Good Vibes Music Academy Showcase (Susan Elkin reviews)

Misha Kaploukhii: piano recital

Corn exchange, Newbury

20 May 2024

Part of the Newbury Spring Festival, this Corn Exchange recital was part of the prize for the winner  of the Sheepdrove Piano Competition so nobody knew until the previous day who it was going to be. In the event it was Misha Kaploukhii.  He is 22, from Russia and studying at Royal College of Music. Very talented indeed, he already has a number of prizes and scholarships under his belt.

It was well chosen programme ranging from the richly romantic Chopin to the modernity of Messiaen taking in a bit of operetta along the way.

Well, obviously we can take outstanding technical skill for granted at this level. What distinguished this performance was delicacy of colour in the interpretation. He began with two substantial works:  Chopin’s F Minor Fantasy, Op 49 and Medtner’s Sonata in G minor, Op 22 which took us though a wide range of moods. The delicacy of the ascending runs combined with the lovely left hand weight in the opening section of the Chopin was particularly striking.

Then, played as pair almost without break, we got two Chopin Mazurkas. He did them with plenty of elegance and dance, tempered with a lot of rubato. And so, as a mood changer,  to Grodowsky’s Symphonic Metamorphosis on Die Fledermaus, which is as witty as it is technically demanding. Kaploukhii clearly knows how the deliver the lilt of a Viennese waltz when it’s required.

The concert ended with Listz’s Bagatelle sans tonalite. followed immediately by Messiaen’s Regards XV. La Baiser de L’Enfant Jesus, a pairing which is in effect a musical joke. Listz has fun with discords, impeccably played with delicate charm by Kaploukhii, but this piece is certainly not atonal in the sense that the term was later understood. The Messiaen (for some reason they dimmed the lights at this moment) is mysterious and unsettling with bell-like chord sequences which Kaploukhii made sound very beautiful. He lingered lovingly (daringly?) over the unresolved final chord, letting its harmonics ring out for a much longer time than usual. Fortunately the good folk of Newbury are very well behaved and educated and nobody interrupted with premature applause.

Maidstone Symphony Orchestra

Mote Hall, Maidstone

18 May 2024

It was rather a treat to have, as concert opener, a piece written by an MSO member. Philip Le Bas is principal bassoon and his Yuki-Onna is an imaginative response to an enigmatic Japanese folk tale. Descending scales which escalate texturally lead to lots of crunch brass chords in the first section and I liked the orchestration which included snare drum, two harps and xylophone. Furrowed brows, though, indicated some anxious counting and suggested that this is a pretty challenging piece to play.

Jonathan Leibovitz – with his exceptionally long slim fingers –  is an engaging soloist to watch and it’s good to hear Mozart’s clarinet concerto played on a basset clarinet so that we heard all those delicious low notes as Mozart intended. Leibovitz brought sunny lightness and colourful phrasing to a very familiar work thereby making it feel unexpectedly fresh. The adagio showed star quality in the delivery of one of Mozart’s most mellifluous melodies and he delivered the finale with mercurial charm.

There was no encore because the second half of the concert began with second piece for solo clarinet and orchestra: Debussy’s Première Rhapsodie. The orchestral part is demanding because there’s so little to hang on to but of course Leibovitz’s playing was creamily beautiful. He’s definitely one to watch.

Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra (1944) is an ambitious work of many mood changes delivered here with enthusiastic competence and commitment – although everyone looked tired at the end. The brass section was particular striking in the first movement and there was lovely playing from the woodwind (especially bassoon) in the second. Because it has five movements loosely organised like a palindrome, the concerto ends more or less where it began with some fine string work along the way, particularly from the violas, in the penultimate movement and in the fiendish fugue at the end.

All in all it was an interestingly and enjoyably programmed concert with which to end the season, and I won’t be the only audience member already to be looking forward eagerly to 12 October.

Roderick Williams –  Cusp (world premiere); text by Rommi Smith
Edward Elgar  – The Dream of Gerontius; text by Cardinal John Henry Newman
Jennifer Johnstone (Mezzo soprano)
Daniel Norman (Tenor)
Roderick Williams (Baritone)
The Bach Choir
The Philharmonia Orchestra
David Hill

A near capacity crowd filled The Royal Festival Hall for a pairing of old and new. Roderick
Williams’s Cusp is conceived as a curtain-raiser for Elgar’s oratorio and takes death as its
main theme, though this time of a young person, rather than old. It is a loosely cyclical work
invoking the seasons to weave together a narrative, incorporating recordings of hospital
sounds at its opening, the pinging of machines later being passed skilfully round the
orchestra often underpinned by vast string chords. Later on the tone gives way to
asymmetric rhythmic passages interspersed with intense lyricism, whilst Roderick Williams –
soloist as well as composer here – has occasional, precise punctuations of sung text.
Rommi Smith’s intelligently worked text, based on sources ranging from interviews with
Bach Choir members and their experiences of death, through to Shakespeare and Dylan
Thomas helps make this an entirely relatable work: the explored emotions are common to
everyone.

David Hill chose to segue this immediately into the Prelude, delivered with great poise and
delicacy, even in the fortissimo passages. I particularly noticed the upper strings sul G
moments and the effortless rich tone they produced. Daniel Norman’s Gerontius was a masterful
performance, wringing in turn every ounce of angst, anger, peace and tranquillity from the
immensely challenging score. Roderick Williams’s Priest was delivered with bravura, whilst
the final ascent through D major at the end of Part I was as finessed as I have ever heard it.
Jennifer Johnstone gave us a warm, lyrical Angel in Part II, beautifully guiding Gerontius
through his journey after death whilst the Bach Choir – heavenly in Part I’s Kyrie Eleison –
crackled and fizzed with irreverent relish in the fiendishly difficult fugue-type sequence as
Demons in Part II.

Under David Hill’s baton, this masterful performance was everything The Dream should be:
at times music that pushed you into the back of your seat, whilst at others music that kept
you on the edge of it.

Czech National Symphony Orchestra

Fairfield Halls

14 May 2024

Hearing a Czech orchestra playing the Valtva section of Smetana’s Ma Vlast is a bit like hearing the Vienna Philharmonic play Strauss waltzes or the BBC Symphony Orchestra play Henry Wood’s Sea Songs – it’s in the blood. So this performance flowed cheerfully like the river it depicts with the timp more prominent than sometimes. It was, however, a bit staid, possibly because of the frequency with which CNSO has to play it,

The stage at Fairfield Halls is tight for a full orchestra and there had to be some adjustment at the back of the first violins to get Choloe Hanslip on stage and for each of her audience calls at the end of her performance. Nonetheless, once she was installed at the front, her aide-memoire iPad on a stand, we were into Bruch’s first violin concerto. She used so much rubato and glissando in her opening statement and leant on the semi-tones so emphatically that it sounded, for a moment, like Klezmer and later I had to check whether Bruch was Jewish. (He wasn’t).

An interesting interpretation, it made a strong dramatic entrée into one of the most popular works in the “classical” repertoire.  Hanslip had plenty of rapport with the orchestra – almost dancing as if she should have been conducting – during the orchestral passages. I liked the segue into the adagio which she played with pleasing warmth and the duet with the horn was delightful. The impressive technical acrobatics in the finale were, indeed, energico as Bruch specifies.  Goodness knows how she gets that mellow tone so far up the instrument. And Steven Mercurio ensured that the interspersed, lush, fortissimo passages rang out richly. All in all it was a pretty decent performance of an audience favourite. And her encore –  Massanet’s Meditation gave us the requisite soupy lyricism played with panache and adeptly accompanied, especially by the harp.

Now, Dvorak’s 8^th is a symphony for which I have a very soft spot having first encountered and played it in the Lewisham Philharmonic (yes, really!) 54 years ago. Of course I’ve played it again since and have heard it performed many dozens of times over the years. And it never palls.

On this occasion all Dvorak’s melodious mood changes were played with character. Highlights included the double bass pizzicato and later decorative flute work in the opening movement. The odd wrong note and occasional loss of impetus were very minor blips. I also enjoyed the pleasingly rich string sound before the rippling tune (later reversed) in the adagio and the nice lilting quality of the allegretto. My favourite moment, though, is the rhythmic, minor key wind entry in the fourth movement about eight minutes before the end – and it made me beam as usual. Moreover, the opening trumpet fanfare was neatly precise and the gallop down the last page with the big rallentando was as uplifting as it should be.

Mercurio, an American who is CNSO’s current Music Director, is a happy, relaxed looking conductor who beats time in a business-like way with lots of smiles. At the end of the symphony he spun round to face the audience with a flourish on the last chord. When the applause had died down, he said “Well that was fun!” before introducing Dvorak’s Slavonic Dance number 15 as the encore and then delivering it with much slavic colour and brio.

Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique

Dinis Sousa

St Martin’s-in-the-Fields

14 May 2024

Part of a week-long Beethoven cycle, this concert presented Beethoven’s second and third symphonies – with all the energy, verve and passion that are the hallmarks of Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique (ORR). Yes, it’s a world of original instruments – valveless horns, woodwind instruments made of wood, few cello spikes, gut strings and bows mostly held above the nut – and that’s what makes the music sound so gloriously fresh.

Sousa is a highly sensitive conductor who brought nippy urgency to the opening movement of the second symphony (1801). The fullness of sound sat very well in the rich acoustic of St Martin’s and yet the alert eye contact between front desks made if feel like chamber music. He is also very good at balance: the interlocking melodies in the larghetto including the running scales in the strings and the flute arpeggios, for example. After some attractive intersectional dialogue in the third movement he launched the Allegro Molto  finale at a cracking speed but also brought out  smiley insouciance.

And so, after the interval,to the wonders of the Eroica Symphony in which the precision was rapier-sharp. The opening movement stands or falls, in my view, on the groundbreaking (for 1803) climactic, discordant, off-beat horn chords which were splendidly played here. I noticed the three section members exchanging happy little grins during the passage which follows so I think they were pleased with their big moment too. Another delight was outstanding work from the timpanist in this movement.

In the funeral march Sousa made sure we heard the growling double bass motifs at the start and at the recap, which is rare because they are usually lost in the texture. He opened the third movement like a grewyhound out of a trap  and all credit, again to the horns for their valiant hunting calls in the trio-esque section. Then finally the interwoven fugal finale came with charm and Sousa extracted every ounce of heroic grandiloquence out of the final pages.

Despite the delicacy of their old or repro instruments, the fortissimi achieved by this orchestra can make the building, and one’s breast bone, vibrate almost as forcibly as an amplified pop group – from Row D, at least. And yet that is set against some of the most delicate pianissimi imaginable.

ORR was founded in 1989 by John Eliot Gardiner who conducted it, and the associated Monteverdi Choir, until recently. He has withdrawn from conducting for the moment because of an incident relating to anger management issues last year. I was struck forcibly at this concert by the phenomenal achievement of “his” organisation over the last 35 years. Nothing can detract from the strength and importance of that work – and it’s most encouraging to see the baton being grasped (literally) by a totally attuned younger man who can create such fine music with ORR, thus taking an important legacy forward.