The Dome, Brighton, 30 3 2014

The last concert of the season was also a milestone for those involved. Barry Wordsworth has been Musical Director for 25 years and in that time has conducted the orchestra for 200 performances. The warmth of his reception fully supported the respect from stage and auditorium.

The afternoon opened with Frank Bridge’s suite The Sea. It is easy to understand why Britten was so impressed when he heard the work as a teenager for it is both English and romantic, conjuring up visions of the sea around our coasts. Closer to Vaughan Williams than Debussy, the opening Seascape seems to look down on the vast ocean from the safety of the shore, where Seafoam immerses us to be splashed, flecked and drenched as we skim close to the surface. Moonlight brings an entirely different vision, a human perspective of moonlight on the sea rather than an abstract mood. Storm releases real power and danger, but when the violence has run its course Bridge rounds up his love for the sea with a restatement of the noble opening theme. Throughout the orchestra proved its mettle and sectional strengths.

American composer Lowell Liebermann will be a new name to most concert goers. His piano concerto was first performed in 1983 and is in essence a transition piece in terms of his own compositions. The opening Allegro is spiky and aggressive, with even the quieter moments retaining the opening tension. If there is a lyrical underpinning it is often lost in the forward thrust and violence around any melodic structures. Think Grieg sieved through Birtwhistle. The Larghissimo opens with solo piano in deceptively remote style, picking out intervals which suggest other scores without any sense of development. It is hauntingly written but none the less disturbing. The final Maccaber Dance is heavily staccato, driven headlong towards its climax, where brass bring a quasi Dies Irae.  Robert Clark was the soloist and almost convinced us that the work was worth the considerable amount of blood, sweat and tears needed to bring it off.

After the interval we heard Brahms’ 4^th Symphony. Maybe it was the exertions of the first half, but the opening movement was not as precisely phrased as one might have expected and the whole lacked energy and focus. This went for most of the second movement as well and it was not until the opening of the Allegro giocoso that the orchestra seemed to marshal itself to produce the level of attack and edge the score requires. Thankfully this continued easily into the finale with a strong muscular flow and wonderful rasping brass at the conclusion.

The next orchestral season opens on Sunday 5 October with works by Glinka, Rachmaninov and Shostakovich, but there are also four chamber concerts in Brighton Unitarian Church on Sundays from 6 July. All details from www.brightonphil.org.uk

Royal Festival Hall, 29 March 2014

No problem with the size of the audience at the Royal Festival Hall when, as one of the final events of All the Stops Cameron Carpenter improvised for the 1920 classic horror film The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. The film will projected onto a large screen in front of the organ which allowed us only brief glimpses of the organist’s diamanté heels. However, there were two smaller screens either side of the main one which brought us direct coverage of the console from almost every angle. If this was a little disconcerting at times it proved effective in enabling us to follow the speed of his stop changes and the way he was thinking as he went.

Cameron Carpenter’s approach to improvisation is essentially a romantic one. Though he does not develop memorable melodic lines, his use of tone and colour is emotionally supportive to the narrative and he uses a very wide range of expression. The awakening of Cesare and the murder of Allen were alarmingly effective and intense. At the same time he managed to bring a subtle humour to Caligari, making the doctor almost jovial in his relationship with the students.

The climax was superbly handled. As it became increasingly clear that the hero was himself insane and the world around him focussed and supportive, Cameron Carpenter introduced a Bach inspired development, as if the chaos of the earlier scenes was giving way to the strict but loving counter-point of the Germanic character. It was masterly and deserved the ovation it received.

 Barbican Hall, 26 March 2014

This proved to be a fascinating evening of post-romantic music, which opened with Sibelius’ Pohjola’s Daughter. The sudden changes of mood and texture were very well captured and the moments of airy lightness particularly impressive. Although Sibelius draws on a very large orchestra, his writing is frequently thin and almost intangible. When power was needed, Sakari Oramo found this, particularly in the brass explosions, without any lack of clarity of texture. The final bars, a hushed whisper from low strings, were exquisite.

Leila Josefowicz was giving the UK premiere of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s violin concerto, and was doing so from memory. The work makes exceptional demands on the soloist, who is required to play extended passages at a furious tempo. It opens, however, with the solo violin accompanied only by remote percussion for Mirage. As the movement develops there are strong hints of gypsy and folk melodies lurking within the melos created, and these continue throughout.

The second movement Pulse I is more reflective, with long held chords and an extended section for violin and trumpet, which is effective and haunting.

Pulse II brings a frenzy of broken rhythms with strong jazz overtones. The percussion section, widely used in earlier movements though always discretely, now comes into its own and is joined by a drum kit. The soloist is here able to enjoy one of a few brief breaks as the orchestra launches into an extended dance-like section.

The final Adieu brings a long solo passage and an extended sense of melancholy, circling around an equally expressive cor anglais solo. When the orchestra joins them it is with deep-throated passion led by the percussion. After quiet meandering, the movement builds to the point where is overpowers the soloist before returning to a more dignified conclusion. This is a work which, while requiring large orchestral forces, could easily join the main repertoire.

After the interval we heard Shostakovich’s 5^th Symphony. The opening Moderato balanced passion with any icy edge, particularly in the strings. There was a level of inherent violence throughout which threw the passage for flute and horn into stark relief.

The Allegretto had strong Mahlerian overtones but we quickly realised this is Shostakovich with a Mahler pullover. The tensions were strongly felt throughout, and were maintained into the Largo. Here Sakari Oramo created a sense of emptiness and desolation, a loss which cannot be reconciled. It was deeply moving and one was able to sense something of what touched the original audience. The final Allegro non troppo was exultant, almost hysterical, rather than joyous, catching the dichotomy of the writing and its original context.

Since taking over as Chief Conductor Sakari Oramo has re-focussed the orchestra and its playing of these late romantic works is exemplary.

Mote Hall, Maidstone, 22 March 2014

Bartosz Woroch flew in a few hours before the concert on Saturday, having played in public the two previous evenings in Poland. One would never have guessed this from the sensitivity and élan he brought to Beethoven’s violin concerto. The high lying passages had a particular sweetness of tone and the first movement cadenza’s warm double-stopping was captivating.

Brian Wright took a relaxed approach to the opening movement, with Bartosz Woroch seemingly more tense than the first violins, but as the musical line developed so he appeared to become more at ease and by the first long trill was working in harmony with the rest of the strings rather than at odds with them. It was a very convincing approach and led us into a heady reading of the slow movement. There were times when the circling upwards phrases were more like Vaughan Williams than Beethoven, and the hushed accompaniment mirrored this. The final movement danced with a lightness of touch in all areas.

After the interval we moved into the vast spaces of Sibelius’ 5^th Symphony. There was a slight rawness to the wind in the opening sections and an edginess to the horns, both in keeping with the uncertainty of direction which is sensed in the strings as they plough ahead regardless. Then suddenly the sun comes out, radiant joy spread throughout the orchestra and, even when the clouds return, there is never a loss of that underlying sense of purpose. Brian Wright captured this dichotomy with ease and shaped the long paragraphs with skill. The end of the first movement was genuinely triumphant. The gentler second movement brought warm wind and concise string playing, before the final movement trembled into life. Horns and trumpets were both accurate and noble in the final sections, bringing the evening to a rounded and satisfying close.

The evening had opened with Schumann’s overture, Manfred. This may have suffered from lack of rehearsal or just a need for a longer warm up. At the start the wind was uncomfortable and the horns hesitant. String sound was unfocussed and lacked bite. Brian Wright managed to galvanise his forces as the work progressed and it was well paced with some fine hushed trumpet playing towards the end.

The next concert on Saturday 17 May brings us Ravel and Gershwin, with Tom Poster the piano soloist, and the exciting new season details are now available.

Birmingham Symphony Hall, 19 March 2014

Never a dull moment it seems for Cameron Carpenter. His Birmingham concert very nearly did not happen at all, given the problems with his travel from Berlin to Birmingham, and the programme actually presented to us was very different from that planned.

In earlier days an organist had to do all the technical work for themselves, or rely on assistants to pull stops for them. Today, everything can be pre-set but this takes an enormous amount of time. In the event, Cameron Carpenter only had time before the start of the concert to set up about half of the planned items, and, as he admitted, no actually time to rehearse on an instrument he had never played before. Under the circumstances the outcome was impressive, even if at times a little alarming.

Having heard him live before, I was open to an approach to registration which was unique to the point of confusion. This he demonstrated from the start with an arrangement of Mozart’s piano sonata K284. The notes may have been Mozart but the sound produced was nothing like it. Wild changes of registration and dynamic, often within a single bar, immersed us in a musical maelstrom. The third movement, a theme and variations, lent itself to this approach and was more pleasing.

By contrast the Bach Trio Sonata which followed seemed almost mild with some fine solo stops in the slow movement and a bold Germanic edge for the finale.

He dropped the planned 1^st sonata by Demessieux but gave us the fiercely aggressive 6^th. This seemed to admirably suite his approach and his technical finesse. The flying pedal writing made his diamanté heels flash at the same time as light bounced off his sparkling shoulders. He then added a Chopin Etude in the same key, C#minor, but, like the Mozart, this seemed strained and unconvincing.

Marcel Dupre’s Variations on a Noel brought the first half to a close and proved to be the most satisfying work of the first half. He brought a Gothic temperament to his interpretation and a range of tonality and texture which was totally convincing. The macabre elements in the music are there, though we rarely hear them as exposed as on this occasion.

After the interval we were in the lap of the gods as there had been no time to prepare anything except for the Scriabin. He opened with Bach, which impressed with the subtly of its registrational changes. To the ear this could have been fine organo pleno but watching the console there was continuous minor changes which added nuances to the phrasing throughout. The fugue built from a whisper to a triumphal climax drawing on the full reeds and en chamade trumpet.

He then improvised three short pieces, which proved to be unexpectedly lyrical and jazz based in their use of gentle syncopation. The final movement was played by the left hand alone, though the sound made this difficult to believe.

Scriabin’s 4^th sonata is a moody, restless piece which assumes the sustaining power of the pian o rather than the consistency of the organ. The hazy opening, with solo voices disappearing into the distance, was very well structured and the changes in colour all apt.

An encore was called for, and it was no surprise when he played an arrangement of a movement from one of Bach’s cello suites for pedal alone. It was masterly.

He can be heard again in London at the RFH on Saturday 29 March, assuming he is able to get there!

Milton Keynes, 12-13 March 2014

Experiencing Mariusz Trelinski’s productions of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut and Henze’s Boulevard Solitude together made more sense than seeing them individually. The cross references between the two versions deepen our understanding of both and also give us a better insight into the approach of the composers. We seem to follow the narrative through De Grieux’s eyes in Puccini but Manon’s in Henze. The archly romantic writing of the earlier composer is in keeping with Des Grieux’s approach to life. He takes Manon at her word and is endlessly forgiving to the point of death. His life, as we see it in its final hours, is a constant recycling of events to the point where time literally stops and he is living in a fantasy now totally divorced from the reality around him.

For Henze, Manon is too close to Lulu for comfort, destroying those who cross her path and managing somehow to outlast the men who die around her.

The video projections by Batek Macias may be uncomfortable on the eyes but bring us a harsh reality which dehumanises everything it touches. Only the death of Manon in the ‘wilderness’ has any slight comfort, but then that itself is a delusion.

Throughout, both productions were finely sung and sumptuously accompanied from the pit under Lothar Koenigs. Gwyn Hughes Jones produced the ringing tones needed for Des Grieux but was strongly contrasted by the darker tones of David Kempster as Lescaut and Stephen Richardson as Geronte. Smaller parts were taken by regular company members, again highlighting the strength of the ensemble.

In Boulevard Solitude Jason Bridges brought us a younger Armand but one who is far more at risk. He may have the classical references but he is easily seduced by drugs and drink. Benjamin Bevan’s Lescaut is a far more sleazy individual though Adrian Thompson brings unexpected nobility to Lilaque.

The two Manon’s are equally well contrasted. Chiara Taigi’s Manon for the Puccini may not be romantically conventional but there is no assumption that she is already debauched before she meets Des Grieux. She is an opportunist who moves as the world provides, but is destroyed all too easily by it. Her ample tones filled out Puccini’s musical lines with ease.

Sarah Tynan’s creation for Henze is more worldly wise, with a steely edge, which she does not lose until the final moments when she shoots Lilaque – though the on-going repetition of this moment is highly effective. She sings with a crispness and clarity which conveyed the English text with ease.

David Poutney’s approach of providing linked productions within a season is proving to be very valuable. The next series on Faith should prove equally stimulating.

The Dome, Brighton, 8 March 2014

An English Idyll was the selling point for this concert which began and ended with Elgar. His second Wand of Youth Suite opened the evening and its gentle melodies proved highly effective, particularly the slowly evolving line at the heart of The Little Bells. The Russian influence both musically and emotionally was evident in The Tame Bear, which led to an enthusiastic,  but well-structured, finale with the Wild Bears.

In Delius’ The Walk to the Paradise Garden, David Hill brought out the Wagnerian rather than the Debussyan influences, making the whole seem heavier and more sombre in its unfolding than is often the case. Perhaps it was in contrast to the heady lightness of Tasmin Little’s playing of The Lark Ascending. This is not only Vaughan Williams’ most popular work but one of the all-time favourites, regularly at the top of the charts. That it has a potentially serious side too often goes unnoticed. Though drafted in 1914, before the massacres of the war, it seems to reflect the silence and emptiness of the countryside, the folk tunes a ghosted memory of the men who worked the land. It was both moving and lyrical as it spun its way ever upward.

After the interval David Hill brought us a strangely disparate view of Elgar’s first symphony. The first two movements were brash, fast and often over loud. There was very little sense of rubato in the approach and no portamento in the string sections. As such it was over-modern and aggressive. However the Adagio found a much better sense of style and balance, with the tempo not only relaxed but having a far finer sense of flow. This moved into the final movement which at last felt like Elgar and the nobility of the work was allowed to blossom.

The individual items were introduced by Petroc Trelawny. As the concert was not being broadcast one has to ask why? It added nothing to our experience of the music and his inability to get simple facts correct was irritating.

The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra return to the Dome next year.

The Dome, Brighton, 2 March 2014

Barry Wordsworth was dressed to kill this afternoon, and his programme served to reinforce the sense of occasion, growing in strength as it progressed.

Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin was light and airy throughout with a real brightness in the final movement. The small orchestral forces seemed to add up to more than the players on stage. The same was true for Vivaldi’s A minor Bassoon concerto. An unprepossessing work, Andrea de Flammineis gave us a cultured and gently moving account of a work which seems very close to Venice. The opening movement has minor undertone which feels like a slightly unstable gondola. This gives way in the second movement to a quiet moonlit night out on the lagoon. Fanciful, of course, but the whole work has a gentle smile which soloists and orchestra brought off to perfection.

There is an innocence, almost a naivety, about Copland’s Appalachian Spring which is immensely appealing – a dream of what might have been but has now been lost. This was very well caught by Barry Wordsworth and the small orchestra, with some very effective solo playing, particularly Alistair Young at the piano.

The afternoon ended with Mozart’s Symphony No 29 in A. One of my earliest memories of concert going is hearing this symphony in the Maida Vale studios back in the early 1960s and it has remained a favourite ever since, though it is not as popular as it once was. The structure may be conventional but Mozart constantly stretches the boundaries, and there are passages that pre-figure Beethoven even at this early stage.

A brief word from Barry encouraged us all to support not only the final concert this season, on 30 March, but to endeavour to support in any way possible the next season which will include not only eight concerts at the Dome but also four concerts in Brighton Unitarian Church. More details to follow!

ENO, London Coliseum, 28 February 2014

ENO has a very strong track record where Handel is concerned and I suspect the new Richard Jones production of Rodelinda will join the ranks of challenging but convincing approaches.

We are in Milan in some amorphous present, but there is no sense at all of a country, its people or even its outside world. The characters we meet are almost entirely bound up with their own narcissistic problems; the CCTV is only used to spy on each other. When we do encounter the outside world, in some stunning designs from Jeremy Herbert, characters are alone. The huge memorial to Bertarido dwarfs the stage; the enormous neon-lit bar is empty but for the protagonist and his friend. There are few surprises as the narrative unfolds and relationships become ever tenser. They may sing of love and desire, but violence is ever present and the brilliant reversal of the final scene – all compassion in the language, but increasingly vicious in action – is fully justified by all we have seen before.

It is uniformly well sung, often brilliantly so, with Rebecca Evans’ Rodelinda moving towards Lady Macbeth in her single-minded search for vengeance, her husband, Bertarido, giving Iestyn Davies one of his finest characterisations, as a man moving from compassion to vengeance. John Mark Ainsley made Grimoaldo a more complex character than he appears from the libretto, at odds with the action he has led himself into and yet potential more honourable than Bertarido. Susan Bickley’s Eduige is a pragmatist who loses out in the end. In this world of nasty individuals only the fixer, Garibaldo, actually gets killed, but the one honest man, Christopher Ainslie’s finely crafted Unulfo, is not only butchered near to death by the ‘hero’ but is totally ignored in his pain as the victors grab the spoils. It is a challenging but convincing approach which I hope will be revived.

Christian Curnyn keeps a tight rein on his forces in the pit, who played with panache, but could surely have been raised for greater impact?

There are six more performances between now and 15 March.