Halle Orchestra: Beethoven 250 – Beethoven Symphony No.8 and Fidelio Act II

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Beethoven - Tremate Empi Tremate: Trio for soprano tenor and bass with orchestra, Ben Gernon, Fidelio: Act II, Halle Orchestra, Rachel Nicholls, Simon O’Neill, Sir Mark Elder, Symphony No.8

Halle Orchestra: Beethoven 250 – Beethoven Symphony No.8 and Fidelio Act II

The Bridgewater Hall, 27 February 2020

You can never have too much Beethoven.

Here the Halle orchestra, choir and colleagues gave us a hat trick of hits:

• Tremate, Empi, Tremate: Trio for soprano, tenor and bass with orchestra
• Symphony No.8
• Fidelio: Act II

Tremate, Empi, Tremate was a fairly short work, which Beethoven apparently wrote as an exercise, a way of exploring Italian opera and song. Still, it was a genuine work of music and didn’t feel at all academic. It had an elegant, filigree quality and was an aperitif for what was to come.

And what came next was the magnificent eighth symphony, with the Halle being conducted by Ben Gernon. What to say about this work, that has not already been said before and better by Sir Donald Tovey? Well it was prodigious, monstrous (recalling that monsters dwell always on the border of becoming), wondrous, fabulist – and over far too soon.

After the interval Sir Mark Elder conducted the Halle orchestra and choir and diverse singers (notably Rachel Nicholls as Leonore) in Act Two of Fidelio. Maybe Jeff Bezos was thinking of this opera when he said that what he valued in a wife was will and resourcefulness. He wanted someone who could, if needs must, get him out of prison. That is what happens here, anyway: Leonore in disguise goes into prison to get her husband Florestan (the excellent Simon O’Neill) out. It was like the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, only with the roles reversed and a happy ending. A series of dramatic scenes, each studded with a brilliant aria or two.

Too much Beethoven is not nearly enough.

Details of future Halle concerts can be found here.

Bang On A Can All Stars

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2×5, Arlen Hlusko, Bang On A Can All Stars, Believing, Closing, David Cossin, Haydn, Henning Kraggerud, Horses of Instruction, Julia Wolfe, Kate Moore, Ken Thomson, Mark Stewart, Philip Glass, Ridgeway, RNCM Strings Festival, RNCM Strings Festival 2020: RNCM String Orchestra, Robert Black, Steve Martland, Steve Reich, Tchaikovsky, Vicky Chow, Vivaldi

Bang On A Can All Stars

RNCM Concert Hall

25 February 2020

I was not sure to expect here, but it turned out to be an exhilarating concert where I learned a lot.

The band took to the stage and played the following five works:

• Julia Wolfe – Believing
• Kate Moore – Ridgeway
• Philip Glass Closing
• Steve Martland Horses of Instruction
• Steve Reich – 2×5

In the first half – which is to say, for performances of the the first four works – the Bang On A Can All Stars were by themselves on stage. In the second half, for Steve Reich’s 2×5, they were joined on stage by students from the RNCM.

If I had to characterise the band, I would say that they are attracted to music that has a lively propulsion. All the music was minimalist, in some ways classical and / or jazz, yet had the primitive vibe of a rock beat. There were several points in each performance where you did not want the beat to end – isn’t this as good a definition of great music as any? – instead you wanted it to, if anything, become louder, more insistent and complex, grander.

The Bang On A Can All Stars were made up of Robert Black on bass, Vicky Chow (piano), David Cossin (diverse percussion), Mark Stewart (guitar), Ken Thomson (clarinet and saxophone and piano) and Arlen Hlusko (cello). They are well worth checking out. And their taste in composers  (an excellent filter cum scuttle net) is worth exploring as well. Listen, for example, to Steve Martland’s Horses of Instruction (say here): doesn’t it make for a happier, more joyful day?

Halle Orchestra: Mozart! Immortal Mozart!

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Halle Orchestra, Jonathan Nott, Mozart - Symphony No.39, Mozart! Immortal Mozart!, R. Strauss - Oboe Concerto, Schubert - Symphony No.5

Halle Orchestra: Mozart! Immortal Mozart!

The Bridgewater Hall, 13 February 2020

Mozart and much, much more.

For this evening’s concert the conductor was Jonathan Nott, who showed himself to be vigorous and lively and altogether excellent. The Halle orchestra went full pelt and they played:

• Schubert – Symphony No.5
• R. Strauss – Oboe Concerto
• Mozart – Symphony No.39

Schubert ‘s symphony made use of a sparse range of instruments, but here less was more. The first movement laid down the law and the rest of the movements enforced it. You heard bright and bold laughter though you could imagine (with a stretch) stray shadows before the darkness came. This symphony was first performed in 1816, when Schubert was about 20. Just over a decade later he would be dead.

Directly after the Second World War, Richard Strauss composed his Oboe Concerto, on the suggestion of an American soldier, an oboe player in civilian life. There are a few elegiac tones, which is understandable. For, after all, in 1946 Germany had been bombed to smithereens. Listening to it now, mind, you are struck by an enigmatic beauty. Disturbing, indissoluble. You are listening to a question not easily understood, a bell tolling once, the broken call (and the uncertain perambulations) of a wounded bird. Well worth a second spin, this tune. Stéphane Rancourt was brilliant on oboe.

As for the Mozart symphony, well it explains and justifies the title of concert,for a start. Also. it should be mentioned that the thirty ninth, premiered in 1788, was the first of a final trilogy of great symphonies that Mozart produced toward the end of his life. It is a masterpiece, a mix of solemnity and sunlight. The Trio toward the end features a Landler. If you were to personify this symphony, you would be looking upon a young and handsome Lord, a citizen of Heaven. Yes, an Immortal.

Details of future Halle concerts can be found here.

 

Halle Orchestra: Rachmaninov’s Romantic Lyricism

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Halle Orchestra, Jess Gillam, John Adams, Kazuki Yamada, Rachmaninov, Rachmaninov’s Romantic Lyricism, Saxophone Concerto, Symphony No.2

Halle Orchestra: Rachmaninov’s Romantic Lyricism

The Bridgewater Hall, 16 January 2020

A concert of contrasting moods.

The conductor was Kazuki Yamada and the Halle played:

• John Adams – Saxophone Concerto
• Rachmaninov – Symphony No.2

First off we heard John Adams’s Saxophone Concerto, Jess Gillam’s bright and breezy performance making it sound freshly minted. The subdued jazz tones had something of the twinkle of distant stars. It was upbeat, had swing but was pretty laid back. It didn’t set out to impress, because it didn’t need to.

Then, after an interval where I fought off the temptation to down a tub of ginger ice-cream (I had had a caramel sponge cake just before the concert, so it would have been a bit too much), there came Rachmaninov’s second symphony. Now, surely, it did mean to impress – and it succeeded.  It was immense, rearing its towering torso like a colossus that had just stepped in front of the sun. Like it had been around for a thousand years and would outlive you too: not so much classical as immortal. A beast of raw lyricism, an irresistible force.

Somehow the music swept all before it. You looked not just into the mirror of one man’s mind, but out of a window that showed the landscape of the human soul. A power ballad of a symphony, it radiated force and fury.

And it sent me.

Details of future Halle concerts can be found here.

RNCM Strings Festival 2020: RNCM String Orchestra

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Haydn, Henning Kraggerud, RNCM Strings Festival, RNCM Strings Festival 2020: RNCM String Orchestra, Tchaikovsky, Vivaldi

RNCM Strings Festival 2020: RNCM String Orchestra

RNCM Concert Hall

12 January 2020

This was the closing concert of a full programme of scrumptious events at this year’s RNCM Strings Festival

We heard the following fine works:

• Vivaldi – Cello Concerto in E minor (arr for double bass and strings)
• Haydn – Cello Concerto in C major
• Henning Kraggerud – Solens Datter
• Tchaikovsky – Serenade for Strings in C major

Catherine Yates conducted the Vivaldi, with Božo Paradžik playing double bass. Chris Hoyle did the honours with respect to the Haydn, where we had the great Miklós Perényi playing cello. And, after the interval, Henning Kraggerud introduced his own composition Solens Datter, where he uses Norse myth to address anxieties over climate change, and played on both it and the Tchaikovsky.

Kraggerud told a story about an atom bomb test and Tchaikovsky’s work that I was a little bit uncertain about, though it may well be correct. My understanding, anyway, is that Wernher von Braun invented the countdown protocol after seeing it in Fritz Lang’s Frau im Mond (1929). Rocket science imitates cinematic art.

An exhilarating concert all around.

Dialogues des Carmélites

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Dialogues des Carmélites, Francis Poulenc, RNCM

Dialogues des Carmélites

By Francis Poulenc

RNCM Theatre, 11 December 2019

This was a stunning production of the opera that held a special place in Poulenc’s heart, written as it was after his return to the Catholic Church.

Poulenc was gay, as we know, and the church, as ever, opposed same-sex relationships; but he no doubt had reconciled himself to this contradiction. The opera, which Poulenc completed in 1956 – and he had a hand in the libretto as well as the music (though much of Georges Bernanos’s text is retained), which tells you how much it meant to him – also has some of the fractious atmosphere of post-war France: the fall-out from the collaboration with Nazi Germany, the deportations to Auschwitz, all of that.

The music is both hymnal and harrowing, especially toward the end when the full cost of the nun’s moral choices has to be paid. Though, in one sense, they had only one moral choice to make, whether to accept God’s Grace and become instruments of His Will, or not. And as nuns they had already made that choice. Throughout, the song is very natural when it comes to the nuns’ everyday life; yet very moving at the close with the profound Salve Regina. As a story, curiously, it reminded me of Xavier Beauvois’s film Of Gods and Men. No doubt Beauvois was influenced by Poulenc’s opera.

All in all. the musical performances were wonderful. And with splendid costumes, gorgeous sets and lambent lighting, it was a visual delight as well.

Halle Orchestra: Copland’s Jazz Concerto

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Benny Goodman, Bernstein, Clarinet Concerto, Copland, Copland’s Jazz Concerto, Cristian Macelaru, Gershwin, Halle Orchestra, Jake Heggie, Leonard Bernstein, Moby-Dick Suite, Porgy and Bess, Porgy and Bess: Symphonic Picture, Sergio Castelló López, West Side Story: Symphonic Dances

Halle Orchestra: Copland’s Jazz Concerto

The Bridgewater Hall, 5 December 2019

A mosaic of marvellous American music.

In this concert we got four American compositions, each work an amalgam of jazz and classical elements. This was the programme:

• Jake Heggie: Moby-Dick Suite
• Copland: Clarinet Concerto
• Bernstein: West Side Story: Symphonic Dances
• Gershwin: Porgy and Bess: Symphonic Picture

The ‘Moby-Dick Suite’ was as epic as the novel, the music coming from Jake Heggie’s eponymous opera, which premiered in 2010. The Suite, arranged by tonight’s conductor Cristian Macelaru, was first performed in 2017.

Copland’s ‘Clarinet Concerto’, written for Benny Goodman (he paid ‘real money’ to employ the services of the great American composer), was first performed in 1950. Goodman played it on radio, not in the concert hall. Here Sergio Castelló López took it on stage and approached it in a spirit of playful dynamism. In his and the Halle’s hands it swung.

As for Bernstein’s ‘West Side Story: Symphonic Dances’, well, it had been astutely labelled. For these were dances, the music full often of violent, visceral movements. Cool yet restless, contradictory and explosive, never sitting still. True, some of the music was built on Beethoven. But alongside that there were shouts (‘Rumble!’) and finger-clicking and a feeling of frenetic action.

We ended with Gershwin’s ‘Porgy and Bess: Symphonic Picture’, Robert Russell Bennett’s arrangement of music taken from the great opera, first performed in 1935 with an all-black cast. Bennett’s arrangement was completed some seven years later. If you have ever once seen Porgy and Bess, this suite will bring will bring back to you a treasury of dazzling moments.

So an all-American concert, then, with much of the music originating from operas and musicals. The music not purely jazz or classical but a vivid oscillation between the two. For want of a better word, the end result could be called ‘American’.

Details of future Halle concerts can be found here.

Elias Quartet, with Emmeline Quartet

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Elias Quartet with Emmeline Quartet, RNCM

Elias Quartet, with Emmeline Quartet

RNCM Concert Hall, 26 November 2019

This was a superb concert which delivered on every level.

The Elias Quartet played Beethoven’s String Quartet in A to begin with, and what a wonderful performance of that great work it was. In the second half they were joined by the Emmeline Quartet and together they gave us Mendelssohn’s Octet in E flat major, equally good. As an encore we received a few Gaelic songs: haunting, fragile melodies.

A great evening.

Halle Orchestra: Wigglesworth’s Mozart Tribute

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Halle Orchestra

Halle Orchestra: Wigglesworth’s Mozart Tribute

The Bridgewater Hall, 31 October 2019

Mozart and more, much more.

For this exhilarating concert of classical and original compositions, Ryan Wigglesworth (pictured above) conducted the Halle, including in a performance of one of his own works, and played piano with Paul Lewis. A busy evening for him, then, and we certainly got our money’s worth.

Altogether, we heard these four gorgeous works:

• Debussy (orch. Robin Holloway): En blanc et noir
• Mozart: Concerto for Two Pianos
• Ryan Wigglesworth: Locke’s Theatre
• Ravel: Valses nobles et sentimentales

The ‘Concerto for Two Pianos’ was my favourite performance, Mozart’s ease and elegance not quite disguising an elfin foreboding. That bad thing probably won’t happen, but anyway do take care. Meanwhile make the most of life.

Ryan Wigglesworth’s own ‘Locke’s Theatre’ draws on the work of the seventeenth-century English composer Matthew Locke, who incidentally was one of Purcell’s teachers. I didn’t know this while listening to it, having assumed that the title referred to John Locke, where his theatre might be the theatre of the mind. There was a frenetic, stream of consciousness feel to it. You could imagine Ideas (some atomic, some more multilayered) getting up on stage to strut their stuff, full-throatily delivering their lines and then exiting, no doubt being pursued by a bear. To be followed by a cry of ‘Next!’

Of the French works, I preferred Ravel to Debussy this time, though actually there were luxuriant moments in both. They were designed primarily to give pleasure, you felt, and in this they succeeded.

Details of future Halle concerts can be found here.

Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Blackmail’ (1929)

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Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Blackmail’ (1929), Darius Battiwalla

Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Blackmail’ (1929)

RNCM Theatre, 3 November 2018

Perfect or near-perfect cinema.

It was an extremely well crafted film, especially considering its vintage (released in 1929, so almost a century old), but on reflection that is hardly surprising when you cast a glance at who the director was: the great Alfred Hitchcock. The film was shown at the RNCM with live organ accompaniment, dazzling in its own right, by Darius Battiwalla.

So a silent film and set in London – the archetypal big city – and you are struck first and foremost by certain scenes’ similarities to the great masterpieces of Hitchcock’s heyday. When the police officers burst into Tracey’s tenement flat and we see him reading a newspaper on the bed it is like the boarding room occupied by Joseph Cotton’s killer at the start of Shadow of a Doubt. And when Tracey escapes through the window and over the rooftops and we see police officers following it is like the prologue to Vertigo.One of those police officers could be James Stewart’s Scottie. And the film evokes The 39 Steps in myriad ways.

Anny Ondra, a very beautiful Czech actress with expressive eyes, plays the damsel in distress. In one scene we see her walking down the Strand, a desolate Trafalgar square in the distance. There is a fleeting glimpse of Piccadilly Circus in another scene. Elsewhere we are at a Lyon’s Coffee House, a bustling form of life. People dining after a day at work. And then we are at a police station, with its tenebrous interiors and murky corridors. Finally, there is the British Museum, with the villain Tracey scarpering over the tombs of Egyptian mummies and statues Assyrian nobles. A frantic pursuit that has echoes of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.

It is wonderful how Hitchcock switches from verisimilitude – we are in a real city with real people – to showing us the anxious point of view of various different characters, saying in effect: this is the world that this person lives in. To be precise: not all of the characters are anxious. Some aware of their peril, others are oblivious to what is happening around them (as in life). There is a great, extended shot when Alice and the guy she has met walk up the staircase of his apartment building. It is a single tracking shot and we follow them floor by floor. How did Hitchcock manage to do that in 1929?

The concise and economical storytelling has a spellbinding elegance. There is artistry yet it never interferes with the momentum of the narrative, which is forever going forward.