A Living Legend

I have been aware of the veteran American conductor, Lorin Maazel, for years, and to my great delight last night saw him in action. He collects orchestras as well as the plaudits of the critics. He is or has been musical director of the New York Philharmonic, the Philharmonia, the Clevedon Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Arturo Toscanini Philharmonic (a new one to me),the Bavarian Radio Symphony, director of the Vienna State Opera and – of interest to this website – he is now coming to the end of three years working with the opera house orchestra of Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències (City of Arts and Sciences),the enormous entertainment complex, designed by Santiago Calatrava and Félix Candela, in the city of Valencia.

Last night it was a privilege to be present at music making of great distinction. It was the turn of the Philharmonia as part of their current tour with Maazel, performing a programme which is to be repeated in Dortmund next week. He is like so many conductors it seems, small in stature, conserving his energy on the podium, with spare but clear directions to his players -who clearly have great regard for him – but then expansively leading them to climaxes of which there were many last night. He conducted throughout without a score.

It was an exhilarating programme which I greatly enjoyed, the centre piece for many there was clearly Tchaikovsky’s 1st Piano Concerto performed passionately but also sensitively by the Macedonian pianist Simon Trpceski who had some trouble in getting the piano stool at the right height, applauded by some of the audience when he had done so and responding with a mocking bow. There was exceptional rapport between orchestra and soloist. It was a virtuoso performance, but that was true of the whole evening.

It might seem perverse but for me the highlight of the concert was the first piece, Kodaly’s Dances from Galanta, which has for long been a favourite of mine, as has all the work of this Hungarian composer. With Bela Bartok, these two friends brought to a wider audience much of the country’s folk music. I visited Kodaly’s house in Budapest when I was in that city in the winter of 1994 (see in my European Cities blogs) and over the years have collected some of his music on disc. It was a sensational performance – seeing music as it is made is so much better than just hearing it, and the relationship between the instruments – especially some wonderful clarinet playing and gorgeous string tone – was a revelation to me.

After the interval the evening ended in triumphal mood with Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition with the prolonged climax of The Great Gate of Kiev ringing in my ears as I left Colston Hall.

A great evening!

Bryan

Kirill Karabits and the B.S.O.

Following on my last posting, I was at the Colston Hall in Bristol last night to hear the first programme there of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra under their new principal conductor, the young Ukranian, Kirill Karabits. As he appeared on the platform the audience welcomed him warmly, but he is the antithesis of a showy extrovert, and having briefly acknowledged the applause, he turned to face his new orchestra, and in a moment we were into the first piece. From my seat above the orchestra I was able to watch his distinctive conducting style. He uses no baton but with expressive hands and arms, moulds the music, his eyes darting from the score to the players as if together they were conjuring up the sound. A comment by Christine (Dec 5th) on the first concert I saw him conduct, referred to the passion of his conducting. I agree and it is marked by the important qualities of commitment and concentration as well.

The three varied works performed last night were a challenge to this new collaboration. My main interest was the symphony, Sibelius’s 2nd. I have several recordings and treasure performances by John Barbirolli and Simon Rattle. It’s a work I love – perhaps too much for I was just a little disappointed with last night’s performance, but cannot be sure why. Perhaps I was expecting too much. A work of starts and endings, it’s not easy to create a sense of wholeness. But it was played with verve and, yes, passion, and deserved the enthusiastic response from the audience at its ending.

Renaud Capucon was the soloist in Bruch’s Violin Concerto and gave a splendid performance which was matched by the sensitive accompanying of the orchestra; it was all of a piece. But the unexpected revelation of the concert for me was the opening work, The Frescoes of Piero della Francesca by the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu (1890-19159). Densely orchestrated, employing every part of the orchestra, it revealed a hidden melodic unity which emerged continually from the torrent of sound, which I found exciting and very moving. Critics of Martinu suggest that he had no clear style and was too influenced by changing fashions in music. From the little that I have heard of his huge output that would have been my impression until last night. I was overwhelmed by the piece. Talking to a member of the orchestra in the interval he said he had never played the work before. That was in no way apparent and pays tribute to the quality of the orchestra and the preparation of its conductor.

The confidence and élan of the performances bodes well for the future of a new partnership, which we celebrated last night.

B.R.

Charismatic Conductors

There have been quite a few changes on the orchestral scene recently and I have picked up references to three conductors who have mounted the podium for the first time as musical directors of orchestras. The most sensational of them is of course the 28 year old Venezuelan, Gustavo Dudamel, who has featured in these blogs before (and in many other places!). He opened his tenure as director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic last week with a formidable programme of Mahler and John Cage, conducting without a score and receiving a ten minute standing ovation with the final work. ‘Here was a probing, rigorous and richly characterised interpretation’ wrote the New York Times music critic.

Here at home my local orchestra, The Bournemouth Symphony, was conducted by the Ukranian Kirill Karabits for the first time in his role as their chief conductor . Fiona Maddocks from The Sunday Observer was there, and she gave him and what she describes as ‘this fine orchestra’, an enthusiastic review. She called it ‘an exhilarating debut which won a rapturous response from the capacity audience’. Andrew Clements in The Guardian was more cautious and complained that the performance of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring lacked ’a sense of overall organisation’ and strained the resources of the orchestra. The same orchestra, but different perceptions. I heard Karabits conducting his new orchestra last year ( see December 5th.blog ) and was impressed, and will be hearing this new combination again later this month.

There’s a new duo in Scotland as well. Donald Runnicles is now the chief conductor of the B.B.C. Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Rowena Smith reviewed a recent concert in the City Halls, Glasgow. Mahler’s 1st Symphony was the main work, as it had been in Los Angeles a few days before. The critic was impressed and, it ‘bodes well for the future’ she concludes. With a passing reference to the number of young conductors around – Krabbitts is 32 – she says that despite the excitement of youth, Scotland has opted for experience. Runnicles has also come home. Scottish by birth, he has many positions of responsibility in America and Europe, some of which remain and has a considerable operatic reputation.

An interesting week with perhaps rather too much attention to the figure on the rostrum. Whatever the charisma of the man or woman out in front, its the players who make the music. Despite the enormous enthusiasm for Dudamel, it is significent that he accepted the applause by standing not alone, but with the orchestra.

B.R.

Pianistic Pyrotechnics

I am missing my annual visit to the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts in London’s Royal Albert Hall. My first visit was in 1947 and in the following year I had a season ticket, and have tried most years to go to one or two concerts since. But thanks to B.B.C. TV I have watched several of this year’s programmes, and it has been almost as good as actually being there. I think the programming has been a bit odd – even esoteric – with an emphasis on anniversaries of one sort or another, but that’s a question of preference and taste.

I have just been watching a re-play of two of this week’s concerts, both featuring works for piano and orchestra. Stephen Hough concluded his survey of all four of Tchaikovsky’s piano concertos with a bravura performance of the composer’s Concert Fantasia in G major with David Robertson conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Generally agreed to be an unequal piece, it was new to me and I enjoyed it very much, as did the audience. Full of piano pyrotechnical challenges, Hough who has become a favourite of the promenaders, was fully equal to its demands.

The previous night the renowned Chinese pianist Lang Lang played Chopin’s Piano Concerto No.2 in F minor. I have since read a fairly cool review of his performance, the critic implying that the pianist 'played' with the music. Certainly he is a performer, in love with music to the point of ecstasy, flirting, smooching even with the key board, but also achieving exquisitely delicate and faultless playing. The audience went mad when it was over, and the encore, almost a formality, was never in doubt. He is an astonishing and still very young artist, and on this occasion had the advantage of being beautifully accompanied by the Staatskapelle Dresden, conducted by Fabio Luisi.

What is it that makes ordinary mortals play like these and many other virtuoso pianists? Much of the time most of these two weren’t even looking at the keyboard, their fingers dashing up and down with consummate confidence, Lang Lang in particular, seeming to commune with higher powers - or the Albert Hall ceiling. Learning to play the piano was one of many of the things I have tried to do and failed. (Learning Spanish is another!). I managed to plod through one of Beethoven’s early sonatas, but never became proficient enough to play without being glued to the score and making many errors. I even stumble at this computer’s keyboard! And yet here are these amazing international artists who seem to belong to another species of human being and bring such delight to those who love music.

B.R.

Music and Message

This has been a remarkable weekend at the London Promenade Cocerts. Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra has performed in three programmes, the first and third of which were televised.

The orchestra itself is an event. Conceived by Barenboim and his friend the Palestinian born critic Edward Said, who died in 2003, it comes together each summer and consists of young musicians from Israel and Arab countries. Barenboim – surely one of the very greatest artists of the age – insists that the orchestra is not a political project but a humanitarian one. He describes it as an ongoing dialogue linking the universal, metaphysical language of music with the continuous dialogue between people of all ages. It is, he says, a forum where young people can express themselves freely and openly. ‘We believe in only two absolutely necessary political ideas – there is no military solution to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, and the destinies of the Israeli and Palestinian’.

The orchestra has performed throughout the world in the ten years of its existence, and received a tremendous welcome, in a packed Albert Hall on Friday and yesterday. There is an amazing rapport between conductor and players, with Barenboim almost reluctantly accepting the immense applause of the audience. He seems, as he conducts, to respond to his musicians as much as to direct them. It was Liszt, Wagner and Berlioz on Friday and with another chamber concert of Mendelssohn and Berg later that evening, Barenboim smiled at the audience and said – ‘the encore is at 10.15’! It was Beethoven’s opera ‘Fidelio’ yesterday, with its inescapable message of freedom for imprisoned people. Splendid performances, rapturously received. On Friday, listening alone and yet feeling part of a community of hope in peace and justice, I was near to tears, as I am sure were many others.

There is an interesting connection with Spain for readers of these blogs. The orchestra has its summer school in Seville with some young musicians from Spain now also taking part in the orchestra as well. The Barenboim-Said Foundation is financed by the regional government of Andalucía to develop education through music projects based on the principles of coexistence and dialogue. This of course in a region – as Barenboim pointed out in an interview in the interval on Friday –where once Jews and Muslims lived together in peace.

Let Barenboim have the last word. ‘The Divan was conceived as a project against ignorance. A project against the fact that it is absolutely essential for people to get to know the other, to understand what the other thinks and feels, without necessarily agreeing with it. I want to create a platform where the two sides can disagree and not resort to knives.’ He has done so.

B.R.

Bath Music Fest 2009

May into June : time again for the Bath Music Fest which opened this weekend with a brilliant firework display. We are going to several concerts and on Monday I was part of an enthusiastic audience at the Assembly Rooms hearing a popular programme played by Freddy Kemp, a virtuoso of the key board, but a person of quiet and modest manner. Before the concert there was an interview with Kemp by the Festival’s charismatic Director, the multi-talented Joanna MacGregor.

Kemp’s father is German and his mother Japanese (and he is married to a Russian wife!), but although England is his home, his work confirms him as an international citizen, now much in demand around the world. During the interview, he reeled off the engagements he has had in the last two weeks. And claimed not to be very good at practicing! After a concert the previous evening in Perth, Scotland, he had driven through the night to be available for Monday’s concert, but there were no signs of any tiredness in his performance of two Beethoven sonatas, two Chopin ballads, Liszt’s’ monumental Mephisto Waltz No.1 bringing the recital to a sensational close. It was wonderful to be there.

The Bath Festival is an eclectic mix of music and a long way from the more traditional days of its origin in 1948. Well before Bath became the fashionable destination of the wealthy, Bath was known for its music. Queen Elizabeth visited the city in 1668 to hear the choristers from nearby Wells Cathedral perform in Bath and in the early 1700’s when Beau Nash was the Master of Ceremonies, indulging his love of gambling, and drawing society away from London to bathe in the spa waters, Nash introduced an orchestra as another of the delights the city could offer the indulgent rich. 2008 celebrated Bath International Music Festival's 60th Anniversary with a stunning Bruckner performance by the L.S.O. under Colin Davis.

Joanne MacGregor not only performs in several concerts, but regularly pops up to greet audiences throughout the seventeen days of music making. Yesterday I went to one of her Master (Mistress’?) Classes for young pianists, one of whom, a ten year old girl, brought the house down by the maturity and concentration of her playing. We are looking forward to hearing the amazing South African mezzo Sibongile Khumalo in Bath Abbey this evening.

B.R.

Another Prom Season

The prospectus for the 2009 Henry Wood Promenade Concerts in London is now on sale and you can check on the programmes by looking them up on bbc.co.uk/proms. Each year the style of music is expanded to embrace many genres and performed in a variety of venues, more this year than before. But the classical repertoire is the mainstay of the concerts, and most of them – 76 in total - will be held in the spacious Royal Albert Hall. All will be broadcast and several televised either on the night or at some time later. I have decided to be an armchair concert-goer this year, although I shall miss the unrepeatable atmosphere that can only be experienced in the hall itself.

The programme planners bend over backwards to be different from previous years, the theory being that for a tradition to survive it mustn’t get stale. One novelty this year are concerts that employ the piano or is some cases more than one. All of Tchaikovsky’s works for piano and orchestra are being performed with Stephen Hough as soloist.

But for many the most unusual experience of the Proms will be when Malcolm Arnold’s A Grand, Grand Overture begins the second half of the last night on September 12th I have a recording of this on a compilation disc of his music on Conifer Classics, probably no longer available. It’s a crazy work employing a huge orchestra, organ, three vacuum cleaners, a floor polisher and rifle shots with surely one of the most delayed climaxes in all music to finish the work. The piece if full of spoof references to other composers, including Mahler and Saint Saens. It will be worth waiting for and the Promenaders will love it. My bet is that they will demand an encore.

Originally – and I think its only previous performance – the piece was composed for one of the three Festivals in London organised by the humorist, cartoonist and tuba player Gerard Hoffnung’; a highlight of the 1950’s. The two were friends, both mischievous but Hoffnung’s humour less dark than Arnold’s. I wrote a blog on Arnold in October 2006. I still feel that although he is an uneven composer, he is seriously neglected. So it’s a bit sad that when he is featured in a concert programme its only as a joker, not a serious composer.

But do listen on September 12th if you can. It will be enormous fun.

B.R.