Photo, Chris Christodoulou
Friday, August 4, 2023
Royal Albert Hall, London
As Humphrey Bogart’s Rick says to Ingrid Bergman’s Lisa in Casablanca: “We’ll always have Paris”. That might have been true for Klaus Mäkelä if he hadn’t conducted William Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast again following this, https://www.colinscolumn.com/orchestre-de-paris-klaus-makela-conducts-jazz-suite-no-2-and-waltons-belshazzars-feast-with-sol-gabetta-playing-shostakovichs-second-cello-concerto-philharmonie-live-webcast/. It wasn’t Mäkelä’s finest half-hour. In London he explored the piece to greater effect, for articulation and clarity, without diminishing the feasting. Thomas Hampson was a vivid narrator, a master of the words, and the BBC Symphony Chorus rose to Mäkelä’s challenging tempos (sometimes too fast, if, this time, with greater point) and we were closer to just how remarkable Belshazzar’s Feast is. The ‘writing on the wall’ episode was gripping – with the choral shout of “Slain!” as good as it gets, loud and brutally incisive – with the ‘joyful noise’ that follows less of a fly-by than in Paris, the concluding pages exultant. Excellent playing, too.
The concert started with Jimmy López Bellido’s Perú negro, a suspenseful and atmospheric piece, colourfully scored (including unusual percussion), suggestive of a painterly showpiece, if in fact rather sinewy and dramatic, avoiding obviousness:
“The main source of inspiration for this work is Afro-Peruvian music, but although the piece makes reference to six specific traditional songs, it is indeed very personal. I did not attempt to merely copy or reproduce Peruvian folklore. On the contrary, I assimilated it and created something entirely new and personal – an invented folklore of sorts, which bears the seal of my musical language.”
Although Perú negro has its popular aspects, such as the “traditional songs”, there is a tougher aspect to the fifteen-minute piece that sustains interest, the composer gratifyingly not playing to the gallery, a quality that ensures the need for a focussed listen as well as a return visit. This UK premiere was impressive.
It goes without saying that Yuja Wang is a brilliant pianist but whether her limitless technique compromises the music-making is another matter, perhaps it’s all too easy for her, for in Rachmaninov’s ingenious Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini one could only admire the perfection of the playing if without being taken into the score itself, although her sensitive anticipation of ‘Variation XVIII’ caught the ear, as did the humorous pay-off at the piece’s very end, without fuss, amidst a lack of characterisation most of the time, well-accompanied if a little noisy in the cymbal-clash department. But in ‘Rachmaninov 150’ year Wang is certainly making significant contributions, https://www.colinscolumn.com/rachmaninoff-150-yuja-wang-gustavo-dudamel-and-the-los-angeles-philharmonic-perform-the-works-for-piano-and-orchestra/, and see below. Her encores were Rachmaninov’s Polka de W.R (the initials being the composer’s father), which she rampaged through in pub-piano style, but was stylishly scintillating in Vincent Youmans’s ‘Tea for Two’, arranged by Art Tatum, witty and affectionate.
During this Proms season most of Rachmaninov’s piano-and-orchestra works are scheduled – except the marvellous Concerto No.4, an inexcusable omission when such as Andsnes, Donohoe, Giltburg, Hough, Lugansky, Trifonov – and Wang – play it, as do others. An unjustly ‘Cinderella’ opus has been unfairly passed over. Cock-up!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001p2jm
Ashkenazy’s second recording of PC4, 1984; the first was with Previn, also Decca.
I thought the performance of ‘Belshazzar’s Feast’ really thrilling … up there with the very best and a very real improvement on the performance that Makela gave in Paris a short while ago, good though that was. The Albert Hall acoustic suits the work to perfection. I couldn’t but recall bumping into the composer and his wife in a branch of Rymans (the stationers) in Albemarle Street, off Piccadilly, in the 1970s. A delightful encounter … he told me he was looking for GENUINE Indian rubbers and was having terrible trouble finding any! If I’d been able to trace a source I’d have made a point of sending a supply to his home on Ischia. He was utterly charming and his wife seemed to beam with pleasure that a complete stranger who greatly admired her husband’s music had appeared out of the blue and told him so. I do love ‘Belshazzar’, which IMHO Klaus Makela pulled off magnificently, not least on account of the thrilling orchestral and choral contributions and the perfectly judged delivery of Thomas Hampson.
I agree it was thrilling but in the hall in Paris the impact was even greater; marginally a finer evening for me, though I was there in Paris and only on loudspeakers last night. I did think Willard White (76) in Paris was more imposing than TH.
I totally agree that the omission of No 4 is a grievous mistake. Why for heavens sake?
I put it on my list for being the best PC of the 20th century.
Tonight brings a welcome addition of Hindemith’s music which is a rarity over recent years. On the South Bank we enjoyed his Violin Concerto recently. He is unfairly tainted by accusations of “dryness” whatever that is meant to mean.
Somewhat disappointing that a review that mentions “articulation and clarity“ and “Slain – as good as it gets“ doesn’t spot the major difference between London and Paris. Surely that was the BBC Symphony Chorus? Not only do they sing it regularly but credit ought to be given to their Chorus Director, Neil, Ferris, who prepared them to be able to cope with Makela‘s wild ride?
“articulation and clarity” referred to the SO as well.
In Paris it was Chœur de l’Orchestre de Paris and Cambridge University Symphony Chorus.