Philip Spires commonplace book

Escandinavia – ADDA hosts Joan Enric Lluna and Joana Carneiro in Grundman, Bach and Schumann

2026-03-28T16:18:00.003+01:00

The concert was subtitled “Escandinavia”, a label that some of the audience found a little confusing. But a program note clarified that the Symphony No. 2 of Robert Schumann is also often called Escandinavia as a nickname. Despite being premiered in Dresden in 1845, it was also dedicated to King Oscar of Norway and Sweden – hence the nickname.

Baffling labels aside, there was nothing in this program to challenge a concert-going audience, apart from possibly a world premiere of a piece by locally resident composer, Jorge Grundman. The History of a Smile for clarinet and orchestra was listed as his opus 96, no less. The orchestra in question turned out to be strings and a percussion section of a vibraphone and a marimba. These latter instruments played a significant part in creating a soundscape for the work, while, if anything, the full complement of strings was, if anything, underused.

But this is essentially a show piece for solo clarinet, though it would be stretching things to say it was a concerto. Minimalist structures are heard here, with many figures relying on minor scales or modes around a bass pedal. The overall effect is perhaps rather monotonous, but, given the minimalist inspiration, that is part of the point. Joan Enric Lluna’s playing was superb, as were the two encores he offered, both his own compositions and forming two parts of his Homenaje á Maestro Rodrigo.

Joana Carneiro’s conducting of this opening work was itself astounding in that she prompted every detail of the score. It came, therefore, as no surprise to read that she often specialises in contemporary music. When she moved onto Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3, she was equally precise with music that demands above all precision. Now this is every well-known music, especially the second movement, the Air, which is often heard as a standalone piece. The ADDA Orchestra’s playing, especially that of the trumpet, was breathtaking.

And in the second half we heard a Romantic symphony that epitomises the mid-nineteenth century approach to music. It is often levied as a criticism against minimalism that the music is all process, not product. Anyone thinking that this is a characteristic of modern music should listen to the Symphony No. 2 of Robert Schumann, where the composer’s assumptions of form, modulation and orchestration are more than evident. In the end, it is a satisfying work, but, for all Schumann’s reputation for unpredictability, this particular concertgoer tends to find his approach formulaic. It’s a personal opinion.

The orchestral playing, the conducting, and the solo playing were all superb. The program also held together beautifully and as a whole it was also superb.

L’Écume des Jours by Edison Denisov from Lille Opera on OperaVision

2026-03-22T20:10:15.384+01:00

I do not usually review anything outside of direct experience. Theatre, opera, and concerts, yes, because they are experienced at firsthand. I make an exception for books, because reading is so personal that each different reader may find a different world within pages visited by others. Film, recordings and television I regard as packaged and, though I might record what I have seen, I do not write reviews. There are exceptions, notably the operas Eros and Psyche by Rosicky and Von Einem’s Der Prozess - The Trial, both of which were live performances made available by the wonderful work of OperaVision. The exception has come around again, this time in the form of Denisov’s L’Écume des Jours, an opera also broadcast by OperaVision.

Premiered in 1986, Opera de Lille recently presented the work, and it is available on the OperaVision website until September 2026. I encourage opera lovers everywhere to try it, and anyone interested in contemporary music should make a make a point of listening, perhaps on several occasions.

Edison Denisov’s music does not have many performances in the concert halls of western Europe and North America. Personally, I can see a straight line of influence through the twentieth century – the Soviet century – starting with Shostakovich, continuing through Schnittke and terminating with Denisov. Seen together, the work of these three composers seems to illustrate the history and fate of the Soviet Union from its creation to its demise. Right from the Symphony No1 of Dmitri Shostakovich, with its almost confident modernity anticipating the Constructivism in art that would follow, through to the disparate multiplicity of style and form that characterizes Denisov’s music, there was generally an increasing loss of confidence in the ideal and increasing resort to cynicism on behalf of the composers in order to express what they were feeling.

Listen, for instance, to each composer’s first symphony, and compare them. As recently mentioned, Shostakovich was generally upbeat, though as a composer he was never particularly optimistic. Later, always prone to pastiche, in his case circus, music and jazz often invade the gloom, the first symphony limits itself to what might be achieved by a young genius. It is forward looking, if not quite confident.

Contrast that with the first symphony of Arnold Schnittke. The vision is equally grand, but now there is evidence of cynicism, some use of the random, inclusion of electronics and frequent use of popular forms, though these are generally integrated and interwoven. There is less confidence than in Shostakovich and more cynicism, but the overall impression is that the individual can still make a contribution, though the outlook is bleak.

In Denisov’s first symphony, equally grand in vision as the two already mentioned, it seems that recognizable forms and shapes have been subsumed into confusion, a thoroughly competent confusion where the composer can express what he wishes but cannot settle mentally into a particular style or groove. Everything is disparate – at least on the surface. The concerns of previous generations of composers are still there are still here, but they are packaged together, as if the composer cannot decide what should take precedence. The despair seems here closer to the surface, the energy of cynicism that both Shostakovich and Schnittke is here dissipated to despair. It sounds as if Edison Denisov lacks the commitment to espouse as a particular style and consciously dithered the sound.

And said we come to L’Écume des Jours in the production by Opera Lille. Based on Boris Vian’s surrealist novel Froth On The Daydream, we meet Chloë, who is clearly not well. She turns to Isis, her friend and lover, and pleads for one last chance to meet a boy and be happy. Such a boy appears in the shape of Colin. Chloë and Colin hit it off, though Chloë has to disguise herself in a pink dress and wear a wig to hide the fact that she that her treatment has caused her to lose her hair. Chloë is in fact suffering from water lily in the lung and her treatment is to be surrounded with flowers.

Serious surreal encounters ensue, which involve mice, people emitting smoke, a doctor who prepares a treatment by severing his own tongue and piercing his own arm, a character who cuts off his arm with a knife, and various other visual treats.

Initially, the flights of fancy are vaguely shocking and part humorous, but as the opera progresses, they become darker and more threatening. A real crucified Christ appears regularly, accompanied by his own choir, and a character called Alise asserts her substantial presence on the proceedings.

The opera’s denouement is a lethal injection for Chloë to end her suffering, and we are left at the end with Isis, Chloë and Colin reclining on a hospital bed, with Chloë dying But with Isis placed centrally, we realise that she is suffering the most. The opera seems to be saying that the real suffering is felt by those who experience bereavement, not death.

Denisov’s music is perfect for the scenario. It comes and goes, makes its point, then disappears. When popular forms appear, they threaten rather than or relieve. Eventually, these characters are tossed around by events like rudderless boats in a storm. They are part of and party to the events, but they are never in control. Chloë is dying, Colin, to some extent, exists only because Chloë wished him to. It is Isis, the person in the middle of the love triangle who suffers, and it is she who is alive and will continue to live. The shortest straw, perhaps.

L’Écume des Jours is a rarity. Opera lovers should give it a go. Do not be daunted by the apparent disconnectedness of most of the music. After two hours, it will all make sense in the sense that it remains nonsense. The above is what I took from the experience in a single sitting. There will be more.

Bassem Akiki conducts and the direction of Anna Smolar is amazing. Josefin Feiler, Cameron Becker, Katia Ledoux, Elmar Gilbertsson, Edwin Crossley-Mercer, Natasha Te Rupe Wilson, Robin Neck, Maurel Endong, Matthieu Lécroart have important parts in the cast. Do experience L’Écume des Jours on OperaVision.

Martha Argerich, Charles Dutoit and the Orchestra Della Svizzera Italiana present a star-studded concert in ADDA, Alicante

2026-03-21T13:16:22.901+01:00

Star billing often does not live up to audience expectations. Such events tend to attract attendees who are more interested in seeing a star name than in listening to what that performer might be able to do. There was not one minute like that in the entire evening last night in ADDA, Alicante, where we were privileged to hear music made by Martha Argerich and Charles Dutoit.

They are both getting on in years. Martha Argerich is 84 and Charles Dutoit 90, but no one who listened to the music they made would have had any inkling of their advancing years, so fresh and eager were both in their music making.

Martha Argerich’s name would grace any concert in any auditorium. Here she played the first concerto of Beethoven, the same work that opened her concerto-performing career just 76 years ago. It is hard when listening to this music to imagine that it was written before 1800. This is fresh, sophisticated, jolly, and serious at the same time, and displays the kind of integration between the orchestra and soloist that was to shape and so completely change the form so completely from the elegance and decoration of the eighteenth-century model.

Though it was not Beethoven’s first attempt at the form - we know that he was in intensely self-critical - it has a freshness and directness that belies its complexity. Here Beethoven wanders wide from the declared C major and makes abrupt transitions, both rhythmic and harmonic. This can make a performance of the work seem disconnected, but not, of course, in the hands of Martha Argerich, who first recorded the work over 40 years ago.

The followed an encore. Scarlatti’s Sonata K1 41 is a piece that Martha Argerich plays regularly as an encore. What her right hand has to do in this piece is both fast and intricate. But the effect is above our musical: there is no show here, only quality.

The orchestra and Charles Dutoit had started the evening with a performance of Ravel’s Mother Goose. Now Ravel’s music is always surprising. Here, Charles Dutoit chose slow tempi that stressed both of the beauty of the phrases and the detail of the orchestration. Nothing in music exists, of course, if the musicians are not up to the task. In this concert, the Orchestra Della Svizzera Italiana was not only up to the task, their playing and integration as an ensemble sculpted every phrase to perfection.

In the second half, Charles Dutoit directed the Orchestra Della Svizzera Italiana in the fourth symphony of Mendelson, the Italian. At 90 years of age, Charles Dutoit keeps gestures to a minimum, but what he gets from his players is superb. And it was especially joyful for the audience to witness how much the players were enjoying the experience, a response, which kept the music, both lyrical and vibrant. Charles Dutoit announced that the encore would be a piece that was “very well known”, and it was. Perfection.

Handel's Giulio Cesare In Egitto in Valencia is a triumph for all concerned, singers, designers, directors, technicians and especially musicians

2026-03-15T12:20:00.001+01:00

Giulio Cesare In Egitto is an opera by Handel dating from approximately 1724. The word “approximately” must also be applied to the operas of George Frederick Handel because he was nothing if not a pragmatist. He regularly rewrote or edited passages to accommodate the particular skills or shortcomings of whatever singers he had at his disposal. For a composer who wrote over forty Italian operas, some of them almost household names, we would expect that opportunities to hear his work in major houses are frequent. Though I personally have not sought performances of the composer’s work, I admit that the last time I heard a performance of one of the operas was forty years ago in London when the English National Opera did Xerxes. I recall that I attended two performances, because it was a superb production. So it was with some misgivings that I approached this production in Valencia of Giulio Cesare In Egitto. My musical tastes have changed over the years and I was not sure that the experience would measure up to expectations - or perhaps the real fear was that it would!

The reluctance was not musical. Handel’s melodic gift is one of the most dependable things in European music. Basically, I worried that a three-and-a-half-hour baroque opera would not sustain my interest in a hall like Les Arts, Valencia, where the presence of a baroque orchestra might just be lost in the sheer size of the place. I need not have worried. A seat in row five meant that everything was perfectly audible, though I imagine that some passages of this production might have been less than audible in the gods.

And speaking of gods, they were remarkably absent in this libretto. Though the sets regularly featured pyramids and ibises, there were a few references to any religious differences that might have existed between Egypt and Rome. Indeed, the setting was the Ptolemaic period, so indeed there may have been not have been many differences, at least as far as emperors and generals were concerned.

At the start, Caesar is victorious. Tolomeo, ruler of Egypt, has had Pompeo, the opposing general in the recent battle, beheaded, and, thinking the trophy of the head would please Caesar, he has his henchman, Achilla, present it to Caesar. To perform the task, Achilla is dressed like a cross between a jester and an ogre. Caesar is revolted, as is Cordelia, Pompeo’s wife and Sesto, his son, who vows to avenge the death of his father. In this production Sesto’s youth is emphasised by his inability to lift the sword that he wields as a threat.

Cleopatra, not satisfied with playing second fiddle to her brother, then sets about a plot to remove him from the throne and bring Caesar along with her, thus uniting power and cementing her position. Much of the opera’s plot revolves around the way Cleopatra uses her guile and looks to win Caesar over to her plan. It is essential, therefore, that Cleopatra can not only sing, she needs to act supremely well, without once hamming it up.

One of the major successes of this imaginative production was to use two Cleopatras, one of whom sang. Cleopatra, the seductress, wore a long frilly dress, while Cleopatra the schemer wore a business suit. The two Cleopatras were made up to appear very similar and swapped clothes here and there, depending on what the music was conveying. In a moment of absolute magic, Cleopatra, as an inconsequential servant, seduces a snoozing Caesar. But he is on stage, while Cleopatra sings from within the audience, dressed as the seductress. At the scenes denouement, the second Cleopatra appears on stage to stand in triumph over Caesar, but she, the non-singing character, is dressed as the schemer. Ultimate conquest is achieved. Both the drama and the beauty this scene conveyed was one of the production’s triumphs.

By the end, Pompeo’s death is avenged, Tolomeo gets his comeuppance and Cesar and Cleopatra are married to everyone’s delight, even the characters who also who have been recently killed.

Baroque opera is not renowned for either action or drama. Indeed in Giulio Cesare In Egitto, the norm is for one character to present an aria expressing their current emotional state and the dilemmas that they imagine. This focuses the attention of the audience on two things: musicality and production. Musicality underpins the credibility of the character and production contextualises their thoughts and makes sense of everything.

The musicality was masterfully executed by Mark Minkowski, who clearly has a genuine penchant for this form. The tempi he chose and especially the dynamics he employed were nothing less than masterful, and the Valencia Orchestra was not only up to the challenge, but the players also seemed to relish the opportunity to show off their prowess. The pianissimo passages in particular were riveting. Here, in this great theatre before an audience of more than thousand, a character with orchestral accompaniment was able to sing quietly and be heard by everyone. It made all the characters, above all, human and their expressed psychological dilemmas real. Only rarely have I heard a production of an opera where as much obvious planning has gone into integrating what we heard and saw. It is one thing to plan on another to execute, but the cast of Giulio Cesare In Egitto did it all. Everything, ultimately, had to make sense and it did!

And the production needs to be highlighted. It is hard to single out a particular aspect, so the triumvirate of director Vicent Boussard, designer Frank Philipp Schlossman and costume designer Christine Lacroix must all be mentioned, as indeed must the lighting of Andreas Grűter. All these elements came together in an utterly convincing whole that always integrated, never separated the audience from the meaning as interpreted by the characters on stage. It is rare to find such obvious harmony of purpose across all aspects of an opera production.

Visually, the staging used a mock screen, outlined in white and was therefore almost cinematic. Occasionally, a black panel would slide across the front to divide the stage in two. This was used to emphasize a particular character’s isolation. It also provided a stunning way to chang scene, with the lighting effects following the movement of the panel across the stage. Also innovative was the use of the moving panel to facilitate the entry and exit of protagonists. It all added up to a seamless and wholly credible production where each aspect complemented the whole and never intruded. This was a significant achievement. In addition, we had singers and musicians within the audience, a violinist on stage in a musical duel with Caesar and above all wonderful playing from the orchestra.

And I have not mentioned the singers! Marina Monzó as Cleopatra quite stole the show. Her singing was perfect for the role, and she also managed to portray the two roles of seductress and schemer perfectly. Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen as Caesar was also perfect, if at times a little less than audible if singing backstage. Caesar’s foray into the audience after Cleopatra’s seduction was pure magic. Sara Mingado’s Cordelia and Arianna Vendittelli as Sesto were in some respects cameo roles but nevertheless came across superbly as three-dimensional characters. Cameron Shahbazi’s Tolomeo, camp and gay in the extreme, was utterly convincing and Jen-Philippe McClish as Achilla and Bryan Sala as Curio were also superb. Achilla’s inconsistency and constant wavering were communicated superbly.

This was an utterly memorable visit to the opera, and an opportunity to revisit the world of baroque opera in the hands of Handel. It was memorable in every aspect, music, singing and staging, and I stress again that it was the integration of these elements that was so successful. I hope it is not forty years until the next Handel opera.

Two outstanding soloists in Mussorgsky and Khachaturian both give superb performances in concert to remember by the Slovak Philharmonic under Daniel Raiskin

2026-03-10T11:04:00.001+01:00

One of the interesting things about regular concert going with a subscription is the visiting orchestra. Once in a while, a group from a country which is not on the usual map of music making in Western Europe is programmed to appear. Last night in ADDA, Alicante, for instance, we were privileged to hear the Slovak Philharmonic in a program of works that, for the most part, have not been performed frequently in Spain. What the Slovak Philharmonic did not bring, at least at first sight, was any music by a Slovak composer. On the bill were a Czech, two Russians and an Armenian, who during his lifetime would have perhaps preferred the label “Soviet”. And indeed alongside the Slovak Philharmonic was a Ukrainian conductor, Daniel Raiskin, a Croatian baritone, Marko Mimica, a Moldovan violinist, Alexandra Cununova, and Spanish chorus, so the experience was decidedly multi-national. We did hear Slovak music in the final encore, Slovakian Czardas in fact, and indeed some folk-inspired Moldavian music for solo violin. But amidst this apparently disparate evening what held this program together was the commitment of those involved to deliver fine music, and outstanding it proved to be.

We started with Dvořák’s Symphonic Variations Op78. This is Dvořák, it must be said, not at his most tuneful, but the compositional skill in constructing these largely quiet variations is immense. Variation form is often quite difficult for an audience to listen to, largely because by its nature it is episodic. The Slovak Philharmonic gave a superb performance which brought the piece together. I describe largely “quiet” music, but in the final fugue the composer goes to town on orchestral colours. It is a work worthy of exploration at length.

Then we heard Marko Mimica as baritone soloist in Shostakovich’s orchestral version of Mussorgky’s Songs and Dances of Death. Marko Mimica has a powerful but lyric baritone, and his voice is perfect for these songs where the soloist is very much to the fore. His dark tones penetrated every corner of the auditorium, even pianissimo, and his expression communicated meaning, despite the fact that the back projection of the words were unreadable for a good part of the audience.

The evening finished with the Polovtsian Dances of Borodin, a work, which always brings the house down, perhaps by virtue of the vibration created by the high volume of the sound that the composer demands. Again, the words sung by the chorus were generally unreadable on the back wall of the auditorium. The coordination between the chorus, the Coro Amici Musicae under the direction of Igor Tantos Sevillano, and the orchestra was superb.

Just after the interval, we heard Khachaturian’s Violin Concerto in the concert’s main work. The soloist was Alexandra Cununova, who played the piece with a prompt from the score, but no-one in the audience listening with closed eyes would have known. This is not the repertoire’s most played violin concerto, but on the evidence of this performance, it is a masterpiece and deserves a wider audience. The judgment is not offered without having listed to the work again after the concert.

Alexandra Cununova’s playing of the solo part was superb. The writing of the solo part was also superb. But what came across above all was the compositional skill of Aran Khachaturian. In this thirty-five-minute-concerto, there were regular orchestral tutti from a large ensemble which played at considerable volume, but every note of the solo part was audible, even to the fore. This is a concerto written by a master of orchestral writing.

The play of Alexandra Cununova was not only perfection: it went way beyond that. Despite the fact that she took prompts from a score, the playing seemed completely spontaneous and utterly committed. This was the kind of performance that will live forever in a concert-goer’s memory. It was a work in over fifty years of concert going that I have never heard performed before. I will seek it out in future and make sure to hear it again.

Alexandra Cununova finished with a piece by a Moldovan composer, inspired by folk music, and this work for solo violin complemented and contrasted perfectly with the rhythmic bravura of the concerto. What a performance!

2026-03-06T10:27:00.000+01:00

Once upon a Time, I read the writing of Aldous Huxley with enthusiasm. I was a little younger then… More recently, I have tended to find his attitudes rather stuffy, and class-ridden, not embodying the fresh view of the world I once thought he held. Brave New World was not representative and, in my youth, I perhaps mis-read its intentions. A television adaptation of Eyeless In Gaza at the end of the 1960s prompted further exploration. Recently, I found The Art Of Seeing worth avoiding. So it was with mixed expectations that I started Mortal Coils, a work the author published in 1921

Its form is interesting. Aldous Huxley described its five separate sections as three short stories, a novelette and a play. In each of the pieces, there is a keen, if somewhat caricatured central character for whom some random event, some twist of fate provides an ironic punchline. For that reason, I will not review the stories in detail. What happens is crucial, and it tends to happen right at the end.

Throughout, Aldous Huxley seems to be mocking anyone who apparently takes him or herself, seriously. There is a keen eye for pretension, but, it has to be said, these tales of competition are won, more often than not, by the wily, not the showy.

The Gioconda Smile is the novelette. Miss Spence has the smile in question. She is thirtyish and a spinster. Mr. Hutton is a well-to-do friend with a hypochondriac wife, who needs to take her medicine.

Permutations Among The Nightingales is a play set in a hotel. Various society-type guests pirouette around themselves for attention. There is a lot of coming and going.

The Tillotson Banquet involves rather rich people with a decoration urge tracing a long-lost artist who has fallen on bad times. There might be a commission. In his nineties, and living in a basement among beetles, the old artist accepts the invitation to dine.

The Green Tunnels is it story about a group of visitors to Italy. They become obsessed with one another as well as with themselves. Both gestures and actions are mis-interpreted.

In Nuns At Luncheon, Huxley mocks the act of writing, itself, as a scribbler imagines how he might fictionalize a tale about a nun who falls from grace.

None of these has anything like a grand vision. These five pieces are like extended jokes with unexpected punch lines. They are stories, however, worth the telling, and certainly worth the reading.

Gregorio Nieto plays Saint-Saens Cello Concerto alongside Tchaikovsky in an ADDA concert that approaches perfection

2026-02-28T12:41:00.004+01:00

I normally start my concert reviews by focusing on the programme, then the performance and then the personalities. This time I want to reverse the order and start with the performers, or at least one particular performer.

Josep Vicent is artistic director of the ADDA auditorium and the conductor of its orchestra. For many years, he has worked hard throughout the Valencian region to raise standards of playing and performance. First with the Jeunesses Musicales World Orchestra and subsequently with ADDA, he has worked tirelessly to achieve perfection of programming and performance that the audiences in ADDA currently enjoy. The scale of his achievement in Alicante surely ranks alongside Rattle in Birmingham or Dudamel in Caracas. Now, the sense of anticipation felt collectively by ADDA audiences is tangible. Every concert is not merely an event, it is a guaranteed memory for life. After over fifty years of concert going, I look forward to the ADDA experience in a way that recent visits to world famous venues cannot match. Congratulations to Josep Vicent for having the vision, talent, and persistence to make it happen, for the achievement is primarily his, though the ADDA orchestra that you created still owns the playing!

Last night’s programme provides a perfect example of the quality we have come to take for granted. At first sight, there is nothing particularly special. A Tchaikovsky Symphony, Saint-Saens’s Cello Concerto No. 1, and then Tchaikovsky’s popular favourite, the Fantasy Overture, Romeo and Juliet.

Now this last piece is so widely played and known that it might be hard to say something new about it. Personally, I first heard this over sixty years ago and my enthusiasm for it is undiminished. To call it a masterpiece is to belittle it. The perfect blend of conflict, falling in love and tragedy of the story is beautifully drawn by its composer, who both understood the play and knew how to create music to convey meaning. The transitions in this piece are apparently seamless, but they happen suddenly enough to keep the audience surprised, as well as charmed, even if the work is familiar to them. No matter how many times one hears this piece, it works the same every time.

It does, however, need to be played properly and with commitment. As has happened so often with very well-known music, musicians and conductors often rely on familiarity for effect so the performance itself becomes perfunctory. This was not the case last night with the ADDA orchestra under Josep Vicent’s direction. Both and interpretation were perfect and in under twenty minutes, the whole of Shakespeare’s drama played out before us. More Tchaikovsky followed. More swans, we were told, as the orchestra offered an encore of music from Swan Lake. The reference to “more swans” came after Gregorio Nieto had chosen Saint-Saens’s The Swan for his own personal encore after the work that proceeded Romeo and Juliet.

The work in question was Saint-Saens’s First Cello Concerto and Gregorio Nieto’s playing of it was a virtuosic, vivid and utterly communicative. It was the kind of concerto where the soloist and orchestra engage in musical dialogue, without obvious cadenzas where the soloist plays alone. This assumes sufficient orchestral skill on behalf of the composer to facilitate that dialogue and sufficient skill on the part of the performers to remain aware of the required balance. This is therefore difficult music to perform and last night soloist alongside the virtuosic ADDA orchestra under Josep Vicent gave a faultless interpretation. The experience was memorable.

As was the opening work in the concert. Josep Vicent has championed Tchaikovsky’s symphonies over the years and has given multiple performances of the equally famous numbers four, five and six. But this was number two, the Little Russian. It is a symphony that is performed less than the famous three, but on this evidence, the Little Russian should be a concert hall standard. The enthusiasm encapsulated in the writing of the finale alone might render it a permanent favourite.

The symphony was a complete success: a success in terms of performance because the ADDA orchestra gave an exciting and perfect rendition of it, and it was a success of programming by Josep Vicent. The performance, and indeed the whole concert was utterly memorable, which in the end presented three pieces by Tchaikovsky alongside two by Saint-Saens. The concert was entitled Conexión Latina II, in recognition of the evening’s soloist being Venezuelan, but a more apt title could have been Esencia del Romanticismo, since the three works on the programme were all composed in the 1860s and 1870s, so our experience was concentrated on a very short period of musical history. What a masterpiece of programming! It was musically perfect.

Bach’s Brandenburg Concerti – an authentic experience

2026-02-21T12:09:00.002+01:00

When writing a concert review when the pieces performed are as familiar as Johann Sebastian Bach’s Brandenburg Concerti, one concentrates inevitably on what might have been different this time around. In ADDA las night we heard a performance of this music which had authenticity as its main goal. The instrumentation, therefore, was exactly what JS Back had originally specified. The forces of the English Concert, thus, were small and the hall large.

The English Concert was founded by Trevor Pinnock in 1972 as part of a movement that in those days was quite new. This was the “original instrument” movement which sought to discover and recreate how early music had originally sounded. Over fifty years on, and The English Concert is still doing it’s laudable work. I personally am old enough to remember Stokowsi’s versions of Bach for full orchestra and the absolute revelation that in Harnoncourt’s 1967 recording of Monteverdi’s Vespers cornetti were used instead of trumpets. In the twenty-first century, we have perhaps come to expect instrumental authenticity in early music to such an extent that when, a few years ago, I attended a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at a Prom, a friend joked that it was on the original voices.

Last night in ADDA Alicante, we heard The English Concert under Kristian Bezuidenhout in the complete cycle of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Brandenburg Concerti. The order in which they were played was itself interesting, being 1-6-2-3-5-4. This presumably allowed the brass players to put their feet up in the second half, or to do what brass players do when they are not on stage. It was probably born of a desire to keep the sonorities varied.

The playing was exquisite, despite the fact that the natural hunting horns in number one are notoriously hard to control. The trumpet playing in number two, however, was simply divine.

What was a little frustrating was the rearrangement of the stage between pieces. This seemed a little perfunctory at times but perhaps was essential. It was Johann Sebastian Bach who chose what instruments to use, after all.

A packed ADDA concert. hall received the concert very well, but it was quite a marathon. One is always astounded by the harmonic and rhythmic invention in this music.

As a final note on authenticity, I would personally go as far as to suggest that setting is important, as well as instrumentation. Johann Sebastian Bach would not have recognized a new concert hall seating over one thousand people as a venue for the performance of what is essentially chamber music, perhaps. And the final note on popularity: the Brandenburg Concerti had fallen into obscurity for over a century before being rediscovered in 1849, a hundred years after their composer’s death.

The White Peacock by DH Lawrence

2026-02-15T15:27:00.002+01:00

It is said that Maurice Griffenhagen’s, painting, An Idyll, was the inspiration behind DH Lawrence’s novel, The White Peacock. In the painting, a pair of lovers share a passionate embrace, surrounded by a lusciously idealized garden, full of colour, growth and flowers. The pair of lovers, however, seem lost to the beauty that surrounds them, so driven are they by their shared need to fulfil their passion. The painting owes much to Pre-Raphaelitism, but though the colours are vivid, and there is a sense of timelessness about figures, but the outlines are blurred, perhaps impressionistically, indicating, perhaps that the surroundings are vulnerable to change and so too are these lovers within them.

The White Peacock is a novel of Edward England, published in 1910-11. The First World War is not yet even on the horizon, though in the first decade of the twentieth century, Britain’s industrial landscape was long-formed. and its political and social formation were already modern. Yet, throughout the green and pleasant land, rural employment, and country ways still dominated in many places, as Lawrence describes at length in relation to the novel’s setting, Nethermere, a small place in Nottinghamshire.

Cyril Beardsall narrates The White Peacock. He grows up in the English East Midlands. We know this is Nottinghamshire with occasional wanderings as far as Derbyshire, but we never really visit any city throughout the novel. Indeed, we are hardly ever visit the narrator, who regularly observes, describes, but rarely opines, and never pontificates. At times, the narrator almost seems to be living neutrally everyone else’s life in turn.

Like the painting that inspired it, the novel is full of flowers, trees, gardens, and woods. Lawrence’s descriptions of plants and verbiage are themselves vaguely Pre-Raphaelite in their detail and colour. We visit farmers, gamekeepers, several innkeepers and, at times, it seems we have to fight hard to get through the foliage in order to release the trapped rabbit.

And of course, central to the book’s plot are the relations between men and women, childhood friends who grew up together, exploring what the natural world might offer them. Lettie has two admirers, George and Leslie. They are as different as chalk and cheese, and then grow apart, live quite different lives. As they mature, the need to earn a living rears its head above the flowers and compromises have to be made. Marriages are struck. Lettie opts for Laslie, the moneyed option, and George marries Meg, who is at least homely. Children are born and lives diverge, socially, professionally and politically. Only destinations remain similar in their hopelessness.

Lawrence depicts lives where choices have to be made, but where these choices are often constrained by something other than passion. These characters, predominantly the men, seem to have difficulty accepting who they are. They seem to be pre-programmed for failure, and then cannot accept when they feel it. The women seem to be coyer, and, as ever in Lawrence, the suggestion is that they are essentially in control of their relations with men. But these relations, always through marriage, produce new people whose demands on their parents are unpredictable and change all associated lives.

Throughout, the flowers continue to bloom, and nature lives out its apparently inevitable seasonal cycle. But for the people of the small, rural place, the idyll lasts just moments, moments where individuals might forget who they are.

As to the identity or the thoughts of Cyril Beardsall, The White Peacock’s narrator, we know as much by the end as we did the start. We do know, however, that he has moved away from the midlands and now lives a very different kind of life. I wonder who it might be.

Claudio Constantini and Josep Vicent deliver surprises in music by Gershwin and Beethoven in ADDA, Alicante

2026-02-14T12:44:00.005+01:00

Sometimes a conventional concert program springs surprises when, as an audience member, you least expect it. This evening’s main surprise was the soloist, Claudio Constantini, who is one of the very few “classical” musicians who has made his name across genres on two different instruments, the piano and the bandoneon. Peruvian by birth, but educated in Finland, the Netherlands and France, he has never lost his passion for Latin American music and indeed the popular forms of that music. Having been nominated in 2019 for a Latin Grammy for his playing of Gershwin, it was fitting that in this concert the first half was devoted to the American composer.

We began with the Cuban Overture whose rhythms seemed to infect the whole evening with energy. This is by no means a light introduction to a concert. From the beginning, it is a major piece that might be considered as a tone poem for orchestra. It features Cuban rhythms (it was originally titled Rumba), and Caribbean percussion instruments. Gershwin wanted these at the front of the orchestra, but last night in ADDA a compromise was struck, with percussion at the back of the stage but regularly featuring large, projected onto the back wall of the auditorium. The musical effect of the piece combined with the expert playing of the ADDA Orchestra we sheer delight.

Then we heard Claudio Constantini as soloist in Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blue. Approaching a work such as this, which in many respects can present a parody of itself, can be problematic. For my personal taste, in the hands of classical musicians, there is often not enough risk taking. In the hands of popular interpreters, the music often comes second behind the performer’s ego. This particular performance, however, was memorable both because the harmonies and rhythms were properly stretched to excitement, but also because the playing was accurate and respected the score. Claudio Constantini’s playing of the solo part illustrated the fact that he has he has he has played it before. His dynamics and timing were exquisite.

Now usually, the ADDA audience demands an encore from a soloist. Often performers appear reluctant to offer one. Not so Claudio Constantini, who needed no repeated curtain calls to come back on the stage with a bandoneon. He played one of his own compositions with string accompaniment, a tango of sorts, a milonga perhaps, where the cadences often sounded like Piazzolla. Superb. Quiet. Very successful.

In part two we heard a performance of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, No. 6. But this was different from any other performance of Beethoven 6 that I personally have heard.

ADDA programmes often list the movements of a piece alongside their timings. Last night’s programme did list the movements but gave only the duration of the whole symphony. Josep Vicent clearly decided that this performance of the work would have no pauses at the movement breaks and so we heard forty minutes of music without a break. It worked beautifully and Beethoven’s vision of rural life did come across as a vast picture of both landscape and people’s place within it. This playing of the piece without a break was a real surprise, and it was truly memorable.

Gimenez’s The Marriage of Luis Alonso closed the evening, and Josep Vicent encouraged the audience to accompany by clapping.

L’enfance du Christ. Op 25 by Hector Berlioz: Mark Elder conducts the Valencia orchestra and chorus in Castello - a surprising understatement

2026-02-07T20:10:00.003+01:00

Having just heard a performance of L’enfance du Christ. Op 25, I realize how little I know about the music of Hector Berlioz. His Symphonie Fantastique has figured on several programmes over the years. as has the Roman Carnival Overture. Apart from a recent performance of La Mort de Cléopâtre and Les Nuits d’été, that had been the extent of my concert exposure to the composer’s music. But over fifty years of concert going I have never been to a performance of the Trojans, or the Requiem, or, for that matter L’enfance du Christ.

Berlioz is often associated with grand gestures of orchestration. And grand gestures in general. At least that is the general impression. Not knowing L’enfance du Christ and having heard it only once or twice in recordings, I was therefore surprised to find just an orchestra of double woodwind, backed up by horns on three trombones for part one, but no trumpets. Even the chorus in part one was only male voices. In parts two and three, we did have a full chorus, but the brass disappeared completely from the stage, replaced by harpist. It was hardly the orchestral forces that one would expect from an over-the -top composer like Berlioz!

And, having now heard a complete performance of this work, I can state that in no uncertain terms it is an understated piece, very far from the overstatement that is expected from the composer. It does have a particularly striking and unusual passage in part three, but it is surprising in a doubly surprising way. More of that later…

The performers with the Orquestra de la Communidad Valenciana and Cor de la Generalitat Valeciana under Marc Elder, with soloists Laurence Kilsby, Kate Lindsey. Gordon Bintner, Willaim Thomas and Matthew Rose. The setting was the Auditori de Castelló de la Plana before an audience that received this rather quiet work with rapt attention. Musically, however, the work is not what a casual listener might expect, being remarkably subtle in its construction whist at the same time daring in his harmony.

There are passages that sound like they might have come straight from a Bach chorale side-by-side with music that audibly presages Debussy. Especially in the first part, I personally found the passages sung by Matthew Rose as Polydorus highly reminiscent of Debussy, particularly of Pelleas et Melisande. But that might be just the effect of the French language to merge the musical progression into an apparently seamless experience.

Laurence Kilsby’s tenor as narrator was beautifully clear throughout and Willaim Thomas singing the part of Herod was darkly threatening. Kate Lindsey and Gordon Bintner as Mary and Joseph were at times operatic, as they needed to be, and the singing of the chorus was completely in tune with the nature of the music that we heard. The offstage voices here were behind a curtain at the back of the stage in this performance, and their ethereal resonance was superbly done. Mark Elder, for whom the music of Berlioz is something special, chose slow tempi throughout, which allowed the reflective beauty of some surprising harmonies to show through.

And so to the strange part. In the middle of part three of the oratorio, Berlioz writes a trio – perhaps signifying the holy family? – where the performance becomes chamber music. Spotlit and not conducted, two flutes and a harp play an interlude of several minutes and the music here is simply divine. It is so surprising, so memorable for someone like me who has consistently ignored the work that this sound will live on for the rest of my life.

In this work, L’enfance du Christ, Hector Berlioz seems to kneel reverently throughout in whispered prayer. He might, on occasions, appear to want to up the tempo or increase the volume, but he always holds back, and always puts lyricism and communication before effect. It will not be long before I listen again.

The Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra under Michael Waterman play Puccini, Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky in a memorable concert

2026-02-01T18:46:00.003+01:00

Sometimes, not often, a concert program stands out as inherently interesting. I thought that when I saw the Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra’s offering last night in Alicante’s ADDA auditorium. The works on offer were by three of the most played composers, but their form in each case was unusual. Giacomo Puccini is justly famous for his operas, but a string quartet in an arrangement for string orchestra…? There followed the String Quartet No8, Op110, perhaps the best known of Dmitri Shostakovich’s fifteen string quartets, arranged in an equally famous version for string orchestra by Rudolph Barshai. And then Tchaikovsky’s underplayed string sextet Souvenir of Florence in a new arrangement for string orchestra by the evening’s concert master and director, Michael Waterman. It’s not often in decades of concert going that I have been privileged to hear a string sextet, certainly many fewer times than I have heard a string orchestra.

I Crisantemi is a piece of six minutes or so written by Puccini for string quartet. The music is delicate, as delicate in places as a flower petal. But it is also lyrical, and, as one would expect from Puccini, the music is song like. It was written alongside Manon Lescaut and at times the string writing is very reminiscent of the intermezzo from that opera. I Crisantemi seems to be an exercise in understatement, but this is not to suggest that it makes anything other than a powerful piece in performance. The arrangement for string orchestra lost none of the music’s delicacy.

Dmitri Shostakovich dedicated his eighth quartet, Op110, to victims of war, but musically it’s about only one thing: “Me… Me… Me…” The four notes, DSCH in German notation, D, E flat, C, B natural in English, form the composer’s musical signature, and, in this twenty-minute quartet, which sounds like it has several movements played without a break, this signature motif provides almost all the material that the composer uses. At times, it is bleak and depressed, at times upbeat and dancing, at times angry and threatening: the quartet number eight almost mesmerize listeners into a trance. Rudolph Barshai was a founder member of the Borodin Quartet and later made a career as a conductor, spending many years directing the Moscow Chamber Orchestra. He also prepared a Chamber Symphony, Op110a, from the Shostakovich eighth quartet. Not only did the composer approve of Barshai’s arrangement, but he also actually gave the piece its name. This is music of almost frightening intensity, whose final pianissimo actually increases the tension transmitted to the audience. There is no tranquil ending here for a work that in effect rips open the emotions of its listeners. And in this performance by the Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra, raw meat was exposed.

In total contrast, the gay abandon of Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir of Florence is filled with joy, exuberance, dance, and beauty. It sounds like a piece that a composer might rattle off very quickly, so spontaneous does it sound. But Tchaikovsky was a composer with considerable craft, and he was still revising it some two years after its initial composition. Michael Waterman’s version for string orchestra retained the fresh sound that this piece achieves when played by a sextet, the extra players in the arrangement adding depth, but neither weight nor clumsiness to this vibrant music. It has to be said that it was largely down to the skill and togetherness of this ensemble that they brought brilliance to this music. A four-movement structure suggests that the composer might have something symphonic in mind and, indeed, Tchaikovsky’s approach reminded me of the Mendelsohn string symphonies. Perfect ensemble, and a very skilful arrangement combined to make this performance utterly memorable.

There was a short encore, another arrangement, this time of a motet, Locus Iste by Bruckner. It was another quiet work that again demonstrated that in a good hall with an attentive audience, a handful of players can fill the place with music. I repeat the experience was utterly memorable.

Rune Bergmann conducts the ADDA orchestra in Alicante in Mozart and Sibelius and a moment to reflect

2026-01-24T12:56:00.000+01:00

Last night’s concert in ADDA with our resident orchestra under Rune Bergmann, our invited director, was memorable for perhaps regrettable reasons, none of which were musical. Regret came at the end, and more of that later.

The program was a conventional one: overture, classical symphony, and then a Romantic one, much loved and much played. The program did not disappoint and as ever our ADDA orchestra brought the music to life with virtuoso playing, enthusiasm and ensemble.

We began with Mozart’s Overture to the Magic Flute. After its slow introduction, the composer projects real energy through fugal music before pausing for a central section in which Masonic chords in the brass intervene. In the late eighteenth century, this might have been seen as a revolutionary gesture, perhaps reminding those in the audience of what was currently happening in France. It would not have provided them with the kind of comfortable listening that the piece provides today. Those brass interludes are nothing more than a “Look out!” perhaps reminding everyone that status counts for nothing, perhaps to remind people of how lucky they were to be alive. Mozart himself was not alive by the end of the run of the Magic Flute.

The Prague Symphony that followed is Mozart’s 38th Symphony. It was one of the pieces that introduced me to listening to music that was not pop, because there was a recording of it in my school’s small record library. To this day, I cannot either predict or understand the slowing of pace in the first movement, where the string lines cross over a rhythmic structure like punctuation. All I know is that every time I hear the piece, which is quite often, it takes me by surprise. Rune Bergmann’s pace with this piece, and indeed, overall across the concert, was brisk, giving the music extra drama here and there.

This Sibelius Symphony No.1 that we heard in the second half is a concert hall standard. Having just written that, I checked and I have not heard it live in concert for at least fifteen years! (Live television, excluded!) It is a work that is always impressive, but for me, personally, lacks identity. In it, I sense the composer is still searching for a musical identity that only crystallized later. Here we have passages straight out of Tchaikovsky, some folk influence, some undiluted late Romanticism. In fact, the symphony is brim-full of ideas, to such an extent that the music seems to be episodic. But one what wonderful episodes they are.

Rune Bergmann chose a very fast tempo in the scherzo and equally fast for sections of the finale, a speed which emphasizes musical contrast, less so the inherent lyricism. But it was a memorable performance of a familiar work.

And then the regret. ADDA’s artistic director, Josep Vicent, who had been listening to the concert, took a microphone and reminded the audience of the recent rail accident in Spain that claimed many lives. He asked for respectful silence, and the ADDA audience observed it faultlessly.

There was always going to be an encore. Conductor Rune Bergmann went up high to a box and low strings introduced his playing of the Norwegian bukkehorn in what I think was a performance of Michael Strand’s Men går jag över engarna (But I walk across the meadows). Anna Nielsen, invited concertmaster for the evening, then took up the melody in song. She was joined on stage by Rune Bergmann and the bukkehorn to conclude the work. It is a simple song, rather sad and folksy, musically modal and thus fit the requirements perfectly. Like the Masonic chords in the Mozart, this reminded everyone how lucky they were to be alive and provided a deeply personal and reflective experience for all involved, on stage and off.

ADDA Cameristica play two pieces for winds and then a Mahler version of a Beethoven String Quartet in a concert of pure musical joy

2026-01-16T18:51:00.003+01:00

These days, one always expects a lot from any performance by members of the ADDA Orchestra and one is never disappointed. This subgroup, called ADDA Cameristica, gave a free concert last night in the Sala Ruperto Chapi featuring the kind of program that a commercial concert would simply not present, because commercial considerations would preclude it. As a consequence, the likelihood that music lovers would ever have a chance of hearing pieces of this kind, especially those included in the first half of this ADDA concert, is minimal. Certainly in over fifty years of concert going, I have never had the privilege of hearing the Strauss Serenade performed as a chamber music piece.

This was a concert of under an hour of music but involved two quite different ensembles. In the first half we heard two pieces of music for a wind band, one of which also had percussion. Jesse Passenier’s Overture for 13 winds and percussion was a world premier performance of a piece that uses jazz idiom alongside formal structures in its ten-minute duration. It is based on two sections that are then repeated with variation. A slow, highly textured section gives way to a rhythmic and staccato dance-like second section, where the percussion adds weight. These two sections are then repeated with variation to complete the work. Writing a piece for thirteen winds and percussion is a very laudable exercise, but one wonders whether the composer would ever have expected to hear it professionally performed. Memorable were the shared textures that the contrabassoon and the bass clarinet created. This was an exciting work that should be played often.

Richard Strauss’s Serenade for thirteen winds is a masterpiece. The programme listed the work as Opus4, but I think it is Opus7. The Suite Opus 4 is considerably longer that the ten-minute piece we heard. The fact remains that Richard Strauss was just seventeen when he wrote it. If it is played at all, it tends to be played at the opening of a symphony concert, in which these gentle sonorities become somewhat lost in the oversized acoustic. It was then a revelation to hear the piece played in a small auditorium designed for chamber music. It is a youthful work, written by teenager for his father. It is a masterpiece, albeit in Richard Strauss’s terms, a miniature. The four horns that are that are demanded by the composer are worked quite hard, but these players of the ADDA Cameristica were faultless.

The second half of the concert was played by a string orchestra. And it was significant string orchestra, including two double basses. I point this out because the work played was Mahler’s string orchestra version of Beethoven’s Opus95 String Quartet. Now there are no basses in a string quartet, so Mahler did a little more than merely make more copies of the string parts.

And what work this is. It sounds as if it had been written for a string orchestra in the original. Beethoven’s often surprising use of rhythm and dynamics really did work extremely well in this larger setting. It was a memorable performance worthy of repeated hearings. Wonderful.

Nacho de Paz in Valencia conducts Scriabin and Messiaen and achieves revelatory sounds

2026-01-12T15:36:00.004+01:00

Nacho de Paz had a challenging program to conduct in his concert with the Orchesta de València. It’s not that the music was especially difficult, it’s just that the three works included in the program are not often played together. The workload in rehearsals must have been tremendous, but it was time well spent because these performances were memorable.

In his pre-concert talk, however, Nacho de Paz explained that the two composers whose works we heard both held universe-explaining obsessions, albeit of radically different kinds, and thus both composed according to their philosophy.

The main attraction for me personally was the Scriabin Poem of Ecstasy. The composer at the time of its composition was becoming obsessed with theosophical ideas, where a synthesis of ideas, religions and human experience were raised to a force which could drive the universe. The Poem of Ecstasy predated his work on The Mysterium, that vast unfinished work, whose first performance in the Himalayan foothills in India might just bring an end to the universe, the composer thought. The Poem of Ecstasy, an orchestral piece in one movement, otherwise known as the composer’s fourth symphony, was much closer to the fundamental core of human experience. It has clear sexual meaning and, when all said and done, without sex there would be no humans. Nacho de Paz, in his pre-concert talk, seemed to ignore this angle, concentrating on Scriabin’s exploration of the multiple harmonics that naturally spring from a long note. For Nacho de Paz, the massive apotheosis of the Poem of Ecstasy was a symbol of Scriabin achieving a kind of mathematical perfection by synthesising the mathematical possibilities of harmonics. My view is that it represents a purely physical, not mental experience. The performance of the work regularly achieved the composer’s intended dynamics, thus rendering the experience of listening quite physical.

The other two works on the program were both by Olivier Messiaen. Now Olivier Messiaen was a devoted Christian, a Roman Catholic, who constantly strove to reveal a spiritual truth through his musical composition. The fact that audiences often find his work hard to appreciate is his apparent rejection of form in his work. Messiaen’s music rarely conforms to what anyone expects from a concert piece. It is always meditative and possibly also intensely personal, even when, for instance in the Nine Meditations on the Holy Trinity, he is exploring the transliteration of text in the music. He called the system he invented a “communicable language”, but often audiences find that they have never learned his language.

The two works on offer in this concert were Les Offrandes Oubliées and L’Ascension. The former is the more conventional concert piece, but in the end, when the music literally dissolves into silence, the effect is strange in that the music does not seem to embody emotion. It simply exists.

L’Ascension’s four movements are effectively a concerto for orchestra. The first movement concentrates on brass, the second on wind and the last strings. Messiaen explores the sonorities just like any other composer would when trying to show off what an orchestra can do, but doubly baffling then is the decision to use only the strings in the last movement and then only part of the strings on the platform. Harmonically, Messiaen’s music is always recognizable. His signature is complex and, for the casual ear, it is perhaps unintelligible. Repeated listening, however, reveals patterns that the composer uses time and again, but they remain unconventional. The complications of dissonant notes in ecstatic chords always seems to cast doubt into the meaning of the music, doubt that still might have troubled the composer.

Overall, the concert was a triumph. It presented three twentieth century masterpieces on a single programme, works that presented composers grappling with the philosophies that drove them. Harmonies used by both composer were truly ecstatic. But by then end of L’Ascension, the slow progression of the music was surely a vision of the infinite that no human being can comprehend.

Ruben Jais and Roberta Mameli surprise with Haydn and Mozart at ADDA Alicante - a concert to remember

2025-12-24T15:54:00.001+01:00

The anonymous role that expectation plays in our lives is vastly important. Expectation satisfied can often result in a feeling of self-confirmation, that feeling that comes with sensations of “I told you so, and I was right”. On the other hand, expectations not met can sometimes be associated with poor experience, associated with thoughts such as “I knew this was a bad idea”. Just occasionally, one sets off with expectations that are not met, and the result is tantamount to revelation. “What on earth have I been missing all these years?”

Last night I went to ADDA in Alicante with preconceived expectations. On the bill were Haydn and Mozart, composers who I spend many hours listening to, or not listening to might be a better description. In both cases, I hear a lot of their music but rarely pause to listen. That is one of the joys of going to concerts, to be presented with music that one often ignores or is ignorant of. We thereby run the risk of being surprised. Last night in ADDA, at least in the first half of the evening, the music not only did not conform to expectations, but the experience was so rich that it may even have changed my listening habits.

Alongside the ADDA orchestra, there were billed two other musicians, an invited conductor, Ruben Jais and Roberta Mameli, a soprano soloist. All last night’s performers brought an enthusiasm and no little skill of execution to produce a performance that were not only as good as can be imagined, but they may have even been revelatory, at least for this hardened concertgoer.

We began with Haydn’s aria Berenice, che fai? with Roberta Mameli as soloist. The aria is in fact from one of Haydn’s operas. Joseph Haydn wrote fourteen operas. Why on earth are they never performed, especially since the librettists he worked with include Goldoni? Roberta Mameli’s singing of this aria was powerful, dramatic, exciting and vocally superb. There is a lot of sturm und drang around in this music, but it is perfectly crafted and allows the soloist adequate room to show off, while retaining sufficient musical sense not to be merely a showpiece. A program note reminded the audience that Haydn had become a musician via singing, and the composer’s handling of the voice and orchestra combined managed to convey just the right balanced blend of anger and elegance to convince. Roberta Mameli's performance conveyed every scrap of meaning it was possible to extract from both text and music. This was singing of the highest quality in the form of a surprise called Haydn opera.

What followed was a real ear-opener. A Haydn symphony in the first half of concert programmes is not unusual. They are usually mid-nineties onwards, with occasional forays into the eighties and even the seventies. But not the pre-fifties! That is specialist fare. I do often research the music prior to concert, but this time I had not troubled my recordings, since my expectations had convinced me what to expect. The program note did surprise in that it described a series of Haydn mid-career symphonies all composed in minor keys. But surely this was music to order from Esterhazy employers. What could have motivated Joseph Haydn to melancholy?

The reality of Haydn’s Symphony No49 La Passione unfolded. It was nothing less than revelatory. Not only did this music not meet my expectations, but it completely shattered them. They had told of elegance, dance-like rhythms and more icing than cake. And how utterly unrelated was the reality! The first movement never really seems to exist, except in gentle comments around a theme that seems never to be stated. It could not have been more different from what I unexpected. A strange second movement followed, and then even a downbeat minuet before a finale that tried and tried to establish a major key but eventually failed. The symphony provided a musical experience of such surprise that at home I immediately accessed a recording of it and listened to it twice again. There is a lot in this music, both musically and intellectually, and it provided an experience as rounded as any I have had in a concert hall for some time. Hence a New Year’s Resolution to explore more of the symphonies of Joseph Haydn.

But the experience was surely as much as a result of Ruben Jais’s vision for the music, as it was a result of compositional skill. In music, no matter how good the writing, it still has to be interpreted and performed, and it is these qualities that an audience remembers.

In a more familiar second half of the concert, we heard two works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The Symphony No25 again explores sturm und drang, with what at the time must have sounded like a procession of dissonance. And in the early Exultate, Jubilate, Mozart conceived a show-off piece for a singer that also makes musical sense and provides a rousing end to any programme. This was especially the case as Roberta Mameli’s voice achieved levels of dynamics alongside purity of tone and musical interpretation that rendered this very familiar piece a real surprise. A standing encore of Corelli’s Christmas Cantata brought the evening to an equally surprising end, because, after all the sturm und drang that had preceded it, these overtly gentle Baroque sounds were truly elegant and relatively simple at the same time.

It is not often that expectations are so completely shattered with utterly surprising results. I will certainly never again listen to the music of Joseph Haydn with my previous assumptions. This was a truly memorable evening.

Verdi's Luisa Miller in Les Arts Valencia is a triumph for all concerned

2025-12-11T13:19:00.001+01:00

Giuseppe Verdi set Salvador Cammarano's adaptation of Schiller’s Kabale und Liebe (Intrigue and Love) to music to produce the first opera of his now identified “middle” period. In this phase, the composer rejected previous formats of love duets followed by a chorus, which had previously dominated Italian opera. The opera is known as Luisa Miller, named after the apparently blameless heroine who, in the version Cammarano intended, dies tragically along with her lover at the end. In the case of Luisa Miller, the composer’s departure from the norms of stage melodrama initially led to the work’s troubled premiere in Naples. Verdi would never again write for Teatro San Carlo, but, as we know, did move onto other things. Cammarano’s adaptation of Schiller’s Intrigue and Love moved the plot decisively towards the “love”, but in a new production of the opera in Valencia, the intrigue is again in focus. The main themes, however, of this re-envisaged production are clearly social class, family loyalties, stereotypes, individualism, and feminism.

Valentina Carrasco’s production makes perfect sense, despite at times appearing to be merely decorative. We are presented with a doll factory setting. The director herself makes the point that dolls and the images they present are largely aimed at a female audience.

Luisa’s father, Miller, owns the factory and he is worried because his daughter is in love with Carlo, a stranger of unknown attachment or descent. When Luisa sings of her love for him, the factory workers immediately think of marriage and stereotypical dolls, representing grooms and brides, are brought together in an unfeeling embrace to signify the conventional marriage that awaits. At first sight, this could be literal, it could present a stereotypical idea of romantic love, but it could be kitsch, or it could indicate the conventional thought that dominates a small town. But as things progress it is symbolic of Luisa’s state of mind, a reality that will change by the opera’s end.

Carlo, it transpires, is in fact Rudolfo, the son of the local count, who regards his subjects as possessions. They must conform to his wishes, and certainly not oppose them. This is the kind of patriarchal society that this production of the opera will question. Wurm, the previous suitor of Luisa, reveals the true identity of Rudolfo as the count’s son and thereby casts doubt in everyone’s mind about the lover’s intentions. Was the name change just to hide the aristocratic origins of someone who just wanted to seduce a nice girl from the town? This is the doubt he sows in Luisa’s mind.

In a weak point of the libretto, and the count and Wurm reveal to the audience the fact that the count’s fortune came about by an act of murder against his own family. Here, the characters do little more than tell the audience the plot. It is clumsy, but then Wagner did it repeatedly. The two men, however, decide that their interests are best served by sticking together. The count reveals that he has marriage plans for his son, the suitor being Federica, a rich, well-connected duchess. Rodolfo, who is sincere in his love for Luisa, is not impressed despite having grown up with his intended spouse.

To signify a hunt called by the count, the toy factory displays cuddly dogs. Again, at the time, this could be taken as petty and decorative, but they reinforce the concept indicating that the count will hunt his own prey and stop at nothing to get his own way. When Miller, Luisa’s father, criticizes the count, he is imprisoned. Luisa is then confronted with the plot hatched by Wurm and the count to lever Rodolfo out of her life and replace him with Wurm, thus achieving what he himself and the count want. The dogs, incidentally, reappear in act three, this time set as a pack by Luisa to indicate that now she has become the huntress in wanting to achieve a change her own life. It is this aspect that becomes the twist that makes this production of Luisa Miller so convincing.

Threatening consequences for her father, Wurm has Luisa write a letter in which she falsely admits to her duplicity in leading on Rudolfo to get her hands on his money. It is clear that Luisa is being manipulated, but in the context of events, what other choice does she have? She cannot countenance her father’s death or even suffering, and this is in marked contrast with the count’s act of familial murder to amass his fortune. Rudolfo, on reading Luisa’s letter, takes it at face value and such is his desire to internalise his grief, he contemplates death whilst at the same time threatening his father with the revelation of his crime. Wurm, meanwhile, rubs his hands together in expectation of triumph, the same hands that will explore Louise’s body. The letter is written, Rudolfo suspects intrigue. The plan is working. Wurm and the count will get what they want. Louise’s father can be released.

With marriage preparations on the way, Rodolfo has decided that it he cannot get his own way then no one else is going to have Luisa. He decides that the two of them will take poison in the final act of defiance and enduring love (as he sees it!). Luisa seems to have not agreed or even been consulted about such a plan. It is another example of how the males assume they can impose their wishes on women.

Luisa has, however, lined up her hunting dogs. She has thus become the huntress, and it dawns on her that she can take control of her life. We suddenly see lots of brides and grooms, stereotypical dolls, of course, hanging by their neck. The stereotypes are going to be erased. Rodolfo takes his poison in what is now perceived as a selfish, self-seeking act of revenge born of his own pride, perhaps. But, in this production, Luisa throws her helping of the poison onto the ground, thus refusing to conform with Rudolfo’s wishes.

Thus we have the final redemption, not Wagnerian adoption into heaven, as Luisa sees the light of her own independence from all this male intrigue and in-fighting. As the dying Rodolfo and Miller, Luisa’s father, bemoan the death of a bride doll representing Luisa (signifying their stereotypical view of women), Luisa herself walks towards the light of her own future carrying a groom doll, a stereotype she now controls. If you remain Romantically inclined, it is heaven she approaches via death, and she carries with her memory of Rodolfo. She did not, however, take the poison, and she had previously become the huntress by lining up her pack of dogs. It is enigmatic, perhaps, powerful, yes, and, in the end, it brings together in perfect sense a production that might at first sight have seemed disparate.

The singing of all concerned was, however, the opera’s undoubted highpoint. Freddie De Tommaso as Rodolfo and Mariangela Sicilia as Luisa were simply faultless. They were more than this, however. Rudulfo’s arrogance and at the same time sincerity were clear. Freddie De Tommaso struck the balance between confidence of his masculinity married with a sense of inferiority with regard to his father. Mariangela Sicilia’s Luisa combined the simplicity of female prospects at the start of the opera with the growing realisation that something had to change to release her from the frustrations of a life controlled by others.

Alex Exposito’s count was convincingly powerful, whilst conveying the fact that he was hiding something embarrassing behind the status. Gianlucca Buratta’s Wurm was slimily convincing. Germán Enrique Alcántara as Miller sang every line elegantly and with clear meaning, and the Maria Barakova as the Federica, the duchess-suitor played a role that was a little one-dimensional, but she sang and acted with terrific and convincing style. This was a woman who knew what she wanted, but, because of Luisa’s assertion of independence, she was denied her prize. At the opera’s end, it is only Luisa who walks towards new existence with confidence. Everyone else has suffered, but then everyone else was in some way involved in the intrigue that was designed to entrap her. It is therefore, but triumph for feminism that Luisa’s new resolve prevails.

It must be sad that I have not mentioned the music. Having opened the review with the name “Giuseppe Verdi”, I have not yet mentioned anything about the music. Verdi has apparently played second fiddle, but not so on stage. The music of this opera bursts with ideas and textures, all perfectly communicated and played by the Orquestra de la Communidad Valenciana under Sir Mark Elder. Luisa Miller might not be one of Verdi’s better-known operas, but in this production, it is a roaring success that makes perfect dramatic and musical sense.

Leticia Moreno plays Fazil Say's 1001 Nights in the Harem with ADDA orchestra under Josep Vicent in Alicante

2025-12-06T13:12:00.002+01:00

Last night’s concert in ADDA featured a program of unusual style. The main work on offer was a half hour violin concerto, and there is nothing strange about that. This, however, was a violin concerto with a difference. But the rest of the program comprised three works by Ravel, two of them excerpts and the third, that strangely familiar experience we call Bolero. Throughout this concert featuring effectively a Spanish-Turkish sandwich, a thread linking these works was their “orientalism”, that nineteenth century concept blending mysticism and magic in the eyes of then colonial Europeans. But the orientalism imagined by Ravel was here contrasted with the voice of a contemporary Turkish composer, whose claims to authenticity were surely justified, despite his having studied in Germany and his liking for jazz. In this world, after all, everything is syncretic.

The concert started with Ravel, the Feria from Rhapsodie Espagnole. The orchestral sound, textures and ensemble were perfect throughout. This was Ravel at his most joyous, and perhaps once forgetting manacles that kept his asceticism to the fore. The playing of this piece, so familiar, was exceptional, and was duly noticed by and remarked upon, via applause and acclamation, by the audience.

In the second half, a second Ravel excerpt, the Ouverture de Féerie from Shéhérazade was, by contrast, much more restrained, much more of a conscious recreation of a scene in the composer’s mind than a depiction of a place and time.

Then, to complete the Spanish-Turkish sandwich, we heard a performance of Bolero. It is such a strange piece of music that I doubt anyone other than its composer understands what it is doing. The composer himself said there was no music in it. In some ways, it is an essay in orchestration, which is eventually one orchestral tutti played in slow motion with a drum beat. Here, the master orchestrator has the majority of the strings played pizzicato for half the piece, and some of the strings remain pizzicato until near the end. In Ravel’s music, however, you can always hear the harp.

But despite the strangeness of this music, basically two repeated melodies varied only in dynamics in texture, it has gained remarkable popularity. And this performance, as ever by the ADDA Orchestra under Josep Vicent was greeted with cheers of appreciation.

The main part of the Turkish filling in this sandwich came from the evening’s main work, which was 1001 Nights in the Harem, a violin concerto by Fazil Say. In this world, the composer mixes extended violin technique, Turkish percussion, a traditional song in the slow movement and a multiplicity of understated orchestral textures to create the quiet world in which Sheherazade might have told her bedtime stories. Leticia Moreno, who was soloist, gave a truly memorable performance of this monumental solo part in which she is rarely silent throughout the half hour duration of piece. Some of the scrapes and scratches of the first movement perhaps had the audience worried that she would have no bow left by the end, but all was well. This is virtuosity that rarely involves simply showing off. Much of the solo part is very quiet, accompanied by mere orchestral punctuation. Here is a concerto where the soloist must feel like a specimen under a microscope. There is simply no room for error whatsoever and every detail is audible. The fact that the orchestra and the soloist gave such a faultless performance of this strange and reflective work is testament to everyone concerned, Josep Vicent. Leticia Moreno, the ADDA orchestra and ADDA audience, attentive as ever. I did listen to Kopatchinskaja with Pappano in 2024 in the same work before writing this this review and I could spot no difference in interpretation or playing. Both were faultless, followed similar tempi and phrasing.

There were two encores. Having taken her bow at the end part one, Leticia Moreno returned to the stage to play Piazzolla’s Oblivion with orchestral accompaniment and then we had the final section of Bolero repeated. This was one to remember.

ADDA orchestra under Darrell Ang plays Brahms and Zhou Tian with Albert Gionovart as soloist

2025-11-29T12:56:00.001+01:00

Zhou Tian’s Concerto for Orchestra was written in 2016. It was commissioned and premiered by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and their recording of it received a Grammy nomination. In Zhou Tian’s own words: ‘My Concerto for Orchestra is a love letter to the symphony orchestra, featuring passages that range from epic to intimate. It is scored lushly through four parts: “Glow,” a journey to splendor through two contrasting themes; “Indigo,” a musical postcard from a walk in the forest one late summer night; “Seeker’s Scherzo,” a retro miniature; and “Intermezzo – Allegro,” a fierce rhapsody that begins with a lyrical fugue. Beneath the power and edginess, there is an unmistakable sense of romanticism in the music.’

So, what we heard last night in a performance by the ADDA orchestra in Alicante was, in all but name, a rather conventional Romantic symphony following the usual four movement pattern of allegro, adagio, scherzo and allegro-finale. The fact that it was titled Concerto for Orchestra indicates that the composer tried to highlight the individual sonorities and capabilities of each instrument and instrumental grouping of the orchestra. And the composer did just that. The fourth movement, for instance, starts with effectively a string quartet which, late Shostakovich style, angularly introduces the themes of the fugue that builds via woodwind to an orchestral tutti. The writing for timpani in this section is prominent. Zhou Tian explains that ‘in the fourth a fugue builds’ where ‘occasional touches of jazz syncopation and harmony are mixed with folksy tunes in perpetual motion’.

But there are also difficulties for the listener. In the first movement, for instance, alongside orchestral climaxes, the harp is playing arpeggios that cannot possibly be heard. Later on, the composer does make use of the harp’s individual sonority. Overall, I found that contrasting sonorities were often lost in a similar broad brush of orchestral colour. In that first movement, Zhou Tian states that ‘Keen listeners may discover hidden homages to some of the great concerti for orchestra from the past.’ I did find myself sifting through memories to locate references, but, as will be seen later, my mind was otherwise engaged. One did sense that the composer, however, did use quotation liberally, even, at one stage near the end, Messiaen’s Turangalila.

Of the second movement, the composer says that ‘Plush strings, lyrical oboe solo, dashing flutes and harp, and dark brass paint shades of blue into indigo…’ The use of colour to express sound is relevant here in a movement that sounds like it could have been written at any time in the last century, or perhaps before.

There follows a conventional short scherzo. The third movement ‘draws inspiration from the classical form while incorporating new turns and twists, constantly exploring different colors and timbre’. Zhou Tian used the term ‘a retro miniature’ in his own description, and apart from ‘miniature’ hardly applying to a work scored for large forces, the term ‘retro’ could be applied to the whole work. Stylistically, it might draw on jazz, popular music, film music and other things, but essentially this is music of and from the past. It is no criticism to state that, but anyone coming to a work written in the last ten years and seeking something more “cutting edge” is going to be disappointed. The overall, impression of the work is both competent and exciting, but perhaps falling short of the memorable.

There followed an encore that conductor Darrell Ang described as a present from China, a piece that is played whenever there is something to celebrate. It was rousing.

In the first half we had heard Brahms Piano Concerto No1 played by Albert Guinovart. The soloist was a last-minute replacement for Judith Jáuregi, who was ill. At such short notice, Albert Guinovart did a superhuman job. This work is no mean feat for anyone, let alone someone who has had a minimal amount of time to prepare. The ADDA audience was wholly appreciative of the soloist’s efforts and the performance was enjoyed by all.

Albert Guinovart offered two short preludes of his own composition as an encore, the first a homage to Chopin, the second, as he himself described it, “original”. It was here that for just a short while we heard the true artistry of the performer. As ever, of course, and throughout, the ADDA orchestra was superb.

My own mind from the start was somewhat distracted by the trills that Brahms used to open the work. My mind immediately recalled another piece, but what? I have to admit that I spent much of the first half sifting through my musical memory to locate it, but locate it I did. Those trills are reminiscent of the opening of Berthold Goldschmidt’s opera Beatrice Cenci, so similar in fact that the later composer must have had the Brahms in mind when he wrote the score in 1949. The work waited until 1988 for a first performance and was not staged until 1994. It is, for the record, written in a late-Romantic style that very much pre-dated the year of its composition. The memory itself proved prescient.

Gülsin Onay at the Denia International Piano Festival gives an exquisite performance

2025-11-28T10:52:00.000+01:00

At 8pm on November 26, 2025 in the Centro Social in Denia, we heard Gülsin Onay play the piano.

Programa

Johann Sebastian Bach - Partita No. 1 in B flat major, BWV 825

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Sonata in A major, KV331

Ahmed Adnan Saygun - 2 preludes in Aksak rhythm, op.45 nos.4 & 12

Frédéric Chopin - Sonata in B minor, op.58

I am breaking a self-imposed rule not to review concerts that I have been partly responsible for presenting. In the past, there were a lot of opportunities to do so, and I became repetitive. But the reason for this departure from the norm is to pay some homage to the exceptional talent, artistry and musicality of Gülsin Onay, who performed for us last night in the Denia International Piano Festival, courtesy of a group that I assist with, arsaltacultural.com.

On the face of it, the concert did not look like it was to be so memorable an experience. Notwithstanding two short pieces by a contemporary Turkish composer, the program looked rather conventional, a Bach partita, a widely played Mozart sonata and the Op58 Chopin sonata. But appearances can be deceptive. With live music, there is always the possibility that it will surprise and, on this chilly evening in November, there proved to be nothing conventional about the playing of our soloist, Gülsin Onay.

From the moment she started the Bach Partita No1, BWV825, the audience could collectively sense that they were in the presence of a true artist. The touch, the phrasing, and the sheer musicality of the playing immediately communicated that Gülsin Onay was a supreme storyteller. The plot of the musical story was always uppermost in her playing of the Bach Partita, which in other hands can so often seem like a procession of unrelated notes, if played unsympathetically. Here, the shape of the story, the juxtaposition of dances with harmonic and rhythmic complexity was crystal clear, so clear that many people listening were really experiencing the music for the first time, no matter how many times they had heard it before.

The Mozart Sonata, that followed, K331, is also well known. The Alla Turca rondo that forms the finale is recognizable to those who don’t even know the music of Mozart. And in the hands of this Turkish pianist, the concordance of music and performer was perfect. Indeed, the whole piece was couched in remarkably un-Mozart-like emotion. The description only holds for pianists who follow the dots religiously and do not interpret them, and this charge could never be levelled against Gülsin Onay. This is not to say that she took liberties with the score. She didn’t. But she played the everything with the insight of a true musician, a real artist.

A complete change of style was needed from Gülsin Onay for two preludes in Aksak rhythm, op45 nos4 & 12, by Ahmed Adnan Saygun. They were rhythmically interesting, rather percussive pieces, and the ease with which Gülsin Onay made the transition to a different musical world is surely testimony to the quality of her relationship with this composer’s work over the years.

But it was her playing of the Op58 Sonata of Chopin that really convinced this audience of the pianist’s artistry. It should have come as no surprise since the program notes stated that she had been awarded a state medal by Poland for her interpretation of Chopin.

Here was a work that I have heard perhaps thousands of times. On the basis of last night’s performance, however, I did not even know it, because almost every note, every phrase seemed new. It was as if we had Frederick Chopin in the auditorium explaining exactly what each phrase of the Sonata meant. The communication was that direct, and like all good stories, it captivated everyone until the last note. It was a performance of such a virtuosity and artistry that I cannot recall, after 50 years of listening to music, anything that was ever equal to it.

Gülsin Onay received a standing ovation and responded by playing two encores. Ondine from Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit is a piece that many pianists would prefer not to attempt. In her hands, it was a door to enter the private universe of Maurice Ravel, so perfectly did each phrase fit into the space revealed by Ravel’s imagination. And then the Op9 No2 Nocturne of Chopin brought the evening to a close. Again it was a familiar work, but it is rarely played like this, with communication, not mere beauty of sound uppermost. By the end, I found myself saying that Gülsin Onay was simply one of the finest pianists I had ever heard.

Milan Slijepcevic toca en el Festival Internacional de Piano de Denia - el programa por el concierto de 4 diciembre

2025-11-27T14:35:00.003+01:00

Več Makropulos at the Royal Opera House in London, a triumph for Ausrine Stundyte and a convincing re-interpretation by Katie Mitchell

2025-11-22T17:15:00.008+01:00

Več Makropulos is really a play with musical accompaniment. One wonders whether the singers would think the same! It was also the debut in the opera house of the telephone, which features in act one of any production. But here it played a central role in the establishment of a feminist interpretation of the work, an interpretation that eventually proved both successful and relevant.

Janacek’s opera was completed in 1925 and staged in 1926. The difficulty of updating the text means that most productions of the work stay in the 1920s of it’s original conception. Here in 2025 in this production the setting is contemporary, which means that when Elina Makropulos finally reveals her age, she has to add an unscripted hundred to the written 337 years. The only problematic detail that arises from the time shift revolves around the patrimony and matrimony of the central characters. In 2025 we have DNA testing to establish lineage, whereas in 1925 such things were unknown. The problem, however, has no impact on the story, since DNA testing takes time, and time, even for a 437-year-old woman, is here in short supply since the action of Vec Makropulos surely takes place over one or two days.

The long running legal case about the inheritance of an estate between the Prus and Gregor families might have been settled before a century had elapsed, let alone two, if the family lineage had been established. The lack of any will kept the dispute alive, so to speak. But until the arrival on the scene of Emilia Marti, who seems to be well informed about the history of the families, no-one involved had any idea that Baron Prus in 1827 had fathered an illegitimate child following a relationship with an opera singer called Ellian MacGregor. Emilia Marti - Ellian MacGregor 200 years on - knows the location of a will in a drawer ostensibly containing letters written by Prus to his lover. The will leaves the estate to the illegitimate son, but there is a problem with the name. As an illegitimate child, the birth registry was unable to record a true father’s name. The singer MacGregor, wary of scandal that might be attached to her fame, used Makropulos as the surname -her own original family name - but entered the name of her long dead father, Ferdinand alongside. Over years, the Mac dropped away and the family name became Gregor, but there existed no definite linkage between the illegitimate son and the name Gregor, and crucially no tangible link to prove that Baron Prus was the father. DNA testing could establish a link, but not in 48 hours.

There is also another document associated with the will. It is a single sheet and written in Greek. It is a recipe for the elixir of life that Ferdinand Makropulos prepared for the emperor Rudolf in the sixteenth century. Emilia Marti - the same woman who as a sixteen-year-old Elina Makropulos was the guinea pig for the elixir, is now reaching the end of it’s effect and, after 437 years, she needs another dose. It is her mission to track down the document that she gave to her lover 200 years before, believing that she would never need it again. Originally, she had fallen ill and the emperor refused the potion, called her father a fraud, had him imprisoned and executed. She recovered, escaped to Hungary and lived on in relative obscurity. “No-one knew I would live for a hundred years…” Then she became a singer and had several careers, several lifetimes.

437 years is a long time. Elina Makropulos has had many identities, gone through many relationships and has had several children. She is now tired of what men might do to her and for some time has preferred the company of women. But she is not one for a quiet life. She has been a famous singer throughout and has lived life in the fast lane. She drinks heavily, takes class A drugs intravenously and is into every sexual expression possible with her female partners. At the start of this production using a split stage, while Vitek and Gregor and Prus discuss the court case in a hotel cafe, Emilia Marti is on her mobile in her room setting up a date with Krista via text messages. Krista comes to the hotel and she and Emilia make love. Krista’s lines in act one describing her infatuation with Marti are here delivered by phone from Marti’s bathroom. It is utterly credible. Though the elevation of the written minor role of Krista into a significant character who drives events was a major risk, the credibility of the result is testament to the genius vision of the director, Katie Mitchell.

When Marti joins the others in the cafe to discuss law, Krista stays behind in the hotel room, riffles through Martin’s bags in search of valuables and communicates her findings via texts to her boyfriend Janek, Baron Prus’s son, who researches and values possible loot.

Thus we have a perfect storm. Everyone on stage is now in competition with everyone else in order to establish advantage, both personal and financial. These are all people who are not nice to one another. The fact that Krista shoots Janek, rather than him committing suicide after a tiff with his father, might stretch credibility, but Krista now regards him as a liability that might threaten her own chances, which are now identified as staying with Emilia Marti to take advantage of her wealth and celebrity. It all makes such sense, given these characters’ propensity for lethal competition.

There are several aspects of the libretto that give rise to a feminist interpretation. Emilia Marti reveals the multiple scars, physical scars, that men have inflicted over the years. She feigns sleep when Gregor tries to rape her. She regards having sex with Prus to get her hands on the elixir recipe as a purely business transaction. It’s all there, despite having been written by the potentially misogynistic Leo’s Janacek. So all this production does is emphasize a thread of the characterization, rather than invent it.

There are several points here where time stands still or at least runs slow. The action on stage mirrors this, and these moments happen when Marti, feeling the weight of years, starts to run low on energy. Jakub Hrůša’s phenomenal understanding of the score allows him to bring this off musically by adjusting tempi, without interrupting the musical flow or sounding clumsy even in an ear that knows the score.

In the denouement, Marti has the elixir formula from Prus, has told Gregor his history, has declared her original name, Elina Makropulos, and has finally run out of energy. It is Krista, the opportunist, who receives the elixir when Marti declares she is no longer interested in a life that has delivered only suffering for so long. Krista can profit and she does, totally, and in this production in character.

Performances do matter, however dominant the plot and Ausrine Stundyte as Emilia Marti plays a more than pivotal role. Not only is she on stage almost all the time, but she is also more often than not singing. In this production, when Emilia Marti is not centre stage, she is still on stage and still acting. As conceived in this production, the role thus becomes demanding throughout the one and a half hours of the three acts, played here without any interval. Sean Pannikar as Gregor is almost impossibly wild and flighty, and John Reuter as Prus is quietly confident, assertive, powerful but almost always wrong. A special mention should be made of Alan Oke who sung Count Hauk-Sendorf, the old man with dementia who remembers wild Spanish adventures with a woman called Eugenia Montez. Who else? Heather Engebretson and Daniel Matousek who play Krista and Janek had to act quite a lot. Their parts did not require them to sing a lot, but in this production their relationship is central to the plot and they are both on stage for a good deal longer than their vocal parts might suggest.

An experiment in reshaping a masterpiece it was. And the experiment was successful.

Denia International Piano Festival - programa 26 noviembre - Gülsin Onay

2025-11-08T10:31:00.001+01:00

Torino - Andrés Orozco Estrada conducts RAI Torino in Rossini, Mozart and Berlioz with Michael Barenboim as soloist

2025-11-05T14:34:00.004+01:00

There were some famous musical names associated with Orchestra Sinphonica della RAI, Torino in last night’s programme. Previous conductors of the orchestra had surnames Pretre and Sinopoli and the night’s soloist was a Barenboim. The current principal conductor of Orchestra Sinphonica della RAI, Torino is Andrés Orozco Estrada and it was he who directed them in this concert in Alicante’s ADDA auditorium.

The concert began with one of the most well-known and rousing of Rossini’s overtures. Everyone knows the theme of the William Tell Overture’s final section, but Rossini was always episodic in his compositional style and the quiet sections that preceded allowed the orchestra to show off some of its solo playing. Starting a concert with the sound of a solo cello is hardly likely to be a showstopper, but that is clearly what Rossini wanted for his master work, perhaps indicating that all heroes have first to be born and many of them humbly.

Michael Barenboim was then soloist in Mozart K218 Violin Concerto. This, especially after the tutti at the end of the William Tell Overture was quiet, playful, witty and precise. I can never imagine that Mozart, even as a nineteen-year-old was taking his audience seriously when he wrote these notes. I always feel that the phrase “This is what they can cope with” must have been running through the composer’s mind. Basically, I don’t trust Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It has been a lifelong relationship, and there have been undoubted pleasures along the way.

Michael Barenboim and the orchestra’s playing, however, left nothing to be desired. It was sophisticated, accurate, witty and cute in places, secure and reflective in others. The composer’s ability to balance the solo part in the context of the orchestral accompaniment is a real achievement, for this orchestral part is no mere accompaniment, it presents a real dialogue with the soloist. Michael Barenboim gave the audience an encore of a movement of solo Bach in acknowledgment of warm applause.

The second half featured one work, Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. I confess the Berlioz is another composer whose music remains utterly baffling to me. It remains spectacularly baffling, however. Andrés Orozco Estrada had the third movement begin with woodwind played from high in the royal box, thus rendering the sound “far off”. The tubular bells that feature in the final movement gave a special sonority that I don’t recall from other performances of the work. But for someone who made his name for his orchestration to have called for two harps, just to keep them silent for most of the time, is beyond imagination. Perhaps he wrote the parts and then forgot about them. The orchestral playing was superb throughout, however, especially the muted horns, the brass, percussion and woodwind. Passages in the central movement were surely written by Mahler, sixty years before their time.

The orchestra offered a little piece of Italy to this audience in Spain as an encore. The Intermezzo from Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana is a superb way to follow the over-the-top Berlioz.

Denia International Piano Festival - programa 6 noviembre - Congyu Wang

2025-10-31T09:43:00.003+01:00