Halle Orchestra: Ravel’s Bolero

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Debussy: Images for Orchestra, Halle Orchestra: Ravel’s Bolero, Mussorgsky (in an orchestration by Ravel): Pictures at an Exhibition, Ravel: Bolero, Warhol

Halle Orchestra: Ravel’s Bolero

The Bridgewater Hall, 9 May 2019

This was an impromptu concert, so an unexpected bonus, and all the better for that.

Sir Mark Elder conducted the Halle and the orchestra played these three wonderful works:

• Debussy: Images for Orchestra
• Mussorgsky (in an orchestration by Ravel): Pictures at an Exhibition
• Ravel: Bolero

You could see how the works, although in many respects very different in tone and texture, were interlinked. Debussy’s Images for Orchestra aimed to evoke scenes from memory – it is focussed around various countries – and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition attempted a similar feat: it was about a painter and his pictures. There is a difference, mind, between memories, psychological images as it were, and external vision: pictures, things seen in the world.

Ravel orchestrated the version of Mussorgsky’s work performed here and he composed the final work, Bolero. There is also a further connection: the most elaborate of Debussy’s Images focuses on Spain, the country from which Bolero takes its inspiration.

In Bolero just the one theme is repeated again and again, with more colour and orchestration gradually added with each repetition. But the underlying theme is always present, never obscured. It is thrilling – the way it builds up to a climax, the uncertainty as to how it will all end – but a bit gimmicky, in truth: you are pleased that Ravel wrote it because that means that no one else now has to. Here, though, a visual analogy occurred to me. That Bolero is like one of those Warhol silkscreen prints where the same image (say: Marilyn pouting, Elvis drawing a gun) is repeated over and over, with slight variations in colouring, say.

An evening of vital music and visual culture. A lot to hear, a lot to see.

Details of future Halle concerts can be found here.

Halle Orchestra: Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony

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Beethoven: Overture: Leonora No.3, Hallé (arranged for orchestra by C. M. Wagner): Souvenir and Scherzo, Halle Orchestra: Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony, Heejae Kim, Mozart: Piano Concerto No.17 in G, Sibelius: Symphony No.5

Halle Orchestra: Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony

The Bridgewater Hall, 14 April 2019

Beethoven, Mozart, Sibelius and Halle himself: a concert that had everything.

Jonathon Heyward conducted the Halle this time out, and they played:

• Beethoven: Overture: Leonora No.3
• Mozart: Piano Concerto No.17 in G
• Hallé (arranged for orchestra by C. M. Wagner): Souvenir and Scherzo
• Sibelius: Symphony No.5

Beethoven’s ‘Overture: Leonora No.3’ was an epic symphonic poem, a form that the great composer discovered while struggling to write Leonore, an opera (in fact never completed) that was the prototype for Fidelio. To answer the obvious question, Yes there was a version one and two. This third was the final revision before Beethoven abandoned Leonore for good. Or realised that the overture was OK, complete in itself, and did not need to be developed into a full blown opera. He was not wrong. It is dramatic and stirring and altogether splendid.

Heejae Kim played piano for the ‘Piano Concerto No.17 in G’, a masterpiece (yes, another one) by Mozart. It was apparently first played at a private gathering in Dobling, near Vienna. The Concerto has a delicate, filigree construction – though that hardly does justice to it as a description. Prodigious variegated content.

After the interval, having enjoyed a tub of double ginger ice cream, we heard Halle’s ‘Souvenir and Scherzo’ in an arrangement for orchestra by Christoph Maria Wagner, a contemporary composer and conductor, still living (born in 1966). It was no mean work: soaring and energetic and exhilarating.

Sibelius’s ‘Symphony No.5’ brought the concerto to a stirring close. The Allegro motto finale was glorious and spectacular, as ever. Famously, Sibelius was inspired to write this Swan Hymn, as it has been called, by seeing (and hearing) loads of swans (what is the plural noun for swans? It is bank: ‘a bank of swans’): their presence, their call. Their flight away and seeming disappearance. It is like Keats with the nightingale, all over again.

Details of future Halle concerts can be found here.

 

Halle Orchestra: Sibelius’s Violin Concerto

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Halle Orchestra: Sibelius’s Violin Concerto

Halle Orchestra: Sibelius’s Violin Concerto

The Bridgewater Hall, 4 April 2019

This was another excellent concert from the Halle.

The orchestra, conducted this evening by Sir Mark Elder, took to the stage and played the following works:

• Berlioz: Overture: Les Francs Juges
• Sibelius: Violin Concerto
• Debussy: Nocturnes
• Ravel: La Valse

Ravel’s La Valse, the closing performance, was splendid. Sometimes slow and stately and serene, it acquired as well a rollicking commotion when the tempo accelerated to a quicksilver pace. Though recognisably a waltz, there were too myriad moments of tension and suspense (and I was reminded that a waltz features in Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt.).

There were three movements to Debussy’s Nocturnes. Nuages had a soaring quality – it seemed as though you were being borne aloft and away. Fetes made you think of a bright adventure, an eventful journey. Flashes of light, a holy procession. Whereas Sirenes had a silver quality: a gleaming sea, pale moonlight, lustrous sirens.

I was interested to learn that Nocturnes was inspired by a series of Impressionist paintings but not, as you might imagine, by a Frenchman – Monet or Manet, say – but by an American: Whistler. Is it possible to attribute each movement to a particular painting? I don’t know, but Nocturne in Black and Gold, the Falling Rocket is certainly in the Fetes camp.

The magnificent virtuoso Viktoria Mullova accompanied the Halle for Sibelius’s Violin Concerto and, as for Berlioz:’s Overture: Les Francs Juges, well we are hearing a lot of Berlioz this year, and learning a lot about him. And learning that there is much in his music to enjoy.

Details of future Halle concerts can be found here.

The Pilgrim’s Progress

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Ralph Vaughan Williams, RNCM, The Pilgrim’s Progress

The Pilgrim’s Progress

Music by Ralph Vaughan Williams

RNCM Theatre, 31 March 2019

This was for the most part a gripping production of Vaughan Williams’ great ‘morality’, as he once termed it.

Set during the First World War, we see Pilgrim as a deserter who leaves his fellow soldiers behind in order to search for a better way of life. After that, we pretty much follow Bunyan’s classic: Pilgrim encounters many people, the comfortable and the unfortunate and the damned, but none quite possess his urgency and his resolve to attain Christian virtue.

My only qualm with the production was the ending, where we saw Pilgrim on the couch and a Freud figure listening sympathetically to his story. Somehow, it undercut Pilgrim’s Faith, which was until then (in my mind anyway: I bought it whole) inviolable. And I mean, is psychoanalysis (a pseudo-science at best) to be placed above Christianity? Really?

Details of future performances of The Pilgrim’s Progress can be found here.

Harp Masterclass with Anneleen Lenaerts

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Anneleen Lenaerts, Harp Masterclass with Anneleen Lenaerts, Marco Borggreve, RNCM

Harp Masterclass with Anneleen Lenaerts

Carole Nash Recital Room, RNCM

24 March 2019

Photo credit: Marco Borggreve

Anneleen Lenaerts, Principal Harpist with the Vienna Philharmonic, gave a public masterclass, working with three students from the RNCM

It was interesting to observe. Playing the harp requires ‘good fingers’ and ambidexterity – you need to have good use of both hands. You need also to be decisive: like a chess player committed to moving the piece he has touched. On top of that, the harp looks mighty difficult to control; a piano with the strings exposed.

At the end of the masterclass, Anneleen Lenaerts gave a 30-minute solo harp recital where she showed how powerful and expressive her instrument could be. Here, her performance of The Moldau by Smetana was especially wonderful.

Decontamination #16: Contralto

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Contralto, Decontamination #16: Contralto, Sarah Hennies

Decontamination #16: Contralto

Carole Nash Recital Room, RNCM

22 March 2019

Decontamination #16 was a performance of Sarah Hennies’ Contralto, an hour-long work for video, strings and percussion.

Contralto featured eight transwomen (is that the correct term?) who spoke or sang certain set phrases. Some phrases had emotional resonance – they touched upon issues like acceptance and rejection, self-understanding and personal quest – while some phrases sounded like nonsense syllables. Utterances (even the same utterances, spoken by different women) were shyly spoken, or defiant or defensive, or an opportunity to be playful and flirtatious. Some women took their task seriously, even earnestly, while others were off-hand, casual, knowing.

By the end, curiously enough, you had (or thought you had) a very real sense of these women’s lives, even though the film did not consist of formal interviews or responses to probing questions.

RNCM Chamber Music Festival 2019

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Beethoven, Haydn, Heath Quartet, RNCM, Trio Wanderer

Joseph Hayden: Innovation and Inspiration: RNCM Chamber Music Festival

RNCM, 15-17 March 2019

This year’s RNCM Chamber Music Festival focused on the work and legacy of Joseph Hayden, the great composer of chamber music.

Over the weekend there was a lecture and a masterclass, a film screening and a workshop, and many, many concerts. The concerts featured Haydn’s music, naturally enough, but also music by those who had influenced him, his contemporaries and those who came afterward. Chiefly a certain Ludwig van Beethoven.

RNCM students and staff contributed to many concerts and each evening there was a concert by a world class ensemble. So on Saturday we heard from Trio Wanderer, who played:

• Haydn – Piano Trio in A major; Piano Trio in F sharp minor; Piano Trio in E flat minor
• Beethoven – Piano Trio in B flat major, ‘Archduke’

The ‘Archduke’ was pretty wondrous, as ever. It is amazing to think that a human being made it.

On Sunday we had Heath Quartet over, and they played:

• Haydn: String Quartet in D major; String Quartet in C major
• Beethoven: String Quartet in E flat major

Again, this was a superlative concert too. Incidentally, they played standing up, these guys: unusual, but maybe it improved their performance, by making them more alert, more responsive to each other’s playing? Certainly, it made me more aware of the swagger in Hayden’s music in particular.

Halle Orchestra: Shostakovich’s First Symphony

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Chopin, Dvořák, Halle Orchestra, Piano Concerto No.1, Scherzo capriccioso, Shostakovich, Symphony No.1

Halle Orchestra: Shostakovich’s First Symphony

The Bridgewater Hall, 14 March 2019

An evening of ebullient and bombastic music.

The Czech Czech conductor, Tomás Hanus, shepherded the Halle as they played:

• Dvorák: Scherzo capriccioso
• Chopin: Piano Concerto No.1
• Shostakovich: Symphony No.1

Probably the first work, Dvorák’s Scherzo capriccioso, was the most testing for the orchestra, because it was so incredibly mercurial. Always moving forward, constantly accelerating, never standing still. Very busybody. An ideal exemplar of music as process. And, I am sure, a devil to perform – but here the Halle excelled.

I knew Dvorák’s mother had died shortly before he wrote it and so kept on listening out for elegiac passages (which certain commentators had sworn were there), but couldn’t hear any. Mind, ascribing intention and emotion to a composer’s work is a bit like attributing human emotions to animals. It can be done, but it is a leap.

The best I could come up with was to identify a restless, distracted (indicative of dissatisfaction with the world,  grieving?) quality in certain passages.

Overall, though, it was happy and joyful. At the end you pictured a conquering hero climbing a stairway to heaven. When he reaches the top step a door opens. Blinding light.

The wonderful Eric Lu was the pianist for Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 – which was actually the second concerto Chopin wrote, though the first one to be published. The second movement, in Lu’s formidable performance, had real emotional heft. It was intense and powerful: like telling someone you love them for the first time. Meanwhile, the third and final movement was a cheery and lively dance, full of Krakowiak rhythms. The circus had come to town.

Then, following a short interval, we came to the main event of the evening, Shostakovich’s First Symphony.

Written in the mid-1920s and completed when Shostakovich was just 19, it is unusual in several respects, not least in the prominence given to wind instruments: the trumpet, bassoon, flute, oboe and clarinet all play starring roles. And already, even at this early stage in Shostakovich’s career, you can see emotional depth and deft musical construction.

The symphony evokes a sombre mood at the start, brilliantly sustains it, becoming later on dramatic and raucous. It is in the third movement where Shostakovich ups his game, conjuring a Shakespearean world of grand confilict and kingly tragedy. Musically, I love the way the oboe segues into the cello. They are kindred instruments. Both can marshal dark, strange sounds.

All in all, the symphony is an incongruous juxtaposition of exuberance and pathos, and the Halle delivered a splendidly evocative and exciting performance.

Another Halle concert, another encomium.

Details of future Halle concerts can be found here.

I Fagiolini

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I Fagiolini, Leonardo: Shaping the Invisible, Martin Kemp

I Fagiolini

Leonardo: Shaping the Invisible

RNCM Concert Hall, 12 March 2019

This was an enjoyable and enlightening evening: I learnt a lot.

You had, first of all, a series of mini-lectures by Professor Martin Kemp, the world’s foremost expert on Leonardo. He discussed various paintings (the Mona Lisa and the Salvator mundi) and picked out certain themes in Leonardo’s work, among them war, grotesqueness and ugliness (part of Leonardo’s aesthetics), the Madonna. After each mini-lecture, during which paintings were displayed on screen, we heard music from Leonardo’s contemporaries on the same or a similar theme. The likes of Thomas Tallis’s Salvator mundi, Claudio Monteverdi’s Era l’anima mia, etc.

He was an extraordinary individual, Leonardo, but he by and large shared the Renaissance worldview. Naturally, there are affinities between his work and that of others.

It was especially interesting to learn that Leonardo had an interest in music itself (in fact, he played a sort of lyre), which he saw as a branch of mathematics, an aural equivalent to geometry, Pythagoras’s theories of proportion and form in the visual realm.

All in all, it was an awfully educational and edifying experience.

 

RNCM Symphony Orchestra

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Gustav Mahler: Symphony No 5 in C sharp minor, RNCM Symphony Orchestra, Robert Schumann: Cello Concerto in A minor, Yukyung Na

RNCM Symphony Orchestra

RNCM Concert Hall, 7 March 2019

This was another splendid concert from the RNCM Symphony Orchestra.

We heard:

• Robert Schumann: Cello Concerto in A minor
• Gustav Mahler: Symphony No 5 in C sharp minor

The first work, featuring Yukyung Na on cello, was moody and romantic. It was a twee warm-up for what followed: a full pelt forward, hell for leather, sole-blistering performance of Mahler’s great symphony.

The concert was recorded by the BBC on the night and will apparently be aired on Radio 3 sometime in June.