This blog has moved

This blog is now located at http://classical-music.euroresidentes.com/.
You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds or you may click here.

For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to
http://classical-music.euroresidentes.com/feeds/posts/default.

Andalusian Inspiration

I have been listening again to a CD of music by Joaquin Turin(1882-1949) who I wrote about early in these postings (13.07.2005). He and Manuel de Falla represent a generation of Spanish composers in the earlier part of the last century, each of them distinctly themselves but both influenced by their friends Debussy and Ravel whom they met in their Parisian years. Turin composed many works for small ensembles and soloists but was the only Spanish composer of his time to produce a symphony. The Sinfonia Sevillana is regarded as his orchestral masterpiece. I have it on disc in the Naxos ‘Spanish Classics’ series, the Castile and Leon Symphony Orchestra conducted by Max Bragado Darman.

The latest in this series consists of compositions by Lorenzo Palomo, who though based in Germany for many years, says of his work that he has been ‘faithful to the most authentic Andalusian music, introducing a number of Arabic and Hebraic melismas as well as cadences characteristic of flamenco’. The disc includes his Sinfonia a Granada, which I have yet to hear.

It is this national or regional loyalty which is so characteristic of much Spanish contemporary music, where the link with popular culture is always so strong. That is particularly true of Turina, whose work like Palomo’s, shows the influence of traditional Andalusian music, whereas his friend de Falla was perhaps more adventurous.

Turina was born in Seville although his family were originally from Northern Italy. He studied there as well as in Madrid. Living in Paris from 1905 to 1914, he took composition lessons from Vincent d'Indy and studied the piano under the legendry composer and virtuoso pianist Moszkowski. He and de Falla returned to Madrid in 1914, where he worked as a composer, teacher and critic, and in 1931 was appointed the professor of composition at the Madrid Royal Conservatory, where he carried out a thorough reform despite the restrictions which operated during the Franco years, and constrained so many artists. He remained there until he died in 1949.

His works include the operas ‘Margot’ (1914) and ‘Jardín de Oriente’ (1923), La oración del torero (written first for a lute quartet, then string quartet, then string orchestra), chamber music, piano works, guitar pieces and songs, the Danzas fantasticas, also on the Naxos disc mentioned aboveas well as La Procesion del Rocio. This is his first work for orchestra and represents the annual procession in the village of that name, with a lovely melody worthy of a Hollywood movie and the sound of a pipe and drum as the journey proceeds. It’s a delightful work.

B.R.

Three Orchestras

During this long tedious winter I have been privileged to attend three excellent concerts, two in nearby Bristol and one in Liverpool. I am no music critic and therefore can’t make an informed comparison of the performances, but derived much pleasure from each of them. The Philharmonia Orchestra makes an appearance in Bristol most seasons. This concert was conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy, its Conductor Laureate - a musician for whom I have the greatest respect – his no-nonsense approach to the art of conducting very different from the celebrity style of some of his compatriots. He accompanied Steven Isserliss in Elgar’s Cello Concerto, orchestra and soloist in complete accord; a quite beautiful performance, tender and passionate as befits this work of the composer’s later years. Sadly because of not feeling well, I was unable to stay for the evening’s main work – Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony – but enjoyed my recording (Naxos 8.570568) as consolation!

It was Tchaikovsky again at Bristol’s Colston Hall earlier this month, the Fifth Symphony played by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra under the Ukrainian Kirill Karabits, now in his second year as their principal conductor. The collaboration is clearly working well. It was a full blooded and superbly rehearsed performance, the last movement a tour d’force which brought the house down. Earlier they accompanied the Polish pianist Peter Jabionski in Scriabin’s Piano Concerto, a work for which I have great affection but which I think is rarely played. It was well done, but I enjoyed the fabulous encore that followed – perhaps one of the composer’s many brief preludes, almost as much. (I play my recording of the concerto often, Nikolai Demidenko is the pianist on the Hyperion label.)

Liverpool’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra has the advantage of being a local orchestra and performing in their own hall, which has an excellent acoustic. The Manfred disc mentioned above is one of their recent achievements, recorded in the same venue. It seems as if the orchestra can rely on an enthusiastic and loyal audience. It was an unusual programme – Hindemith, Bartok and Rachmaninoff, under the headline of ‘Brave New World’. (It also provided an excellent programme which is not true of Bristol, which has more advertisements than musical notes and no reference to future concerts!). The orchestra produce a wonderful sound and under their Russian conductor, Vasily Petrenko, can lay claim to performances of an international standard. It was a superb evening.

B.R.

Beethoven 2

A long time since this journey through the 32 piano sonatas began, but then I have been otherwise engaged as well! My reservations about this monarch of all composers has been seriously challenged, as I expected it to be. A virtuoso of the key board in his own day until deafness intervened, one can imagine him sitting at the piano and experimenting with all sorts of possibilities before committing his ideas to paper. Unlike Martinu who I believe rarely corrected his first thoughts, Beethoven’s manuscripts show constant crossings-out and revisions. But the sense of seamless invention remains. Simply, he is just amazing, rivalled only by Schubert in his confidence about what he wants to do.

A lot of pleasure from my recordings derives from the pianist, Paul Lewis who says that he tries to make Beethoven the centre of his performance rather than himself. "I think Beethoven, when he writes, has a certain idea in mind, and he doesn't care how he achieves that’ he said in an interview by the Los Angeles Times "He makes it your problem. He makes indications of what you're aiming at, but he doesn't make it easy." Whereas a composer like Chopin, Lewis said in the same interview, expresses himself through the notes on the score, with Beethoven there is much more. The famous ‘Hammerklavier’ sonata, for instance, he says, is about strain, and demands it from the performer. "The awkwardness, the extreme difficulty of it, is essential to its character," he says. "You have to feel that you're grinding, pushing yourself to the limit, and maybe a little bit beyond it."

I have really enjoyed this exercise, and listening to the sonatas in order of composition, moving from the classical traditions of Haydn and Mozart to the more extrovert and surely autobiographical compositions of the late sonatas, is an experience in itself. He travels beyond any received pattern, movements of an unequal length, just two of them sometimes, often (especially in the last three) with massive finales. In all this you meet the man.

I’ve just finished listening to those last three, all conceived at about the same time and in the last six or so years of his life. I was especially moved by the very last movement of the three, which is a sort of threnody on all his music for me, but also the third movement of No.30 (Opus 109) which consists of six variations on a choral theme, with an exquisite quiet ending.

So, despite what I see as his aggression, if it’s possible to be re-converted, that’s what I am. Indeed Beethoven is, the ‘monarch’ of his profession.

B.R.

Beethoven (1)

Musical enthusiasms can change over the years. Beethoven has always been at the centre of my appreciation of classical music; his personal story of struggle and victory over temperamental angst and deafness, all part of the impression his music makes on me. But as I have got older, whilst still appreciating his genius, I now find an aggression implicit in his work that makes it difficult for me to warm to the music. There is an in-the -face remorseless, humourless attack in some of his music; so much so for me that I feel I need to steel myself against it rather than to surrender to it . His brilliance is not in doubt (if it was, who am I to question it anyway!). But if music ‘speaks’ to one, here is an insistent voice that I now find less overwhelming than I once did.

However I have been re-playing my CD’s of Beethoven’s thirty two piano sonatas in the recordings by Paul Lewis on the Harmonia Mundi label, and perhaps need to revise my opinion and withdraw my confession. I am amazed at the sheer inventiveness of the composer. Before the onset of his deafness and his abandonment from the concert platform, he was renowned in his own day as a brilliant improviser and virtuoso pianist and the proof of that is in the music. One has the feeling of an exciting journey in which he communicates with himself and with the listener.

There is this constant sense of dialogue, the keyboard straining to become what can only perfectly be experienced in an orchestral score. To the untrained ear such as mine, the unexpected keeps on happening – ‘where is he going next?’ one asks and invariably it’s not where you might expect. Despite my reservations above, Beethoven ‘talks’ to you in his sonatas, demands close attention, but leaves you refreshed and wanting more. (There’s plenty more – I am only at No. 8!). Its very busy music and I enjoy the adagios and menuettos that balance the vigorous allegros which are so characteristic of the more restless movements. Something again to do with my age perhaps - I like quiet music more than I once did! I will write on this again when I have come to the end of this particular pilgrimage.

Meanwhile I have the advantage of listening to a master pianist for whom fidelity to the score matters more than personal display. I wrote about hearing Paul Lewis perform in April of 2008.

B.R.

Birmingham and Bournemouth:Lugansky and Lill

Two orchestral concerts on consecutive days this week – an unusual but welcome luxury. My favourite orchestra – City of Birmingham Symphony on Wednesday, with their brilliant if over publicised director of music, Andris Nelsons (nine photos of him in the programme is a bit much!). The highlight for me was Rachmaninov’s 3rd. Piano Concerto: Nikolai Lugansky the soloist. I have his excellent Warner’s recording (again with the C.B.S.O.), but this performance was nothing less than sensational, given a poetic as well as a powerful interpretation of this my favourite concerto, with a superb contribution from the orchestra.

An interesting man, Lugansky believes in God, he says, ‘because there is music’. In an interview with a Dutch journalist, he has quoted the legendry pianist Michelangeli, who once said that a pianist should be the priest of the composer. Even with a barn-stormer like this work, Lugansky has a coolness and purity in his performances (I have also heard him play the second Rachmaninov concerto). He is exceptional amongst the many pianists of his generation.

Yesterday in Bristol, John Lill, a very different artist and performing a very different concerto - Beethoven’s second -played with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, reduced in size for this very Mozartian work. It was a gentle and sensitive performance as was the Ballet Music - ‘Idomeneo’ that preceded it. The conductor was the American James Gattigan, young, but who has been around a bit. I counted more than twenty five named international orchestras he has worked with in the programme notes, which ended with the information that he ‘resides in Brooklyn with his wife’. But when, one wonders?

Both concerts had Dvorak in common. On Wednesday in Symphony Hall it was his eighth, and in Bristol last night, his seventh symphonies. Both were played with dedication and brio, and had been clearly well prepared, Birmingham’s orchestra having the advantage of working with a permanent conductor. However Gaffigan was impressive, and the orchestra applauded him as well as the audience. But I have reservations about the way Dvorak is generally performed, as a twentieth rather than nineteenth century composer– with emphases on climax and speed. For me his use of the woodwind gives the clue to his genius. Perhaps I am fantasising, and I am no expert. He certainly moved beyond his grounding in Moravian and Bohemian folk music and contributed to the development of symphonic music beyond Brahms. But I relished the quieter moments in both performances and flinched a bit at the enormous climaxes. But two wonderful concerts!

B.R.

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