Intermezzo

Bryntervention

There was a surprise in store at the end of tonight's Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra concert at the Royal Festival Hall.

As Gustavo Dudamel returned to the stage to take yet another round of applause, he was accompanied by a statuesque figure in a horned helmet and eyepatch with a dead sheep slung around his neck.

Their mambo days now apparently behind them, the no-longer-youth orchestra encored with Abendlich strahlt der Sonne Auge from Das Rheingold - the sheepskin-draped figure revealed as Bryn Terfel.

I can report that he's loud enough to drown out what looked like 140 musicians. And he knows all the words. All good news of course for those of us lucky enough to have tickets for autumn's Ring cycles at Covent Garden.

Victory for Venezuela - Gustavo Dudamel leads Simon Bolivar Orchestra to a knockout win

Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar / Dudamel - Royal Festival Hall, 18 April 2009 

This, the last concert in the Simón Bolívar Orchestra's South Bank residency, was by far the hottest ticket in town - sold out for months, and tickets going for hundreds on Ebay. Tan Dun was apparently being denied a VIP comp as I went in, on the grounds that there simply weren't any seats left. Those lucky enough to snag a ticket were as mixed a bunch as you'd find anywhere. Youngsters, oldsters, MPs, Essex princesses, Russian robber barons and their collagen-gobbed molls, American exchange students, Viktoria Mullova, ladies who lunch, lads who drink.

But the most important guest, sitting bang in the centre of the stalls, was José Antonio Abreu, the tiny, fragile, saintly-looking founder of El Sistema, who quite rightly received a standing ovation before the concert began. Amidst all the point-missing press, it's easy to forget that the Venezuelan project is not about training musicians or even nurturing individual musical talent but about changing the lives of the most deprived children. If practising four hours a day six days a week happens to turn them into great performers, that's just a welcome side effect.

The programme played to their strengths, with a first half of three short Latin American works - the robustly rhythmic Sensemaya by Silvestre Revueltas, Antonio Estevez's dreamy, impressionistic Mediodia en el llano and the most identifiably Venezuelan of them all, Santa Cruz de Pacairigua by Evencio Castellanos.

If every performance of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring  was as raw and visceral as this one, there'd be a riot every time it was played. It was not subtle, the bursts of brutal frenetic energy played out at maximum volume. What it displayed was how brilliantly the orchestra work together. Like their opening Tchaikovsky symphony last week, this is an intricately-interwoven work in which none of the individual parts taken in isolation really make sense, so it needs what it got - an orchestra who can play together as one, attuned and responsive to each other.

Encores, of course there were encores! Starting with Batuque by Oscar Lorenzo Fernândez, a mad dance that spins faster and faster and faster - but never quite out of control - until it collapses in a heap.

Elgar's Nimrod variation was the surprise second encore - beautifully played, absolutely straight, with repeats. An enormously touching tribute to their temporarily-adopted city.

There was a brief blackout while the orchestra swapped their dark jackets for the bright bombers stashed under their chairs, and then a reprise of the Ginastera and Bernstein encores from Tuesday's performance. Only this time even crazier, with violinists dancing on chairs while they played, horns spinning and who knows what tossed high in the air and deftly recaptured.

The audience went insane, with loads rushing down to the front. Was it just to try and nab one of the Venezuela jackets and caps that the orchestra were ripping off and tossing into the crowd? Or was it years of pent-up classical-going frustration - no talking, no coughing, no clapping till it's over - finally being allowed to manifest itself? 

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Venezuelan invasion begins - Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra hit London

Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar / Dudamel - Royal Festival Hall, 14 April 2009 

After their amazing, unforgettable 2007 Proms concert, Gustavo Dudamel and the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra were back in town to light up the South Bank for the first night of a short residency.

They'd won the game as soon as they stepped on stage, judging by the applause. It's an enormous band - twelve double basses, at least forty violins - but they all squeezed on somehow.

Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra was the opener, a clever choice that demonstrates clearly that the orchestra can handle more than just fiesta music, as well as providing plenty of individual chances to shine. The woodwinds were particularly impressive, their unerringly accurate intonation a rare delight south of the river, but the whole orchestra was immaculately-drilled. The size of the band provides a depth and richness of sound few conventional symphony orchestras can match, but it could also prove unwieldy. Not so in the expert hands of Gustavo Dudamel - even the quicksilver twists and turns of the last movement were crisp and fleet.

He drove Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony relentlessly.  It was exciting, edge-of-seat stuff, but at the same time I would have appreciated more subtlety here and there - the first movement's woodwind slivers airier, like glints of light on water, the brass fanfares more stately and monumental. The potential is there, and these musicians have grasped the most important lesson of all, which is how to listen and how to play as part of a greater whole. All they need now is the age and experience to hone their talents to the final degree.

The standing ovation erupted on the last note, maybe even before, and the lights dipped for a quick onstage costume change. Off came the DJs, on went the famed Venezuela jackets, and they launched into their party-piece Ginastera and Bernstein, complete with dancing violinists, twirling horns, and recklessly juggled drum sticks. The audience went wild, and wilder still as jackets were daintily removed and flung out into eagerly awaiting hands.

This orchestra doesn't produce the most refined playing you'll ever hear, but that's so far from the point it's irrelevant. What it does - and what no other orchestra right now seems able to do - is simply to bring people together in the joy of music. Simple, but not easy, and nobody does it better.

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u want more photos? Turn teh page..............

What's on in London in April

Easter means chocolate, rite? Not at the Royal Opera House, who are serving up a scary brew of gypsy curses and unpredictable tenors as the ancient Il trovatore is resuscitated from 13 April with Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Sondra Radvanovsky, Mikhail Petrenko and Roberto Alagna.

More Bob on 15 April: 'In Conversation with Roberto Alagna' will reveal what it's like being booed off at La Scala, how to marry a vampire and the exact location of the Sonny Crockett outlet store.

Another venerable Moshinsky production opens on 27 April, the dusty dungeons'n'dragons Lohengrin, in possibly its last ever run. Simon O'Neill shares the title role with Johan Botha, Edith Haller makes her ROH debut, and Semyon Bychkov conducts. 

ENO decamp to the Young Vic this month for Katie Mitchell's multimedia assault on Purcell, After Dido: 

"After Dido is an original film and theatre performance directed by Katie Mitchell and the team who made the National Theatre's Waves and some trace of her. It tells the story of four Londoners on the night of a live anniversary radio broadcast of Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas, and is created by an ensemble of singers and actors using cameras, lights and sound effects, whilst the full score of the opera is performed live."

I like that last bit. Comforting.

April is Passion-packed - at the Barbican Riccardo Chailly and the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig present the St Matthew Passion on 5 April with Thomas Quasthoff and Hanno Mϋller-Brachmann, as do the Orchestra of the Age Of Enlightenment at the Royal Festival Hall on 9 April with Mark Padmore and Roderick Williams.

The Barbican's mini Lang Lang fest begins on 20 April when he joins the LSO for the evening. A recital and various smaller-scale events at St Lukes follow.

Meanwhile, the Royal Festival Hall hosts Gustavo Dudamel and the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra on 13 April, with a second performance on 18 April. In between, the orchestra's various ensembles perform (without Dudamel). Returns only for most of these, but there are free rehearsal tickets available on 13 and 14 April if you can get there in the morning, and on 17 April there's a free performance by the brass ensemble at 6pm.

The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment present another of their occasional and agreeably relaxed late night concerts in the Queen Elizabeth Hall on 23 April at 10pm. Ed Gardner conducts Mozart and Haydn, and tickets are a positive giveaway at £8, or £4 for students.

Gabriela Montero - here's one she didn't prepare earlier

Edinburgh Festival: Gabriela Montero - Queens Hall and The Hub, 12 August 2008

Gabriela Montero has been enjoying a fair amount of attention recently for her improvisatory abilities. But the first of her two concerts at the Edinburgh Festival was an opportunity to see how she'd cope with the standard repertoire in a programme mixing Bach, Chopin, Debussy, Schumann and Liszt.

The 11am start was cruel, and she confessed halfway through that she's 'not a morning person'. But the problem lies deeper than that. The pianist is a sort of translator who has to communicate with both the composer and the crowd. Montero has no problems on the second count - she's a warm, engaging person, sensitive and responsive to her audience. But connecting with the score was another matter.

From the first piece to the last, I had no idea what she was trying to say. The first half was delivered in a consistent cautious mezzoforte, the second thunderingly loud. Everything was inflected with a seemingly random rubato. Pedalling was obedient to the rhythm rather than the phrase. If it wasn't for the sheer technical difficulty of much of her programme, I'd have assumed she was playing it through for the first time. 

Her physical abilities were in no doubt, with tremendous strength, control and articulation apparent across all techniques, and surprisingly few fingering errors considering the technical challenges. I did wonder if she'd simply not practised enough or really thought the scores through. Whatever the reason, the results were not impressive.

There are artists whose gimmicky presentation masks a genuine interpretive talent (I'm thinking of the likes of Lang Lang and Fazil Say) but on this basis I'm not convinced Montero is one of them. Significantly, the only time I sensed any musicality was in the encore, an improvisation based on Flower of Scotland.

Her second show was an all-improvisation late nighter at the Hub in front of a packed crowd. Half of us had belted uphill in the rain after the late-running Dudamel concert at the Usher Hall, and wanted something special to compensate for having to skip the encore.

Here, Montero was in her element. Calling out for themes from the audience, she gave us Yesterday in the style of Piazzolla, a boogie woogie Night & Day and the Alle Menschen werden Brüder bit from the end of Beethoven's 9th in the style of Rachmaninov or perhaps Legrand - a fallback style she slipped into for a couple of folk tunes too. Less successful was a Bach-like take on a snatch of the Moonlight Sonata, where she set herself an inescapable circular trap.

It was undemanding and entertaining, and at a technical level, I think the most skilled improvising I've heard.  But I think I'll do without a second helping.

 

This our tempo! Gustavo Dudamel pwns Edinburgh, pwns Proms

Edinburgh Festival: Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra / Dudamel - Usher Hall, 12 August 2008

Prom 37: Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra / Dudamel / Martin Fröst - Royal Albert Hall, 13 August 2008

Edinburgh:
Copland Appalachian Spring
Ravel La Valse
Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique

London:
Ravel La Valse 
Anders Hillborg Clarinet Concerto (Peacock Tales)
Berlioz Symphonie fantastique

What proves that the Dudamel effect is not just the creation of a vampiric media, rejuvenating their tired old classical music coverage with fresh young blood, is that he achieves astonishing results with every orchestra he shakes his stick at.

Here was a case in point. The Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra - professional, refined, elegant - and about as exciting as a secondhand Volvo. But for two nights in a row - and with a long, tiring train ride (and I know, I did it myself) in between - they set an audience alight with their passion and fervour.

In Edinburgh on Tuesday, Appalachian Spring was sprung with the chill vigour of a sleigh ride. La Valse skirled and lurched drunkenly. The Symphonie Fantastique was delivered with the uninhibited inyerface brashness that for once could make you appreciate why it so scandalised and horrified its original audiences. Berlioz would have wept with joy.

I was left with an agonising decision - whether to hang around for an encore, or dash off through the rainy night to my next appointment (a Gabriela Montero late night recital, of which more later). I escaped, and found later I'd missed the two encores the ecstatic audience had demanded.

But luckily there was no such dilemma on Proms night. After the final wild fugue of the Fantastique, and the thunderous applause, the temperature was lowered with the sombre, hymn-like Sangen by by Swedish composer Stenhammar.

And then two minutes later the roof blew off the Albert Hall with a Latin stomp, Tico Tico, that rivalled the Simon Bolivar Orchestra's rendition at last year's Proms. Complete with the never-before-seen spectacle of the middle-aged sensible Swedish brass section tossing their jackets aside and leaping to their feet with their horns in the air.

But there had already been one encore. This came at the end of the first half. Martin Fröst's staggeringly virtuosic reading of Hillborg's (he turned up at the end to take a bow) Clarinet Concerto (complete with masked dance-mime and spooky lighting) was followed by a klezmer-style arrangement that showed off his skills in yet another light. Is he the best clarinettist in the world right now? Probably.

It should be pointed out, for those who care about such things, that I was sitting inches from the front at the Edinburgh concert, the sort of distance where you can hear every violin individually, and there was not a note out of place in the string section.

Sitting just behind the orchestra in the choir stalls at the Prom, I was impressed too by the calibre of the percussion playing. The whole programme was a mighty test of percussion skills, from the fiendish toms in the Hillborg to the massive bells at the end of the Fantastique. Woodwind intonation varied, but you couldn't accuse Dudamel (as some have done)of not knowing his technical stuff.

The Prom is available on the BBC iPlayer, here, for the next seven days. And the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra have a blog  - in Swedish - with some great photos, here.

Edinburgh:

Gustavo Dudamel and Martin Frost:

 

Martin Frost:

Swedish brass do a twirl:

 

  

Venezuelans invade Albert Hall, Prommers surrender

Prom 48: Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela/Dudamel - Royal Albert Hall, 19 August 2007

Shostakovich Symphony No. 10 in E minor Bernstein West Side Story - Symphonic Dances Latin American works including music by Revueltas and Ginastera

Tonight's concert presents a tough act for the rest of the Proms season to follow. It's hard to see how anyone could top it for musicality, intensity and sheer excitement. Dudamel simply grabbed the audience and held us in his thrall.

Shostakovich's tricky 10th was a brave choice to open with. Its incredibly subtle first movement is simply boring in the wrong hands. But Dudamel made it ebb and flow - verrrry slowly - with sensitivity and immaculate technical control. He allowed in space for reflection, time to appreciate its delicate colours.

In the violent second movement we saw the full extent of the orchestra's powers as they thundered through it. With around 200 members, it was a mighty sound. And it drew out something very special and different about this orchestra. They really feel the music, physically, right down to their toes, as they play. They rocked and swayed like sailors on a stormy sea, from violins to basses, in counterpoint to Dudamel's muppet flailings.

This brief and savage interlude, painted in strong colours and bold lines, was followed by a return to introspection in the third movement, cryptic and fascinating.

It was a mature and complete reading that would have been astonishing from any orchestra, let alone such a young one.

The pace did drop a little with the Bernstein that followed the interval. Although this has its technical challenges, it is at heart banal in comparison with the Shostakovich. What little passion it has is displayed neatly on the surface, with little to unearth by repeated listening. The orchestra's response was efficient rather than intense.

The pace picked up again with the Latin American works which followed. Moncayo's Huapango and Ginastera's Estancia had flair, rhythm and above all, passion. If Dudamel's style can be characterised by extremes, then what he brought here was sheer joy.

The response had to be nothing less than a foot-stamping standing ovation, which produced the first of several storming encores. But first, the orchestra discarded the black jackets they'd arrived in:

in favour of some cunningly secreted and rather more colourful ones:

They managed some well drilled instrument-waving moves from the Tito Puente school while they were playing, and raised their instruments for applause at the end:

Although the audience would have been happy for them to go on all night, they called an end to proceedings by peeling off their jackets and tossing them into the crowd.

One got stuck in the cat's cradle of BBC recording wires:

and one found an unlikely home on a senior prommer:

(A few more photos below)

*Update - some BBC photos here.

 

 

More Padmore please (and more Venezuelan brass while you're at it)

Prom 46: Mark Padmore/The English Concert - Cadogan Hall
Prom 47: City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra - Royal Albert Hall
Prom 48: LSO with Alina Ibragimova/Venezuelan Brass Ensemble - Royal Albert Hall, 18 August 2007

If you had Wayne Rooney on your team, would you take him off at half time? It seemed odd to fill the second half of the English Concert's programme with Handel's overexposed Water Music when Mark Padmore (a mere six songs in the first half) was on such winning form.

Not that there was anything wrong with the English Concert's instrumental pieces, all pulled together with a freshness and vitality that even some dodgy horn playing didn't mar. Laurence Cummings' direction from the harpsichord, largely restricted to key moments like rests and rits, was minimal but effective.

But it was Mark Padmore's few contributions that really made this concert. He miraculously managed to present the quaint humour in three Arne settings of Shakespeare in an entirely non-excruciating way. And in his three Handel arias - a strongly theatricalised Total eclipse, His mighty arm and Waft her, angels - he thoroughly inhabited each character. Padmore's Handel is secure and precise, each syllable individually considered and perfectly coloured. At least there was the small consolation of an encore of Tune your harps, beautifully arranged for pizzicato strings and stunning oboe from Marcel Ponseele.

Talking of colour, the English Concert's choice of stage wear, individually selected but all in harmonious shades of purple, is a most effective compromise between the fussiness of full frack and the sloppy casual:

Over at the Albert Hall, despite the fine Jesus of Alan Opie and Mary Magdalene of Catherine Wyn-Rogers (left), I found the CBSO's performance of Elgar's The Apostles severely hard going.

It's a flawed and over-long work that wasn't helped by conductor Oramo's even-handedness of dynamics and tempo. Only in the final Ascension movement was there any real propulsive energy.

The late night prom which followed, a double header of the LSO followed by the Venezuelan Brass Ensemble, replacing the advertised Vengerov programme, was far more lively.

Conducted by a hyperactive François-Xavier Roth, the LSO positively motored through two short Piazzolla pieces and a couple of Coplands. Who knew they had hot tamale souce in their veins? Alina Ibragimova's solos in Piazzolla's La Mufa and Todo Buenos Aires were deft and sensitive, despite a mere four days preparation. 

The LSO made way for the Venezuelan Brass Ensemble, a band of about 50 drawn from the ranks of the Simón Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, who are performing tomorrow night. In a variety of configurations, sometimes switching to percussion instruments, they displayed great balance and teamwork. They started with rather more slow and sombre work than I felt like hearing after the LSO's earlier programme, but always with an impressive precision. They really blossomed when they upped the tempo for pieces like Tico Tico.

They packed extra energy into the couple of pieces that were composed by ensemble members. These surprisingly made more of an impression than some of the better known works.

There's absolutely no need to make any allowance for the fact that all of the musicians are under 20 - any full-time, adult, professional band would be thrilled to play as well as this. Their blistering, uninhibited finale of I Got Rhythm got them a completely deserved standing ovation, rewarded with an immediate encore.

One thing puzzled me - the ensemble is reportedly open to all, but I only noticed a couple of girls there. That's fewer than the LSO have, fewer even than male bastions like the Berlin Phil - I wonder why?