28th October, 2015
Royal Festival Hall, London, United Kingdom
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 1
THOMAS LARCHER Violin Concerto
STRAVINSKY The Rite of Spring
Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin)
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Markus Stenz (conductor)
I am only here at the RFH again to meet a friend but for what was worth, it was a pretty good LPO concert. The highlight tonight was undoubtedly Thomas Larcher's "Violin Concerto", a two-movement work that demands intense virtuosity from the soloist and an economic but oddly scored orchestra (the instrumentation includes six African finger pianos and a frying pan, for example). The soloist was Patricia Kopatchinskaja, one of the most fascinating violinists in the business today. The concerto, on first listen, is a rather convincing, tasteful and successful case of blending traditional tonal relationships (e.g. passacaglia in circles of fifths and extensive uses of traditional scales) with more aggressive avant garde effects. It was very lucky for the concerto to be graced by an illuminating personality that was Kopatchinskaja, who appeared to have totally absorbed the music and presented it as an organic entity. This is a soloist who would dance around the stage in rhythm bare feet whilst nailing those glissandi like folk players, and this was the sort of simple joy or primitive fun that is almost always absent from performances of "complex" contemporary classical music, and was exactly why the performance was highly enjoyable. The opening Beethoven 1 was OK. It was nice and clean with very transparent textures and fantastic ensembleness but conductor Markus Stenz added little to shape or dramatise the music which made the first two movements "excruciating" to listen to (my friend's words). The "Rite of Spring" was pretty impressive though. It did not have much sensationalising drama, but it had all the ugly raw disgusting energy that is required which made moments such as "Dance of the Earth" rather overwhelming. Most audience came out of the concert hall still banging to the rhythms. Surely that was a pretty good sign.
This entry was originally published in my private Instagram account.
29 October, 2015
23 October, 2015
Unsuk Chin: Clarinet Concerto
22nd October, 2015
Royal Festival Hall, London, United Kingdom
STRAVINSKY Fireworks
UNSUK CHIN Clarinet Concerto
WAGNER Tristan und Isolde - Prelude and Liebestod
LIGETI Atmosphères
RAVEL Daphnis et Chloe Suite No. 2
Kari Kriikku (clarinet)
Alwyn Mellor (soprano)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Nicholas Collon (conductor)
This is the sort of programme that messes up one's mind. To be honest, I only went because of Unsuk Chin's "Clarinet Concerto", the latest addition to her favourite genre of composition. She made it explicitly clear in the notes that it is neither traditional nor avant garde. It was 25 min of the soloist battling against a monstrous orchestra. This is a composition where every parameter in music was taken to the very extreme to form a fascinating survey of harmonics and timbre, and extended instrumental techniques were often called upon from both the soloist and the orchestra. It was less in-your-face as her other concertos, but, as far as I can tell, much more nuanced and polystylistic (in a tasteful way). The ephemeral sound mass in the second movement sets up nicely the ethereal "Atmosphères" by her teacher, Ligeti. However, I often find "clever" mammoth programmes like this more conceptually exciting than there is substance, and sadly it was true in the second half. The Wagner felt quite thin, the Ligeti way too dynamic and episodic and the Ravel was exciting with little depth or breathing. The playing was exceptional throughout starting from the shameless Stravinsky showpiece to the wild dances of the Ravel, and the winds in particular well deserve a couple of pints tonight, plus the Unsuk Chin must have been terribly difficult to put together. It is just that expectation is high when this sort of programme is presented and Nicholas Collon needs to age (it will happen). The Unsuk Chin was well worth it though.
This entry was originally published in my private Instagram account.
Royal Festival Hall, London, United Kingdom
STRAVINSKY Fireworks
UNSUK CHIN Clarinet Concerto
WAGNER Tristan und Isolde - Prelude and Liebestod
LIGETI Atmosphères
RAVEL Daphnis et Chloe Suite No. 2
Kari Kriikku (clarinet)
Alwyn Mellor (soprano)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Nicholas Collon (conductor)
This is the sort of programme that messes up one's mind. To be honest, I only went because of Unsuk Chin's "Clarinet Concerto", the latest addition to her favourite genre of composition. She made it explicitly clear in the notes that it is neither traditional nor avant garde. It was 25 min of the soloist battling against a monstrous orchestra. This is a composition where every parameter in music was taken to the very extreme to form a fascinating survey of harmonics and timbre, and extended instrumental techniques were often called upon from both the soloist and the orchestra. It was less in-your-face as her other concertos, but, as far as I can tell, much more nuanced and polystylistic (in a tasteful way). The ephemeral sound mass in the second movement sets up nicely the ethereal "Atmosphères" by her teacher, Ligeti. However, I often find "clever" mammoth programmes like this more conceptually exciting than there is substance, and sadly it was true in the second half. The Wagner felt quite thin, the Ligeti way too dynamic and episodic and the Ravel was exciting with little depth or breathing. The playing was exceptional throughout starting from the shameless Stravinsky showpiece to the wild dances of the Ravel, and the winds in particular well deserve a couple of pints tonight, plus the Unsuk Chin must have been terribly difficult to put together. It is just that expectation is high when this sort of programme is presented and Nicholas Collon needs to age (it will happen). The Unsuk Chin was well worth it though.
This entry was originally published in my private Instagram account.
15 September, 2015
BBC Proms 2015
This entry consists of posts from my private Instagram account.
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First Night of the Proms
NIELSEN "Maskarade" Overture
GARY CARPENTER Dadaville
MOZART Piano Concerto No. 20
SIBELIUS Belshazzar's Feast Suite
WALTON Belshazzar's Feast
Lars Vogt (piano)
Christopher Maltman (baritone)
BBC Singers
BBC National Chorus of Wales
BBC Symphony Chorus
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Sakari Oramo (conductor)
If the First Night is anything to go by, it illustrates exactly how quirky and non-homogeneous this year's programmes are. Sakari Oramo and the BBC SO kicked off the season with a pleasant "Maskarade" Overture by anniversary composer Carl Nielsen, then the programme took a sharp turn to a new piece called "Dadaville" by the musical composer Gary Carpenter, which, in line with Dadaist philosophy, is an uncomfortable mixture of crowd-pleasing and childish "readymade" musical materials (read: awful) and fireworks from the balcony. It was followed by Lars Vogt performing Mozart's most dramatic minor concerto that was PC20 (with anticlimactic cadenzas by Vogt himself, which was full of punctuated silence). Once again, RAH proved to be too vast for subtle Classical grace, and it took the orchestra an entire movement to tune down from the fireworks of "Dadaville", but when one gets to hear the glowing strings in the second movement one can understand why both Popes have affinities towards Mozart PCs, for one really gets a glimpse of Heaven whilst listening to it. The second half consisted of two depictions of the biblical story of Belshazzar's Feast, and they can not possibly be more contrasted. I must confess I do not understand Sibelius' almost-tranquil setting at all. Walton's setting, on the other hand, was music that could have taken down the Walls of Jericho. It was 35 minutes of harmonically and rhythmically charged music, and Walton's treatment of the text and the use of two rows of off-stage brass accentuated the drama of the story. How baritone Christopher Maltman managed to work against a 250-strong choir on his own in the RAH was a wonder in itself. Curious start to the season. Let's see how the rest plays out.
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Prom 5
HAYDN Symphony No. 85 "La reine"
HK GRUBER into the open ...
STRAVINSKY Petrushka (1911)
Colin Currie (percussion)
BBC Philharmonic
John Storgårds (conductor)
On paper, we had a good coverage of different styles of music to satisfy my evangelical agenda. The evening started with Haydn 85, one of the Paris ones, which, granted, was played with much elegance. The strings in the minuet was particularly joyful and the winds in the finale was quite uplifting. It was the old Classical-in-RAH problem again - all the nuances were almost inaudible, making it a very dull experience overall. Then it was the world premiere of HK Gruber's percussion concerto "into the open ..." For the entire 25 minutes, I struggled to come to terms with the musical idiom. To me, the music was uncomfortably tonal, nondirectional, and the timbres of the instruments just did not gel, and the orchestral parts were mostly intrusive to the soloist. Being one of the leading figures of the so-called Third Viennese School, it might be his intention to be uncompromising. However, given the rather weary performance of "Petrushka", I suspect the problem lies in the conductor John Storgårds. It was a relentless performance. I found the balance of the orchestra almost always out of control, and the music lacked narration, which was not good given the piece is meant to be ballet music. At certain points I felt the BBC Philharmonic struggled to hold the piece altogether, or at least they struggled with all the irregular rhythm. I wonder if the other two ballets would have existed if Diaghilev had heard this version. The audience, Twittersphere and early reviews love the performance. I must say I disagree with all of them.
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Prom 9
BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 1
STRAVINSKY Apollon musagète
BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 4
Mahler Chamber Orchestra
Leif Ove Andsnes (piano / director)
Legendary Leif Ove Andsnes brought his highly acclaimed Beethoven Journey with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra to the BBC Proms. There is something very charming and magical about this growing trend of pianists directing Classical concertos from the keyboard, such as Mitsuko Uchida doing the Mozart ones with the Cleveland Orchestra. When the soloist is in charge of all the artistic directions, it brings such fabulous unity to the performance that could only be the asymptotic limit when colourful personalities clash. Sure, nothing can save the Rondo of the "First Concerto" from being one the most irritating movements ever written in the classical canon (C major theme written in sequences repeated about 80 times?), but the performance is every bit 24K gold. The scintillating scales, the deep basses, the delicate - almost brittle - balances amongst orchestral parts, the radiant second movement (to me, highlight of the night), the never-abrasive youthful energy in the rondo, all urged the audience to applaud furiously (if this is any indication, the roof might collapse after "Emperor" on Sunday). Same went with the more angular "Fourth Concerto". The Proms organisers feel the need to fill every programme this week with something by Stravinsky, and tonight it was his much eclipsed neoclassical work "Apollon musagète" for 34 strings that was placed between the concertos. With much concentration, one can find it rewarding and much joy from the metastable serenity, microscopic activities and melodic twists, though otherwise it was awkwardly programmed tonight. Having said that, 34 people playing together in such good balance and good grace in the absence of a conductor was sensational in itself.
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Prom 10
STRAVINSKY Concerto "Dumbarton Oaks"
BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 3
SCHOENBERG Friede auf Erden
BEETHOVEN Choral Fantasy
BBC Singers
David Hill (conductor)
Mahler Chamber Orchestra
Matthew Truscott (violin / director)
Leif Ove Andsnes (piano / director)
Leif Ove Andsnes/MCO Beethoven Journey Part II. I don't think I have heard the precious minor "Third Concerto" played this well for a very long time, if at all. What I said yesterday still stand, and that torrential and tempestuous first movement cadenza followed by intense suspense and restraint and subsequent implosion towards the end was the highlight for me. It was, however, the rarely heard "Choral Fantasy" that sent the audience to their feet. By Beethoven's standard or indeed by any standard, it is an outrageous and unusual composition, not least because it is a piano concerto that requires a choir, or that the finale of a 20-minute piece starts 3 minutes after its introduction, but also the continuously evolving musical texture that contrasts the solo piano against the orchestra with and without choir. I find this piece endlessly fascinating. A stroke of programming genius compliments this proto-Beethoven 9 with pre-atonality Schoenberg's hyper-romantic a capella gem "Friede auf Erden" ("Peace on Earth"), about which, I feel, certain altos in the BBC Singers got over-excited at some point. Tonight's Stravinsky was the "'Dumbarton Oaks' Concerto" for 15 instruments (again without conductor). It was a pleasant little piece that recalls, at times, certain bits of "Pulcinella". Well, the completist in me is currently left unsatisfied...
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Prom 12
STRAVINSKY Octet
BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 2
BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 5
Mahler Chamber Orchestra
Leif Ove Andsnes (piano / director)
Leif Ove Andsnes' Beethoven Journey with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra Part III. I have run out of things to say about how good they are, so this clip of roaring and floor-stomping audience after the glorious and majestic "'Emperor' Concerto" should be able to speak for itself. Do get the recordings. The Stravinsky piece that preceded the playful "Second Concerto" was the equally witty if slightly tedious "Octet". The instrumental writings are very cool, but neoclassicism just does not work (on Stravinsky anyway). Now that the Beethoven and Stravinsky works are out of the way, my body is totally ready for some invigorating Pierre Boulez.
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Prom 13
PIERRE BOULEZ Notations I, III, IV, VI, II
LUCA FRANCESCONI Duende - The Dark Notes
HOLST The Planets
Leila Josefowicz (violin)
Elysian Singers (women's voices)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Susanna Mälkki (conductor)
When Gustav Holst composed "The Planets" in 1916, he scored for an off-stage female vocalise choir at the end of "Neptune" in a fade-out ending to represent going into the mysterious unknown. 99 years later, what new horizons we have reached. Meanwhile, when Pierre Boulez composed the "12 Notations" for piano in 1945, it was meant to be poking fun at Webernian serialism with 12 pieces of 12 bars with the 12-note technique. The five orchestral "Notations" represent some sort of cosmic expansion from these miniatures. Whoever came up with the idea of pairing these two works of brilliant sonic imagination in a single mammoth concert deserves a medal in recognition of his/her programming genius, and a beating for torturing the fine BBC SO players. Sandwiched between the two works was Luca Francesconi's new violin concerto "Duende - The Dark Notes" for Leila Josefowicz. The piece was full of interesting moments, though I could not work out its overall narration, if there is one. One can, perhaps unfairly, compare it to a lot of things, such as the solo part of Pärt's "Frates", fake birds from Respighi's "Pini di Roma", decaying chords and piano interruptions from Berio's "Coro" etc. Astonishing virtuosity from the soloist. Whilst I have a tiny suspicion that the third-desk cello played a note in "Notation II" a semiquaver too early, I cannot be more impressed by fomer Ensemble Intercontemporain Music Director Susanna Mälkki tonight. The performance of "The Planets" was nothing short of stunning. The incisive rhythmic aggression in "Mars", the clinically immaculate strings in "Venus" and "Mercury", the pacing, tension and drama in "Jupiter", the delicate orchestral balance towards the end of "Saturn", the exhilarating sharp contrasts in "Uranus", and the fabulous serenity in "Neptune". It was breathtaking. This was orchestral playing to the highest order, and I am increasingly convinced that Susanna Mälkki is the Boulez (conductor) of our generation.
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Prom 18
MOZART Piano Concerto No. 10
SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 7 "Leningrad"
Katia Labèque (piano)
Marielle Labèque (piano)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Semyon Bychkov (conductor)
There is a very fine line between comedy and tragedy. The Greeks knew it, Shakespeare knew it, and Rowan Atkinson knows it. When I last heard Shostakovich 7 live 12 years ago, I could not be more thrilled to see the music blasting out at full volume, or at least the snare drums going at it non-stop for good 10 minutes in the first movement (it is the FRSM set piece for snare drum by the way). It was a piece I could listen to day in and day out. It starts boldly in C major, and the notorious jolly ostinato makes it very fun listening in your teens. As I grow older, I read more about history, and I start to find Shostakovich's later symphonies unbearable to listen to. The happier the apparent "Socialist Realism" (satires) are, the darker the irony gets, and it gets to a point so bleak that I can no longer look at the music directly. The opening chords of III send chills down my spine and terrify me. Critics would say the use of big tunes in tutti, the relatively conservative construction and the downright vulgar musical materials, amongst other things, make Shostakovich an unoriginal or even tasteless composer, but the sheer raw emotion in the face of human atrocity is so overwhelming that it can never fail to smack you right in the face. The BBC SO under Semyon Bychkov gave a very hot-blooded and tight performance which, surprisingly, I found at times a bit thin (perhaps because of where I stood), but the individual players were just sensational. The first half, on the other hand, was a rather uninspired performance of Mozart's two-piano Concerto (No. 10) by the Labèque sisters. The gestures were too Romantic, conversational aspects rather inapparent, over-pedalling, una corda overkill, it was quite tedious. The encore was something by Philip Glass. The audience loved it, I got bored of it, but I guess the repetition set up DSCH 7 nicely.
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Prom 38
FOULDS Three Mantras
MESSIAEN Turangalîla-Symphonie
Steven Osborne (piano)
Valérie Hartmann-Claverie (ondes Martenot)
London Symphony Chorus (women's voices)
BBC Philharmonic
Juanjo Mena (conductor)
I don't normally listen to "Turangalîla-Symphonie" live, but when I do, I do it twice in three months. How can I tell you now what you already know? (See my 29th May post) Anyway. It takes a serious classical connoisseur to realise what programming genius it was to compliment the main event by the obscure "Three Mantras" by John Foulds, and what discovery it was. Also inspired by Hindu philosophy, these three gems might not be the most original of all music, but they are brilliant in orchestral colours and temperaments in the same way "The Planets" are. One cannot help to compare the urgent strings, serene beauty of the female vocalise choir and the final aggression to the respective pieces by Holst (see my 28th July post). It was some full-bodied stuff. Strange, then, that it took the BBC Philharmonic four whole movements of "Turangalîla" to warm up to the piece after the interval. Juanjo Mena is a fine conductor, and I find the performance almost always enjoyable, but too fine and refined to make it impressive in the vast RAH. Having grown up listening to the abrasive and high-octane Kent Nagano recording, it was very refreshing to hear a more "spacious" performance of the work, so it was very frustrating to hear a lot of the nuances getting lost in the ether. Steven Osborne was a good soloist, with the right amount of vigour and drama. Valérie Hartmann-Claverie's ondes Martenot was, however, virtually inaudible. Having heard Aimard/Hartmann-Claverie/Salonen just a little over two months ago, the contrast cannot be more stark.
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Prom 42
SIBELIUS Symphony No. 3
SIBELIUS Violin Concerto
MICHAEL FINNISSY Janne
SIBELIUS Symphony No. 4
Julian Rachlin (violin)
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Ilan Volkov (conductor)
I don't think I have ever been this confused, clueless and exhausted in a concert before. In this rather generous programme, a triathlon of Sibelius works - two symphonies and the "Violin Concerto" - framed a Sibelius-inspired (so the concert description claims) world premiere by Michael Finnissy. I will admit it straight away, Sibelius is a composer I have struggled with since the beginning of time. I don't find it offensive, but I just do not understand or appreciate the aesthetics of his music. Not a single work, be it the piano works, the "String Quartet" or whatnot. Earlier this year, I made the effort to go through the symphony cycle with score and by the end I got almost nothing out of it except, perhaps, I found Nos. 3 and 6 more interesting, so I thought I would do my part by going to this celebratory Prom. "No. 3" is indeed fine, and I enjoyed the propelling energy of I, the deceptively clean II and the texturally beguiling III. I found the VC problematic, where the soloist Julian Rachlin did not seem to communicate with the orchestra at all, and the orchestra totally out-performed him. If it was not enough, the encore was Ysaye's "Third Sonata". Then I did not understand a single note played in the second half. The Finnissy did share the fluidity of Sibelius' symphonies, and the microscopic growth (?) in the low register instruments, and he even used a rather conspicuous glockenspiel, but nothing made any sense. Nor did the angular "Fourth Symphony", so I am not even going to try. Don't get me wrong though, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Ilan Volkov was amazing. The playing was powerfully energetic, and the complex textures of the symphonies were realised with brilliant transparency. I just don't get any of this. Maybe in 10 years' time I will.
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Prom 43
SIBELIUS Symphony No. 5
SIBELIUS Symphony No. 6
SIBELIUS Symphony No. 7
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Osmo Vänskä (conductor)
After posting yesterday's review, people passionately urged me to not give up on Sibelius and that I should go to this Prom, not least because it was conducted by the leading interpreter of Sibelius, Osmo Vänskä. Fearing that I might bitterly regret it in the future if I miss it, I obliged, and I am so glad I did. I kept thinking during most of "No. 5" that this is music of culmination - the music is always unsettled and unstable and as a result always forced to be on the move - a concept, as some sort of enzymologist, I cannot be less familiar about. There is something always yearning for release and fighting for freedom and often it never really bursts out until the very end, so one needs to take the whole lot in in order to make some conceptual sense out of it. Once that idea clicked, "No. 7" instantly made a lot more sense, in that ideas crystallising and edging towards the final C major chord is itself a massive sonic journey, and it is as rewarding looking backwards at the music as it is looking forwards. It is rather moving, really, that Sibelius brought his wife along with him in this journey (in the form of the "Aino Theme" stated by the trombone) I don't have much intellectual things to say with regards to "No. 6", except it is really pretty. The performances by BBCSO were nothing short of breathtaking. There was one magical moment in III of "No. 5" where the strings played pianississimo (ppp) tremoli and it actually pierced through the RAH rather clearly. The brasses and winds were consistently outstanding as far as I can tell. I have had a much deeper appreciation of Sibelius in 2015. I cannot say I am emotionally attached to the music, still, but I guess it is a very personal thing. As someone who is more attuned to sparkling ideas, it takes a certain state of mind to appreciate Sibelius. I am just eternally grateful that I came to this Prom, and something clicked.
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Prom 45
DEBUSSY / BUSSER Petite Suite
MOZART Piano Concerto No. 22
SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 15
Elisabeth Leonskaja (piano)
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Charles Dutoit (conductor)
I am sure I am not the only person who raised some eyebrows tonight - on grounds of artistic decisions, not merits, that is. Charles Dutoit, a conductor best known for drawing fantastic colours from orchestras, conducting the bleak Shostakovich 15? The evening started with Henri Büsser's orchestration of Debussy's overplayed-at-school four-hand piano classic "Petite Suite". It was all very pretty, if the last movement is rather irritating. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra was on good form, the strings were particularly clinical. Then entered the legendary Elisabeth Leonskaja performing Mozart's "Piano Concerto No. 22". The orchestra was still over-excited from the Debussy, but when the firm resonating basses hit, we knew we were in for some special pianism. The velvet tone of the playing was so spectacular that one wished the over-colourful orchestra could just shut up, or have Leonskaja performing a solo recital instead. Dutoit sensed that by the third movement, except he himself could not stop growling at the orchestra to get the sound he wanted and that was very distracting. The D-flat major "Nocturne, Op. 27 No. 2" encore was some transcendental stuff. The only issue I had was the decision to play Benjamin Britten's incoherent and incompatible cadenzas. DSCH 15 is a puzzling work, some sort of conscious disintegration of an eclectic musical mind, a mortal struggling to choose between fighting with last breath and total abandonment. This symphony, introspective and retrospective, fused with childish ironies, sparse orchestration, fragmented percussion pulses, chilling brass chords, is very unsettling to hear. Perhaps it takes a fine performance like this to accentuate the abstract nature of the work. It is unusual to describe the performance of a Shostakovich symphony as transparent, but that was exactly how it was like. This is a Prom of quite high standard, but it is very odd.
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Prom 46
NIELSEN "Helios" Overture
BRAHMS Violin Concerto
NIELSEN Three motets
NIELSEN Hymnus amoris
NIELSEN Symphony No. 2
Nikolaj Znaider (violin)
Anna Lucia Richter (soprano)
David Danholt (tenor)
Choristers of Winchester Cathedral
DR KoncertKoret
DR SymfoniOrkestret
Fabio Luisi (conductor)
This is the most extraordinary Prom I have been to. It is scandalous that only one symphony is played to celebrate the 150th of Carl Nielsen, but what an honour to see the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and Concert Choir flying 200-odd people across just to perform here at the RAH to celebrate their national hero. It is odd to choose the "Second Symphony" over the significantly more popular "Fourth" and "Fifth", but it turned out to be a topical choice. Subtitled "The Four Temperaments", this is the musical manifestation of the four moods described by the ancient Greeks, and almost the exact subject of Pixar's latest release "Inside Out" (in fact, the father of the director is a Nielsen scholar). The fiery "Choleric", the dancing strings in compound time in "Phlegmatic", the heartwrenching lyricism of "Melancholic", and the edge-of-the-seat triumphant thrill of "Sanguine", this is hands down my favourite performance this Prom season, and that was only the last 35 minutes of a mammoth 3h programme. It takes a great composer to excel in writing for all the moods, and it takes a Gemini like Nielsen to experience all of them at the same time, and that is particularly apparent in the episodic "'Helios' Overture", again performed with much conviction. The surprise discovery was the three rarely performed a capella motets and what fabulous polyphonic writing those are. Equally precious was a rare performance of the gigantic and punchy choral work "Hymnus amoris" - sumptuous soundscape throughout. Did I mention that somewhere in the middle, they managed to squeeze the tiny Brahms "Violin Concerto" in? Nikolaj Znaider's performance was the most seamless take I can remember, and I found myself swinging to the entire first movement, even when he chose the play the Heifetz cadenza and Fabio Luisi's conducting was a bit on the soft side. The encores were a Bach sarabande and more Nielsen. As Znaider remarked, "Denmark is not just about LEGO and pastry". I am Angry and Disgusted that RAH was only half full; Sad that there was only 3h of these; Fear that I would never hear Nielsen this fine again; but as core memory goes, it was, from my Honest Island, just Joy.
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Prom 50
BACH Goldberg Variations
András Schiff (piano)
If you actually read these ridiculous Instagram/Facebook reviews, chances are you know I am not a Bach person, but I cannot, cannot, cannot possibly miss András Schiff performing the "Goldberg Variations". 2000 people braved the heat to fill the RAH at 22:15 on a Saturday just to hear one man performing superhuman alchemy on stage, with discipline and total concentration I have never witnessed from the normally unruly Prom audience. It is hard to imagine that this immortal music was intended to be a lullaby (if true at all) when it is so full of vitality and artistic richness. Schiff took four brief pauses and by presenting the work as five units, I found the work almost symphonic in construction. The "orchestrations" came alive so vividly without requiring much imagination - just how many palettes of sound can one produce with 10 fingers and 2 feet? The well-balanced tones, the shaping and shading that breathe, the contrapuntal clarity... this is a performance of wonder, and it sent the audience rocking the ground by the end, instead of sending them to sleep. I have no more intellectual comments to make, but my spirits are totally refreshed, as Bach blessed us, and Schiff transcended it.
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Prom 51
HAYDN Symphony No. 90
BARBER Essay No. 2
SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 10
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Andris Nelsons (conductor)
We are getting down to serious business now. Boston Symphony Orchestra and Andris Nelsons presented Shostakovich 10 in an insultingly under-attended Sunday afternoon Prom. DSCH 10 is an ambivalent work. With the extensive use of the DSCH motif, it is clearly indicative of an autobiographical nature. It even intertwines with the "Elmira" motif - that of his love interest at the time - in the third movement à la Sibelius 7. The big question is, what do all these actually represent? Which part is genuine and which part is satirical? The short answer is, nobody knows. It depends on which book you read. Here was a powerful no-nonsense rendition, with the orchestra completely on fire most of the time. No wonder why their recording has remained on the top of the charts lately. I could do without the entire first half, which were one of Haydn's English Channel symphonies (No. 90) and Barber's pointless and uncharacteristic "Essay No. 2". Granted, for what was worth, it was a first-rate performance. Everything was very well balanced and pristine, just that the music was very, very boring.
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Prom 53
BARTOK The Miraculous Mandarin
MOZART Piano Concerto No. 24
SHOSTAKOVICH / MCBURNEY Prologue to "Orango"
David Fray (piano)
Natalia Pavlova (Susanna)
Natalia Yakimova (Renée)
Alexander Shagun (Armand Fleury)
Александр Трофимов (Paul Mâche)
Vladimir Babokin (Foreigner 1)
Oleg Losev (Foreigner 2)
Dmitry Koleushko (Zoologist)
Ivan Novoselov (Orango)
Leo Elhardt V(oice from the Crowd)
Denis Beganski (Master of Ceremonies)
Yuri Yevchuk (Veselchak)
Irina Brown (stage director)
Philharmonia Voices
Philharmonia Orchestra
Esa‐Pekka Salonen (conductor)
Talk about political correctness. Three tramps forcing a girl to seduce men into a room so they could rob them. They end up doing so to a wealthy Chinese man and killing him. I have no idea why anyone would set that to music but that is the basis of Bartók's "The Miraculous Mandarin". Not a score I have warmed to (not used to Bartók being programmatic), but it is a supercharged performance by the Philharmonia with Esa-Pekka Salonen's hallmark textural transparency. The second half was a semi-staged performance of Gerard McBurney's orchestration of the Prologue to the never existed opera "Orango" by Shostakovich. I see little artistic value in completing 1/4 of a work found in someone's dustbin, but it was half an hour of non-stop mindless bombastic fun. It is a surrealist story (satirically) depicting the West as evil, basically. It is also not everyday you get to see an opera singer slapping an audience in the face with a gigantic gun, someone examining a banana on stage, and the entire arena audience given red flags to wave as instructed (how Orwellian). Fulfilling their duties to perform a late Mozart piano concerto, David Fray went for the second of the two minor concertos, No. 24, perhaps appropriately so as it is the darkest concerto by the normally mischievous composer. The evenness and balance of the playing were fantastic, though some people might find it not dramatic or entertaining enough. It was a good buffer between two sonically massive works.
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Prom 54
BRITTEN Sinfonia da Requiem
RAYMOND YIU Symphony
NIELSEN Flute Concerto
JANACEK Sinfonietta
Andrew Watts (counter-tenor)
Emily Beynon (flute)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Edward Gardner (conductor)
Haruki Murakami remarked in the opening pages of "1Q84" that there are probably not many people in the world who would recognise the opening of Janáček's "Sinfonietta". That, I suppose, has more to do with collective cultural ignorance than musical inadequacy, for one cannot possibly forget the opening fanfare (and its reprise in the finale). The BBCSO under Edward Gardner gave it all in an intense performance, visibly so as the face of the clarinettist was so bright red by the end I feared his head would explode at some point. Obviously it was very cool to see the extended brass, but the intonation were sometimes off at the ridiculously high notes - can't blame them really for they had been working solidly for the past two hours. The programme started with two other takes on the notion of the symphony. Britten's "Sinfonia da Requiem" was less dreadful than it is described in Wikipedia. It sounds like some bad Shostakovich without the fun. It was followed by Hong Kong-born composer Raymond Yiu's "Symphony", which is a polystylistic work for countertenor and orchestra that deals with love and loss surrounding the AIDS scare in the 80s. It was all nice and pretty with some fluid Dutilleux-esque colourful harmonies, until it broke into some 2 minutes of shameless flamboyant disco music (might as well call Giorgio Moroder in). I do like the final lament, but musically this flow of styles just does not work, no matter how "fabulous" it sounds. After the interval, bizarrely, we had Nielsen's erratic and quirky "Flute Concerto". Musical ideas are all over the place in this piece and I often get lost, but it was a sensational performance by Emily Beynon. The versatility of the BBCSO is astonishing.
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Prom 55
PIERRE BOULEZ ... explosante-fixe ...
LIGETI Lontano
BARTOK Concerto for Orchestra
Sophie Cherrier (flute)
SWR Experimental Studio
SWR SO Baden-Baden and Freiburg
François-Xavier Roth (conductor)
People only treasure things when they lose them. When the BBC Proms organisers invited the soon-defunct SWR SO Baden-Baden and Freiburg, it caused a bit of a buzz within the classical circle as it was viewed as a powerful sign of solidarity and protest. It is very sad to see a fine orchestra go (if you are an avant garde music fan, this is tragic). To say farewell in their first and last ever Prom, they presented three 20th century masterpieces in a thoroughly exceptional performance. Legendary Ensemble Intercontemporain flute soloist Sophie Cherrier, who has worked closely with Boulez over the years, performed his hyperactive spatial concerto "...explosante-fixe..." When this was performed in the cozy QEH in 2011, I thought it was 35 min of sonic overkill, but when the electronic relays were projected from the high ceiling of the vast RAH, it was such a fabulous experience to get engulfed by torrents of sound. I am very curious how "Répons" would fare if it ever gets done here. A bit of a contrast, then, that it was sound mass era Ligeti's "Lontano" after the interval. It is a piece that needs to be heard live, for it goes to the extremes of dynamics, timbres and nuances to generate a sense of timelessness and ethereal flow. The programme concluded with an exhilarating rendition of Bartók's ultimate orchestral showpiece "Concerto for Orchestra". Personally I think the "Intermezzo" can be slightly more sarcastic, but the ascending winds in the "Elegy" were just magical. Needless to say the "Finale" was some edge-of-the-seat stuff. François-Xavier Roth made a heartfelt speech about the orchestra's situation, then went on to conduct a Schubert encore, adding great sadness to what was an enjoyably angular programme.
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Prom 57
SCHUBERT Overture in C major in the Italian Style
MOZART Piano Concerto No. 23
SCHUBERT Symphony No. 9 "Great"
Maria João Pires (piano)
Chamber Orchestra of Europe
Bernard Haitink (conductor)
Maria João Pires. Bernard Haitink. Chamber Orchestra of Europe. Mozart "Piano Concerto No. 23" and Schubert 9. Need I say more?
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Prom 61
IVES Symphony "New England Holidays" - Decoration Day
BARTOK Piano Concerto No. 2
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 3
Yuja Wang (piano)
San Francisco Symphony Orchestra
Michael Tilson Thomas (conductor)
Yuja Wang is in the house! I am not a fan of pyrotechnics or athletic pianism. The only reason I went to this Prom was because Bartók's "Second Piano Concerto" was on the programme and this most brutal piano concerto in the classical canon needed to be heard live. The audience was given some musical magic, for this is the most woeful and feeblest performance of this concerto I have heard. It was remarkable how inaudible the piano was throughout the majority of the first movement, and the fiendish eight-note contrapuntal cadenza could do with more breathing space. The San Francisco Symphony Orchestra under Michael Tilson Thomas had no sense of structural or textural understanding and managed to reduce the gigantic orchestral parts to mere accompaniment and, frankly, MTT sounded totally disinterested in the piece and I could not see him doing anything more than just cueing players in. The net result was that the piece turned into a mash of sounds and this was the sort of performance that gives 20th century music a bad name. It was not all that bad, I guess, for the night music section in II was pretty neat, perhaps because it was homophonic. The second half was a very lethargic performance of Beethoven 3. The orchestra was pretty good in general and the strings and winds were fantastic, but there were no drama, no narration and no emotional depth. I have yet to be convinced that MTT is an inspired conductor. The Ives "Decoration Day" movement from his "Symphony" at the beginning was actually the most interesting, as it provided all the opportunities of showmanship MTT excels in, which was also evident in the Brahms encore (guess what could it possible be?) (No. 10)
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Prom 66
BEETHOVEN "Fidelio" Overture
SCHOENBERG Piano Concerto
SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 8
Mitsuko Uchida (piano)
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Vladimir Jurowski (conductor)
I have waited so long for this, the Schoenberg "Piano Concerto" played live, by no less than she who produced the seminal recording of this piece, Dame Mitsuko Uchida. If you have ever read her liner notes and lengthy analysis on this concerto, you know she has it in her DNA. This 12-tone concerto is very difficult to put together, and the solo part is very unpianistic, but when it is executed well, it is powerfully expressive and surprisingly intuitive to listen to, not least, perhaps, due to the principal "soft" tone row that tricks people into thinking it is harmonically directional, and the fact it starts with a waltz. This was a weighty performance with the instruments of the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Vladimir Jurowski blending together so well in unity that shows convincingly this concerto is the rightful heir to those by Brahms et al. By the end of this spellbinding performance, the only adjective I could come up with, albeit inappropriately given the circumstances of the concerto, was majestic. Utterly majestic. The second half was a fiery performance of the most absolute and integrated symphony by Shostakovich, "No. 8". The first movement is nearly 30 min long, incorporating materials from Nos. 5 and 7, but it is nowhere as tedious as Mahler 3. It was rare enough to be able to hear it live, let alone seeing everyone on stage giving it all as if their lives were on the line (except perhaps the pianist who played like, what, 5 notes and a chord in 75 min?) This is as good as music can get. As Shostakovich himself said of "No. 8": life is beautiful.
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Prom 71
RIMSKY-KORSAKOV The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh
TCHAIKOVSKY Violin Concerto
ELGAR "Enigma" Variations
Julia Fischer (violin)
St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra
Yuri Temirkanov (conductor)
Thank you [my friend] for the free ticket, I got a rather amazing seat for this Prom. I will be blunt - I arrived with a high level of scepticism towards Yuri Temirkanov (see my 26th Apr 2015 post). In an act of musical bravery, he led the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra to bring one of the most British pieces by the most British of all composers to the most British of all classical events in one of the most British musical venues. As far as I know, the Proms audience is also one of the most receptive in the world as well. It is always curious to hear Elgar performed by non-British forces. This is the most weighty and muscular "'Engima' Variations" I have ever heard, with "W.M.B." and "Troyte" sounding so Russian militant you thought you were listening to Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich, and "Nimrod" was so cinematically dramatic. Did it work? I have no nationalistic agenda, but it was unusually hyper-romantic and surprisingly moving. Before that it was Julia Fischer performing the Tchaikovsky "Violin Concerto". It was oddly temperamental, with the orchestra easing the tempi and dynamics completely illogically. It was not a technical issue, for the soloist and orchestra were so brilliantly in tune and in time with each other with total discipline, just that Temirkanov had a penchant to accentuate hidden orchestral parts to the point of obscuring the main tunes, and I found that rather tedious to hear. Fischer had total command of this music and from the way she interacted with each part of the orchestra you feel that she might as well conduct the orchestra from the violin herself. However, most of the time the performance lacked fire, no matter how technically accomplished she was. Sometimes, delicate intricacies are inadequate for good performances, and you do need some shameless showmanship to complete it, and that is certainly required for the Tchaikovsky "Violin Concerto".
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Prom 73
BRAHMS Symphony No. 3
SCHMIDT Symphony No. 2
Vienna Philharmonic
Semyon Bychkov (conductor)
My last Prom this season is also one I have been looking forward to all season - Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra under Semyon Bychkov performing Brahms 3, a work the WPO premiered themselves. Having heard Chailly's passionate recording about 500 times in the past year or so, the opening tonight sounded rather slow and weak, but when they warmed up to the RAH acoustics around the big cello tune in the first movement, we were in for some serious music making. They came back at the recapitulation at full throttle, with such deep emotional drive that put Berliner Philharmoniker's autopilot Prom last year to shame. Bychkov's take of the third movement tune is the textbook example on how to play a romantic melody with grace and elegance without sounding sentimental and cheesy, which contrasted nicely with the powerful and solid rhythmic rigour of the last movement. Following this heavyweight first half was a heavier weight work - the obscure Schmidt "Second Symphony", which was the reason why the hall was rather empty tonight. Schmidt played cello under Mahler, and claimed the likes of Schoenberg to be his contemporaries. You can understand why it is not played very often, for the overall narrative is not clear and has little sense of unity or direction, but listening to this hour-long symphony with full concentration proved to be rewarding. This is a work of dense textures, and the harmonies are so chromatically charged and colourfully orchestrated one can claim it to be erotic. The middle movement was a set of fascinating variations. This is a work I need to revisit, but WPO rightfully deserved the thunderous applause from the audience tonight. The encore was "Nimrod" from "'Enigma' Variations". These two live performances in three days could not be more different, and the strings were immaculate, perhaps a bit too Viennese for Elgar, but it was a nice touch.
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Prom 75
ELGAR The Dream of Gerontius
Magdalena Kožená (mezzo-soprano)
Toby Spence (tenor)
Roderick Williams (baritone)
BBC Proms Youth Choir
Vienna Philharmonic
Sir Simon Rattle (conductor)
I know I said yesterday was the last Prom for me, but I ended up in that area of London in the afternoon so I thought I might as well, after all you do not get to see Simon Rattle conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra live for £5 every day. I do not have a lot to say today because I do not know Elgar's "Dream of Gerontius" at all. It was just about being there.
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First Night of the Proms
NIELSEN "Maskarade" Overture
GARY CARPENTER Dadaville
MOZART Piano Concerto No. 20
SIBELIUS Belshazzar's Feast Suite
WALTON Belshazzar's Feast
Lars Vogt (piano)
Christopher Maltman (baritone)
BBC Singers
BBC National Chorus of Wales
BBC Symphony Chorus
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Sakari Oramo (conductor)
If the First Night is anything to go by, it illustrates exactly how quirky and non-homogeneous this year's programmes are. Sakari Oramo and the BBC SO kicked off the season with a pleasant "Maskarade" Overture by anniversary composer Carl Nielsen, then the programme took a sharp turn to a new piece called "Dadaville" by the musical composer Gary Carpenter, which, in line with Dadaist philosophy, is an uncomfortable mixture of crowd-pleasing and childish "readymade" musical materials (read: awful) and fireworks from the balcony. It was followed by Lars Vogt performing Mozart's most dramatic minor concerto that was PC20 (with anticlimactic cadenzas by Vogt himself, which was full of punctuated silence). Once again, RAH proved to be too vast for subtle Classical grace, and it took the orchestra an entire movement to tune down from the fireworks of "Dadaville", but when one gets to hear the glowing strings in the second movement one can understand why both Popes have affinities towards Mozart PCs, for one really gets a glimpse of Heaven whilst listening to it. The second half consisted of two depictions of the biblical story of Belshazzar's Feast, and they can not possibly be more contrasted. I must confess I do not understand Sibelius' almost-tranquil setting at all. Walton's setting, on the other hand, was music that could have taken down the Walls of Jericho. It was 35 minutes of harmonically and rhythmically charged music, and Walton's treatment of the text and the use of two rows of off-stage brass accentuated the drama of the story. How baritone Christopher Maltman managed to work against a 250-strong choir on his own in the RAH was a wonder in itself. Curious start to the season. Let's see how the rest plays out.
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Prom 5
HAYDN Symphony No. 85 "La reine"
HK GRUBER into the open ...
STRAVINSKY Petrushka (1911)
Colin Currie (percussion)
BBC Philharmonic
John Storgårds (conductor)
On paper, we had a good coverage of different styles of music to satisfy my evangelical agenda. The evening started with Haydn 85, one of the Paris ones, which, granted, was played with much elegance. The strings in the minuet was particularly joyful and the winds in the finale was quite uplifting. It was the old Classical-in-RAH problem again - all the nuances were almost inaudible, making it a very dull experience overall. Then it was the world premiere of HK Gruber's percussion concerto "into the open ..." For the entire 25 minutes, I struggled to come to terms with the musical idiom. To me, the music was uncomfortably tonal, nondirectional, and the timbres of the instruments just did not gel, and the orchestral parts were mostly intrusive to the soloist. Being one of the leading figures of the so-called Third Viennese School, it might be his intention to be uncompromising. However, given the rather weary performance of "Petrushka", I suspect the problem lies in the conductor John Storgårds. It was a relentless performance. I found the balance of the orchestra almost always out of control, and the music lacked narration, which was not good given the piece is meant to be ballet music. At certain points I felt the BBC Philharmonic struggled to hold the piece altogether, or at least they struggled with all the irregular rhythm. I wonder if the other two ballets would have existed if Diaghilev had heard this version. The audience, Twittersphere and early reviews love the performance. I must say I disagree with all of them.
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Prom 9
BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 1
STRAVINSKY Apollon musagète
BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 4
Mahler Chamber Orchestra
Leif Ove Andsnes (piano / director)
Legendary Leif Ove Andsnes brought his highly acclaimed Beethoven Journey with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra to the BBC Proms. There is something very charming and magical about this growing trend of pianists directing Classical concertos from the keyboard, such as Mitsuko Uchida doing the Mozart ones with the Cleveland Orchestra. When the soloist is in charge of all the artistic directions, it brings such fabulous unity to the performance that could only be the asymptotic limit when colourful personalities clash. Sure, nothing can save the Rondo of the "First Concerto" from being one the most irritating movements ever written in the classical canon (C major theme written in sequences repeated about 80 times?), but the performance is every bit 24K gold. The scintillating scales, the deep basses, the delicate - almost brittle - balances amongst orchestral parts, the radiant second movement (to me, highlight of the night), the never-abrasive youthful energy in the rondo, all urged the audience to applaud furiously (if this is any indication, the roof might collapse after "Emperor" on Sunday). Same went with the more angular "Fourth Concerto". The Proms organisers feel the need to fill every programme this week with something by Stravinsky, and tonight it was his much eclipsed neoclassical work "Apollon musagète" for 34 strings that was placed between the concertos. With much concentration, one can find it rewarding and much joy from the metastable serenity, microscopic activities and melodic twists, though otherwise it was awkwardly programmed tonight. Having said that, 34 people playing together in such good balance and good grace in the absence of a conductor was sensational in itself.
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Prom 10
STRAVINSKY Concerto "Dumbarton Oaks"
BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 3
SCHOENBERG Friede auf Erden
BEETHOVEN Choral Fantasy
BBC Singers
David Hill (conductor)
Mahler Chamber Orchestra
Matthew Truscott (violin / director)
Leif Ove Andsnes (piano / director)
Leif Ove Andsnes/MCO Beethoven Journey Part II. I don't think I have heard the precious minor "Third Concerto" played this well for a very long time, if at all. What I said yesterday still stand, and that torrential and tempestuous first movement cadenza followed by intense suspense and restraint and subsequent implosion towards the end was the highlight for me. It was, however, the rarely heard "Choral Fantasy" that sent the audience to their feet. By Beethoven's standard or indeed by any standard, it is an outrageous and unusual composition, not least because it is a piano concerto that requires a choir, or that the finale of a 20-minute piece starts 3 minutes after its introduction, but also the continuously evolving musical texture that contrasts the solo piano against the orchestra with and without choir. I find this piece endlessly fascinating. A stroke of programming genius compliments this proto-Beethoven 9 with pre-atonality Schoenberg's hyper-romantic a capella gem "Friede auf Erden" ("Peace on Earth"), about which, I feel, certain altos in the BBC Singers got over-excited at some point. Tonight's Stravinsky was the "'Dumbarton Oaks' Concerto" for 15 instruments (again without conductor). It was a pleasant little piece that recalls, at times, certain bits of "Pulcinella". Well, the completist in me is currently left unsatisfied...
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Prom 12
STRAVINSKY Octet
BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 2
BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 5
Mahler Chamber Orchestra
Leif Ove Andsnes (piano / director)
Leif Ove Andsnes' Beethoven Journey with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra Part III. I have run out of things to say about how good they are, so this clip of roaring and floor-stomping audience after the glorious and majestic "'Emperor' Concerto" should be able to speak for itself. Do get the recordings. The Stravinsky piece that preceded the playful "Second Concerto" was the equally witty if slightly tedious "Octet". The instrumental writings are very cool, but neoclassicism just does not work (on Stravinsky anyway). Now that the Beethoven and Stravinsky works are out of the way, my body is totally ready for some invigorating Pierre Boulez.
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Prom 13
PIERRE BOULEZ Notations I, III, IV, VI, II
LUCA FRANCESCONI Duende - The Dark Notes
HOLST The Planets
Leila Josefowicz (violin)
Elysian Singers (women's voices)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Susanna Mälkki (conductor)
When Gustav Holst composed "The Planets" in 1916, he scored for an off-stage female vocalise choir at the end of "Neptune" in a fade-out ending to represent going into the mysterious unknown. 99 years later, what new horizons we have reached. Meanwhile, when Pierre Boulez composed the "12 Notations" for piano in 1945, it was meant to be poking fun at Webernian serialism with 12 pieces of 12 bars with the 12-note technique. The five orchestral "Notations" represent some sort of cosmic expansion from these miniatures. Whoever came up with the idea of pairing these two works of brilliant sonic imagination in a single mammoth concert deserves a medal in recognition of his/her programming genius, and a beating for torturing the fine BBC SO players. Sandwiched between the two works was Luca Francesconi's new violin concerto "Duende - The Dark Notes" for Leila Josefowicz. The piece was full of interesting moments, though I could not work out its overall narration, if there is one. One can, perhaps unfairly, compare it to a lot of things, such as the solo part of Pärt's "Frates", fake birds from Respighi's "Pini di Roma", decaying chords and piano interruptions from Berio's "Coro" etc. Astonishing virtuosity from the soloist. Whilst I have a tiny suspicion that the third-desk cello played a note in "Notation II" a semiquaver too early, I cannot be more impressed by fomer Ensemble Intercontemporain Music Director Susanna Mälkki tonight. The performance of "The Planets" was nothing short of stunning. The incisive rhythmic aggression in "Mars", the clinically immaculate strings in "Venus" and "Mercury", the pacing, tension and drama in "Jupiter", the delicate orchestral balance towards the end of "Saturn", the exhilarating sharp contrasts in "Uranus", and the fabulous serenity in "Neptune". It was breathtaking. This was orchestral playing to the highest order, and I am increasingly convinced that Susanna Mälkki is the Boulez (conductor) of our generation.
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Prom 18
MOZART Piano Concerto No. 10
SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 7 "Leningrad"
Katia Labèque (piano)
Marielle Labèque (piano)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Semyon Bychkov (conductor)
There is a very fine line between comedy and tragedy. The Greeks knew it, Shakespeare knew it, and Rowan Atkinson knows it. When I last heard Shostakovich 7 live 12 years ago, I could not be more thrilled to see the music blasting out at full volume, or at least the snare drums going at it non-stop for good 10 minutes in the first movement (it is the FRSM set piece for snare drum by the way). It was a piece I could listen to day in and day out. It starts boldly in C major, and the notorious jolly ostinato makes it very fun listening in your teens. As I grow older, I read more about history, and I start to find Shostakovich's later symphonies unbearable to listen to. The happier the apparent "Socialist Realism" (satires) are, the darker the irony gets, and it gets to a point so bleak that I can no longer look at the music directly. The opening chords of III send chills down my spine and terrify me. Critics would say the use of big tunes in tutti, the relatively conservative construction and the downright vulgar musical materials, amongst other things, make Shostakovich an unoriginal or even tasteless composer, but the sheer raw emotion in the face of human atrocity is so overwhelming that it can never fail to smack you right in the face. The BBC SO under Semyon Bychkov gave a very hot-blooded and tight performance which, surprisingly, I found at times a bit thin (perhaps because of where I stood), but the individual players were just sensational. The first half, on the other hand, was a rather uninspired performance of Mozart's two-piano Concerto (No. 10) by the Labèque sisters. The gestures were too Romantic, conversational aspects rather inapparent, over-pedalling, una corda overkill, it was quite tedious. The encore was something by Philip Glass. The audience loved it, I got bored of it, but I guess the repetition set up DSCH 7 nicely.
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Prom 38
FOULDS Three Mantras
MESSIAEN Turangalîla-Symphonie
Steven Osborne (piano)
Valérie Hartmann-Claverie (ondes Martenot)
London Symphony Chorus (women's voices)
BBC Philharmonic
Juanjo Mena (conductor)
I don't normally listen to "Turangalîla-Symphonie" live, but when I do, I do it twice in three months. How can I tell you now what you already know? (See my 29th May post) Anyway. It takes a serious classical connoisseur to realise what programming genius it was to compliment the main event by the obscure "Three Mantras" by John Foulds, and what discovery it was. Also inspired by Hindu philosophy, these three gems might not be the most original of all music, but they are brilliant in orchestral colours and temperaments in the same way "The Planets" are. One cannot help to compare the urgent strings, serene beauty of the female vocalise choir and the final aggression to the respective pieces by Holst (see my 28th July post). It was some full-bodied stuff. Strange, then, that it took the BBC Philharmonic four whole movements of "Turangalîla" to warm up to the piece after the interval. Juanjo Mena is a fine conductor, and I find the performance almost always enjoyable, but too fine and refined to make it impressive in the vast RAH. Having grown up listening to the abrasive and high-octane Kent Nagano recording, it was very refreshing to hear a more "spacious" performance of the work, so it was very frustrating to hear a lot of the nuances getting lost in the ether. Steven Osborne was a good soloist, with the right amount of vigour and drama. Valérie Hartmann-Claverie's ondes Martenot was, however, virtually inaudible. Having heard Aimard/Hartmann-Claverie/Salonen just a little over two months ago, the contrast cannot be more stark.
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Prom 42
SIBELIUS Symphony No. 3
SIBELIUS Violin Concerto
MICHAEL FINNISSY Janne
SIBELIUS Symphony No. 4
Julian Rachlin (violin)
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Ilan Volkov (conductor)
I don't think I have ever been this confused, clueless and exhausted in a concert before. In this rather generous programme, a triathlon of Sibelius works - two symphonies and the "Violin Concerto" - framed a Sibelius-inspired (so the concert description claims) world premiere by Michael Finnissy. I will admit it straight away, Sibelius is a composer I have struggled with since the beginning of time. I don't find it offensive, but I just do not understand or appreciate the aesthetics of his music. Not a single work, be it the piano works, the "String Quartet" or whatnot. Earlier this year, I made the effort to go through the symphony cycle with score and by the end I got almost nothing out of it except, perhaps, I found Nos. 3 and 6 more interesting, so I thought I would do my part by going to this celebratory Prom. "No. 3" is indeed fine, and I enjoyed the propelling energy of I, the deceptively clean II and the texturally beguiling III. I found the VC problematic, where the soloist Julian Rachlin did not seem to communicate with the orchestra at all, and the orchestra totally out-performed him. If it was not enough, the encore was Ysaye's "Third Sonata". Then I did not understand a single note played in the second half. The Finnissy did share the fluidity of Sibelius' symphonies, and the microscopic growth (?) in the low register instruments, and he even used a rather conspicuous glockenspiel, but nothing made any sense. Nor did the angular "Fourth Symphony", so I am not even going to try. Don't get me wrong though, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Ilan Volkov was amazing. The playing was powerfully energetic, and the complex textures of the symphonies were realised with brilliant transparency. I just don't get any of this. Maybe in 10 years' time I will.
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Prom 43
SIBELIUS Symphony No. 5
SIBELIUS Symphony No. 6
SIBELIUS Symphony No. 7
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Osmo Vänskä (conductor)
After posting yesterday's review, people passionately urged me to not give up on Sibelius and that I should go to this Prom, not least because it was conducted by the leading interpreter of Sibelius, Osmo Vänskä. Fearing that I might bitterly regret it in the future if I miss it, I obliged, and I am so glad I did. I kept thinking during most of "No. 5" that this is music of culmination - the music is always unsettled and unstable and as a result always forced to be on the move - a concept, as some sort of enzymologist, I cannot be less familiar about. There is something always yearning for release and fighting for freedom and often it never really bursts out until the very end, so one needs to take the whole lot in in order to make some conceptual sense out of it. Once that idea clicked, "No. 7" instantly made a lot more sense, in that ideas crystallising and edging towards the final C major chord is itself a massive sonic journey, and it is as rewarding looking backwards at the music as it is looking forwards. It is rather moving, really, that Sibelius brought his wife along with him in this journey (in the form of the "Aino Theme" stated by the trombone) I don't have much intellectual things to say with regards to "No. 6", except it is really pretty. The performances by BBCSO were nothing short of breathtaking. There was one magical moment in III of "No. 5" where the strings played pianississimo (ppp) tremoli and it actually pierced through the RAH rather clearly. The brasses and winds were consistently outstanding as far as I can tell. I have had a much deeper appreciation of Sibelius in 2015. I cannot say I am emotionally attached to the music, still, but I guess it is a very personal thing. As someone who is more attuned to sparkling ideas, it takes a certain state of mind to appreciate Sibelius. I am just eternally grateful that I came to this Prom, and something clicked.
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Prom 45
DEBUSSY / BUSSER Petite Suite
MOZART Piano Concerto No. 22
SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 15
Elisabeth Leonskaja (piano)
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Charles Dutoit (conductor)
I am sure I am not the only person who raised some eyebrows tonight - on grounds of artistic decisions, not merits, that is. Charles Dutoit, a conductor best known for drawing fantastic colours from orchestras, conducting the bleak Shostakovich 15? The evening started with Henri Büsser's orchestration of Debussy's overplayed-at-school four-hand piano classic "Petite Suite". It was all very pretty, if the last movement is rather irritating. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra was on good form, the strings were particularly clinical. Then entered the legendary Elisabeth Leonskaja performing Mozart's "Piano Concerto No. 22". The orchestra was still over-excited from the Debussy, but when the firm resonating basses hit, we knew we were in for some special pianism. The velvet tone of the playing was so spectacular that one wished the over-colourful orchestra could just shut up, or have Leonskaja performing a solo recital instead. Dutoit sensed that by the third movement, except he himself could not stop growling at the orchestra to get the sound he wanted and that was very distracting. The D-flat major "Nocturne, Op. 27 No. 2" encore was some transcendental stuff. The only issue I had was the decision to play Benjamin Britten's incoherent and incompatible cadenzas. DSCH 15 is a puzzling work, some sort of conscious disintegration of an eclectic musical mind, a mortal struggling to choose between fighting with last breath and total abandonment. This symphony, introspective and retrospective, fused with childish ironies, sparse orchestration, fragmented percussion pulses, chilling brass chords, is very unsettling to hear. Perhaps it takes a fine performance like this to accentuate the abstract nature of the work. It is unusual to describe the performance of a Shostakovich symphony as transparent, but that was exactly how it was like. This is a Prom of quite high standard, but it is very odd.
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Prom 46
NIELSEN "Helios" Overture
BRAHMS Violin Concerto
NIELSEN Three motets
NIELSEN Hymnus amoris
NIELSEN Symphony No. 2
Nikolaj Znaider (violin)
Anna Lucia Richter (soprano)
David Danholt (tenor)
Choristers of Winchester Cathedral
DR KoncertKoret
DR SymfoniOrkestret
Fabio Luisi (conductor)
This is the most extraordinary Prom I have been to. It is scandalous that only one symphony is played to celebrate the 150th of Carl Nielsen, but what an honour to see the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and Concert Choir flying 200-odd people across just to perform here at the RAH to celebrate their national hero. It is odd to choose the "Second Symphony" over the significantly more popular "Fourth" and "Fifth", but it turned out to be a topical choice. Subtitled "The Four Temperaments", this is the musical manifestation of the four moods described by the ancient Greeks, and almost the exact subject of Pixar's latest release "Inside Out" (in fact, the father of the director is a Nielsen scholar). The fiery "Choleric", the dancing strings in compound time in "Phlegmatic", the heartwrenching lyricism of "Melancholic", and the edge-of-the-seat triumphant thrill of "Sanguine", this is hands down my favourite performance this Prom season, and that was only the last 35 minutes of a mammoth 3h programme. It takes a great composer to excel in writing for all the moods, and it takes a Gemini like Nielsen to experience all of them at the same time, and that is particularly apparent in the episodic "'Helios' Overture", again performed with much conviction. The surprise discovery was the three rarely performed a capella motets and what fabulous polyphonic writing those are. Equally precious was a rare performance of the gigantic and punchy choral work "Hymnus amoris" - sumptuous soundscape throughout. Did I mention that somewhere in the middle, they managed to squeeze the tiny Brahms "Violin Concerto" in? Nikolaj Znaider's performance was the most seamless take I can remember, and I found myself swinging to the entire first movement, even when he chose the play the Heifetz cadenza and Fabio Luisi's conducting was a bit on the soft side. The encores were a Bach sarabande and more Nielsen. As Znaider remarked, "Denmark is not just about LEGO and pastry". I am Angry and Disgusted that RAH was only half full; Sad that there was only 3h of these; Fear that I would never hear Nielsen this fine again; but as core memory goes, it was, from my Honest Island, just Joy.
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Prom 50
BACH Goldberg Variations
András Schiff (piano)
If you actually read these ridiculous Instagram/Facebook reviews, chances are you know I am not a Bach person, but I cannot, cannot, cannot possibly miss András Schiff performing the "Goldberg Variations". 2000 people braved the heat to fill the RAH at 22:15 on a Saturday just to hear one man performing superhuman alchemy on stage, with discipline and total concentration I have never witnessed from the normally unruly Prom audience. It is hard to imagine that this immortal music was intended to be a lullaby (if true at all) when it is so full of vitality and artistic richness. Schiff took four brief pauses and by presenting the work as five units, I found the work almost symphonic in construction. The "orchestrations" came alive so vividly without requiring much imagination - just how many palettes of sound can one produce with 10 fingers and 2 feet? The well-balanced tones, the shaping and shading that breathe, the contrapuntal clarity... this is a performance of wonder, and it sent the audience rocking the ground by the end, instead of sending them to sleep. I have no more intellectual comments to make, but my spirits are totally refreshed, as Bach blessed us, and Schiff transcended it.
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Prom 51
HAYDN Symphony No. 90
BARBER Essay No. 2
SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 10
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Andris Nelsons (conductor)
We are getting down to serious business now. Boston Symphony Orchestra and Andris Nelsons presented Shostakovich 10 in an insultingly under-attended Sunday afternoon Prom. DSCH 10 is an ambivalent work. With the extensive use of the DSCH motif, it is clearly indicative of an autobiographical nature. It even intertwines with the "Elmira" motif - that of his love interest at the time - in the third movement à la Sibelius 7. The big question is, what do all these actually represent? Which part is genuine and which part is satirical? The short answer is, nobody knows. It depends on which book you read. Here was a powerful no-nonsense rendition, with the orchestra completely on fire most of the time. No wonder why their recording has remained on the top of the charts lately. I could do without the entire first half, which were one of Haydn's English Channel symphonies (No. 90) and Barber's pointless and uncharacteristic "Essay No. 2". Granted, for what was worth, it was a first-rate performance. Everything was very well balanced and pristine, just that the music was very, very boring.
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Prom 53
BARTOK The Miraculous Mandarin
MOZART Piano Concerto No. 24
SHOSTAKOVICH / MCBURNEY Prologue to "Orango"
David Fray (piano)
Natalia Pavlova (Susanna)
Natalia Yakimova (Renée)
Alexander Shagun (Armand Fleury)
Александр Трофимов (Paul Mâche)
Vladimir Babokin (Foreigner 1)
Oleg Losev (Foreigner 2)
Dmitry Koleushko (Zoologist)
Ivan Novoselov (Orango)
Leo Elhardt V(oice from the Crowd)
Denis Beganski (Master of Ceremonies)
Yuri Yevchuk (Veselchak)
Irina Brown (stage director)
Philharmonia Voices
Philharmonia Orchestra
Esa‐Pekka Salonen (conductor)
Talk about political correctness. Three tramps forcing a girl to seduce men into a room so they could rob them. They end up doing so to a wealthy Chinese man and killing him. I have no idea why anyone would set that to music but that is the basis of Bartók's "The Miraculous Mandarin". Not a score I have warmed to (not used to Bartók being programmatic), but it is a supercharged performance by the Philharmonia with Esa-Pekka Salonen's hallmark textural transparency. The second half was a semi-staged performance of Gerard McBurney's orchestration of the Prologue to the never existed opera "Orango" by Shostakovich. I see little artistic value in completing 1/4 of a work found in someone's dustbin, but it was half an hour of non-stop mindless bombastic fun. It is a surrealist story (satirically) depicting the West as evil, basically. It is also not everyday you get to see an opera singer slapping an audience in the face with a gigantic gun, someone examining a banana on stage, and the entire arena audience given red flags to wave as instructed (how Orwellian). Fulfilling their duties to perform a late Mozart piano concerto, David Fray went for the second of the two minor concertos, No. 24, perhaps appropriately so as it is the darkest concerto by the normally mischievous composer. The evenness and balance of the playing were fantastic, though some people might find it not dramatic or entertaining enough. It was a good buffer between two sonically massive works.
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Prom 54
BRITTEN Sinfonia da Requiem
RAYMOND YIU Symphony
NIELSEN Flute Concerto
JANACEK Sinfonietta
Andrew Watts (counter-tenor)
Emily Beynon (flute)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Edward Gardner (conductor)
Haruki Murakami remarked in the opening pages of "1Q84" that there are probably not many people in the world who would recognise the opening of Janáček's "Sinfonietta". That, I suppose, has more to do with collective cultural ignorance than musical inadequacy, for one cannot possibly forget the opening fanfare (and its reprise in the finale). The BBCSO under Edward Gardner gave it all in an intense performance, visibly so as the face of the clarinettist was so bright red by the end I feared his head would explode at some point. Obviously it was very cool to see the extended brass, but the intonation were sometimes off at the ridiculously high notes - can't blame them really for they had been working solidly for the past two hours. The programme started with two other takes on the notion of the symphony. Britten's "Sinfonia da Requiem" was less dreadful than it is described in Wikipedia. It sounds like some bad Shostakovich without the fun. It was followed by Hong Kong-born composer Raymond Yiu's "Symphony", which is a polystylistic work for countertenor and orchestra that deals with love and loss surrounding the AIDS scare in the 80s. It was all nice and pretty with some fluid Dutilleux-esque colourful harmonies, until it broke into some 2 minutes of shameless flamboyant disco music (might as well call Giorgio Moroder in). I do like the final lament, but musically this flow of styles just does not work, no matter how "fabulous" it sounds. After the interval, bizarrely, we had Nielsen's erratic and quirky "Flute Concerto". Musical ideas are all over the place in this piece and I often get lost, but it was a sensational performance by Emily Beynon. The versatility of the BBCSO is astonishing.
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Prom 55
PIERRE BOULEZ ... explosante-fixe ...
LIGETI Lontano
BARTOK Concerto for Orchestra
Sophie Cherrier (flute)
SWR Experimental Studio
SWR SO Baden-Baden and Freiburg
François-Xavier Roth (conductor)
People only treasure things when they lose them. When the BBC Proms organisers invited the soon-defunct SWR SO Baden-Baden and Freiburg, it caused a bit of a buzz within the classical circle as it was viewed as a powerful sign of solidarity and protest. It is very sad to see a fine orchestra go (if you are an avant garde music fan, this is tragic). To say farewell in their first and last ever Prom, they presented three 20th century masterpieces in a thoroughly exceptional performance. Legendary Ensemble Intercontemporain flute soloist Sophie Cherrier, who has worked closely with Boulez over the years, performed his hyperactive spatial concerto "...explosante-fixe..." When this was performed in the cozy QEH in 2011, I thought it was 35 min of sonic overkill, but when the electronic relays were projected from the high ceiling of the vast RAH, it was such a fabulous experience to get engulfed by torrents of sound. I am very curious how "Répons" would fare if it ever gets done here. A bit of a contrast, then, that it was sound mass era Ligeti's "Lontano" after the interval. It is a piece that needs to be heard live, for it goes to the extremes of dynamics, timbres and nuances to generate a sense of timelessness and ethereal flow. The programme concluded with an exhilarating rendition of Bartók's ultimate orchestral showpiece "Concerto for Orchestra". Personally I think the "Intermezzo" can be slightly more sarcastic, but the ascending winds in the "Elegy" were just magical. Needless to say the "Finale" was some edge-of-the-seat stuff. François-Xavier Roth made a heartfelt speech about the orchestra's situation, then went on to conduct a Schubert encore, adding great sadness to what was an enjoyably angular programme.
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Prom 57
SCHUBERT Overture in C major in the Italian Style
MOZART Piano Concerto No. 23
SCHUBERT Symphony No. 9 "Great"
Maria João Pires (piano)
Chamber Orchestra of Europe
Bernard Haitink (conductor)
Maria João Pires. Bernard Haitink. Chamber Orchestra of Europe. Mozart "Piano Concerto No. 23" and Schubert 9. Need I say more?
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Prom 61
IVES Symphony "New England Holidays" - Decoration Day
BARTOK Piano Concerto No. 2
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 3
Yuja Wang (piano)
San Francisco Symphony Orchestra
Michael Tilson Thomas (conductor)
Yuja Wang is in the house! I am not a fan of pyrotechnics or athletic pianism. The only reason I went to this Prom was because Bartók's "Second Piano Concerto" was on the programme and this most brutal piano concerto in the classical canon needed to be heard live. The audience was given some musical magic, for this is the most woeful and feeblest performance of this concerto I have heard. It was remarkable how inaudible the piano was throughout the majority of the first movement, and the fiendish eight-note contrapuntal cadenza could do with more breathing space. The San Francisco Symphony Orchestra under Michael Tilson Thomas had no sense of structural or textural understanding and managed to reduce the gigantic orchestral parts to mere accompaniment and, frankly, MTT sounded totally disinterested in the piece and I could not see him doing anything more than just cueing players in. The net result was that the piece turned into a mash of sounds and this was the sort of performance that gives 20th century music a bad name. It was not all that bad, I guess, for the night music section in II was pretty neat, perhaps because it was homophonic. The second half was a very lethargic performance of Beethoven 3. The orchestra was pretty good in general and the strings and winds were fantastic, but there were no drama, no narration and no emotional depth. I have yet to be convinced that MTT is an inspired conductor. The Ives "Decoration Day" movement from his "Symphony" at the beginning was actually the most interesting, as it provided all the opportunities of showmanship MTT excels in, which was also evident in the Brahms encore (guess what could it possible be?) (No. 10)
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Prom 66
BEETHOVEN "Fidelio" Overture
SCHOENBERG Piano Concerto
SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 8
Mitsuko Uchida (piano)
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Vladimir Jurowski (conductor)
I have waited so long for this, the Schoenberg "Piano Concerto" played live, by no less than she who produced the seminal recording of this piece, Dame Mitsuko Uchida. If you have ever read her liner notes and lengthy analysis on this concerto, you know she has it in her DNA. This 12-tone concerto is very difficult to put together, and the solo part is very unpianistic, but when it is executed well, it is powerfully expressive and surprisingly intuitive to listen to, not least, perhaps, due to the principal "soft" tone row that tricks people into thinking it is harmonically directional, and the fact it starts with a waltz. This was a weighty performance with the instruments of the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Vladimir Jurowski blending together so well in unity that shows convincingly this concerto is the rightful heir to those by Brahms et al. By the end of this spellbinding performance, the only adjective I could come up with, albeit inappropriately given the circumstances of the concerto, was majestic. Utterly majestic. The second half was a fiery performance of the most absolute and integrated symphony by Shostakovich, "No. 8". The first movement is nearly 30 min long, incorporating materials from Nos. 5 and 7, but it is nowhere as tedious as Mahler 3. It was rare enough to be able to hear it live, let alone seeing everyone on stage giving it all as if their lives were on the line (except perhaps the pianist who played like, what, 5 notes and a chord in 75 min?) This is as good as music can get. As Shostakovich himself said of "No. 8": life is beautiful.
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Prom 71
RIMSKY-KORSAKOV The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh
TCHAIKOVSKY Violin Concerto
ELGAR "Enigma" Variations
Julia Fischer (violin)
St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra
Yuri Temirkanov (conductor)
Thank you [my friend] for the free ticket, I got a rather amazing seat for this Prom. I will be blunt - I arrived with a high level of scepticism towards Yuri Temirkanov (see my 26th Apr 2015 post). In an act of musical bravery, he led the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra to bring one of the most British pieces by the most British of all composers to the most British of all classical events in one of the most British musical venues. As far as I know, the Proms audience is also one of the most receptive in the world as well. It is always curious to hear Elgar performed by non-British forces. This is the most weighty and muscular "'Engima' Variations" I have ever heard, with "W.M.B." and "Troyte" sounding so Russian militant you thought you were listening to Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich, and "Nimrod" was so cinematically dramatic. Did it work? I have no nationalistic agenda, but it was unusually hyper-romantic and surprisingly moving. Before that it was Julia Fischer performing the Tchaikovsky "Violin Concerto". It was oddly temperamental, with the orchestra easing the tempi and dynamics completely illogically. It was not a technical issue, for the soloist and orchestra were so brilliantly in tune and in time with each other with total discipline, just that Temirkanov had a penchant to accentuate hidden orchestral parts to the point of obscuring the main tunes, and I found that rather tedious to hear. Fischer had total command of this music and from the way she interacted with each part of the orchestra you feel that she might as well conduct the orchestra from the violin herself. However, most of the time the performance lacked fire, no matter how technically accomplished she was. Sometimes, delicate intricacies are inadequate for good performances, and you do need some shameless showmanship to complete it, and that is certainly required for the Tchaikovsky "Violin Concerto".
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Prom 73
BRAHMS Symphony No. 3
SCHMIDT Symphony No. 2
Vienna Philharmonic
Semyon Bychkov (conductor)
My last Prom this season is also one I have been looking forward to all season - Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra under Semyon Bychkov performing Brahms 3, a work the WPO premiered themselves. Having heard Chailly's passionate recording about 500 times in the past year or so, the opening tonight sounded rather slow and weak, but when they warmed up to the RAH acoustics around the big cello tune in the first movement, we were in for some serious music making. They came back at the recapitulation at full throttle, with such deep emotional drive that put Berliner Philharmoniker's autopilot Prom last year to shame. Bychkov's take of the third movement tune is the textbook example on how to play a romantic melody with grace and elegance without sounding sentimental and cheesy, which contrasted nicely with the powerful and solid rhythmic rigour of the last movement. Following this heavyweight first half was a heavier weight work - the obscure Schmidt "Second Symphony", which was the reason why the hall was rather empty tonight. Schmidt played cello under Mahler, and claimed the likes of Schoenberg to be his contemporaries. You can understand why it is not played very often, for the overall narrative is not clear and has little sense of unity or direction, but listening to this hour-long symphony with full concentration proved to be rewarding. This is a work of dense textures, and the harmonies are so chromatically charged and colourfully orchestrated one can claim it to be erotic. The middle movement was a set of fascinating variations. This is a work I need to revisit, but WPO rightfully deserved the thunderous applause from the audience tonight. The encore was "Nimrod" from "'Enigma' Variations". These two live performances in three days could not be more different, and the strings were immaculate, perhaps a bit too Viennese for Elgar, but it was a nice touch.
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Prom 75
ELGAR The Dream of Gerontius
Magdalena Kožená (mezzo-soprano)
Toby Spence (tenor)
Roderick Williams (baritone)
BBC Proms Youth Choir
Vienna Philharmonic
Sir Simon Rattle (conductor)
I know I said yesterday was the last Prom for me, but I ended up in that area of London in the afternoon so I thought I might as well, after all you do not get to see Simon Rattle conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra live for £5 every day. I do not have a lot to say today because I do not know Elgar's "Dream of Gerontius" at all. It was just about being there.
20 August, 2015
BBC Proms 2015: Prom 46 - Nielsen: "Helios" Overture, Three motets, Hymnus amoris, Symphony No. 2; Brahms: Violin Concerto (Znaider / Richter / Danholt / Winchester Cathedral Choristers / DR KoncertKoret / DR SymfoniOrkestret / Luisi)
20th August 2015
Royal Albert Hall, London, United Kingdom
NIELSEN "Helios" Overture
BRAHMS Violin Concerto
NIELSEN Three motets
NIELSEN Hymnus amoris
NIELSEN Symphony No. 2
Nikolaj Znaider (violin)
Anna Lucia Richter (soprano)
David Danholt (tenor)
Choristers of Winchester Cathedral
DR KoncertKoret
DR SymfoniOrkestret
Fabio Luisi (conductor)
This is the most extraordinary Prom I have been to. It is scandalous that only one symphony is played to celebrate the 150th of Carl Nielsen, but what an honour to see the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and Concert Choir flying 200-odd people across just to perform here at the RAH to celebrate their national hero. It is odd to choose the "Second Symphony" over the significantly more popular "Fourth" and "Fifth", but it turned out to be a topical choice. Subtitled "The Four Temperaments", this is the musical manifestation of the four moods described by the ancient Greeks, and almost the exact subject of Pixar's latest release "Inside Out" (in fact, the father of the director is a Nielsen scholar). The fiery "Choleric", the dancing strings in compound time in "Phlegmatic", the heartwrenching lyricism of "Melancholic", and the edge-of-the-seat triumphant thrill of "Sanguine", this is hands down my favourite performance this Prom season, and that was only the last 35 minutes of a mammoth 3h programme. It takes a great composer to excel in writing for all the moods, and it takes a Gemini like Nielsen to experience all of them at the same time, and that is particularly apparent in the episodic "'Helios' Overture", again performed with much conviction. The surprise discovery was the three rarely performed a capella motets and what fabulous polyphonic writing those are. Equally precious was a rare performance of the gigantic and punchy choral work "Hymnus amoris" - sumptuous soundscape throughout. Did I mention that somewhere in the middle, they managed to squeeze the tiny Brahms "Violin Concerto" in? Nikolaj Znaider's performance was the most seamless take I can remember, and I found myself swinging to the entire first movement, even when he chose the play the Heifetz cadenza and Fabio Luisi's conducting was a bit on the soft side. The encores were a Bach sarabande and more Nielsen. As Znaider remarked, "Denmark is not just about LEGO and pastry". I am Angry and Disgusted that RAH was only half full; Sad that there was only 3h of these; Fear that I would never hear Nielsen this fine again; but as core memory goes, it was, from my Honest Island, just Joy.
Royal Albert Hall, London, United Kingdom
NIELSEN "Helios" Overture
BRAHMS Violin Concerto
NIELSEN Three motets
NIELSEN Hymnus amoris
NIELSEN Symphony No. 2
Nikolaj Znaider (violin)
Anna Lucia Richter (soprano)
David Danholt (tenor)
Choristers of Winchester Cathedral
DR KoncertKoret
DR SymfoniOrkestret
Fabio Luisi (conductor)
This is the most extraordinary Prom I have been to. It is scandalous that only one symphony is played to celebrate the 150th of Carl Nielsen, but what an honour to see the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and Concert Choir flying 200-odd people across just to perform here at the RAH to celebrate their national hero. It is odd to choose the "Second Symphony" over the significantly more popular "Fourth" and "Fifth", but it turned out to be a topical choice. Subtitled "The Four Temperaments", this is the musical manifestation of the four moods described by the ancient Greeks, and almost the exact subject of Pixar's latest release "Inside Out" (in fact, the father of the director is a Nielsen scholar). The fiery "Choleric", the dancing strings in compound time in "Phlegmatic", the heartwrenching lyricism of "Melancholic", and the edge-of-the-seat triumphant thrill of "Sanguine", this is hands down my favourite performance this Prom season, and that was only the last 35 minutes of a mammoth 3h programme. It takes a great composer to excel in writing for all the moods, and it takes a Gemini like Nielsen to experience all of them at the same time, and that is particularly apparent in the episodic "'Helios' Overture", again performed with much conviction. The surprise discovery was the three rarely performed a capella motets and what fabulous polyphonic writing those are. Equally precious was a rare performance of the gigantic and punchy choral work "Hymnus amoris" - sumptuous soundscape throughout. Did I mention that somewhere in the middle, they managed to squeeze the tiny Brahms "Violin Concerto" in? Nikolaj Znaider's performance was the most seamless take I can remember, and I found myself swinging to the entire first movement, even when he chose the play the Heifetz cadenza and Fabio Luisi's conducting was a bit on the soft side. The encores were a Bach sarabande and more Nielsen. As Znaider remarked, "Denmark is not just about LEGO and pastry". I am Angry and Disgusted that RAH was only half full; Sad that there was only 3h of these; Fear that I would never hear Nielsen this fine again; but as core memory goes, it was, from my Honest Island, just Joy.
29 May, 2015
Messiaen: Turangalîla-Symphonie (Aimard / Hartmann-Claverie / Philharmonia / Salonen)
28th May, 2015
Royal Festival Hall, London, United Kingdom
DEBUSSY Syrinx
DEBUSSY La damoiselle élue
MESSIAEN Turangalîla-Symphonie
Samuel Coles (flute)
Sophie Bevan (soprano)
Anna Stéphany (mezzo soprano)
Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)
Valérie Hartmann-Claverie (ondes Martenot)
Philharmonia Voices (Ladies)
Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor)
Sex. Just sex. There is no piece in the classical repertoire quite like Messiaen's "Turangalîla-Symphonie", which is a 75-min, 10-movement work for solo piano, huge orchestra which calls for 11 percussionists and an electronic instrument called ondes Martenot (top two pictures), written to celebrate erotic love. I have a love-hate relationship with this piece. It was the piece that showed me all sorts of sonic possibilities in classical music and opened the doors of contemporary music for me when I was about 15. When I grew older, however, the piece became too blatant, vulgar and downright pornographic for my taste - I mean, one can't take the piece seriously when one realises the sliding strings followed by cymbals clashing in the "Finale" sound a bit like orgasm. Now, it is a bit like fast food - I can have a dose of it for quick thrills every now and then. After all these years, I am still a bit baffled by how a devout Catholic like Messiaen wrote such suggestive music charged by naughty harmonies, and why "Development of Love" (Movement 8) comes after the sex in "Joy of the Blood of the Stars" (Movement 5) (makes it more ironic that the opening piece tonight was "Syrinx", a mythological nymph known for her chastity, by Debussy of all people). The Philharmonia under Esa-Pekka Salonen played the work with such fabulous transparency that made it very refreshing, though the brass overpowered the strings and he was unreserved and relentless about the energy of the piece that left little breathing space for the more serene moments like the post-coital cuddling in "Garden of Love's Sleep" (Movement 6) and the percussion extravaganza that is "Turangalîla 3" (Movement 9). It was great to hear the old Pierre-Laurent Aimard sound again, with the punch, spike and fire that have been absent in his recent recordings. The cadenzas of "Chant d'amore 1 & 2" were particularly remarkable. My first RFH concert 14 years ago was Aimard doing "Turangalîla" with Nagano, and the hall was 80% empty with the audience looking totally bored. Today the full house erupted with joy. I guess it had something to do with that triumphant, otherworldly and cosmic expansion-like F# major chord.
This entry was originally published in my private Instagram account.
Royal Festival Hall, London, United Kingdom
DEBUSSY Syrinx
DEBUSSY La damoiselle élue
MESSIAEN Turangalîla-Symphonie
Samuel Coles (flute)
Sophie Bevan (soprano)
Anna Stéphany (mezzo soprano)
Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)
Valérie Hartmann-Claverie (ondes Martenot)
Philharmonia Voices (Ladies)
Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor)
Sex. Just sex. There is no piece in the classical repertoire quite like Messiaen's "Turangalîla-Symphonie", which is a 75-min, 10-movement work for solo piano, huge orchestra which calls for 11 percussionists and an electronic instrument called ondes Martenot (top two pictures), written to celebrate erotic love. I have a love-hate relationship with this piece. It was the piece that showed me all sorts of sonic possibilities in classical music and opened the doors of contemporary music for me when I was about 15. When I grew older, however, the piece became too blatant, vulgar and downright pornographic for my taste - I mean, one can't take the piece seriously when one realises the sliding strings followed by cymbals clashing in the "Finale" sound a bit like orgasm. Now, it is a bit like fast food - I can have a dose of it for quick thrills every now and then. After all these years, I am still a bit baffled by how a devout Catholic like Messiaen wrote such suggestive music charged by naughty harmonies, and why "Development of Love" (Movement 8) comes after the sex in "Joy of the Blood of the Stars" (Movement 5) (makes it more ironic that the opening piece tonight was "Syrinx", a mythological nymph known for her chastity, by Debussy of all people). The Philharmonia under Esa-Pekka Salonen played the work with such fabulous transparency that made it very refreshing, though the brass overpowered the strings and he was unreserved and relentless about the energy of the piece that left little breathing space for the more serene moments like the post-coital cuddling in "Garden of Love's Sleep" (Movement 6) and the percussion extravaganza that is "Turangalîla 3" (Movement 9). It was great to hear the old Pierre-Laurent Aimard sound again, with the punch, spike and fire that have been absent in his recent recordings. The cadenzas of "Chant d'amore 1 & 2" were particularly remarkable. My first RFH concert 14 years ago was Aimard doing "Turangalîla" with Nagano, and the hall was 80% empty with the audience looking totally bored. Today the full house erupted with joy. I guess it had something to do with that triumphant, otherworldly and cosmic expansion-like F# major chord.
This entry was originally published in my private Instagram account.
20 April, 2015
"Nocturnes" by Kazuo Ishiguro
I have not read a fiction cover to cover for years, let alone doing it within 24 hours. There is something very gripping in the atmosphere of the writing that makes it impossible to put down this book. Strange though, because the stories are so gentle they are on the verge of being uneventful, with almost no drama, but the relevance and fluidity of the events give a sense of slow burning and silent storm striking akin to listening to Sibelius' symphonies - his would-be 8th maybe, in five movements - each story corresponds to a movement with the final one cleverly unifying all the themes and motifs that appear in the preceding four. Ishiguro does not use music to generate atmospheres the way Murakami does, but music serves as a common thread in the book, a common interest that brings people together, but not one that keeps people together. Setting these stories against "music" and "nightfall" is an intriguing irony that makes one wonder if impermanence in human relationships is a beautiful thing afterall, and the author appears subtly judgemental on this subject. A very clever and thoughtful book. I should read more.
This entry was originally published in my private Instagram account.
17 April, 2015
Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No. 1 (Trifonov / Philharmonia / Temirkanov)
16th April, 2015
Royal Festival Hall, London, United Kingdom
RIMSKY-KORSAKOV "The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh" Overture
RACHMANINOV Piano Concerto No. 1
DVOŘÁK Symphony No. 8
Daniil Trifonov (piano)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Yuri Temirkanov (conductor)
You've got to admit, there is a very good reason why Rachmaninov's "Piano Concerto No. 1" is not played very often - it is pretty linear, mono-layer and honestly uninteresting with little delectable melodies and the orchestra doing bare minimum. The coughs, snores (yes, snores) and fangirl screamings from the audience tonight made better polyphony and rhythmic vitality than the music. It takes a certain Daniil Trifonov (the gentleman next to me - born 1991 according to Wikipedia in case you wonder) to make firework out of the piece to make it just about enjoyable. You can easily see why he is the hottest pianist on the planet today that even Martha Argerich gives him the highest praises. He belongs to the proud Russian lineage of pianists like Gilels and Richter who can make drama out of absolute nothing, and he practically turned the concerto into his own personal playground. It wasn't just the techniques that was impressive. He is capable of drawing out so many different shades and colours on the piano that he singlehandedly put the orcherstra to shame. The firm basses, the delicate inner voicings, the crisp melodic shapings, that enormous wall of sound from the first movement cadenza, the drama, the introspective delicacy, you name it. That alone was worth the time. The second half was Dvořák 8 conducted by Yuri Temirkanov (Philharmonia). I thought it was a dreadful performance, but the audience seemed to like it a lot. It was the most dreary performance of the "Symphony" I have ever heard. The tempi of the piece inconsistent and all over the place, the balance of the orchestra questionable with random brasses sticking out like sore thumbs, and overall the orchestra sounded totally uninterested. The conductor took so much effort to punch out every note in certain phrases to emphasise the contrapunctal writings and it was painful to hear. I saw Norman Lebrecht in the audience. I wonder what he will say tomorrow.
This entry was originally published in my private Instagram account.
Royal Festival Hall, London, United Kingdom
RIMSKY-KORSAKOV "The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh" Overture
RACHMANINOV Piano Concerto No. 1
DVOŘÁK Symphony No. 8
Daniil Trifonov (piano)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Yuri Temirkanov (conductor)
You've got to admit, there is a very good reason why Rachmaninov's "Piano Concerto No. 1" is not played very often - it is pretty linear, mono-layer and honestly uninteresting with little delectable melodies and the orchestra doing bare minimum. The coughs, snores (yes, snores) and fangirl screamings from the audience tonight made better polyphony and rhythmic vitality than the music. It takes a certain Daniil Trifonov (the gentleman next to me - born 1991 according to Wikipedia in case you wonder) to make firework out of the piece to make it just about enjoyable. You can easily see why he is the hottest pianist on the planet today that even Martha Argerich gives him the highest praises. He belongs to the proud Russian lineage of pianists like Gilels and Richter who can make drama out of absolute nothing, and he practically turned the concerto into his own personal playground. It wasn't just the techniques that was impressive. He is capable of drawing out so many different shades and colours on the piano that he singlehandedly put the orcherstra to shame. The firm basses, the delicate inner voicings, the crisp melodic shapings, that enormous wall of sound from the first movement cadenza, the drama, the introspective delicacy, you name it. That alone was worth the time. The second half was Dvořák 8 conducted by Yuri Temirkanov (Philharmonia). I thought it was a dreadful performance, but the audience seemed to like it a lot. It was the most dreary performance of the "Symphony" I have ever heard. The tempi of the piece inconsistent and all over the place, the balance of the orchestra questionable with random brasses sticking out like sore thumbs, and overall the orchestra sounded totally uninterested. The conductor took so much effort to punch out every note in certain phrases to emphasise the contrapunctal writings and it was painful to hear. I saw Norman Lebrecht in the audience. I wonder what he will say tomorrow.
This entry was originally published in my private Instagram account.
Respighi: Roman Trilogy (Philharmonia / Valcuha)
16th April, 2015
Royal Festival Hall, London, United Kingdom
OLGA NEUWIRTH Un posto nell'acqua
OLGA NEUWIRTH locus . . . doublure. . . solus
Mei Yi Foo (piano)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Clement Power (conductor)
RESPIGHI Fontane di Roma
DE FALLA Nights in the Gardens of Spain
RESPIGHI Feste romane
RESPIGHI Pini di Roma
Ingrid Fliter (piano)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Juraj Valčuha (conductor)
I AM DEAF. I think I have just heard all the live music I need for the next 10 years. The evening started with two uncompromising works by Olga Neuwirth, an "Oiseaux exotiques"-esque piano concerto (very colourful and dynamic stuff), and an ensemble work that challenges every auditory sense one has. I cannot describe it fully, but it started off with a "Pli selon Pli"-esque bang, full of "atmosphères" sound mass, in microscopic descending figures with some strings in natural harmonics and/or microtones lurking in the background perpetually, with parts for electric guitar and amplified electric celesta (?). It was quite uncomfortable to listen to after a bit, but it was a surreal experience to hear it live. The main event was Respighi's Roman Trilogy performed by Philharmonia conducted by Juraj Valcuha (stepping in for the late Lorin Maazel). Yes, I got a seventh row ticket bang in the middle of the hall seeing the conductor at face level at the last minute. That meant I had 80 people including 11 percussionists, the new RFH organ, multiple on- and off-stage brasses, taped bird songs and a mandolin blasting at full volume about 20 steps away from me at me the whole evening. It was physically painful, but really, what are the chances of hearing "Feste romane" live? The real winner for me this evening, actually, were the serene "Fountains of Rome" and de Falla's "Nights in the Gardens of Spain". I have never ever heard the de Falla this exhilarating. Moreover, you know the soloist totally absorbed the music when you can see her (Ingrid Fliter) banging to the dance rhythms, swinging to the viola groove, playing toccata on the right hand, dueting with the upper strings on the left hand whilst tapping her feet in high heels at the same time. If you think about it, both the Respighi and the de Falla are some sort of musical magic transforming the static to the dynamic. Absolutely breathtaking music through and through. The sheer volume and density of content of the past four hours were overwhelming. I think both my body and mind need to rest for a very long time to recover from all these.
This entry was originally published in my private Instagram account.
Royal Festival Hall, London, United Kingdom
OLGA NEUWIRTH Un posto nell'acqua
OLGA NEUWIRTH locus . . . doublure. . . solus
Mei Yi Foo (piano)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Clement Power (conductor)
RESPIGHI Fontane di Roma
DE FALLA Nights in the Gardens of Spain
RESPIGHI Feste romane
RESPIGHI Pini di Roma
Ingrid Fliter (piano)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Juraj Valčuha (conductor)
I AM DEAF. I think I have just heard all the live music I need for the next 10 years. The evening started with two uncompromising works by Olga Neuwirth, an "Oiseaux exotiques"-esque piano concerto (very colourful and dynamic stuff), and an ensemble work that challenges every auditory sense one has. I cannot describe it fully, but it started off with a "Pli selon Pli"-esque bang, full of "atmosphères" sound mass, in microscopic descending figures with some strings in natural harmonics and/or microtones lurking in the background perpetually, with parts for electric guitar and amplified electric celesta (?). It was quite uncomfortable to listen to after a bit, but it was a surreal experience to hear it live. The main event was Respighi's Roman Trilogy performed by Philharmonia conducted by Juraj Valcuha (stepping in for the late Lorin Maazel). Yes, I got a seventh row ticket bang in the middle of the hall seeing the conductor at face level at the last minute. That meant I had 80 people including 11 percussionists, the new RFH organ, multiple on- and off-stage brasses, taped bird songs and a mandolin blasting at full volume about 20 steps away from me at me the whole evening. It was physically painful, but really, what are the chances of hearing "Feste romane" live? The real winner for me this evening, actually, were the serene "Fountains of Rome" and de Falla's "Nights in the Gardens of Spain". I have never ever heard the de Falla this exhilarating. Moreover, you know the soloist totally absorbed the music when you can see her (Ingrid Fliter) banging to the dance rhythms, swinging to the viola groove, playing toccata on the right hand, dueting with the upper strings on the left hand whilst tapping her feet in high heels at the same time. If you think about it, both the Respighi and the de Falla are some sort of musical magic transforming the static to the dynamic. Absolutely breathtaking music through and through. The sheer volume and density of content of the past four hours were overwhelming. I think both my body and mind need to rest for a very long time to recover from all these.
This entry was originally published in my private Instagram account.
22 March, 2015
Total Immersion: Boulez at 90 Concert
21st March, 2015
Barbican Hall, London, United Kingdom
PIERRE BOULEZ Notations I, III, IV, VII, II
PIERRE BOULEZ Pli selon Pli
Yeree Suh (soprano)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Thierry Fischer (conductor)
This is a very interesting concert for many reasons. It is rare to hear large-scale Boulez works conducted by conductors other than Boulez himself; and the original conductor pulled out last minute and these are not the pieces one can easily step in to perform with such short notice. Expecting the unpopularity of the event, Barbican actually closed the upper area and the balcony, and still the hall was not full. "Pli selon Pli" is a work I have heard many times (recordings) since secondary school, and Boulez's own live performance of the work in 2011 was my single most favourite concert of all time. Every time I hear the work I find something new. It is a piece Stravinsky called "pretty monotonous and monotonously pretty" and indeed the endless evolution of static beauty is ever so captivating. Here, substitute conductor Thierry Fischer brought out a fantastic palette of sounds from the BBC SO. Being so used to Boulez's own interpretations, it is interesting to hear individual parts being delineated as such, but now the effect is that the work lacks a(n apparent) narration and each instrument effectively just did their own things with little internal interactions. The soloist went for operatic drama on her own and made moments like the soloist-flute interactions in the third "Improvisations" very odd. I can't work out whether it was because they struggled to put the piece together (massive kudos to them for playing it at all), a question of taste or whether or not it provided a new perspective to this piece altogether. The net result, to me, was that this performance sounded even colder than Boulez's own takes. I do have issues with Thierry Fischer's control of volume though, in which he provided little variations in amplitude, and it made listening to the five orchestral "Notations" a relatively surprisingly dull experience, and the second "Improvisations" was too loud. The celesta solo is very sweet though. Interesting concert all in all, and I am very curious what the "professional" critics will say tomorrow.
This entry was originally published in my private Instagram account.
Barbican Hall, London, United Kingdom
PIERRE BOULEZ Notations I, III, IV, VII, II
PIERRE BOULEZ Pli selon Pli
Yeree Suh (soprano)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Thierry Fischer (conductor)
This is a very interesting concert for many reasons. It is rare to hear large-scale Boulez works conducted by conductors other than Boulez himself; and the original conductor pulled out last minute and these are not the pieces one can easily step in to perform with such short notice. Expecting the unpopularity of the event, Barbican actually closed the upper area and the balcony, and still the hall was not full. "Pli selon Pli" is a work I have heard many times (recordings) since secondary school, and Boulez's own live performance of the work in 2011 was my single most favourite concert of all time. Every time I hear the work I find something new. It is a piece Stravinsky called "pretty monotonous and monotonously pretty" and indeed the endless evolution of static beauty is ever so captivating. Here, substitute conductor Thierry Fischer brought out a fantastic palette of sounds from the BBC SO. Being so used to Boulez's own interpretations, it is interesting to hear individual parts being delineated as such, but now the effect is that the work lacks a(n apparent) narration and each instrument effectively just did their own things with little internal interactions. The soloist went for operatic drama on her own and made moments like the soloist-flute interactions in the third "Improvisations" very odd. I can't work out whether it was because they struggled to put the piece together (massive kudos to them for playing it at all), a question of taste or whether or not it provided a new perspective to this piece altogether. The net result, to me, was that this performance sounded even colder than Boulez's own takes. I do have issues with Thierry Fischer's control of volume though, in which he provided little variations in amplitude, and it made listening to the five orchestral "Notations" a relatively surprisingly dull experience, and the second "Improvisations" was too loud. The celesta solo is very sweet though. Interesting concert all in all, and I am very curious what the "professional" critics will say tomorrow.
This entry was originally published in my private Instagram account.
20 March, 2015
Towards the Total Synthesis of Chemical Music
Chemistry is an intriguingly artistic subject. When I applied to university, I cited the artistic nature of chemistry as one of my biggest initial interests in the subject and the admissions interviewers often found it very amusing. It is not difficult to explain why, even to non-chemically minded audiences – the colours of solutions, the symmetry, or lack thereof, of molecular structures, or the intricate arrangements of macromolecules such as proteins and DNA. It is oddly satisfying to work with some of these structures and not difficult to see the parallels between chemistry and visual arts such as paintings and sculptures.
One thing I have always wondered, however, is whether there is any link between chemistry and music. If so, can we compose music using chemistry? Let’s face it, chemistry is not a sonically interesting subject. The most entertaining sound one hears in the laboratory is probably the moment when one inserts a sample tube into an NMR spectrometer, and the next in line would perhaps be the noises from the pumps of the HPLC – really, there is nothing more fascinating to hear in a cold room than pumps working at different pitches in different rhythms. The late Hungarian composer György Ligeti would have called that “micropolyphony”.
It is relatively rare for classical composers to take inspirations from natural sciences, and rarer still from chemistry. Sir Edward Elgar and Alexander Borodin are famous for being both chemists and composers, with the latter being a professor in chemistry, but neither appear to relate chemistry to their music. Edgard Varèse entitled two of his complex compositions Ionisation and Density 21.5 (the latter refers to the approximate density of platinum at room temperature in g cm^-3, as the work was written for a platinum flute), but both seem to have little to do with chemistry other than the title. Perhaps the most relevant example is Pithoprakta (Greek: actions through probability) for 50 instruments, by Iannis Xenakis, where the composer treats each instrument like a molecule in an ensemble (no pun intended) and let the musical material evolve according to statistical mechanics. It is certainly a grand, if non-canonical, way to compose.
Approaching it from the other angle, there is an attempt to “hear” molecules using their vibrational modes, and a method has been developed to generate notes from chemical reactions. In either case, they are methods to generate notes and less so about using them to write complete pieces of music. Can we go further?
The art of musical composition, to put it in the most unromantic way, is the 2D visual representation of a time-dependent sonic event to be interpreted and realised by performing musicians. The music of legendary classical composers such as Bach, Beethoven and Brahms are rigorously structured as well as sonically captivating. The narration, emotions and sophistication of the composer are immortalised by carefully constructed melodies, harmonies and/or rhythms.
As noted above, chemistry is full of building blocks for art – structural motifs, symmetry, sequences, etc. – and, as it turns out, for life itself. Is it possible, then, for chemistry to play a role in musical compositions? Here are two quick proposals inspired by famous composers. Firstly, there is an established compositional method called serialism, where musical parameters – pitch, duration, dynamic, etc. – are determined by strict mathematical rules. Many composers have worked with this technique, including important figures such as Shostakovich and Stravinsky. There is a lot of material in chemistry to form the basis of serial compositions. For example, one can form a legitimate melody from a protein structure by assigning musical notes to its sequence. Rules can then be applied to determine how the notes are played. This then becomes the seed of the composition and one can apply operations to permute the notes, to harmonise and to give it a rhythmical drive.
Alternatively, the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos used to compose music by sketching out contours from geographical landscapes in works such as New York Skyline and Symphony No. 6, which is subtitled “On the Outline of the Mountains of Brazil”. One can imagine a lot of experimental data from chemistry, such as IR spectra of organic molecules or structures of amorphous materials, are suitable for such compositions. Mass spectrometry data of proteins seem to be particularly useful.
If I were able to finish the endless rounds of protein purification, I might finally get a chance to sit down with manuscript paper to compose my own chemical music. Just to brainstorm, I have a 340-note melody from my PhD project, a rhythmic pattern for four instruments from the HPLC, a dynamic distribution from the screams of my lab-mates, and a vast disconnectivity graph from my computational chemistry friend. This could be the beginning of a very dramatic symphony.
[Word count: 790]
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The above article was previously submitted to the magazine Chemistry World (Royal Society of Chemistry, United Kingdom) for the Chemistry World Science Communication Competition 2014, and won a finalist award.
One thing I have always wondered, however, is whether there is any link between chemistry and music. If so, can we compose music using chemistry? Let’s face it, chemistry is not a sonically interesting subject. The most entertaining sound one hears in the laboratory is probably the moment when one inserts a sample tube into an NMR spectrometer, and the next in line would perhaps be the noises from the pumps of the HPLC – really, there is nothing more fascinating to hear in a cold room than pumps working at different pitches in different rhythms. The late Hungarian composer György Ligeti would have called that “micropolyphony”.
It is relatively rare for classical composers to take inspirations from natural sciences, and rarer still from chemistry. Sir Edward Elgar and Alexander Borodin are famous for being both chemists and composers, with the latter being a professor in chemistry, but neither appear to relate chemistry to their music. Edgard Varèse entitled two of his complex compositions Ionisation and Density 21.5 (the latter refers to the approximate density of platinum at room temperature in g cm^-3, as the work was written for a platinum flute), but both seem to have little to do with chemistry other than the title. Perhaps the most relevant example is Pithoprakta (Greek: actions through probability) for 50 instruments, by Iannis Xenakis, where the composer treats each instrument like a molecule in an ensemble (no pun intended) and let the musical material evolve according to statistical mechanics. It is certainly a grand, if non-canonical, way to compose.
Approaching it from the other angle, there is an attempt to “hear” molecules using their vibrational modes, and a method has been developed to generate notes from chemical reactions. In either case, they are methods to generate notes and less so about using them to write complete pieces of music. Can we go further?
The art of musical composition, to put it in the most unromantic way, is the 2D visual representation of a time-dependent sonic event to be interpreted and realised by performing musicians. The music of legendary classical composers such as Bach, Beethoven and Brahms are rigorously structured as well as sonically captivating. The narration, emotions and sophistication of the composer are immortalised by carefully constructed melodies, harmonies and/or rhythms.
As noted above, chemistry is full of building blocks for art – structural motifs, symmetry, sequences, etc. – and, as it turns out, for life itself. Is it possible, then, for chemistry to play a role in musical compositions? Here are two quick proposals inspired by famous composers. Firstly, there is an established compositional method called serialism, where musical parameters – pitch, duration, dynamic, etc. – are determined by strict mathematical rules. Many composers have worked with this technique, including important figures such as Shostakovich and Stravinsky. There is a lot of material in chemistry to form the basis of serial compositions. For example, one can form a legitimate melody from a protein structure by assigning musical notes to its sequence. Rules can then be applied to determine how the notes are played. This then becomes the seed of the composition and one can apply operations to permute the notes, to harmonise and to give it a rhythmical drive.
Alternatively, the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos used to compose music by sketching out contours from geographical landscapes in works such as New York Skyline and Symphony No. 6, which is subtitled “On the Outline of the Mountains of Brazil”. One can imagine a lot of experimental data from chemistry, such as IR spectra of organic molecules or structures of amorphous materials, are suitable for such compositions. Mass spectrometry data of proteins seem to be particularly useful.
If I were able to finish the endless rounds of protein purification, I might finally get a chance to sit down with manuscript paper to compose my own chemical music. Just to brainstorm, I have a 340-note melody from my PhD project, a rhythmic pattern for four instruments from the HPLC, a dynamic distribution from the screams of my lab-mates, and a vast disconnectivity graph from my computational chemistry friend. This could be the beginning of a very dramatic symphony.
[Word count: 790]
-----
The above article was previously submitted to the magazine Chemistry World (Royal Society of Chemistry, United Kingdom) for the Chemistry World Science Communication Competition 2014, and won a finalist award.
13 March, 2015
Brahms: Symphony No. 4 (Philharmonia / Sokhiev)
12th March, 2015
Royal Festival Hall, London, United Kingdom
BEETHOVEN "Egmont" Overture
STRAUSS Horn Concerto No. 2
BRAHMS Symphony No. 4
Katy Woolley (horn)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Tugan Sokhiev (conductor)
Switching to a different orchestra (Philharmonia), it is all-German affair tonight here at the RFH. The advantage of looking comparatively young, being rather underdressed and being unfashionably late meant that I was offered a very cheap student ticket to sit in the sixth row, slightly to the right, at conductor level - not bad! - and it allowed me to explore some unfamiliar territories with totally overwhelming impact. I was completely blown by the thunderous strings in Beethoven's "Egmont Overture". Unfortunately, I do not know the instrument well enough to comment on Strauss' "Horn Concerto No. 2", but I have a feeling the wonderfully colourful playing of the orchestra, especially in the second movement, completely upstaged the soloist. The real winner tonight was the urgently intense Brahms 4. Tugan Sokhiev went for earth-shattering outpour of passion, again with much full-body strings, and the results was a spell-binding performance throughout. The magic was such that he allowed the orchestra to go auto-pilot in the third movement, giving only minimal amounts of cues, with a lot of facial commands that reminded me of what Carlos Kleiber used to do. You can only do that when the orchestra is thoroughly well-rehearsed. Brahms 4 might be standard repertoire, but it is not every day you get to hear it played with such total conviction. What a couple of nights.
This entry was originally published in my private Instagram account.
Royal Festival Hall, London, United Kingdom
BEETHOVEN "Egmont" Overture
STRAUSS Horn Concerto No. 2
BRAHMS Symphony No. 4
Katy Woolley (horn)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Tugan Sokhiev (conductor)
Switching to a different orchestra (Philharmonia), it is all-German affair tonight here at the RFH. The advantage of looking comparatively young, being rather underdressed and being unfashionably late meant that I was offered a very cheap student ticket to sit in the sixth row, slightly to the right, at conductor level - not bad! - and it allowed me to explore some unfamiliar territories with totally overwhelming impact. I was completely blown by the thunderous strings in Beethoven's "Egmont Overture". Unfortunately, I do not know the instrument well enough to comment on Strauss' "Horn Concerto No. 2", but I have a feeling the wonderfully colourful playing of the orchestra, especially in the second movement, completely upstaged the soloist. The real winner tonight was the urgently intense Brahms 4. Tugan Sokhiev went for earth-shattering outpour of passion, again with much full-body strings, and the results was a spell-binding performance throughout. The magic was such that he allowed the orchestra to go auto-pilot in the third movement, giving only minimal amounts of cues, with a lot of facial commands that reminded me of what Carlos Kleiber used to do. You can only do that when the orchestra is thoroughly well-rehearsed. Brahms 4 might be standard repertoire, but it is not every day you get to hear it played with such total conviction. What a couple of nights.
This entry was originally published in my private Instagram account.
12 March, 2015
Ireland: Piano Concerto; Walton: Symphony No. 1 (Lane / LPO / Manze)
11th March, 2015
Royal Festival Hall, London, United Kingdom
ELGAR Introduction and Allegro
IRELAND Piano Concerto
WALTON Symphony No. 1
Piers Lane (piano)
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Andrew Manze (conductor)
Early music specialist Andrew Manze made his LPO debut with a curious programme. The Elgar "Introduction and Allegro" for string quartet and string orchestra was a very pleasant surprise, played with such clinical classical grace that sounded totally un-Elgar. It was followed by a sensitive, pristine and perpetually colourful performance of the evocative but rarely performed John Ireland "Piano Concerto" played by Piers Lane. It was BREATHTAKING. The joyful first half was complimented by the fiery emotional rollercoaster that was Walton's "Symphony No. 1". The brass players must have hated Walton, for the non-stop blasts, but what sensational performance overall. The sumptuous closing moments sent chills down my spine. A very thoroughly successful debut of Andrew Manze. We should hear more from him. It was a shame the hall was only half full, but that meant I got full impact of the music even though I sat at the very back of RFH.
This entry was originally published in my private Instagram account.
Royal Festival Hall, London, United Kingdom
ELGAR Introduction and Allegro
IRELAND Piano Concerto
WALTON Symphony No. 1
Piers Lane (piano)
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Andrew Manze (conductor)
Early music specialist Andrew Manze made his LPO debut with a curious programme. The Elgar "Introduction and Allegro" for string quartet and string orchestra was a very pleasant surprise, played with such clinical classical grace that sounded totally un-Elgar. It was followed by a sensitive, pristine and perpetually colourful performance of the evocative but rarely performed John Ireland "Piano Concerto" played by Piers Lane. It was BREATHTAKING. The joyful first half was complimented by the fiery emotional rollercoaster that was Walton's "Symphony No. 1". The brass players must have hated Walton, for the non-stop blasts, but what sensational performance overall. The sumptuous closing moments sent chills down my spine. A very thoroughly successful debut of Andrew Manze. We should hear more from him. It was a shame the hall was only half full, but that meant I got full impact of the music even though I sat at the very back of RFH.
This entry was originally published in my private Instagram account.
13 February, 2015
Dutilleux: Correspondances; Ravel: L'Enfant et les Sortilèges (Philharmonia / Salonen)
12th February, 2015
Royal Festival Hall, London, United Kingdom
DUTILLEUX Correspondances
RAVEL Piano Concerto
RAVEL L'Enfant et les Sortilèges
Barbara Hannigan (soprano / La Princesse)
Mitsuko Uchida (piano)
Chloé Briot (soprano: L'Enfant)
Elodie Méchain (alto: La Mère/ La Tasse chinoise / La Libellule)
Andrea Hill (mezzo soprano: La Bergère /Un Pâtre / l'Ecureuil / La Chatte)
Omo Bello (soprano: La Pastourelle / La Chauve-Souris / La Chouette)
Sabine Devieilhe (soprano: Le Feu / Le Rossignol)
Jean-Sébastien Bou (baritone: L'Horloge / Le Chat)
François Piolino (tenor: La Théière / Le Petit Vieillard (aka l'Arithmétique) / La Rainette)
Nicolas Courjal (bass: Le Fauteuil / L'Arbre)
Philharmonia Voices (Shepherds, Shepherdesses, Frogs, Animals, Trees, Settle (Le Blanc), Sofa (Le Canapé), Ottoman (Le Pouf), Wicker chair, Numbers (Les Chiffres))
Irina Brown (director)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor)
Massive sonic feast: Barbara Hannigan singing Dutilleux's "Correspondances", Mitsuko Uchida playing Ravel's "Piano Concerto" and Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted a semi-staged performance of Ravel's "L'Enfant et les Sortilèges". Dutilleux's music is always sumptuous but always too short - by the time we got into the mood of the music it was all over. I have never heard the Ravel G major this muscular, and it was surprising that it came from Dame Mitsuko. The clarinet messed up regally (missed a high note in the most embarrassing and glaring manner) and shook the first movement up a bit, but the team picked up nicely again. The Ravel one-act opera was uneventful to start with, but turned lush as it went along. The final chorale was a nice discovery and made me wonder if Ravel would be a great choral composer if he had tried. Also, Simon Rattle was right this morning - London needs a new concert hall. The sounds at the RFH balcony was way too thin. It was an enjoyable concert though, worth running up six flights of stairs to get there on time.
This entry was originally published in my private Instagram account.
Royal Festival Hall, London, United Kingdom
DUTILLEUX Correspondances
RAVEL Piano Concerto
RAVEL L'Enfant et les Sortilèges
Barbara Hannigan (soprano / La Princesse)
Mitsuko Uchida (piano)
Chloé Briot (soprano: L'Enfant)
Elodie Méchain (alto: La Mère/ La Tasse chinoise / La Libellule)
Andrea Hill (mezzo soprano: La Bergère /Un Pâtre / l'Ecureuil / La Chatte)
Omo Bello (soprano: La Pastourelle / La Chauve-Souris / La Chouette)
Sabine Devieilhe (soprano: Le Feu / Le Rossignol)
Jean-Sébastien Bou (baritone: L'Horloge / Le Chat)
François Piolino (tenor: La Théière / Le Petit Vieillard (aka l'Arithmétique) / La Rainette)
Nicolas Courjal (bass: Le Fauteuil / L'Arbre)
Philharmonia Voices (Shepherds, Shepherdesses, Frogs, Animals, Trees, Settle (Le Blanc), Sofa (Le Canapé), Ottoman (Le Pouf), Wicker chair, Numbers (Les Chiffres))
Irina Brown (director)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor)
Massive sonic feast: Barbara Hannigan singing Dutilleux's "Correspondances", Mitsuko Uchida playing Ravel's "Piano Concerto" and Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted a semi-staged performance of Ravel's "L'Enfant et les Sortilèges". Dutilleux's music is always sumptuous but always too short - by the time we got into the mood of the music it was all over. I have never heard the Ravel G major this muscular, and it was surprising that it came from Dame Mitsuko. The clarinet messed up regally (missed a high note in the most embarrassing and glaring manner) and shook the first movement up a bit, but the team picked up nicely again. The Ravel one-act opera was uneventful to start with, but turned lush as it went along. The final chorale was a nice discovery and made me wonder if Ravel would be a great choral composer if he had tried. Also, Simon Rattle was right this morning - London needs a new concert hall. The sounds at the RFH balcony was way too thin. It was an enjoyable concert though, worth running up six flights of stairs to get there on time.
This entry was originally published in my private Instagram account.
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