Wednesday 30 October 2013

Volodos and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra continue Brahms-fest

Brahms Piano Concerto No 2 in B flat major, Op. 83
Brahms Symphony No 2 in D, Op. 73
 

Gewandhausorchester Leipzig
Riccardo Chailly
conductor
Arcadi Volodos piano


23 October 2013, Barbican, London
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The Chailly/Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra Brahms cycle continued on Wednesday with a hugely impressive combination of the 2nd Piano Concerto and 2nd Symphony.

The first thing to note (again) of Arcadi Volodos is his musicality.  He appears a natural chamber musician, listening intently to the orchestra’s contributions and responding, as alive to the meditative moments as those of high drama.  Deep into the great slow movement he and Chailly brought the music into a trance-like state, and elsewhere he embellished the solo cello line delicately.  That famous cello solo in the Andante sounded a trifle flat and thin to me.  The french horns also had some entries to forget.  But as with the previous night there was much to enjoy from the Gewandhausorchester, not least the satin sheen that the strings summoned up in the mystical moments of the first movement.
Arcadi Volodos accepts his triumph at the Barbican

Volodos of course also possesses one of the piano world’s most marvellous mechanisms, and dispatched whole passages of Brahms’ famously tortuous writing with outrageous aplomb.  His double-speed race to the conclusion of the scherzo formed a pendant with the orchestra’s similar speed up to conclude the Brahms First Symphony the night before.  It is to be hoped that Volodos continues to appear regularly in London.  He is simply one of the most gifted and interesting pianists alive.

After the interval the Brahms symphony cycle continued with his Second, written in a more pastoral vein than the Beethoven-on-steroids First. Having agonised for 20+ years over his first, the Second was delivered in under a year.   This is Brahms’ most lyrical symphony but also contains some of his most exhilarating moments.  Long a bit of a Cinderella symphony for me, I finally made friends with it earlier in the year so this concert was not to be missed. 


All the quality and preparation from the previous evening were again in evidence here.  The french horns were back on form, the second violins were flexing their muscle in the vigorous development sections, and the interpretation was again excellently rehearsed and shaped.  The finale was exhilarating in its panache and precision.  To hear such volume and power combined with a continuously translucent and balanced sound was a marvel.  


But don’t seek this orchestra out for any Hungarian Dances.  Whether it was the interventionism of Chailly or the disdain of an orchestra in pursuit of more cultured things, this First Hungarian Dance of Brahms joined the long history of encores that added nothing but subtracted a little from the memory of a Brahms evening of the first rank.
Chailly and the venerable Gewandhausorchester in the Brahms 2nd Symphony















Tuesday 29 October 2013

Chailly's Brahms cycle opens at the Barbican

Brahms Double Concerto in A Minor, Op. 102
Brahms Symphony No 1 in C Minor, Op. 68
 

Gewandhausorchester Leipzig
Riccardo Chailly
Gewandhauskapellmeister
Leonidas Kavakos violin

Enrico Dindo cello

22 October 2013, Barbican, London
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One of the highlights of this London season is the Brahms Symphonies and Concertos cycle of Ricardo Chailly and his Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra.  This orchestra is one of Europe’s most venerable with a history stretching back over 200 years.  Along the way it also has connections  to Brahms himself via Arthur Nikisch who directed the orchestra's first Brahms cycle in 1913/14 and who Brahms heard conduct his symphonies.  

Johannes Brahms
Cellist Enrico Dindo
Concert 1 of the 4 started with the Double Concerto and First Symphony.  Leonidas Kavakos and Enrico Dindo were the intermittently engaging soloists in the concerto, and forcefully projected the heroic elements in the score.  Kavakos I have heard before but Dindo was new, bringing a strong sense of personality to his playing and highlighting the feeling of recitative and aria that underpins much of the writing.  Less successful were the more chamber aspects of this work.  The orchestral contribution was very fine as we have come to expect from previous visits, although the woodwind sounded unusually distant relative to the strings and soloists.  A conscious effect?

"I shall never write a symphony" Brahms stated, aged 37.   And the First Symphony had a famously long gestation period.  It was all Beethoven's fault.  "You've no idea what it feels like with such a giant marching behind you" he said.  Nevertheless after 21 years and much encouragement, this majestic work was premiered.

Chailly’s Brahms is highly distinctive.  Not for him the dense, monumental effects of others.  His hallmarks are a sound of shape, transparency,  rhythmic spring, and strong onward momentum.  This performance of Brahms' First Symphony was clearly very well rehearsed.  The orchestra and conductor have just released a recording of the 4 symphonies and are in the middle of touring them to London, Vienna, Paris etc… At times Chailly exaggerated the indicating of entries from sections, as if to say “Look what a delicious detail we have drawn out here!”  But I should not be ungrateful.  There were frequent moments when the ear marvelled at a neatly rounded off phrase here, a smooth gear change there.  All was targeted towards maximising the transparency and balance of the sound, revealing detail and lifting the rhythm.  The pizzicato from the eight double basses was as notable as their wonderful growling pedal notes.  The sound from the string sections was at times so smoothly and sumptuously toned it seemed to be lifting the orchestra into a realm of Ideal Brahmsian performance.  

There were three moments that made the jaw drop.  In the thick of the first movement’s tumultuous development the sequence of gleaming entries thrown amongst the various string sections shone like silver. Then the great melody of the finale sounded as fresh as the day it was written. And the glorious coda?  Well this delivered the night’s biggest thrill when the orchestra accelerated dramatically into the final pages.  

Ricardo Chailly and the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester at the Barbican

Saturday 12 October 2013

Wilfred Owen's poetry silences the Festival Hall

Benjamin Britten: War Requiem (1962)

London Philharmonic Orchestra 
Vladimir Jurowski conductor 
Evelina Dobraceva soprano 
Ian Bostridge tenor 
Matthias Goerne baritone 
Neville Creed conductor (chamber orchestra) 
London Philharmonic Choir 
Trinity Boys Choir

Royal Festival Hall, London 12 October 2013

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Wilfred Owen

A solid evening's work from the LPO under Jurowski, even if it was not as searing as might have been expected.  On a first hearing, there was a nagging feeling this work is not more than the sum of its undeniably impressive parts.

There was much to admire, led by Wilfred Owen's moving First World War poetry which Britten ingeniously intersperses throughout the Latin Requiem mass.  In the Offertorium there was this stunning undercutting of the Biblical story of the sacrifice of Abram's son:

Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.

But the old man would not so,
but slew his son, -
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.


Very fine indeed were the two poetry soloists Ian Bostridge and Matthias Goerne, with Bostridge leading with his plangent voice and compelling fusion of melody and word. Vladimir Jurowski and Neville Creed directed with clarity and feeling.  Elsewhere the LPO chorus were well balanced without really taking flight, while the off-stage boys choir were virtually inaudible at critical moments.

It was left to Bostridge (unforgettable in "Move him into the sun..." and the Agnus Dei) and Goerne to deliver the high points, not least in the closing of the Libera Me and its call to sleep.  This work delivers a powerful message of pacifism and Jurowski might have held the final silence for longer than the 20 seconds he chose.

Wilfred Owen's poem "Strange Meeting" featured in the Libera Me 


Sunday 6 October 2013

Vitality and verve from Orchestra Mozart

Beethoven: Leonora Overture No. 2, Op. 72a
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat, Op. 19
Beethoven: Symphony No. 4 in B flat, Op. 60


Orchestra Mozart

Bernard Haitink, conductor
Maria Joao Pires, piano

Bernard Haitink

Royal Festival Hall, London, 1 October 2013
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In the end Artistic Director Claudio Abbado was not able to join the Orchestra Mozart due to health concerns.  But impressive back-up came from the equally fine conductor Bernard Haitink and a splendid partner in soloist Maria Joao Pires.

This concert was a bizarrely managed bit of scheduling by London's Southbank Centre in which only the presence of Orchestra Mozart itself was a constant.  It started with an attractive Haydn/Mozart/Beethoven programme which then became all-Beethoven.  Then Pires dropped out as soloist to be replaced by Martha Argerich.  Abbado was subsequently forced to cancel his concerts for 2 months, including a tour of Japan.  Argerich simultaneously cancelled and Haitink stepped in at short notice with the suddenly available again Pires.

Orchestra Mozart is a chamber ensemble formed in 2004.  With Abbado as Artistic Director and Diego Matheuz as Principal Guest Conductor (he recently took up the same position with the Melbourne Symphony) it does not want for star conductors.  No doubt with this influence it also plays with the front rank of today's soloists.  And among its own ranks are some famous names such as Wolfram Christ, previously principal viola with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
Wolfram Christ


Pires, a gold standard these days in the classical piano concerti, was in vintage form in the Beethoven Second Piano Concerto after a slightly hard edged start.  Her finely pitched delivery of the hanging notes at the close of the slow movement was mesmerising.  



With youth and technical prowess combined, the Orchestra Mozart strings brought great verve and vigour to their playing, not least in a thrilling Egmont Overture served as an encore.  The woodwind added fine individuality in their contributions to leave only an overall sense that the darker aspects of the works were slightly underplayed.  However the sunny Fourth Symphony was a delight from beginning to end, and there was no want of drama and heroic Beethovenian struggle in the overtures that book-ended the concert and which Haitink shaped with a sure hand.  This season is Haitink’s 60th as conductor, during which he will turn 85.  Long may orchestras benefit from his wisdom. 

Pianist Maria Joao Pires

Martha Argerich - not available