Philharmonia Grimaud Lintu RFH 10 Oct 2013

 Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 1, Symphony No. 1. Hélène Grimaud (pn), Hannu Lintu (cond.), Philharmonia, Royal Festival Hall, London, 10.10.13 

Andris Nelsons called in sick for this evening’s concert, which was a shame, but it did give London audiences a rare chance to sample the talents of one of Finland’s rising stars, Hannu Lintu. He’s a different kind of conductor, and lacks that sense of continuous flowing energy that makes Nelsons’ performances so coherent and intense. Lintu is a tall, wiry figure who communicates to his players through sudden, jerky movements. To illicit a hard accent or punch chord, he’ll throw a crazy shape, all bowed legs and outstretched arms, just ahead of the beat, then freeze until the music catches up. Those individual events come out great, but it hardly helps the music to flow.

Hélène Grimaud is the exact opposite. Her playing is all about continuity, with seamless legato and flowing lines. The Brahms First Piano Concerto that opened the concert worked best when a constructive tension was achieved between conductor and pianist, Lintu picking out the dramatic moments, Grimaud weaving them together through her long, lyrical lines at the piano. Sadly, these were the exception rather than the rule, and the tensions that characterised this reading were mostly unbalanced and unresolved. Brahms is partly to blame: his symphonic aspirations distort many aspects of this concerto, and it is up to the players to find a way to rein the often overblown music into the work’s formal parameters. This is where Grimaud’s approach pays dividends. She always seems sceptical of Brahms’ more extrovert gestures, the huge block chords or the Beethovenian oppositions between soloist and orchestra in the first movement. Her solution is to round off the edges, to play even the most grandiose music with an even legato and a warm tone. Lintu, by contrast, goes for broke with the grand symphonic gestures. In the first movement the orchestra struggled to give him what he was looking for; there were a number of ensemble problems in the strings in the louder passages and some distinctly inelegant playing from the winds. The slow movement worked better, mainly because it could rely more on Grimaud’s lyrical playing. And the finale worked better still, as Grimaud took a completely different approach to the music. From the very opening, she played with a more focussed and more staccato touch – that opening flourish was like a breath of fresh air. This, and every later statement of the rondo theme, was played with precision and clarity, really bringing out the counterpoint between the hands. In the lyrical interludes, she returned to her trademark legato, but as a contrast to the more incisive style of the main theme this worked well. The orchestra also made more sense out of the finale, giving a performance that was as dramatic as that of the first movement, but now with a real sense of direction and purpose.

After the interval came Brahms’ First Symphony, which turned out to be a similarly mixed bag. Lintu seemed more comfortable with this work, and better able to marshal the orchestral forces when needed. But it still lacked focus and there was rarely any sense of adventure. New themes and ideas were presented with the correct tempos and dynamic relationships, but without any sense of surprise or that something new was happening. There was some elegant playing from the orchestra in the inner movements, especially from the leader and from the woodwind soloists, but up until the end of the third movement, this didn’t seem like a particularly inspired reading. But, just as in the concerto, the music really took off in the finale. Perhaps Brahms had a hand in this, saving his most inspired ideas until the end of the work. Perhaps you just can’t go wrong with the finale of this symphony. Whatever the reason, there was some great playing here. The trombones totally nailed their chorale toward the start of the movement. The horns had sounded quite course earlier on, but suddenly their interjections lifted the music. And the string section, which had only had a reasonable evening up until this point, suddenly found the coherency of tone they were looking for and were able to focus the sound of the whole orchestra, even in the loudest climaxes towards the end.

A serviceable evening of Brahms, then, from Grimaud, Lintu and the Philharmonia forces, but not an exceptional one. It was engaging at the time, but chances are all memory of it will evaporate in a week or two, when Riccardo Chailly and the Gewandhaus roll into town to give us their versions of these great works.

2001: A Space Odyssey Live Philharmonia Wallfisch

2001: A Space Odyssey Live: Philharmonia Orchestra and Voices, Benjamin Wallfisch (cond), Royal Festival Hall, London, 7.10.13

A ‘concert performance’ of a film is much like a concert performance of an opera, in that the music is extracted from its position within the drama and thrust into the limelight to fend for itself. 2001 is a great candidate for this treatment though, not least for the sheer quality of the music it employs. Having a live orchestra and choir perform with (I hesitate to say accompany) the film highlights some curious anomalies, one of which is how little music there actually is in it. The ‘Saturn Expedition’ segment, which takes up approximately the middle half (well over an hour) contains no music at all, a fact driven home by the presence of a mute orchestra and choir. But Kubrick’s use of silence only increases the power of the music, when he does use it, and for those set pieces, particularly the Stargate Sequence, live performers certainly add something unique.

The Festival Hall makes a great cinema. A huge screen hung behind the stage, wider even than the organ behind it. The Philharmonia Voices were positioned on the two angled wings of the choir stalls, ladies to the left, gentleman to the right. This gave an interesting antiphonal dimension to Ligeti’s Requiem, although the presence of cloistered choristers to the sides of the screen also gave an awkward liturgical feel to the proceedings. The wooden panelling behind the orchestra was blacked out, which dulled the acoustic a little, but focussed the eye. And all the performers had stand lights, minimising light pollution, although some inevitably bled onto the lower part of the screen.

A similar live presentation of 2001 is taking place in New York this season, so I’m guessing that somebody (Warner?) has developed a package to enable such performances. The film itself is looking immaculate. A soundtrack sans music has been mixed, and in surround too, and the orchestra and choir parts have all been prepared, with all the cues exactly as they appear in the film.

The Philharmonia was brave to take on this project; they’ve got form when it comes to Ligeti. In the early 90s, the orchestra gave a performance of the Requiem in the composer’s presence. The idea was that the same forces would then go into the studio and record the work for the Complete Ligeti Edition, then on the Teldec label. I was at the concert, sitting directly behind Ligeti and craning my ear to hear his comments about the performance. I remember him being (unusually) polite but non-committal in the vague compliments he paid the performers. It turned out, though, that he was disappointed and went on to veto the recording. He was right to, as when the money was found to have another go, it was with the Berlin Philharmonic and Jonathan Nott, now unquestionably the definitive version and a significant improvement on that early 90s performance. That said the main problem then was the singing of the Philharmonia Chorus. This isn’t really a piece for an amateur choir. Fortunatley, the Philharmonia has since availed itself of a professional, albeit smaller chorus, the Philharmonia Voices. They excelled this evening, giving performances of the Kyrie from the Requiem and of Lux Aeterna that were close to ideal.

The recordings on the film’s soundtrack are another issue with a project like this. Kubrick not only had an excellent ear for repertoire choices but also for recordings, and any conductor and orchestra faced with the challenge of replacing Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic playing The Blue Danube  are up against stiff competition. The Philharmonia played well enough, but didn’t approach the finesse we hear on the original soundtrack in the music of either Strausses. I say the Philharmonia, about half the orchestra seemed to be deps. Principal flute/piccolo was played by Katherine Bryan - some dep! (Is she up for this chair? That would be a coup for the orchestra.)

Conductor Benjamin Wallfisch did an excellent job of keeping the music sounding musical while always synchronising it exactly to the visuals. Heaven knows how he managed that in the Ligeti, but it all worked. The Blue Danube sounded very constrained in the space station docking sequence; the synchronisation preventing him from giving the music the freedom and elasticity it needs. Fortunately the music appears twice, the second time in the exit music after the credits. This time there are no visuals, so he could really perform the music. It sounded like a completely different piece.

With all due deference to this evening’s performers, the real stars of this show were the audience. The house was full and the atmosphere was vibrant. Amazingly, many there seemed not to know the film. So there were big laughs for the few comedy moments – the protracted instructions for the zero gravity toilet, HAL’s transparent and delusion pleading as he’s shut down – and gasps at the (admittedly few) visual surprises. I felt a pang of envy for those who came to 2001 for the first time this evening. What an introduction to the film, and so much better than just watching it on the box.

LSO Noseda Lugansky Barbican 29 Sept 13

Britten: Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes

Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 3

Britten: Sinfonia da Requiem

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 6

London Symphony Orchestra, Nikolai Lugansky, Gianandrea Noseda

Barbican Hall, London, 29 Sept 2013

A great performance by the London Symphony this evening, the orchestra sounding distinctive, unified, and bringing vitality and insight to every phrase. Gianandrea Noseda interacted well with the players, and the orchestra clearly gave him exactly what he was looking for. He’s a curious conductor to watch, very energetic, but with all his energy focussed into small, jerky movements. It is a very clear style, though not exactly elegant, and one that always conveys the music’s drama, although sometimes bypasses its lyricism.

The concert opened with Britten’s Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes, and for the first few movements it seemed that Noseda was struggling to find the music’s wavelength. His conducting here was stiff and often seemed forced. Transitions were angular and counterintuitive, and accompanying textures often stood out more than they should. ‘Moonlight’ and the storm worked better, the former because the chocolaty sound of the strings brought out the music’s atmosphere and pathos, and the storm because, whatever his failings, Noseda is able to really bring out the drama in this sort of music.

However good the orchestral playing may have been this evening, the star of the show was undoubtedly Nikolai Lugansky. Prokofiev’s Third Concerto is the ideal vehicle for his pianism, combining as he does flawless technique, natural poetry and an ability to keep his music making unpredictable, however well-known the work. Coming onto the stage, he half resembled Prokofiev himself. His demeanour is modest but confident, his relationship with the keyboard is simultaneously intellectual and gymnastic, and, just as the score requires, his mood can change in an instant, suddenly transforming the speed, dynamic and colour in line with Prokofiev’s twists and turns. Another excellent performance from the orchestra here, and especially from the strings. Years of playing under Gergiev have clearly given them a special affinity for the early 20^th century Russian repertoire, something that was even more evident in the Shostakovich that closed the concert.

But first more Britten. The last time I heard Sinfonia da Requiem was at the Proms earlier this year in a lacklustre reading from the BBC SO under Thomas Adès. Both orchestra and conductor quickly went on to redeem themselves with a stunning performance of the Lutosławski Cello Concerto (with Paul Watkins), but Britten’s problematic score was a low point of that particular performance. Well, this evening Noseda and the LSO demonstrated that all this work needs in order to really shine is a little TLC. After the uninspiring Peter Grimes excerpts, Noseda now fully restored his Britten credentials in a performance that had everything. Yet again, the darker aspects of the music, especially in the first movement, were elegantly conveyed through the rich string sound. And the emphatic articulations in the winds cut through with impressive power, helped in no small measure by the percussion section. But Noseda deserves just as much praise for making this piece function, despite its occasional compositional failings. Even the contrived ending, a sort of winding down of a clockwork mechanism, made perfect musical sense here, a rare feat indeed.

The concert ended with Shostakovich Six. What’s this – an LSO Shostakovich performance without Gergiev? He was here in spirit though, in the impressively idiomatic way the orchestra handled the score. Noseda’s reading was good, although perhaps a little less nuanced and dramatic as what Gergiev would have produced. It occasionally seemed that he was running on autopilot, especially in the second and third movements, where little effort was made to bring out specific details of articulation or counterpoint. But it certainly had momentum and drive, especially the finale, a movement that shows off all the strengths of this orchestra.

A mixed showing then, from Noseda, for whom the Sinfonia da Requiem was the high point of the evening. But for the orchestra’s performance, and for Lugansky’s, only superlatives suffice.

Philharmonia Salonen Roméo et Juliette RFH 26 Sept 2013

Berlioz: Roméo et Juliette

Christianne Stotijn, Paul Groves, Gerald Finley, Philharmonia Chorus and Orchestra, Esa-Pekka Salonen

Royal Festival Hall, London, 26.9.13

This evening’s concert opened with the announcement of some very welcome news: that Esa-Pekka Salonen has renewed his contract with the Philharmonia up to 2017. This orchestra has been more fortunate than most when it comes to Artistic Directors, and the list of conductors who have led the ensemble reads like a who’s who of 20^th century musical talent. But even in this context, Salonen’s tenure has been a golden age. Among his many qualities is the ability to bring out the very best in his players, and the chemistry between Salonen and the Philharmonia seems to improve with every performance. He’s also got a knack for interesting programming, picking works, often obscure, that really show his orchestra’s strengths. All these qualities came together this evening, and the results were spectacular.

Even so, Roméo et Juliette is a tough nut to crack, and a very daring choice for the orchestra’s season opener. Plan A had been The Damnation of Faust, but presumably casting problems forced a rethink. This ‘dramatic symphony’ demands less of its vocal soloists, but considerably more from the chorus and orchestra. It also needs a conductor who can make sense out of the work’s bizarre, hybrid structure. Fortunately, it got everything it needed this evening, in a performance that was well paced and dramatic as well as lyrical and coherent, or at least as coherent is this work is ever likely to sound.

In the opening movement, a small chorus of 12 singers and the mezzo and tenor soloists introduce the action. Or rather, they introduce Berlioz’s oblique gloss on the tale. He assumes that his audience already knows every detail of Shakespeare’s tragedy, a safe bet in the English-speaking world. The performance took a few minutes to get going, and the strings were scrappy in the opening passages. Mezzo Chistianne Stotijn was also out of form, not managing her usual purity of tone. The choir and tenor Paul Groves, however, were excellent, and Groves in particular was scandalously underused, not appearing again after this brief solo. Berlioz’s orchestration is radical throughout this work, even by his standards, and for a few minutes towards the start of the movement, it seemed as if his unusual combinations were going to compromise the ensemble playing. Fortunately, though, these problems were fleeting, and when the orchestra got into its stride from the second movement onwards, the playing was excellent.

Choral movements bookend what is otherwise essentially a programme symphony, and, spare a brief offstage interjection from the chorus, the inner movements are purely orchestral. Again, Berlioz expects us to both know the story and to follow him as he represents it in seemingly abstract music. Salonen’s approach here is ideal. He’s never one to skimp on drama, but he also understands that continuity is required for this narrative-based structure to succeed. So the transitions were always carefully judged and the musical ideas seemed to flow, one into another. Every section of the orchestra gets a real workout, and none disappoints. There were some great woodwind solos, especially from the cor anglais (Jill Crowther), whose solos grace many of the movements.

Towards the end, the full forces of the Philharmonia Chorus make an entrance and play a key role in the finale. They too are given some very demanding music, and never disappoint. Salonen could have paid them a bit more attention, but he was usually having to negotiate multiple strands of divergent counterpoint in the orchestra, so it was probably just as well that the singers could just get on with it without too much guidance.

Then Gerald Finley made his entrance, and from then on the class and quality of the performance was assured. The part is low for his voice, more bass than baritone, but the elegant rich sound that makes his upper register so appealing is just as evident lower down. He doesn’t quite have the projection at the bottom, but Salonen insured that he was always audible. The choral finale is yet another curiosity of the piece. It’s more conciliatory than valedictory, there’s nothing to celebrate here so it is more about lessons learned. It is still loud though, and suitably climactic, but Salonen was able to bring grandeur to these closing gestures without straying into undue heroism or grandstanding.

A curious lighting programme was used for the concert, designed by David Holmes. It consisted of lights projected on the orchestra from above that subtly changed in hue with the emotions of the music. Sadly, the lights didn’t quite reach to the edges of the stage, nor to the conductor, who stood as a Stokowski-like silhouette throughout most of the performance. But at least it was not unduly districting, like Berlioz’s narrative innovations, an experiment that didn’t quite work but that didn’t spoil the evening.

But despite the obscurity to which the lighting consigned him, Salonen was the star of this show, making musical sense out of this strange score and drawing some excellent playing from his orchestra. This opener bodes well for the Pilharmonia’s season ahead, and for the three more that will follow under Salonen’s dynamic leadership.