Intermezzo

Mitsuko Uchida making sense of Mozart

Chamber Orchestra of Europe/Mitsuko Uchida - Royal Festival Hall, 5 November 2007

Did Mitsuko Uchida pick half and leave the orchestra to pick the rest? It might explain the rather odd programme, chunks of Strauss and Wagner sandwiched between two of Mozart's most popular piano concertos. Or perhaps the idea was to show that this small but perfectly formed orchestra can turn its hand to just about anything.

The conductor-free format saw Uchida guide the orchestra from her piano stool, back to audience, for the opener, Mozart's Piano Concerto no.19. With light fluttering gestures, she coaxed a performance as crisp and weightless as her ice blue organdy jacket, and her own featherweight grace was blemished only by some slightly smudgy articulation in the left hand.

I'd love to be able to say Uchida's clothing choices reflect her music -- they don't, but the flowing unstructured forms, tonal palette and textural contrasts do at least display a consistent aesthetic - tonight in the form of a pale ruched cami and loose slate sik velvet pants.

Off went the piano and Uchida as the strings were left to it for Strauss's Metamorphosen. Under the invisible guidance of leader Alexander Janiczek, we witnessed the phenomenon of twenty-three musicians linked as telepathically as a quartet, one single body exhaling Strauss's great collective sigh.

After the interval came Wagner's Siegfried Idyll. How pleasant it was to sit back and enjoy this Siegfried-digest without the distraction of a hefty tenor bellowing and galumphing around the stage. The sheer finesse of every single musician's performance, not to mention the perfection of tone and ensemble, were a delight rarely heard in these parts. For once, I appreciated the hall's new acoustic. At least in the centre, and aided by the perfect intonation of every single player, it rendered every note crystal clear.

Uchida and her piano were wheeled back on to finish with Mozart's Piano Concerto no.20, the handsome to no.19's pretty.  Uchida painted it dark and brooding with a devilish smile, almost more Beethovien than Beethoven. The odd-looking programme at last made sense.

Thomas Ades does le French thang in Edinburgh

Chamber Orchestra of Europe/Thomas Ades/Toby Spence - Usher Hall, Edinburgh, 14 August 2007
Edinburgh International Festival

Tonight's frenchy programme covered 300 years of music from fabuleux to fromage, though in the event it became hard to tell which was which.

The venerable Rameau was the starter. I've always found it hard to muster up the same enthusiasm for Rameau as I have for Couperin, and I couldn't help wondering if Thomas Ades and the COE felt the same. They exhumed the corpse of the overture from Les Indes Galantes but failed to breathe any life into it. It was as English as steamed pudding and just as soggy.

Ades's own Three Studies from Couperin surprisingly failed to pick up the pace, lacking the sparkle and drive of the UK premiere (Ades with the COE again) just four months ago. The scoring is intriguing, but was obscured by an odd dynamic balance, perhaps intentional. Whatever, it failed to dazzle in the way his other work has.

The shift into top gear finally came with Berlioz's Les Nuits d'Été and Toby Spence. Spence began tentatively and selected a different tempo from the orchestra for the opening Villanelle. This was something Ades failed to control, and a problem that re-occured in the final L'Île Inconnue.

However in the second song, Le Spectre de la Rose, both singer and orchestra finally blossomed. Toby Spence has all the basics and more - a fine ringing tone, secure notes, immaculate breath control and terrific projection. When he put it all together, the results were impressive. Although nerves crept in a couple more times, most noticeably at the start of Sur les Lagunes, there were more moments of pure gorgeousness. L'Absence in particular, pickily steered by Ades, was perfect in every way.

The animation that the orchestra gathered for the Berlioz returned after the interval for Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin. Ravel's arrangement is characteristically full of colour and detail, every inch of his canvas filled. Although this is at heart a memorial piece, it's also full of grace, wit and optimism, and the COE brought it exuberantly to life.

The closer, Bizet's Symphony in C, continued in this vein. Written when he was just 17, it has all the naive optimism of youth. This adorable froth is derivative, but Bizet pinched so many different ideas (mostly from Gounod) it's never boring. The COE made it crisp and light as a mille-feuille, but never over-sugared, a surprisingly satisfying ending to the evening. It came as a surprise that Ades could pull more out of Bizet (Bizet!) than his own work but sometimes these things just happen, who knows why.

(No photos tonight - I was personally and firmly informed that this means me:)