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LPO: Jan Lisieki plays Beethoven (Susan Elkin reviews)

LPO: Jan Lisiecki plays Beethoven – Southbank Centre, London

Reviewer: Susan Elkin

Photo of The Reviews Hub - LondonThe Reviews Hub – LondonApril 13, 2025

0 2 minutes read
795770c6 Lisiecki Mendelssohn 2018 12 0086 1600 Christoph Kostlin
 Jan Lisiecki_ Image by Christoph Köstlin

Conductor: Tarmo Peltokoski

Piano: Jan Lisieski

This concert comprises Beethoven sandwiched with Sibelius, starting with the latter’s Phojola’s Daughter which is probably new to most of the audience in the packed Royal Festival Hall. It’s a tone poem inspired by an ancient Finnish story. This performance provides a rather good cello solo over growling percussion to set the scene and leans on the harp, which represents a spinning wheel. The final fade out from cellos, seated for once in the traditional position, at the end is impressive. As he shows many times in this concert, conductor Tarmo Peltokoski is very good at coaxing the quietest possible pianissimi from his players.

Then it is reduced forces and the usual fuss with furniture to position the piano for Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no 5 “Emperor” and Jan Lisiecki, who is very much the star of the evening. He is a highly charismatic young soloist from Canada who looks like a poised Greek god and whose body language makes it clear that he feels every nuance of the music even when he’s not playing. It is almost as if he were conducting from the keyboard. He and Peltokoski give a spirited account of the opening allegro with that all-essential blend of Beethovenian grandiloquence and lightness. The orchestra does a fine job too with some exceptionally fine bassoon work in the passage leading to the fugal descending scales.

The second movement – with muted strings – is slow even for an adagio but the tempo enables Lisiecki to deliver a tenderly controlled conversation between orchestra and piano. Then comes arguably the most magical moment in the entire Beethoven oeuvre: the link between the second and third movements done here with great elegance before Lisiecki dances off into the joyous sunny rondo, fingers flying and all the orchestral interjections carefully balanced especially during the sustained piano trills. It isn’t quite together in the final bars but by then we’re on a high and it doesn’t matter much.

After the interval, we get Sibelius’ Symphony No. 2, one of the most approachable (and playable) of all the Sibelius symphonies. It’s full of heavy brass, tense string work and big climactic melodies which evoke Finland and its political struggles so colourfully, Highlights of this pleasing performance include splendid trombone playing, sensitive timp work, warm and incisive pizzicato, a beautiful oboe solo, a dramatic final minute and some very effective general pauses – another of Peltokoski’s strengths.

Reviewed on 12 April 2025

The Reviews Hub Score  4*

Drama and elegance

REVIEW: SUPERSONIC MAN by Chris Burgess at Southwark Playhouse until 3 May 2025

Susan Elkin • 12 April 2025

‘Moving, evocative, funny and plausible’ ★★★★

Like most critics I approach anything enthusiastically labelled “new musical” with sceptical caution. This show, however, proved a pleasant surprise not least because it has a very powerful but plausible story at its heart. Add into the mix the talents of five richly accomplished, triple threat performers and some decent music and you have something quite impressive.

Adam (Dylan Aiello) and Darryl (Dominic Sullivan) are a gay couple living in Brighton. They are professionally successful as a journalist and teacher respectively and deeply committed to each other. They are also very fit and the action opens in a rigorous gym. Then disaster strikes in the form of Adam’s diagnosis with Motor Neurone Disease. Chris Burgess’s plot is inspired by the real life story of Peter Scott Morgan, a gay man whose fiercely pro-active resistance to MND featured in 2020 Channel Four documentary.

Well, I have personal experience of being the spouse/carer to someone with a terminal diagnosis although our circumstances were, obviously, different. But my own background means that my heart goes out to Darryl who tries so very hard to be positive, practical and supportive while also grappling with devastating grief. Dominic Sullivan more than nails the all-too-recognisable angst, loneliness and sometimes sheer frustrated anger because, like most sick people, Adam is pretty difficult. It’s a fine performance.

Dylan Aiello makes Adam a totally believable character too. He’s funny except when terror strikes and he sees his life being snatched from him as he has to use first crutches, then a walking frame and finally a wheelchair. But the journalist in him, supported by friend and PR expert Ben (James Lowrie – good multi-roler) agrees to an intrusive, comically insensitive TV documentary. It too is an immaculately observed performance as he ricochets from horror, fear, fury, bitterness and despair.

Two women Jude St James and Mali Wen Davies play their friends Ruth and Shaz along with a whole raft of minor characters and they’re both excellent. Davies, in particular, is a larger than life, very funny character actor with a terrific toolkit of accents and an unusually good singing voice for musical theatre.

Chris Burgess’s music (orchestration and musical direction by Aaron Clingham) is woven into the plot integrally so that characters drop almost imperceptibly in and out of song which becomes part of the dialogue as does Philip Joel’s lively choreography. The diction is crystal clear too which helps a lot with the story telling. It all feels perfectly natural and convincing. It’s even relatively tuneful and I left the theatre humming one of the final melodies which is pretty unusual these days on a first hearing.

Despite Adam’s controversial decision to have several vital organs (bladder, stomach and more) pre-emptively removed with a view to overcoming the disease with modern technology there’s only one way this piece can end, despite the dreams. And that’s nicely done too.

This is evocative musical theatre with legs and, I hope, a future. Catch it if you can.

SUPERSONIC MAN

Writer and director: Chris Burgess

LAMCO productions

Southwark Playhouse, Borough

9 April – 3 May

BOX OFFICE https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/supersonic-man/

The Company

Dylan Aiello

Adam

James Lowrie

ben

Jude St James

Ruth

Dominic Sullivan

Darryl

Mali Wen Davies

Shaz

Chris Burgess Writer/Director

Aaron Clingham Musical Director

Steven Edis Musical Arranger

Philip Joel Choreographer

David Shields Designer

Richard Lambert Lighting Designer

Angie Lawrence Production Assistant

Kevin Wilson PR

Steve Caplin Graphic Designer

This review was first published by London Pub Theatre Magazine.

https://www.londonpubtheatres.com/review-supersonic-man-by-chris-burgess-at-southwark-playhouse-until-3-may-2025

Centenary Gala: Messiaen’s Turangalila Symphony

Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra

Conductor: Joanna MacGregor

Piano: Joseph Havlat

Ondes martenot: Cynthia Millar

Brighton Dome

13 April 2025

 

You have to hand it to BPO. This gargantuan work doesn’t get out much because the enormous forces it requires make it prohibitively expensive to stage. What better way, then, for BPO to make a grand celebratory statement than to perform the ten movement, 80 minute Turangalila Symphony as the gala final of its centenary year?

All credit to BPO’s music director Joanna MacGregor who programmed it and originally intended to play the piano part. Instead she conducted it in place of Sian Edwards and brought in  the excellent Joseph Havlat as solo pianist. Versatile flexibility is the name of the game.

This would have been a good concert to take a musically inclined child to so that he or she could see, hear and identify a spectacular range of unusual instruments. Nine percussionists is quite something in a piece which is effectively a massive scale concerto for piano and ondes. I had to Google the latter before the concert started: it’s an early electronic instrument played on keyboards whose sound comes from passing a loop over wires. In the hands of ondist, Cynthia Millar it makes an ethereal, haunting sound especially when whistling descending glissandi are set against Messiaen’s jazzy rhythms and col legno strings in the second movement and evocatively topping the love song melody in the fourth movement.

Other high spots in this performance included the five percussionists with their own rhythmic melody in the seventh movement plus a beautiful cello solo and the grandiloquent passion, of which MacGregor is clearly not afraid, in the filmic eighth movement. And at the very end we got the most sensational, triumphant sustained final chord I’ve heard in a very long time. And a word of praise for the wood block player who is kept busy through most of this work and does a fine job.

Well played as it was, Messiaen is pretty impenetrable and not everyone’s cup of tea. Although there were evidently many cognecenti in the audience, the hall was not full and a surprising number of people slipped out quietly long before the piece was over. The woman in front of me was knitting – yes knitting! – which I’ve never seen before at a classical music concert.

A bold and brave choice then, and atmospherically appropriate for the occasion but BPO must always be careful not to alienate its existing audience members in its quest for new ones. It’s not an easy balance to get right and I shall be interested to see the programmes for the 2025/6, 101st season which we are promised will be announced soon.

Chasing Hares

Sonali Bhattacharyya

Directed by Krishmeela Rittoo

Tower Theatre

 

Star rating 3

 

Bhattacharyya’s play depicts two generations of a family resisting exploitation first in Calcutta and then in London.

Prab (Sol Sarwar) is a sewing machine worker with a wife and baby and a talent for story-telling and play writing. His boss Devish (Salim Sharif), along with his girl friend  Chellam (Vaishnavi CG),  “befriends” him, shows interest in Prab’s play and finds him a better flat but of course, beneath the veneer he’s ruthless. Eventually Prab’s wife Kajol (Amirah Mannan) escapes to London leaving Prab to face whatever Devesh does to him. There’s a framing device whereby we first see Prab with his grown up daughter, Amba (Sadiyah Ahmed) and her own baby 20 years later in London and that’s also where the play ends and we realise … well, no spoilers. Enough to say that Amba is now fighting the shabby treatment of Indian workers in England, encouraged by her father’s example in Calcutta.

Director, Krishmeela Rittoo makes good use of Tower Theatre’s triangular playing space and Freya Alexander’s set combines a stage right office for Devesh and a crowded home – bed, sewing machine etc – for Prab at stage left. Much of the action takes place literally between the two worlds.

Salim Sharif, making his UK debut, after years of theatrical training and work in Oman and Mumbai, is outstanding as Devesh. He finds glittering charisma in this role which he inhabits with total conviction. I hope we see a lot more of his work very soon.

Also excellent is Vaishnavi CG. Hers is a role which develops from self interested flippancy to kind decency and she really makes us believe in Chellam who eventually rumbles Devesh for what he is, leaves him and helps Prab’s wife.

It’s a well crafted piece of theatre and it’s interesting to be taken to a world which is probably unfamiliar to most of the audience.

The Little Prince

Adapted from Antoine de Saint-Exupery by Paul Graves and Angharad Ormond, who also directs

Liminal Space

Cockpit Theatre

 

Star rating: 3.5

 

There is a great deal of charm, talent and expertise in this 75 minute take on Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s 1943 story about an extra-terrestrial child who goes planet-hopping and learns a lot about people on the way.

Thisakya Dias finds the right blend of wistful innocence and forthrightness in the titular Little Prince and, as the role requires, she produces laughter like a peal of bells. Matt Tylianakis, as the aviator, is convincing as a child at play and the improvised light aircraft is a theatrical mini tour de force. Then there’s an ensemble, all adept at physical theatre, each emerging for pleasing cameo roles. I’m fascinated, incidentally, as they draw on the long upstage black board to notice that most of them are left handed. Was it an audition requirement, I wonder jokingly?

It is, inevitably an episodic piece (with a whiff of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) as the Little Prince meets individuals and groups as he travels. Some of them are very short and their messages are pretty didactic and/or cynical. We’re told that heavy drinking is not a good idea, adults should take children seriously, ownership should be communal, vanity is pointless, caterpillars are a prerequisite of butterflies and a lot more.

The lighting and projection is magically effective, however and there’s some nice puppetry. I also admired the imaginative use of all four entrances on to the Cockpit’s central square playing space.

The show is too long though and could usefully drop some of the episodes. Moreover, it may be going over the heads of some of its target audience: presumably  age 5-10ish. There was some very restive boredom behind me.

The Play’s The Thing

William Shakespeare

Performed by Mark Lockyer

Directed by Fiona Laird

Regeneration Theatre

Wilton’s Music Hall and touring

 

Star rating: 5

This one-person take on Hamlet is a phenomenal showcase for Mark Lockyer’s acting talent. One of the most riveting, focused accounts of the play I have ever seen, it is fast paced, accessible, exciting and moving.

Lockyer leaps, often literally, from role to role initially characterising the young Hamlet as a sulky, eyes-down teenager with his hands in his pockets and Claudius as a revoltingly smug politician carefully placing every word with a fake smile. His Polonius is so gloriously obsequious that it put me in mind of Alan Rickman playing slimy Mr Slope in the BBC’s 1982 Barchester Chronicles.

The speed of the shifts, aided by Tim Mitchell’s evocative lighting design, is electrifying from the first moment when Lockyer snaps out of quietly asking the audience to turn off mobile phones to the loud terror of the battlements at Elsinore. The actor, who wears neutral black trousers and casual shirt, and his director Fiona Laird have found simple ways of conveying instant characterisation, at least the first time some someone speaks. As Ophelia, he coyly strokes his imaginary hair. His Rosencrantz/Guildenstern is instantly recognisable as a creep. And he’s a pretty accomplished mime artist so this is a prop-free show.

It’s the voice work, however, which really makes this a special piece of theatre. Goodness knows how he does that throaty growl, like a man in the final stages of emphysema, for the ghost. We also get a higher pitched voice for Ophelia, a spirited vernacular for the grave digger and a lot more. It’s all nicely observed and nuanced but never exaggerated.

The mood switches are impressive too. There’s a lot of weeping – Lockyer is good at that – and his instant rebirth as the insouciant grave digger following a deeply distressed Laertes is one of many remarkable, instant transitions.

The text is an abridged version (90 minutes) of Shakespeare with very occasional single word substitution for 21st century clarity. The willow grows, for example, by the brook rather than “aslant” it in Gertrude’s account of Ophelia’s death. And it works supremely well not least because Lockyer and Laird have found ways of stressing words which usually go unnoticed so that it sounds surprisingly modern. All the famous soliloquies, for example, come over as  spontaneous thought complete with natural pauses.  Moreover, and often related to the fresh interpretation of the lines, they have a gift for finding humour where there isn’t usually any.

This show is also a great feat of stamina. Hamlet is a gruelling role under any circumstances and when you do all the other parts as well it must be extraordinarily taxing. Lockyer does it with only the tiniest breaks – an occasional ten second retreat to stage left shadow to wipe his face and take a swallow of water.

On the night I saw this show there was a subsidiary drama in the form of a front row audience member, text in hand, who apparently wanted to redirect it and kept bobbing up and down and offering brief interjections. Front of house staff tried, to no avail, to ease him out quietly while Lockyer continued undaunted. In the end, half an hour in, the show had to be stopped and the man escorted out. Lockyer bounded after them. Then he returned to the stage, told the audience that he’d spoken to the man and made sure he was “OK” before speaking to the tech people across the audience and announcing where he going from. Then he dropped back into role as if nothing had happened. The whole incident was handled with commensurate, admirable, unruffled professionalism.

Do not miss this show. It runs at Wiltons until 12 April and is touring rurally and regionally this summer.

Borusan Istambul Philharmonic Orchestra

Conductor: Carlo Tenan

Cellist:  Pablo Ferrandez

Cadogan Hall, 08 April 2025

 

This pleasingly wide-ranging concert took us across more than two centuries and several countries. With a Turkish orchestra (part of Cadogan Hall’s Zurich International Orchestra Series) Italian conductor, Spanish soloist and works by German, Austrian, French and Turkish composers, the atmosphere was richly cosmopolitan.

First up was a seriously romantic take on Schubert’s “Unfinished” symphony. It may be very familiar to many of us but my plus-one, who is new to classical music, said she found it very moving – and it was. I really liked the gentle humour is sustaining the horn note on a much  longer pause than usual before the second subject melody and Tenan exaggerated it more at each repeat. He also found great tenderness in the Andante which included some rather beautiful lower string pizzicato and lots of carefully highlighted wind detail, especially oboe.

Moreover I have rarely seen an orchestral player so evidently enjoying every note of the music as principal cello,  Cag Ercag, He smiled at other players, looked back at the principal double bass or across at violas (seated on the outside) to ensure entries were effortlessly together. He really is quite something.

Then came a spirited account of the Cello Concerto no 1 by Saint-Saens with all its virtuosic contrasts. Pablo Ferrandez  (pictured) is a charismatic player who played it with striking purity of sound, plenty of passion, expressive glissandi and an unusually elegant Allegretto. For a complete contrast, and palate cleanser, he played Bach for his encore.

After the interval the orchestra brought in additional percussionists for Nasreddin Hoca Humoresque by Turkish composer Ferit Tuzun and suddenly we had shot forward to 1957. Off-beat rhythms, with kit drum and tambourine packed it with joie de vivre and a strong whiff of Stravinsky.

And so back to the well known fields, birds and weather of Beethoven’s “Pastoral” symphony. It’s not easy to make Beethoven, at his sunniest, sound fresh but with Tenan’s expansively fluid conducting style and his emphasis on dynamic range this account felt both sparky and affectionate without wallowing. The balance in the exposed string sections in the Andante, for instance, was good especially in the busy passages beneath the nicely played bird calls. The storm was as dramatic and graphic as I’ve ever heard it, with terrific timp and piccolo work. And by the time we reached the “Bye Baby Bunting” melody the orchestra was achieving an unusual blend of grandeur and lightness given that this is definitely not a chamber orchestra playing gut strings and trying to adhere to Beethoven’s unlikely metronome markings.

Finally, we got into party mode with an encore by a Turkish composer, Suleyman, which brought back the additional percussionists and created a lively finale, called in English “Change”. Tenan was now batonless and almost everyone on stage was visibly moving to, and having fun with, the powerful rhythms.

 

 

I am not a religious believer. I saw what was, for me, the light when I was eighteen and walked resolutely away from the high (ish) Anglicanism I’d grown up with, and been actively involved in. I have never wavered from the humanist, secular position I took then although the deeply conditioned legacy in my head of Bible knowledge, much of the Book of Common Prayer, psalms, hymns and so on, has often been useful at various levels.

I do, however, do my very best to be respectful of people who take a different view from mine and, provided I steer clear of extremist missionary evangelists, whether they’re on my doorstep or at extended family gatherings, my experience has always been that mutual tolerance is pretty effective.

And of course it goes beyond Christianity. I used to teach richly diverse classes including many very gentle, thoughtful Jews and Muslims along with the occasional Hindu or Buddhist. Today, as I go about my business in multi-cultural London, I meet adults of many persuasions although I’ve always been conscious that I don’t really know much about the faiths which drive them. I have therefore long thought that I should find out more about the Koran and now, at last, I’ve had a go.

I bought and explored Mulana Muhammad Ali‘s translation of the Koran. And I accessed a copy of Michael Cook’s The Koran: A Very Short Introduction. The latter is part of Oxford University Press’s A Very Short Introduction series. Handy pocket sized books, they usually provide a pretty detailed account of the subject in accessible language without patronising or skimping. And this volume is no exception. Cook is Professor in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at University of Princeton.

The Koran is, I learned, a series of verses which devout Muslims believe are the words of Muhammad (c 570-632 AD) who was a channel for God, whom Muslims call Allah. It is therefore, a much later text than other comparable monotheistic texts such as The Bible although it builds on the heritage of prophets such as Abraham. It reads like an instruction manual or constitution. All the rules about fasting, fighting, divorce and other advice for life are clearly set out.  Much of it  –  instructions about love, kindness, decency, modesty, worship patterns and the like – doesn’t seem to differ greatly from Judaism and Christianity or, indeed from the generally kind humanism I more or less try to live by.

Statements such as: “And your God is One God; there is no God but He! He is the Beneficent, the Merciful” (Q2 v38), for example. sounds very much like the first commandment: “Thou shalt have no other Gods but me” as delivered to/by Moses in the book of Exodus.

Famously the Koran condemns usury and usurers and “causes charity to prosper” (Q2 276.) It also, acknowledges Jesus as a prophet but not as Messiah and argues that he was illegally put to death. At the same time it repeatedly refutes the beliefs of Jews and Christians in a way which doesn’t seem quite consistent. It is fascinating stuff.

Michael Cook meanwhile is very good on the way the Koran evolved and was (and is) disseminated. Is it truth or dogma? What exactly is “scripture” anyway given the status and authority it acquires within communities? And, of course, like the Bible, it can be read by most of us only in translation so how can we be sure we are not being fed a distorted interpretation?

This was an interesting and rewarding exercise. I’m fully aware that I’m only scratching the surface but I learned a lot. Moreover, it’s as well to remind ourselves occasionally that real Islam, as practised daily by nearly 2 billion moderate people all over the world, is a very far cry from terrorism and the Taliban whatever the media would prefer us to believe.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: This is Motherland by Nikki May