Review of Hallé concert conducted by Kahchun Wong 3 October 2024

Kahchun Wong conducts the Hallé  cr Alex Burns, the Hallé

Popped in between the opening concert of the Hallé season and his next big contribution to the regular autumn series for Kahchun Wong was a “Rush Hour” concert – one that follows the formula of a novelty (or near-novelty) plus a repertoire work, both played as an interval-less, approximately one-hour long, early evening programme.

The repertoire work was the 1919 suite from The Firebird, by Stravinsky, played with bright colours, delicacy and purity in the opening, percussive interjections from the brass in the Infernal Dance, beautifully controlled textures in the Lullaby, and a very grand final Hymn, starring the big bass drum. It was all very rewarding and praiseworthy.

But before that came Tan Dun’s Violin Concerto: Fire Ritual, with Eldbjørg Hemsing as soloist: the UK premiere of the piece, which was given by the same conductor and soloist in 2019 with the New York Philharmonic (its first time in that city).

It’s another example of “East meets West” in Wong’s programming, being written by a Chinese-American and based on a Taoist tradition of ritual that goes back to Chinese imperial times. The sound of traditional instrumentation is also evoked in Tan Dun’s writing – but not in the sense of using old instruments, rather as the inspiration for parts of a vastly varied sound world.

In one way it’s about as varied a sound world as anyone could hope to get from a symphony orchestra (and its conductor). There’s not just the sound of instruments being played in the usual way, but also unusually (a bowed cymbal, for instance), to which are added things such as players whispering, breathing noisily and humming, the conductor singing, and unison audible page-turning by the musicians – it’s surprising how loud that can be when you want it to.

In addition, the wind section of the orchestra was positioned away from the rest in the auditorium, and placed in pairs (oboe, flute, bassoon, clarinet, etc) facing each other from opposite sides of the gallery seating. So not just a quadrophonic experience, but surround sound in multiple variations.

And the soloist begins peripatetically, entering from the side of the platform as she plays and proceeding around the stalls seats until taking her place centre-stage. Much to see, as well as to hear.

I guess it all contributes to the sense of a ritual procedure, but the music has precise descriptive content, too. There are four sections, which we are told evoke the memory of the victims of war and those who have suffered throughout human history, with a kind of interlude called “Heavenly Birds” (guess what noises that requires) and a final prayer for peace. And let’s not forget a virtuosic cadenza-style episode for the soloist – variety is of the essence – and a brief motif for solo tuba which isn’t totally dissimilar to that at the start of the Infernal Dance in Stravinsky’s Firebird. I guess many will have found the very Chinese-sounding, pentatonic “big tune” towards the end the most heartening and melodious aspect of the whole musical pattern, which in technical terms is worked from and around the note D (or “re” in tonic sol-fa notation of the open key, audio-visually punning to indicate the ideas of return, rebirth and re-live).

It strikes me as in some ways like what in the 1960s we used to call “a happening” (as does Bernstein’s also ritual-based Mass): never a dull moment and fascinating in its mental stimulation.

The Royal Philharmonic Society Awards 2024, at the Royal Northern College of Music

 

    

       

L-R from top: Nicky Spence; Jasdeep Singh Degun; Roman Grigoriv, Olga Diatel and Illia Razumeiko; and Jack Capstaff at the RPS Awards

The Royal Philharmonic Society held its awards ceremony at the Royal Northern College of Music on Tuesday night (5 March) – the first time they’ve ever done them out of London. And here are my awards for the highlights of the show:

l The ceremony began with Conversation in the Forest by Keiko Abe, performed by “The Sound of Manchester” – Delia Stevens and Le Yu (aka Aurora Percussion Duo), with Andrea Vogler, David Hext, Harriet Kwong and Paul Patrick.

l Most entertaining acceptance speech of the night was from tenor Nicky Spence (winner, Singer category), pointing out that he’d been up for the award more than once before and “I was beginning to think I was Pippa Middleton” and telling the tale of how his mother (also present) and he stayed in a youth hostel when he first auditioned for the Guildhall School – sharing a room with bunk beds and, as both were “under-ambitious in terms of BMI”, it became a test of faith for the party on the underneath.

Nicky Spence and his husband, pianist Dylan Perez, also entertained with a rendition of Noel Coward’s Don’t put your daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington, which opened the second half of the night (it all finally ran to 45 minutes behind schedule).

l Jasdeep Singh Degun – the first sitar player ever to win an RPS Award – was both winner of the Instrumentalist category and composer/leader in the final item: Veer, with Harkiret Bahra, tabla, and RNCM musicians Leda Mileto, Chris Karwacinski, Beth Willett and Clara Hope Simpson (aka the Aestus Quartet) and Joana Moura, double bass.

l The Opera and Music Theatre award was won by Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival’s presentation of Chornobyldorf, which brought the whole Ukrainian cast and company of the opera to Yorkshire for its UK premiere. Ukrainian composers Illia Razumeiko and Roman Grigoriv travelled from Kyiv to receive the award.

l And the most eloquent acceptance speech was from Jack Capstaff, music director of Derwent Brass, the Derbyshire brass band which won the “Inspiration” category for non-professional ensembles – the only award decided by public vote (all nominations for it this year being for those based somewhere north of Watford). Bearing in mind the band world’s intense competitiveness, he said, with their foibles – “and there are many” – bands had always been good at creating access to music making for grass-roots communities, and it was down to a groundswell of support that Derwent had won the vote.

Other details:

l “Manchester Classical”, the weekend mini-festival last summer that brought together the Hallé, BBC Philharmonic, Manchester Camerata, Manchester Collective, RNCM and others, was presented with the Series and Events Award, having brought thousands of citizens to the Bridgewater Hall. Accepting the award, Hallé boss David Butcher said the city was unique in its collaboration between different organisations, and “when you work in partnership, brilliant things happen”.

l The Gamechanger Award went to the Irene Taylor Trust and its artistic director Sara Lee for using music to help people affected by the criminal justice system and in marginalised areas of society. 

l The Impact Award was presented to disabled musician Clare Johnston and Drake Music Scotland for Call of the Mountains, a collaboration with Kazakhstan’s Eegeru ensemble, which culminated in a collective performance in Edinburgh.

l Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, an icon of contemporary music who died in 2023, was given the Large-Scale Composition Award for her acclaimed opera Innocence: a portrait of lives changed by a high school shooting (it was staged by the Royal Opera). Her son, Aleksi Barrière, who was the opera’s co-librettist, collected the trophy.

l The BBC Singers were recognised for the quality, style and imagination they bring to a range of endeavour, receiving the Ensemble Award. 

l François-Xavier Roth received the Conductor Award for his work with the London Symphony Orchestra and his own ensemble, Les Siècles; the Chamber-Scale Composition Award went to Laurence Osborn for TOMB! premiered by the GBSR Duo and 12 Ensemble at the Norfolk and Norwich Festival; the Storytelling Award went to Leah Broad for Quartet, a book about four female composers; and the Young Artist Award was presented to mezzo soprano Lotte Betts-Dean.

PS:

Having once been part of a partly similar awards shindig myself, it was like a reminder of old times to see how these things are put together. You invite all your nominees and their friends to come to swell the crowd, but you keep the winners’ names confidential, of course … and then you worry that some of the chosen winners have not committed to being there.

With performers, one trick is to invite them to do a turn in the ceremony – which on the whole they will accept and seriously commit to (see above for examples). But sometimes, when it’s a clear turn-down because they have engagements elsewhere, you simply have to tell them they’ve won, swear them to secrecy and get them to film an acceptance speech in advance, feigning surprise, etc., etc.

When it’s the backroom and admin people (or movers and shakers, as they like to think of themselves), sometimes they, or their underlings, will say: “I could come, but I’m very, very busy and it would help to be tipped off, just privately, if being there in person will really be worth it” – in other words, “Have I won, because I’d love to make a speech in front of my peers and admirers, but otherwise it’s not worth it?” That’s the tricky one. I must admit to having stooped that low with those guys, sometimes.

 

Review of Hallé concert conducted by Anja Bihlmaier with soloist Maxim Rysanov

  

Anja Bihlmaier  cr Nikolaj Lund

It was Beethoven’s Fourth with zip at the Hallé last night, as Anja Bihlmaier showed her credentials as a conductor of the present day, taking the tempo markings very much at face value and, with the orchestra in fine fettle almost from the first bar, creating a performance of neatness and beauty.

She had 40 strings for the entire programme, which also began with Beethoven, in the form of the tone-poem-like Leonora no. 3 overture. I’ve heard it done with more operatic atmosphere – there were only the briefest of pauses, for instance, in this performance to follow the off-stage trumpet calls – but I think she wanted it to be as coherent as possible as a musical structure. It certainly had a fiery presto to finish.

In between the Beethoven pieces there was Maxim Rysanov with Bartók’s Viola Concerto (as completed by Tibór Sérly) – played with artistry and assurance and gathering a fair old head of steam in the gypsy-style passages of its finale – and followed by an encore for the soloist, himself Ukrainian-born, and the Hallé strings led by Roberto Ruisi: Myroslav Skoryk’s Melody, a piece which has become a symbol of lament and horror at the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

After the break came Unsuk Chin’s subito con forza, a short series of shocks and surprises apparently inspired by Beethoven’s music, in which a notable feature was versatility of Erika Öhman on various percussion instruments (which, in addition to her role as timpanist for the rest of the programme, makes her worthy of the woman-of-the-match award for this show).

The Beethoven symphony began in what could have been Haydn style and went on to a pretty perky Adagio and a lively work-out in the Scherzo, with only slight let-up in the tempo for the trios. The last movement danced away from the very first note and ended with a fine effect of contrast – one of Beethoven’s own surprises. I was impressed by the playing, shown in a number of points in the evening but supremely in that finale, of the guest principal bassoon, Todd Gibson-Cornish.

Maxim Rysanov

Review of Hallé concert with Antje Weithaas conducted by Christian Reif

                                                                           Christian Reif  (cr. Simon Pauly)            

The extended platform was in use again at the Bridgewater Hall to accommodate the full forces of the Hallé Orchestra in Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (which was the main marketing label for this concert). It was a worthy reading under conductor Christian Reif, who has the ability to inject a near-theatrical magic into everything he touches.

There was particular gravity and feeling in the slower dances of the first part of The Rite, a real sense of mystery as the second part began, and excitingly realized tension in the conclusions to both segments. The piece has attained the sanctity of set-text authority as an archetype of modernism these days (and modernism is now a matter for history books), but even if it shocks less than it did 110 years ago it can still pack a punch.

But the greater interest for me personally was to encounter another work by Dobrinka Tabakova, the Hallé’s artist-in-residence this season – in this case Pacific, from her Earth Suite, a set of pieces begun when she held a similar job recently with the BBC Concert Orchestra, and apparently still in progress as an open-ended set. Giving music eco-titles is a useful strategy today (it helps arts organisations tick boxes for their funders), but her description of this piece, written as the Covid pandemic began, as permeated by “some of the anxiety and uncertainty of that time” made more connections with the sounds we heard.

It begins with spooky tapping, silence and low hums, before a kind of chorale for muted trombones and then the sound of the strings: followed by a sequence of melodic lines for differing combinations of wind instruments, some highly extended, against a plodding choral accompaniment, which builds to a broad climax before dying away quite rapidly. It’s an easy structure to follow and has a quality of confidence and restfulness that outweighs any others.

The earlier elements in the programme were Falla’s Interlude and Dance from La Vida Breve, piloted by Christian Reif with a sure hand, casting enchantment in the former from the simple ingredients of unison strings, solo clarinet, and so on, and keeping a steady but perfectly danceable pulse, without over-emphasis of its “Spanishness”, in the latter.

And a wonderful solo for Bartók’s Violin Concerto no. 2 came from Antje Weithaas. She had no problem with the full strings strength (nearly 50) of the Hallé, as Reif kept the orchestral sound under precise control, and amid all the virtuosity and fireworks there was tenderness, eloquence and poise.

Antje Weithaas (cr. Kaupo Kikkas)

Review of Hallé concert with Boris Giltburg and conducted by Alexandre Bloch

Boris Giltburg cr Sasha Gusov

The Hallé like to bill each concert with a title these days: what good luck that this one was given that of the music played in its second half, Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra, as the conductor, soloist and piano concerto originally advertised had all changed by the time it happened.

So we had the chance to witness Alexandre Bloch’s debut with the orchestra. He’s no stranger to Manchester, though, having been a junior conducting fellow at the Royal Northern College of Music, after the Paris Conservatoire. He won the Donatella Flick Conducting Competition in 2012, and I remember his part in the 2013 Chester Festival, appearing with Manchester Camerata, which was followed by a move to the London Symphony Orchestra as assistant conductor.

He too the Hallé through Debussy’s Prélude à L’Après-midi d’un faune first, with the opening magically played by Amy Yule, starting from a very gentle piano but highly varied in dynamic as it proceeded. With the orchestra limited to 40 strings (as it was also for the concerto that followed) and the rich tones of Marie Leenhardt’s harp, the textures of this music were beautiful, and its phrasing was delicate while rhythmically quite brisk and always precise.

Boris Giltburg – a welcome guest in the past – appeared to play Chopin’s Piano concerto no. 2. He’s played a lot of Rachmaninov in his time (including here with the Hallé) and did not hesitate to use the power of the piano at times in this one, but he, too, can produce wonderful delicacy and dramatize the changes in sound the score requires. The Hallé wind were on exceptionally fine form for their solos in this piece. And we got an encore from Giltburg in a gorgeously sweet version of Chopin’s E minor Étude.

Overall it was still a short-ish programme, but Alexandre Bloch compensated for that with a brief lecture, illustrated by his own singing voice, on the Lutosławski before it was played. In performance – now with 60 strings, six percussionists and all the other resources the score prescribes – it was intensely colourful and brilliantly delivered, with the kind of instrumental virtuosity that conceals the height of the skills on display, and rhythmic energy constantly to the fore. The long, final Passacaglia, Toccata e Corale was passionately built to its climax, with brassy splendour and a near-devotional intensity from the strings.

Review of Hallé concert with Ian Bostridge and conducted by Kahchun Wong

Kahchun Wong (cr. Angie Kremer)

Kahchun Wong’s concert with the Hallé was a really interesting one – in the end, not so much for what it had appeared to offer on paper, but for what it gave in practice.

The paper interest was a UK premiere: Sofia Gubaidulina’s The Wrath of God, written in 2019, an 18-minute piece for very large orchestra (four Wagner tubas as well as four horns, two bass trombones, two tubas and a lot of percussion). It’s about the day of judgment, and suitably scary. It’s very loud a lot of the time, though there are beautiful and delicately mysterious softer passages too, one for strings and gong, one for strings and solo horn, followed by clarinet, piccolo and glockenspiel, then solo violin. Those I appreciated: but the predominant impression was that this somewhat episodic piece keeps making you think it’s all over, then showing you that it’s not.

The remaining ingredients in the programme were mainstream 20^th century music. Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings featured the peerless and extraordinary voice of Ian Bostridge, alongside the Hallé’s principal horn, Laurence Rogers. Between them (and Kahchun Wong) they gave the lovely song cycle about evening and night with many a dramatic twist. Bostridge frequently uses his voice in a quasi-instrumental way, with intensive emphasis on some notes and lines: in the Elegy (Blake’s “O Rose, though art sick!” and Dirge (the anonymous “Lyke-Wake Dirge”), particularly (the latter has its own evocation of the day of judgment, so that made plenty of sense). Rogers matched him for expression and played the virtuosic part with consummate skill. And in the final Sonnet (Jonson’s “Hymn”, to the Moon) we heard more of a kind of portamento in the Bostridge voice on rising phrases that seems to carry a frisson of dread, even in the most re-assuring music. Never a dull moment with these artists.

Shostakovich’s Symphony no. 5 is probably the favourite among his entire set and very much a repertoire work for symphony orchestras now. The challenge for any conductor, I think, is to catch some sense of ambiguity in it, to set against the clearly tuneful, attractive and agony-to-ectasy journey that it appears to be on the surface. Kahchun Wong did that very effectively: in one sense he dramatized it a bit more than others might (in the first and last movements), but the main characteristics of his interpretation were an assured and idiomatic approach to its rhythms, a peak of intensity which made the impassioned Largo, the third of its four movements, the unforgettable emotional heart of the piece, and a highly strategic change of tempo in the finale (beginning with the horn solo) that brought a huge weight of sadness into the midst of the triumphalism and ensured that stolidity persisted to its end, sound and clamour notwithstanding. It’s a way of conducting that would have been second nature to the great maestros of the first half of the 20th century – the time this music was born – and gives a sense of proportion and shape that are impossible to replicate by any other means.

 

Review of Hallé performance of Verdi's Requiem, conducted by Sir Mark Elder

Sir Mark Elder conducting the Hallé

Verdi’s Requiem has often been described as an “operatic” setting of a sacred text.

There’s no doubting that Sir Mark Elder sees it that way. It makes fairly frequent appearances in concert programmes, but of all the versions I’ve heard I don’t think there’s been any quite as determined to make it into a drama as this.

Each of the soloists is known for their prowess in Italian opera, and it seems each had been encouraged to see their role in this performance as a character study of some sort, whether pronouncing judgment, pleading for mercy, or floating to the heights of beatification.

When it came to the big choral and orchestral highspots, all was spectacle – the Dies Irae with not one but two big bass drums, and especially the Tuba mirum, with Aida-style stage trumpeters appearing on high, to properly put the fear of God into us.

The opening of the whole work was so minimalist as to be almost inaudible (pity so many of the audience decided to show their appreciation with paroxysms of coughing at that precise moment),so much so that the stentorian sound of the men leading off with Te decet hymnus was quite rough by comparison.

It was all much appreciated for its showmanship, and the contribution of the soloists. Natalya Romaniw was a heavenly prima donna, wonderfully sustaining her purity of tone and accuracy to the very end of the Libera me. If the Romantic notion that anyone can be saved through the love of a good woman was what Verdi had in mind there, her voice exemplified it.

Alice Coote, too, so imperious in her depiction of the Last Judgment in the Sequence, was the perfect Secunda Donna when it came to the Agnus Dei, which was one of the most beautiful parts of the whole performance. Thomas Atkins shone as every Italian tenor at prayer should do, in Ingemisco, and James Platt caught something of the pleading tone of Germont father in his singing of Confutatis maledictis (though in ensemble his foundation of the harmony didn’t always seem quite precise enough).

Whatever Verdi did or didn’t believe about the hereafter, he got something right with his setting of the Sanctus in this work: the dwelling place of God must be a scene of supreme rejoicing, which is what he caught in that wonderful fugue for double chorus. For me, it’s the climax of the whole work, though Sir Mark took it quite gently, with rhythmic life – unusually – somewhat lost in the part-singing for some of the time … until the last glorious cadence.

This work should always be something special for the Hallé: its founder, not known for operatic ventures into the Verdi canon particularly, was quick off the mark in appreciating it when it first appeared: he gave it here in Manchester in spring 1876, only about a year after Verdi, with his hand-picked Italian troupe, had toured it to London (and thus performed the British premiere). But Hallé was almost certainly the first to do it with all-British forces.