{"id":5178,"date":"2019-05-11T09:58:52","date_gmt":"2019-05-11T08:58:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.larkreviews.co.uk\/?p=5178"},"modified":"2019-05-11T09:58:52","modified_gmt":"2019-05-11T08:58:52","slug":"philharmonia-orchestra-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/?p=5178","title":{"rendered":"Philharmonia Orchestra"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong>Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury, 9 May 2019<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Part of the Philharmonia\u2019s now established \u2013 and very welcome \u2013 annual residency at the Marlowe, this concert packed a lot of variety.<\/p>\n<p>We began with a workmanlike account of Beethoven\u2019s 1810 overture <em>Egmont<\/em>. I liked Paavo Jarvi\u2019s elegantly pointed dynamics and the seating arrangement with second violins to the conductor\u2019s right meant that none of the complementary melodic elements were lost. Jarvi\u2019s conducting style here was a bit odd, though. In places he was busily signing every semi-quaver. It must be very tiring.<\/p>\n<p>Viktoria Mullova is a very charismatic performer. Tall, sinewy and oozing musicality she gave us a Sibelius violin concerto which was spirited without being showy, especially in the third movement with its nearly executed double stopping passage. It\u2019s a pity this concerto, which dates from 1904, doesn\u2019t get played more often. I can only suppose that it owes its relative unpopularity to its failure to create an audible Finnish landscape, unlike the symphonies and overtures. \u00a0After the concerto, Mullova pulled up a music stand and, accompanied by the orchestra, played Arvo Part\u2019s <em>Passacaglia<\/em> as her encore \u2013 technically fiendish as well as good fun.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Viktoria-Mullova.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-5179\" src=\"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Viktoria-Mullova.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>But the highlight of the concert came after the interval in one of the best performances of Tchaikovsky\u2019s 6<sup>th<\/sup> symphony I have ever heard. Jarvi brought out every ounce of drama, colour and tension from the electrifying bassoon solo at the beginning to that extraordinarily soulful final bar dying away to silence \u2013 and by golly, was Jarvi cross when some enthusiastic audience member started to clap before the final notes had gone. He is obviously a man who dislikes applause at the \u201cwrong\u201d time, incidentally. He did his best to pre-empt the inevitable applause at the end of the resounding third movement by sailing straight into the finale. Every note of this work was given loving, intelligent attention by a conductor who evidently admires and respects the piece. \u00a0And the orchestra rose to this with some magnificently playing. The brass, in particular, did a fine job in the third movement and bassoons, Robin O\u2019Neill\u00a0 and Shelly Organ shone through like sombre stars in all three works.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m not sure this concert needed the rather laboured title \u201cRomantics and Rebels\u201d but it\u2019s good to hear in a single evening three contrasting works from three different countries spanning over a hundred years.<\/p>\n<p>Susan Elkin<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury, 9 May 2019 Part of the Philharmonia\u2019s now established \u2013 and very welcome \u2013 annual residency at the Marlowe, this concert packed a lot of variety. We began with a workmanlike account of Beethoven\u2019s 1810 overture Egmont. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/?p=5178\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5178"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5178"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5180,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5178\/revisions\/5180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}