem like a special occasion". It's hard how to see how the opening concert of the Hallé's 2008-09 season with its newly ennobled music director, Sir Mark Elder, was likely to be anything else. Vienna director sick, but good music saves operaState Opera, Vienna: Damnation was the dominant theme Saturday in a new Vienna State Opera production of Charles Gounod's Faust. But redemption triumphed in the form of wonderful singing and a powerful orchestral performance. e Opera, Vienna: Puccini: La Boheme Royal OperaCovent Garden, London: John Copley's production of Puccini's La boheme, now in its twenty-second revival at the Royal Opera House, is a bit like an old BBC costume drama. It's produced with care, it's directed with an eye for detail and it's a favourite with audiences, as the rapturous reception afforded to the first night of the current revival showed. From my Homeland – Nash Ensemble 1Wigmore Hall, London: Named after Smetana's piece for Violin and Piano, the Nash Ensemble's main Winter series “From my Homeland” got off to a flying start with this attractive programme. For the purposes of the series Brahms seems to have been co-opted as an Honorary Czech, not because of any particular Czech affiliations but because of his sponsorship of Dvořák. Especially welcome was the opportunity to hear his First Serenade in its Nonet version as reconstructed in 1987 by the late Alan Boustead (for a concert and recording by the Academy of St Martin in the Fields Chamber Ensemble). BBCSO/Ono – Night on bare mountain … Manfred Symphony … Pintscher premiereBarbican Hall, London: A slightly unusual choice of works for a “BBC Family Music Intro” concert, maybe – including a substantial new piece and one of Tchaikovsky’s lesser-known if most-masterly works. It was probably Night on the Bare Mountain that was the main attraction for anyone new to this concert-going lark, so it was a shame that quite a few latecomers missed it! This was a rare outing for Mussorgsky’s original (in every sense) version, an unruly if utterly distinctive piece (that was to be tamed and regularised by Rimsky-Korsakov). Kazushi Ono treated it as a flamboyant showpiece, initially attractive but too unrelenting by it close. LPO/Nézet-Séguin Christian Lindberg – La valse … Cantos de la Mancha … Pictures at an ExhibitionRoyal Festival Hall, London: This concert – very much in the old Friday night “Classics for Pleasure” mould (and none the worse for that) – marked Canadian conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s first concert as the London Philharmonic’s Principal Guest Conductor. He first conducted the orchestra in May last year and his star is rising, as he has also just taken over from Gergiev at the helm of the Rotterdam Philharmonic, in addition to his long-standing duties with Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitan. Philharmonia Orchestra Music of Today – Michel van der AaRoyal Festival Hall, London: One of the most worthwhile aspects of the Philharmonia's early-evening and free “Music of Today” series (now in its sixth season under the directorship of Julian Anderson) is the opportunity to hear music by those composers who are known but, as yet, little heard in the UK. Such is the case with Dutchman Michel van der Aa (born 1970), whose work in music and film marks him out among the most inclusive and wide-ranging of younger composers. This brace of instrumental compositions was a good opportunity to find out why. An Ocean of RainTramway, Glasgow: AN OCEAN of Rain – a co-production between Theatre Cryptic, the Aldeburgh Festival, London's Almeida Theatre and the Dutch Ensemble MAE – was panned when it premiered this year in Aldeburgh. The evidence from this Glasgow reworking by its artistic creators – director Cathie Boyd, composer Yannis Kyriakides and librettist Daniel Danis – suggests a mild sharpening up of its stage presentation.Billed as a chamber opera, its focus immediately falls on the music, a mix of electronic soundtrack and instruments that include violin, recorders, Indian accordion, electric guitar, bass and trombone. Levine leads BSO in Mahler's 'Tragic' SixthSymphony Hall, Boston: Some of the more potent experiences at the Boston Symphony Orchestra in recent years have been when James Levine leads the symphonies of Mahler, music to which he has been deeply committed for much of his career. Under Levine's watch, the BSO appears to be building up to a major Mahler event in the composer's upcoming big anniversary season (2010-11), though nothing has been formally announced. CBSO/Heinrich SchiffSymphony Hall, Birmingham: Toscanini, Casals, Barbirolli, Rostropovich: all cellists who became conductors, two of them great ones. To that quartet we must now add Heinrich Schiff, an endearing little roly-poly of a man who charmed both the CBSO and the audience on Wednesday. Royal flush in PartenopeColiseum, London: Crystallised through the stark imagery of French Surrealism — a stylish way of capturing the zaniness of Handel — ENO’s new staging of Partenope is packed with riches. It is also full of flaws. The pleasures come chiefly in the music and the excellent cast of six led by John Mark Ainsley. The problems lie in Christopher Alden’s production, an odd mix of the overdone and the raw. Swansea Festival 2008 (2) : Mozart, Hoddinott, Janácek, Beethoven, Endellion QuartetBrangwyn Hall, Swansea: The Endellion Quartet are amongst the finest and best-known of British quartets; yet, remarkably, this was their first ever performance in Swansea in the thirty years since their foundation. Though one would certainly not have chosen to wait so long for a first appearance, when it arrived it certainly rewarded the wait. Mahler, Symphony No 3 in D Minor: Budapest Festival Orchestra, Iván FischerSymphony Hall, Birmingham: No matter how good the CD and your hi-fi system, there are some works that cannot compare to a live performance. Mahler’s Symphony No 3 is one of those and the Budapest Festival Orchestra under founder Iván Fischer demonstrated the fact perfectly at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall on Oct 7th 2008, in their third and final concert of their brief English tour. The monumental work received a monumental delivery. Tchaikovsky, Elgar: Dmitri Alexeev (piano), St.Petersburg Philharmonic/ Yan Pascal TortelierSt David's Hall, Cardiff: This concert was affected by two significant changes of personnel after its original announcement. As first scheduled the conductor was to be Yuri Temirkanov and the piano soloist Elisso Virsaladze Birmingham Philharmonic OrchestraSutton Coldfield Town Hall: Monday saw Sutton Coldfield Philharmonic Society’s 2008/9 season launched with two significant debuts. Conductor Daniele Rosina’s inaugural appearance with the Birmingham Philharmonic Orchestra (itself introducing its ‘Romantic Favourites’ concert series) and soloist Thomas Gould’s first public performance of the Sibelius Violin Concerto. LPO/Masur Louis Lortie … From the New WorldRoyal Festival Hall, London: Since he stepped down as Principal Conductor (and seemingly without the honorary titles afforded him in Paris, Leipzig and New York), Kurt Masur’s visits to the London Philharmonic have been few and far between. But, absence makes the heart grow fonder, it is said, and the LPO played with real devotion for Masur on this fleeting glimpse of him. Bruckner, LSO/HardingBarbican Hall, London: Daniel Harding is still a young conductor, and a young view of Bruckner is no bad thing. Too often we hear his gigantic symphonies ossified into an overpolished grandeur that makes him sound like the aural equivalent of the Hapsburg Empire Baroque encounter with violinist Mutter is thoroughly engagingSymphony Center, Chicago: With the 17-piece Camerata Salzburg chamber orchestra accompanying her at Symphony Center, it was an all-Baroque encounter with familiar friends J.S. Bach and Giuseppe Tartini. It helped that some new artistic blood was brought into the mix. In Bach's Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor, BWV 1043, the 21-year-old Vilde Frang joined Mutter onstage. This young Norwegian recently got a taste of major league exposure last year in a successful collaboration with the London Philharmonic at Royal Festival Hall. Back to the ‘New World,’ With a Looser ApproachAvery Fisher Hall, NY: Always welcome as a guest at the Philharmonic, Ms. Alsop, the music director of the Baltimore Symphony, took the podium on Tuesday night at Avery Fisher Hall to conduct this Dvorak work on a subscription program. The concert also offered the Philharmonic debut of a gifted young Polish pianist, Rafal Blechacz, in Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2, and Ms. Alsop’s arresting account of Bartok’s Suite from “The Wooden Prince.” Orchestra and Conductor, Going SteadyCarnegie Hall, NY: The conductor Charles Dutoit has led the Philadelphia Orchestra literally hundreds of times over the years, including numerous appearances at Carnegie Hall. But the concert Mr. Dutoit and the orchestra presented there on Tuesday night was something more: their first joint engagement since Mr. Dutoit started his tenure as its chief conductor and artistic adviser. The Secret MarriageTheatre Royal, Glasgow: Domenico Cimarosa's opera The Secret Marriage is neither Mozart nor Rossini, but with its frequent Mozartian grace and its bracing Rossinian pace is, if you like, on its way from one to the other. It is also, as was evident in Scottish Opera's debut production of the work, which opened the company's new season on Tuesday night, a delightful and sparkling opera, packed with delicious music, streams of cracking arias, patter songs and ensemble numbers, yards of wit and comedy, touches of real emotional depth, and endless stylishness. Radu LupuSt George's Bristol: As Radu Lupu takes the stage for this recital, he has a dignity so austere as to be almost forbidding. Yet the moment he touches the keyboard we are transfixed. Huw Watkins premiereKings Place, London: Two years ago, under the subtly provocative title This Isn’t For You, Matt Fretton launched a new concept at Shoreditch Town Hall. A new series, relocated to Hall Two of Kings Place, was initiated last night under the joint curatorship of Fretton and Huw Watkins. People sat on chairs or lounged on bean-bags and were free to wander around or collect drinks from the bar. Brahms’s Earthy Passion Upstages Somber MessiaenCarnegie Hall, NY: Of all the artists James Levine has had as concerto soloists for the Met Orchestra concerts, few have energized him and the players as much as the brilliant German violinist Christian Tetzlaff. Mr. Tetzlaff, Mr. Levine and the Met Orchestra did it again, this time with an insightful and exciting performance of Brahms’s Violin Concerto Pianist's pianist Schiff excels with BeethovenMiddle Temple Hall, London: London’s hunger for Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas has yet to be assuaged. Andras Schiff, named today as one of the Evening Standard’s 1000 Influentials, opened the autumn leg of the Temple Festival 2008 with a recital of four middle period sonatas. This pianist’s pianist (Schiff is always one of those named as an ultimate virtuoso among his peers) has a dedicated following of people prepared to pin back their ears and sit in rapt, sometimes terrified silence. Rachmaninov, Stravinsky: BBC National Orchestra of Wales / Thierry FischerSt. David’s Hall, Cardiff: The beautifully shaped and played phrases of the opening of Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto immediately gave one the feeling that the BBC National Orchestra of Wales was on particularly good form and the remainder of the concert bore out that initial confidence. Swansea Festival 2008: Mozart, Karl Jenkins, Vaughan Williams, Elgar - LSO/ Colin DavisBrangwyn Hall, Swansea: This concert opened the sixtieth year of the Swansea Festival, which has run continuously since its establishment in 1948. Over those sixty years it has hosted many of the leading orchestras from Britain and abroad and has featured a roll call of distinguished conductors and soloists. Scottish Ensemble/Alison Balsom/Alasdair BeatsonPerth Concert Hall: Linking Italian Baroque and Soviet Modernism via the fire bombing of Dresden might sound like grasping at musical straws. But given the rather odd aural juxtaposition of Albinoni (whose well-known Adagio was recreated from six bars found in the ruins of the city library) and Shostakovich (who wrote his dark String Quartet No 8 in the aftermath) in this Scottish Ensemble season-opener, one can't blame the director Jonathan Morton for trying. Northern Sinfonia/ZehetmairThe Sage, Gateshead: In its new publicity snaps the Northern Sinfonia is pictured bizarrely perched atop the giant glass-bubble roof of Norman Foster's Sage. The stunt looks mad. One gust of wind, you feel, and 40 fine musicians could make a very big splash in the Tyne. But it's also highly symbolic. In less than four years the Sage has become one of the world's most admired centres for music. And the Sinfonia has raised its game to match its new home. Kings Place opening concerts Days 3 & 4Kings Place, London: When the Guardian finally moves in above London's newest music venue, it won't be alone; other Kings Place office tenants include the London Sinfonietta and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Both ensembles will keep the Southbank Centre as their main platform, but also plan occasional mini-residencies at their new address. During the opening festivities, each took over Hall One for an evening. Birmingham Contemporary Music Group/KnussenCBSO Centre, Birmingham: here were no new works in the opening concert of the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group's season. Instead, Oliver Knussen conducted a beautifully planned and equally well-executed sequence of works by two of today's leading Nordic composers, the Dane Poul Ruders and the Swede Magnus Lindberg. Barber Institute Gala/Eduardo Vassallo and Mark Bebbington at Adrian Boult HallAdrian Boult Hall, Birmingham: After 70 years the concert hall in Birmingham University’s Barber Institute of Fine Arts was long overdue for refurbishment, and this summer it finally received one. Friday evening celebrated the event, and we entered the charming, spruced-up art deco auditorium to find very little had changed, apart from newly-upholstered seating. The concert itself was something of a disappointment, a bits and pieces programme performed by comparatively recent alumni (though Judith Busbridge’s viola-playing was a particular delight). Ballet's birthplace takes shine to Murphy's telling of Swan LakeTheatre du Chatelet, Paris: At Saturday's matinee, a predominantly French audience at the Theatre du Chatelet applauded for so long that the company was able to give more than 10 curtain calls after the third of its four Swan Lake performances before a capacity crowd at the Right Bank theatre by the Seine. Scottish BalletQueen Elizabeth Hall, London: When Ashley Page was choreographing for the Royal Ballet, he was always the maverick, the risky element on any mixed bill. Now that he is director of Scottish Ballet, Page has volunteered himself for a different role. Much of the repertory he has acquired for the company is challenging and intense - not least the two superb pieces that open its current programme. The Royal Ballet – Swan LakeRoyal Opera House, London: The Royal Ballet season has now opened, and in what better fashion than in a sumptuous production of the timeless, quintessential classic, Swan Lake, a work so packed with wondrous choreography and a fail-safe story that it satisfies balletomanes and first-timers alike. Marc-André HamelinWigmore Hall, London: Marc-André Hamelin has justifiably acquired a reputation as the pianist who can safely venture where other pianists fear to tread; such is his remarkable technical facility. However, there is much more to him than that as this recital made abundantly clear. Monteverdi Choir/Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique/John Eliot GardinerRoyal Festival Hall, London: With violins and violas playing vigorously on their feet, John Eliot Gardiner’s latest project could brand itself “Stand up for Brahms”. Someone has to. Or, rather, used to have to, given the insults dealt out to him by Tchaikovsky (“giftless bastard”), Shaw (“third-rate village policeman”) and others including Britten. Scottish EnsembleCity Halls, Glasgow: A NEATLY weighted programme by the Scottish Ensemble drew a telling contrast between the acerbic 20th-century resilience of Shostakovich and the elegance of Baroque masters Albinoni and Corelli. And, thanks to trumpeter Alison Balsom and Scots pianist, Alasdair Beatson, the confection enjoyed a special coating of icing. Gerhaher/SchiffWigmore Hall, London: Beethoven's only song cycle, An die Ferne Geliebte, was the starting point for so much of what followed in 19th-century lieder that its connections could inspire countless programming ideas. But the recital András Schiff devised with baritone Christian Gerhaher concentrated on the work's profound influence on Schumann. London Sinfonietta / Jean-Bernard Pommier and friends / Schubert EnsembleKings Place, London: Its walls may be lined with the wood from a single, 500-year-old oak tree, but that doesn't stop Hall One, the main concert venue at the newly opened Kings Place, from looking like the product of an epic spending spree at Habitat. Its simple, functional panelling is hardly going to give, say, the Wigmore Hall a run for its money, or at least not in the looks department. But all that wood, the seemingly uninspired shoebox shape, the rubber springs that provide "complete acoustic separation from the rest of the building", all serve a splendid purpose - to make music sound absolutely spellbinding. Mahler: Symphony No 5, Royal Scottish National Orchestra/Stéphane DenèveEdinburgh Festival Theatre: There are few works in the repertoire remotely resembling Mahler's Fifth symphony. The score leads performers and listeners on a demanding emotional and intellectual journey. One anticipates with excitement, but also apprehension; the dramatic tensions remind one that central to Mahler's career was his peerless reputation as an opera conductor. Brodsky QuartetRSAMD, Glasgow: There was just one shortcoming in the opening lunchtime concert of the RSAMD's new season on Friday, which featured the Brodsky Quartet at its most mature and polished. The deficiency lay not in the playing but in the accompanying information in the programme leaflet. BBC Scottish Symphony OrchestraGlasgow City Halls: In its Hear and Now concerts devoted to modern music, the BBC SSO departs far from the traditional format of overture, concerto and symphony. What we heard on Saturday was a lengthy programme (two and a half hours in all) with two intervals, many spoken explanations and much platform upheaval, celebrating the 60th birthday of Nigel Osborne, a composer for whom, it has been accurately said, expressionist modernism works hand in glove with social lament and protest. London Philharmonic Orchestra, Gennadi RozhdestvenskyGlasgow Royal Concert Hall: The London Philharmonic, which opened Glasgow's International Classical Season on Friday night, is a wonderful orchestra with a string section to die for; and that section, with its creamy sound, luminous violins, and bass section with a bottomless depth, featured in an almost showcase capacity at the start and end of the programme, with the 23 solo strings playing Richard Strauss's Metamorphosen with heartrending profundity, and the harrowing throb of the double basses nursing Tchaikovsky's Pathetique Symphony to its dying breath some two and a half hours later. Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Stephane DeneveGlasgow Royal Concert Hall: No music critic in their right mind would have the audacity to knock a star off the full quota for the Olympian performance on Saturday might by the RSNO and Stephane Deneve of Mahler's Fifth Symphony. Sure, by the exhausting finale, five movements and around 60 minutes into the symphony, some of the playing was beginning to sound tired and choppy. But Deneve's concentrated, one-world, driving vision of the piece, as consistent and coherent in its massive structure as it was rivetingly detailed, was unflagging. |
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