Barbican Hall, Saturday 26 March 2016

Sir John Eliot Gardiner asks a lot of his musicians – and equally so of his audience. The singers perform without scores and the many solo instrumentalists perform from memory. The effect is one of immediacy and intense dramatic impact. When this is united with the immaculate beauty of line, the intimacy of so many of the solo arias, and the rapport of all concerned, the impact is frequently overwhelming. I can’t recall a St Matthew Passion where the words have seemed quite so important, driving the text and insisting we follow the narrative. There was never a moment when we simply relaxed into beautiful singing, though that itself was never in doubt.

In the programme note John Eliot Gardiner makes a strong case for his approach, which avoids the pitfalls of a ‘staged’ event and the often sterile impact of a concert. Instead we have soloists who move easily about the stage to find their place to address us directly. They make eye contact with the instrumentalists and with the audience. In the final choruses, both Evangelist and Christus join the chorus, and throughout, the solo voices have come out of the chorus and returned to it.

There is a sense that the music really is more important than those who are performing it, though I doubt we could find a finer performance anywhere today.

Mark Padmore brings an urgency to the Evangelist which involves us throughout and is finely contrasted to Stephan Loges humane Christus. Trinity Boys Choirs may not have a lot to do – they rightly left the stage for much of the time – but their surprisingly continental sound brings unexpected authority to their choruses. The sudden changes in dynamic make for a thrilling choral sound from the Monteverdi Choir, and the English Baroque Soloists are just that – a collection of expert individual players who come together to be more than the sum of their parts.

There was a standing ovation at the end. I’m not normally keen on this type of emotional outburst but on this occasion it was certainly justified.

English National Ballet and English National Ballet School have, in recent years, developed an interesting way of offering a real experience of classical ballet to children as young as three. Students from ENBS dance an abridged version of an ENB show – carefully choreographed for young dancers by George Williamson with Dramaturgy by Adam Peck. A narrator – in this case Saskia Portway – is woven into the action to make the story absolutely clear to the audience. Having opened at Peacock Theatre in London, My First Sleeping Beauty tours until the end of May. It provides valuable experience for young performers at the very beginning of their careers and lots of opportunities for families to experience ballet, possibly for the first time.

Tchaikovsky’s lush melodious score is well enough played by City of Prague Philharmonic conducted by Gavin Sutherland and Daryl Griffith although it must be much harder to dance in sync when you’re working to a recording without a conductor to watch – and some of the cuts are a bit abrupt. The young dancers do well in general although their youth shows occasionally in a strained wobble or two. Especially enjoyable are the set pieces by the benign fairies in the first act, the prince’s show piece dance in the enchanted wood and the series of dances by the fairy tale characters with a particularly witty contribution by two dancers as a pair of cats. And at the end Aurora and the Prince are suitably appealing and impressive in their final romantic pas de deux. The company of 25 – ENBS students are recruited from all over the world – rotate the principal and corps de ballet roles and no one is named in the programme other than as a member of the ensemble.

I have, as with previous shows in this series, some reservations about the narration. Saskia Portway, who co-wrote her own script, plays the older Aurora looking back on her youth sometimes wandering through the action and sometimes standing to the side. Her voice is warm although it sometimes strays dangerously close to the sanctimonious sugariness of Vanessa Redgrave in the TV series Call the Midwife. Moreover she struggles to be heard when the music is rising to one of Tchaikovsky’s magnificent dramatic crescendi. It is more effective at quieter moments when she speaks in rhythm with the music. Why though, at points when the dance makes it completely clear what is happening do we need words at all? When the Queen is counting, for example, it really doesn’t need to be spelt out by a narrator.

On the whole, though, the “My First” concept works. I saw My First Sleeping Beauty with hundreds of children and almost every one of them was totally engrossed for the full 90 minutes and that’s a terrific achievement for cast and creators. I regret though that the vast majority of them are little girls. Why on earth don’t people take boys to ballet as well?

Susan Elkin

Mote Hall, Maidstone, 19 March 2016

In his introduction Brian Wright noted that the concert was book-ended by Adagios. While this was technically true the difference between the two could hardly have been greater. The evening opened with the lush warmth of Barber’s Adagio for Strings which brought richness without ever becoming over romantic. Precise intonation was a harbinger of excellence to come.

As if to give us a little light relief Paul Beniston joined the orchestra as the soloist in Arutiunian’s Trumpet Concerto. I have to admit that in all my years as a music critic this was the first time I had heard the work and it certainly sparkles with a mischievous intensity. While there are hints of Shostakovich in the astringency of much of the writing it also has the romantic washes of sound and colour we associate with Rimsky-Korsakov or Khachaturian. It is not afraid of melody either, and so lies easy on the ear even at a first hearing. Paul Beniston was obviously enjoying himself and his enthusiasm was catching not only for the audience but the soloists in the orchestra, with some particularly fine solo passages for clarinet.

Mahler’s Ninth Symphony is an Everest for the finest orchestras in the world. For Maidstone to tackle it may seem like foolishness but the attempt paid off with many passages of splendid authority. If the opening of the first movement seemed tentative, the first climax galvanised the large forces and brought a thrilling intensity which set a mark for the rest of the performance. The brass produced the raw power Mahler calls for, the first trumpet piercing the hall with its ringing steel. The hushed intimacy of the many bridge passages impressed as the structure gradually unfolded.

The rustic opening of the second movement seemed unusually slow but gathered in pace as the score progressed. Balance in this movement was cleaner than it had been in the first and there was a crispness to the sound which added to the impact. The woodwind rasped its way through the third movement as the score moves towards a chaos which is not easy on the listener but an essential part of the journey. The movement built to a splendid climactic crisis before the gentler pace of the final Adagio. Here we found warmth and steadfastness with a courage to endure. The acid world of shrieking wind and brass are gone and in the magical final pages we sense a striving for a conclusion which remains ever elusive – it recalls the end of Das Lied von der Erde, a fade into oblivion.

Brian Wright was either inspired or close to insane putting the work in this year’s programme but in the event proved that, for all the challenges, it was worth the effort. Players may have been stretched to the limit yet proved themselves more than capable of overcoming the rigours of Mahler’s writing to produce a memorable and moving performance.