This post is one in a sequence which lists (mostly) live music I have heard, as best as memory allows. I write to have a record of my musical experiences and these entries are intended as postcards from me to my future self. All opinions are personal, although music historians from the 25th Century may find some of them of interest.

Other posts in this collection can be found here. The most recent prior post in this sequence is here.

• Harp Chamber Music, by students from the Royal Academy of Music, at Regent Hall, London, Friday 15 November 2024. The programme was:
  • 1. Debussy (arranged Henk de Vlieger): Prelude a l’apres-midi d’un faune
  • 2. Christopher Gunning (1944-2023): Lament
  • 3. Britten: Folk Songs for High Voice
  • 4. Andre Jolivet (1905-1974): Chant de Linos

  The performers were:

  • 1: Ethan Osman (conductor), Jamie McClenaghan (flute), Benjamin Atkinson (clarinet), Katie Sherratt (harp), Sara Maxman (v), Polina Sharafyan (v), Charlie Howells (va), Jayden Lamcellari (c).
  • 2: Jayden Lamcellari (c) and Megan Humphries (harp).
  • 3: Isobel Cleverly (soprano), Sofiia Nikolaiets (soprano), Huw Boucher (harp), Katie Lo (harp).
  • 4: Efrem Workman (flute), Sara Maxman (v), Charlie Howells (va), Jayden Lamcellari (c), Huw Boucher (harp).

  This was an exquisite and delicate programme, with all the works played expertly, to a near-full hall. Christopher Gunning’s very moving Lament was written in response to the horrors of the war in Syria. Among the Britten songs was David of the White Rock, which I once set myself (for tenor) when at school.

  Jolivet’s very challenging Chant de Linos was apparently a 1944 commission for a flute competition that was won by Jean-Pierre Rampal. With such a provenance, it would be a brave flautist who even attempted it, and so hats off to Mr Efrem Workman. He played it superbly, with a strong coherence of line, and without apparent effort. I was reminded of a short poem by Piet Hein:

  There is but one art,
  No more, no less:
  To do all things
  With artlessness.”

• Academy of Ancient Music at Milton Court Concert Hall, Guildhall School of Music, London, on Thursday 14 November 20204. The program comprised four symphonies from the four masters of the 18th century symphony: Vanhal, Mozart, Haydn and von Dittersdorf.
  

  The AAM is an ensemble that tries to present historically-authentic performances. Hence the orchestra was quite slim – just three first and three second violins, for example. I think that would be fine if they were performing in an historically-accurate physical place to an historically-accurate audience. But even the Milton Court Concert Hall, which was perhaps 90% full, had many more people present in a much larger room than I imagine would have ever heard any single performance of these works at the time they were written. So, although they performed very well, the AAM orchestra sounded too thin for my taste.

  For the record (and for my memory), my personal ranking of symphonies of that era is as follows (in descending order):

  • 1. The last three symphonies of Mozart
  • 2. The Sturm und Drang symphonies of Haydn (roughly those written between 1766 – 1773)
  • 3. All of the symphonies of Vanhal
  • 4. All other symphonies, including the others of Haydn and Mozart.

• Vikungur Ólafsson with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Edward Gardner at the Royal Festival Hall, London, on Wednesday 6 November 2024, playing Brahms’ First Piano Concerto.
  

  This was superb performance to an almost full hall, and I had a very good seat in the rear stalls with a direct line of sight to the keyboard. It was amazing to hear how softly Mr Ólafsson played, especially in the second movement, with 2000 or so people sitting immensely quietly to hear him. This Concerto is growing on me, although I still consider Brahms’ music to be long-winded (he is the musical equivalent of Henry James), and the second movement in particular I find to be too long. I could not stay for the second half, which included a new piece by Freya Waley-Cohen and Bartok’s The Miraculous Mandarin Suite.

• Jan Liebermann on the organ of the Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church, London on Saturday 26 October 2024. The programme was (in a slight change from the printed list):
  • JS Bach: Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C Major, BWV 564
  • Jean Langlais (1907-1991): III Chant de paix from Neuf Pieces
  • Alfred Hollins (1865-1942): Concert Overture No. 2 in C minor
  • Samuel Sebastian Wesley (1810-18760: Larghetto in F sharp minor
  • Zsolt Gardonyi (born 1946): Hommage a Marcel Dupre
  • Marcel Dupre (1886-1971): Trois Preludes et Fugues Op. 7 (No 1 in B major, No 2 in F minor and No. 3 in G minor)

  This was an outstanding afternoon recital by a young German organist to an audience of about 60 people. I appreciated the three brief introductions to the works played given by Mr Liebermann. Most of the audience were seated downstairs, so it was very good that his performance was relayed live from cameras in the organ loft to three large video screens at the front of the church. It is a wonder of our particular era – still working with imperfect technology – that even across a distance of only a few metres, the sound of the organ reached us before the video images did, with a delay of about half a second. Thus, for instance, it took some getting used to hearing a sudden loud chord and then seeing Mr Liebermann’s hands play it. For this reason, I stopped watching the video screens after a while.

  All the works were played superbly, with great technical facility and musicality, and with a large variety of organ sounds and effects. Mr Liebermann appeared to know this particular organ well. I especially liked the Concert Overture by Alfred Hollins. The most exciting work he performed was in fact the encore, Bach’s Badinerie from Orchestral Suite No 2 in B minor, BWV 1067, in an arrangement for organ, I think by Jean Guillot (1930-2019). The concert was worth attending for this one joyful and virtuosic work alone. Congratulations to Mr Liebermann for bringing it so well to life.

  Mr Liebermann has posted a clip of himself playing the Badinerie (on the Father Willis organ of Salisbury Cathedral) on IG, here. His cross-over footwork is a marvel to behold.

  This recital reminded me of hearing another superb young organist, Cameron Carpenter, once in Cottonopolis.

• Leonard Bernstein’s two operas, Trouble in Tahiti (1952) and A Quiet Place (1983), performed by the Royal Ballet and Opera Company at the Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera, Covent Garden London, on 22 October 2024.
  

  The RBO’s website says these performances are sold out (and has said so for months), but I had no trouble getting a ticket last week, and there were dozens of empty seats on the evening I attended. This was an outstanding performance of these two operas, with very good singing and acting. The orchestra performance was also superb, and it was nice to able to see four of the percussionists who were at stalls level (not in the orchestra pit). The music was recognizably Bernstein’s and, particularly for the second opera, it sounded repeatedly as if it was about to break into a number from West Side Story. Despite being recognizably Bernstein’s, the music isn’t very good.

  Before the start, an American patron in the foyer told me that these two operas were very dark. I did not think them dark, so much as overly melodramatic and anguished. So much angst, so little plot. And so much time – the second opera could have been cut in half with no loss of anything – not message, nor meaning, nor musical pleasure. How could the composer of the taut West Side Story also write such never-ending meanderings? I am pleased that I heard these two operas, but I would not choose to hear them again.

  And, forty years on from its composition, I wonder what Bernstein was trying to say with his quotation of Henry Mancini’s Baby Elephant Walk, played by layered strings? What will anyone think in 100 years, when even we, today, don’t get it?

• Professor Dmitri Alexeev, in a late afternoon recital for the Chopin Society, at Westminster Cathedral Hall, London on 20 October 2024. The program:
  • Rachmaninoff: Sonata No 1 in D minor, Op. 28

  INTERVAL

  • Chopin: Three Nocturnes (Op 48#2 in F-sharp minor, Op 62#2 in E, Op 27#1 in C-sharp minor)
  • Chopin: Impromptu No. 3 in G-flat minor, Op. 51
  • Chopin: Three Nouvelle Etudes (#1 in F minor, #2 in A-flat, #3 in D-flat)
  • Chopin: Five Polish Songs (arranged by Liszt)

  Mr Alexeev’s performance was superb, and I was indeed fortunate to hear it. A portrait of Chopin was placed behind the piano, as befits a concert for the Chopin Society. The Rachmaninoff Sonata was new to me, and apparently the composer had initially begun the work inspired by the legend of Faust. This idea was still evident in the final work, which had a very strong intellectual energy, with musical ideas from one movement returning and being developed in later movements. Who could have imagined that ordinary scales could sound demonic, as they did here? This Sonata is an intellectual tour de force and Mr Alexeev’s playing made the ideas and their development clear.

  Continue reading ‘Concert Concat 2024’