Till Fellner Piano Recital

Till Fellner Piano Recital

RNCM Concert Hall, 19 January 2013

Apparently difficult and actually difficult, Till Fellner made this recital of works by four very different composers seem altogether easy-peasy.

By the end you were left impressed by how crisp and vital his playing was; he not only brought each work to life, he allowed it space in which to breathe.

Mozart laced his Sonata in F major (the second work of the evening) with lovely melodies, especially in the second movement, and Schumann’s variegated Symphonic Etudes (the fourth and closing work) had during one long passage the stirring jauntiness of a drinking song.  Till Fellner consummately brought out these very different colours – amongst many others – and in his hands, they shone.

Christian Blackshaw Piano Recital

Christian Blackshaw Piano Recital

RNCM Concert Hall, 23 October 2012

Few concerts have given me as much pleasure.

And, really, what Christian Blackshaw does verges on the miraculous. He played four Mozart sonatas here, together with the Fantasie in C minor, and he played all without sight of a score. His playing was precise and exact, there were absolutely no worries on that score, yet there was great feeling and an austere flair present too. If the composer himself had played these pieces it could hardly have been better.

This gives a clue to what Blackshaw is actually about, and why his work is so valuable: he is keeping Mozart’s music alive, night after night, with vital recitals such as these. I thought, curiously enough, of Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury’s dystopian novel, where a group of rebels and freethinkers keep literature alive (books are being burnt) by memorising and reciting great works. Among their number are a pair of twins: War and Peace, volumes one and two. The task Christian Blackshaw has set himself is infinitely more complex, cognitively and artistically, but he is with this heroic band in spirit.

A wonderful evening.

Prazak Quartet @ the RNCM

Prazak Quartet

RNCM Concert Hall, 18 June 2012

They were very unassuming and very, very good, this Czech quartet.

The secret, it seems, is teamwork – they play well together, have an excellent mutual understanding.  Well, the Prazak Quartet has been going for 40 years, so perhaps that’s only to be expected.

Mozart opened the concert, Dvorak closed it, and in between there was a piece by Zemlinsky.

Zemlinsky was a surprise, but a welcome one.  For a long time rather neglected, he was a curiously untimely composer, a high romantic who lived during the age of modernism.  Certainly, this sublime performance of his String Quartet No 1 in A major piqued my interest no end.

Overall, the concert was like playing through a score of Vlastimil Hort’s strategic masterpieces, that’s how well these four fellows performed.

The Prazak Quartet have a website, which includes tour dates and everything, here.

Opera della Luna’s Don Giovanni

Don Giovanni

Music by Mozart

Opera della Luna

The Lowry, 27 April 2012

For verve and vitality, this freshly minted production of what is possibly Mozart’s finest opera scores in the high nineties.

Highly, yes, yet not as frequently as its eponymous hero: the Don in question being a hedonist with an eye for the ladies.  But fair dos to him, for when the gates of hell open up, he goes to his fate with nary a whisper of repentance.  He is a stand-up guy in more ways than one.

What is special about this company – and Opera della Luna are one of the precious jewels of British theatre – is that they’ll revamp a classic work, including perhaps some topical jokes/references and a smidgeon of naughtiness, while keeping production values high and leaving the spirit of the piece intact, its stature undiminished.  It’s that classic strategy of presenting vintage wine in shiny new bottles.

And so it proved here with Don Giovanni: terrific singing, an orchestra live on stage, a slue of sublime arias and dramatic scenes, a story that shifted from tragedy to comedy and back again.  It was pure and dark, murky and light, quintessentially baroque.  There was also  Elvis and Marilyn and Dolly, and a young woman, name of Zerlina (the wonderful Rhona McKail), pleading to be spanked.

It was a mint production.

Opera della Luna is touring Don Giovanni (and The Parson’s Pirates too) throughout the UK, further details are here.

Portrait of War

Portrait of War

Manchester Camerata

RNCM Concert Hall, 10 March 2012

Manchester Camerata with Music Director, Gábor Takács-Nagy. Photo credit: Jonathan Keenan

The second half of this fine concert was wholly given over to Richard Strauss’s epic Metamorphosen, a requiem to the ravages wrought by the Second World War.

Surely change does not necessarily imply destruction, diminishment and elfin despair.  But for this composer, in this work, it is inevitably so.  And as you listen, Strauss makes you believe it too, such is the force of his vision.

Before Metamorphosen there were three other works, each related yet unlike.  Ravel’s Tombeau de Couperin was a kind of happy remembrance, a celebration of friends fallen in war.  The composer is clear that they will live on, in memory and in the music, in lives they’ve touched, not least his own.  There was a new work, Look Me in the Eyes by Aaron Parker, and that too – like the Ravel – turned on an emphatic connection.  Empathy: the impossibility of being simply one person.

Quite my favourite work of the evening was Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.21, which was a thing of wonder, a composition of complex colours.  Man, can Kathryn Stott play the piano: a timely reminder that she’s playing again on Monday 19 March.  This concert, too, will be performed again in a few days, in Leeds this coming Saturday.

Look out also for Manchester Camerata’s forthcoming concert, Portrait Of Faith, at Manchester Cathedral on 4 April (details here).

Così fan tutte

Così fan tutte
By Mozart
Opera North
The Lowry, 25 February 2010

There is a working definition of the term ‘classic’ that I’ve often found to be useful: any work that can be reread or viewed more than once, with profit and renewed pleasure.

It is clear, on my second viewing of Così fan tutte within a year, that it fits the bill with ease.

The opera is mainly about love – and this will always hold true – but now it seems also to parody scientific method to a significant extent. 

Don Alfonso’s pretension to test the love of the two sisters, Fiordiligi and Dorabella, now seems misguided and manipulative.  His subjects (the suitors as well as the sisters) are compelled to run through a gamut of emotions, like white rats being made to run through a maze at the behest of a behaviourist.  On closer viewing, the set, though still stunning as before, looks like nothing so much as a doll’s house, a box, a cage in a laboratory.

A wonderful production from Opera North of a work that explores various attitudes towards love, ranging from the romantic to the cynical, before plumbing for a simple human acceptance of one another as the best bet.

Straight up it hits the target, piercing the heart, as before.

Incidentally, my earlier review of Cosi fan tutti is here.

Current tour dates for Cosi fan tutti are here.