Marin Alsop conducts Dvořák, Milhaud, Varèse, LPO RFH 20 Feb 2013

Dvořák, Milhaud, Varèse: Marin Alsop (cond), Ken Burton (cond), London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Adventist Chorale, Royal Festival Hall, London.

Three Spirituals

Dvořák: Symphony No. 9

Milhaud: La creation du Monde

Varèse: Amériques

The programme for this evening’s concert was a mess, and I blame Alex Ross. Its role in the Rest is Noise season is clear enough, but the Europeans-in-America theme was curated with a heavy hand. From a historical perspective, the choices of composers and works were obvious, but they sit well together. On top of that, the idea of beginning with real spirituals and then moving straight into Dvořák Nine meant that the whole programme had to be reversed, with the symphony in the first half and the curiosities in the second.

I’ve never subscribed to the view that African-American spirituals form the melodic and/or spiritual basis of the New World Symphony, so perhaps the first half of this concert was aimed at listeners like me. A gospel choir, the London Adventist Chorale, opened the concert, and their performance segued directly into the opening of the Dvořák. The congruence between the spirituals and the symphony was blatantly engineered by the inclusion of Going Home a setting of the cor anglais solo from Dvořák’s second movement in the form of a spiritual. But even that failed to make the case.

The choir was on top form, and their short performance was a highlight of the concert. With only twenty singers, they struggled to fill the hall with sound, but the sheer beauty of their tone ensured that everybody listened intently. They performed a simple, homophonic setting of Deep River, a jazzy Swing Low Sweet Chariot, and a setting of Going Home that even followed Dvořák’s harmonies and textures.

As the choir ended the orchestra began, but there was little continuity here. In fact the commitment of the singers, the precision of their ensemble and the elegance of their tone, were in stark contrast to the messy, incoherent orchestral playing that followed. Given the challenges of the second half, the majority of the rehearsal time was presumably given over to the Varèse. But did they even run the Dvořák? Considering the consistently high standards the London Philharmonic usually maintains, this was an amazingly sloppy performance. Alsop clearly has a vision for the symphony. She’s keen to drive the outer movements like it’s Beethoven Five, and both of the inner movements are about steady, insistent tempos. But she wholly failed to communicate any of this to the orchestra, and the result was leaden, incoherent playing, poor balance within the orchestra and a distinct lack of poise at almost every turn.

The second half opened with Milhaud’s La creation du Monde, a piece that requires a programme of this sort to justify its presence in an orchestral concert, but that acts as effective palate cleanser between the more substantial works. Milhaud seems to be taunting the orchestral players with all the jazzy licks he expects them to struggle with, but this time the joke was on him, as all the pseudo-jazz came off beautifully. Special mention should go to Andrew Barclay, whose nonchalant kit drumming succinctly set the tone.

The concert ended with a bang, or several rather, in the form of Varèses’s Amériques. As soon as it began it was clear where all the rehearsal time had gone. The London Philharmonic fielded about the largest band you’ll ever see in the Festival Hall, including an unprecedented 12 percussionists (that’s apart from the two timpanists) vying for elbow room at the back of the stage. This time, Alsop set the pace more carefully and paid much greater attention to the many details of the score. Balance within the ensemble was impressive, with those crucial woodwind textures shining through, even against the large brass section. Some of the quieter passages sagged, but the composer should take as much blame for this as the conductor. And the ending was fabulous, with Alsop managing to increase the volume and density of sound, even over the repeated extremes that make up most of the piece, to give the final page that extra impact. An impressive end, then, to a variable concert, one which struggled to make sense on its own terms, despite its pedantically themed programme. Let’s hope that later offerings in The Rest is Noise are more consistently inspired and make a better case for every work, not just the ones with the loudest bells and whistles.

RCM Symphony Orchestra plays Lutosławski, QEH 6 Feb 13

Lutosławski, Debussy, Roussel: RCM Symphony Orchestra, Franck Ollu (cond), QEH, London, 6.2.13

Lutosławski: Jeux venetiens

Debussy: Nocturnes

Lutosławski: Symphony No. 3

Roussel: Bacchus and Ariane Suite No. 2

Sophisticated, urbane and founded on infinite subtleties of expression: everything about Lutosławski’s music suggests that it requires mature, experienced and world-wise performers to achieve its effect. This evening it got something different, a performance from the Royal College of Music Symphony Orchestra, some members of which were not even born when the composer died (doesn’t that make you feel old?). The ensemble handled the music’s technical demands well, and the more direct approach that the young players took to the music’s expressive side demonstrated that Lutosławski’s aesthetic is not as involved or esoteric as it may sometimes seem.

Jeux venetiens opened the concert, but it wasn’t the best way to start. The piece makes extensive use of Lutosławkski’s distinctive technique of “limited aleatorism”. Those passages proved something of a hurdle for the players. All the notes were there, but they had difficulty maintaining the evenness of the texture, and the balance between the instruments was often problematic. All of the solos were excellent, but for the time being, Lutosławski’s distinctive ensemble formations eluded them.

The orchestra gradually found its feet in the following work, Debussy’s Nocturnes. The links between Debussy’s orchestration and that of Lutosławski were everywhere apparent, with the big difference that the orchestra had little difficulty in achieving what Debussy desired. The strings were on great form, and throughout the second half as well, with near ideal intonation and a unity of ensemble that many professional orchestras struggle to achieve. The Debussy really came to life in the final movement “Sirènes”, for which a female choir from RCM was squeezed onto the stage between the strings and woodwinds. Some shaky intonation and ensemble from the winds in the earlier movements was ironed out for this last movement, and the sound quality from every section brought the piece to life.

But the best was yet to come. Lutosławski’s Third Symphony opened the second half, and was undoubtedly the high point of the concert. The performance was meticulously prepared, and every player was obviously on top of the notes. Unlike in Jeux venetiens, much of the music here is loud and often declamatory, and the orchestra was able to not only give those bold, direct statements, but also find the ideal contrast between those and the more introverted and finely textured passages. The score is something of a concerto for orchestra, regularly shining a spotlight on unexpected corners of the ensemble, and whoever the composer’s attention fell on, they always came up with the goods.

That said, the strings continued to have the upper hand over the winds. The brass in the opening fanfares was just a bit too raucous, and the woodwinds occasionally struggled to keep their intonation in place, although Lutosławski makes things very difficult for them by often writing very loud passages in unison. But the highlight of the evening was the central toccata of the symphony, a complex but highly ordered polyphonic episode for the strings. Again, the strings’ ensemble and intonation was ideal here, but they also achieved a unity of timbre too, not overly dark or heavy, but focussed and crystal clear through all those polyphonic lines.

This evening’s conductor, Franck Ollu, is a new music specialist, which is just as well given the programme. His conducting of Lutosławski’s a Battuta sections (which ironically he led senza Battuta) was very detailed, as if to guide the players through every potential problem in the music. This left him looking frustrated in the ad lib passages, as he had to essentially stand there and let them get on with it. This was particularly apparent in the symphony, in which the bar lines often stop right at the music’s climax, exactly where the conductor would want to intervene the most. Fortunately he was able to have full confidence in his players to continue exactly where he left off, and to take the music in the direction it needed to go.

The concert concluded with the second suite from Roussel’s Bacchus et Ariane. There are Lutosławski connections here too, which just about justified the work’s presence on the programme. It posed few problems for the players, who gave a committed performance, although perhaps lacking a little in sensuality. But it wasn’t the right piece to end the concert, not after the excellent performance of the Third Symphony. The Roussel sounded pretty pedestrian in comparison, and I can’t have been the only person in the audience wishing the evening would end with some further utterance from the Polish master.

The weird, weird world of Pjokken Eide

 Northern Norway is much like Western Cornwall, in that when you visit you’re likely to meet people who could only possibly inhabit the distant corners of the known world. One such man is Pjokken Eide, a senior figure in the civic life of Tromsø. I was there earlier this week to cover the Northern Lights Festival and ran into Pjokken a couple of times. The Festival’s chairman is out of town, so Pjokken is standing in, styling himself the “chairman substitute”. He’s been giving speeches and introductions at a number of formal receptions, and doing so very well, but to look at him it is hard to imagine quite how he fits into the formal, and usually very boring, world of civic receptions and corporate hospitality.

It turns out that Pjokken has just retired from an amazingly varied career. He’s been involved in arts management in Bergen - and if you ever meet him, ask him to tell you the story about how he secured the funding for the Bergen concert hall, a stroke of genius. He also once ran an advertising agency – “You could always tell when an advert was made by Pjokken” somebody in Tromsø told me, and I can well believe it. Most impressively, he spent many years as head of the Norwegian Seafood Council. Here he is inspecting some of the produce (he’s the one on the right, obviously):

But throughout all this, Pjokken has also pursued a bizarre and fascinating music career. In the 60s and 70s he was a member of the band Popol Vuh. Check out this video, in which he “plays” a piano in ways that need to be seen to be believed. Pjokken described the piano to me as “top of the props: no strings, no keys - meant to be seen only from behind”. As far as he can remember, his only contribution to the soundtrack here was the tambourine, although he also played flute and trombone for the band:

He also produced two solo albums around this time and I’m delighted to report that both are on Spotify. They are psychedelic experiences both, in a gentle, folksy sort of way: 

What next? Renaissance music of course. When we met he was full of stories about this album, on which he plays Renaissance trombone, and on one track uses a mousetrap to mimic the sound of self-flagellation in a song dating back to when the plague reached Bergen:

In more recent years the checked tweed suit seems to have become a trademark. He told me that today his musical activities are limited to playing the trombone in an amateur orchestra in Tromsø. However, he marked his retirement from the Norwegian Seafood Council in 2011 with a musical spectacular that the fish traders of Norway are unlikely to forget in a hurry. As a parting gift he wrote them an anthem. As he put it to me “The song is meant to be for the entire seafood industry in Norway what You'll never walk alone is for Liverpool FC.” The lyrics, he says, are “pompous to the extreme”, and, as you’ll hear, Henry Mancini, is channelled at various key moments. Take it away Pjokken!

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Adam Fischer OAE The Creation

Haydn: The Creation

Sophie Bevan soprano

Andrew Kennedy tenor

Andrew Foster-Williams bass-baritone

Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

Schola Cantorum of Oxford

Adam Fischer conductor

Royal Festival Hall, London, 9.1.13

It’s impossible to take your eyes off Adam Fischer. His every gesture at the podium is unique and unpredictable. He clearly lives this music, and the way that he communicates it is utterly distinctive. Fischer conducts without a score, no mean feat considering the length of this oratorio. The recitatives are none of his business really, but in each of them he stands in rapt attention, his arms crossed and his eyes fixed on the soloist. Occasionally he will mouth the words, seemingly in wonder at the quality of the delivery. And then he’ll turn to the audience and nod enthusiastically, to make sure we know that he likes what he’s hearing. 

Fischer’s communication with the orchestra is exemplary too. He’s no tyrant, and often tempos seem more suggested than imposed. But he has a firm grip of moods and styles. When he wants scurrying textures from the strings, for example, he’ll hunch his back and start jumping round the podium in jerky crab-like movements. He certainly has a direct line to Haydn, and especially to Haydn’s optimism, the key quality of The Creation. There were some minor flaws here, but none mattered compared to the sense of intense joy that radiated from the podium. 

The OAE appeared in a particularly large configuration this evening, with four desks of firsts and seconds. This facilitated a good balance, although the Festival Hall did some sections more favours than others. The flutes were particularly prominent, as were the bassoons, but the oboes, clarinets and trombones (with the notable exception of their lion roars) were all but lost to the acoustic. Schola Cantorum, Oxford gave a proficient performance, and responded well to Fischer’s ebullient conducting. There were occasional issues of ensemble and lack of tonal focus, but for an amateur ensemble they quit themselves well.

The three soloists made for a curious but ultimately successful combination. Soprano Sophie Bevan sang with an operatic, almost coloratura, tone, but any suspicions of anachronism were swept away by the sheer musicality of her singing. She had a few small intonation issues, especially at the top, and Haydn severely tested her technique with scale passages across the break, but these technical issues were minor concerns. Andrew Kennedy began the evening in an erratic mood, but settled into a more controlled style towards the end of the first part. He lacks tone in the lower register but his voice has plenty of character in the upper range. Andrew Foster-Williams gave the best vocal performance of the evening. His tone production was close to ideal, and the range of emotions he brought was pitch perfect: the serious passages with a light, almost ironic, edge, and the joyous passages uncomplicated and direct.

Adam Fischer’s take on The Creation was undoubtedly developed in musical environments very different to this. His opera work has put him in good stead to juggle the competing demands of soloists and orchestra. He also has a dramatic sensibility that works well here, making the most of pregnant pauses in the opening choruses, for example, but without ever moving outside of strict 18^th century conventions of taste. He’s the ideal conductor for this orchestra, and one they should welcome back at the earliest possible opportunity.