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Richard Bratby

~ Classical music writer, critic and consultant

Richard Bratby

Tag Archives: RLPO

Review: RLPO / Petrenko & Daniil Trifonov

08 Wednesday Feb 2017

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Birmingham Post, Daniil Trifonov, Reviews, RLPO, Symphony Hall, Vasily Petrenko

rlpo

My old pals the RLPO looking weirdly wonky

The Birmingham Post isn’t always able to post online everything that I’ve written for its print edition, so – after a suitable time lag (ideally you should go out and buy the paper) – I’ll be posting my recent reviews here. As per the print edition, they’re all fairly concise – just 250 words. This is of a performance at Birmingham Conservatoire on Wednesday 1 February 2017.


Brummie pride manifests itself in some odd ways. It’s fantastic that we’ll pack out Symphony Hall for the home team, Mirga and the CBSO. But offered the chance to hear an artist as remarkable as the young Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov, to leave banks of seats empty seems very like cutting off your nose to spite your face. True, Trifonov has been extravagantly hyped since winning the Tchaikovsky Competition in 2011. But what his performance with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra demonstrated beyond any doubt is that sometimes, hype is justified.

Trifonov played the Cinderella of Rachmaninoff’s piano concertos, the Fourth. His tone is rich and bright; he sculpts phrases as well as sings them, and he can flash in an instant from sonorous power to quicksilver brilliance. The effect, with Trifonov trailing luminous streams of fantasy across Rachmaninoff’s twilit skies, and Petrenko and his players supplying yearning, lovingly-phrased string tone and powerful rhythmic kicks as required, was as poetic as it was thrilling.

Petrenko and the RLPO had opened with a boisterous account of Stravinsky’s Jeu de Cartes, and devoted the second half to Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony. The RLPO has an utterly distinctive sound, at its most recognisable when the lower strings glow softly out of the silence. But these players can bite too, and in the monumental first movement Petrenko found a compelling tension between lyricism and steel-toothed aggression.

The scherzo threw coloured sparks in all directions, and the unstoppable machine-music of the finale developed a terrifying momentum. I have it on unimpeachable authority that this performance was a good ten minutes slower than when the CBSO Youth Orchestra played the Fifth a few years back. But I wouldn’t have guessed.

 

Lobster, chips and G&S

17 Monday Aug 2015

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Amati Magazine, BBC Proms, Edinburgh Festival, Gilbert and Sullivan, Glazunov, Jamie Phillips, LPO, Mahler, RLPO, The Arts Desk, The Spectator, Vaughan Williams

By mid-August, concert life in the UK has narrowed down to two basic locations: the Edinburgh Festival, and the Royal Albert Hall. Having already been to the Proms, I wasn’t planning on going to Edinburgh until ten days ago and out of the blue I received a review commission that…well, let’s just say I couldn’t refuse. Watch this space for more details.

A lot’s changed in Edinburgh since I last went to the Festival in 2004. The new trams, whatever their troubled history, are a huge asset to the city, and very handy indeed when sky-high August hotel prices have driven you out to the wilds of Haymarket. But it’s still just as hard to find somewhere decent to eat when you’ve emerged from a show that finishes at 10.30pm – and at my advanced age, my preferred Edinburgh late-night snack of deep-fried white pudding is no longer an option. Nor too is lobster and chips, at least not every day. Sadly…

Street Food, Edinburgh Festival style.

Street Food, Edinburgh Festival style.

And the place is still as maddening and exhilarating as ever in Festival season. I was delighted to bump into my colleague Anna Picard for the first time in person (rather than on Twitter) and I managed to duck out of the mayhem of the Royal Mile for a couple of hours for an afternoon catch-up and pint with a particularly brilliant conductor friend – bringing the Halle Youth Orchestra to town as part of a summer tour.

At the Edinburgh Festival, even the graffiti is meta.

At the Edinburgh Festival, even the graffiti is meta.

Anyhow – watch this space for my Edinburgh report. Meanwhile, we headed up the road again to beautiful Buxton to raid Scrivener’s bookshop (surely the only second-hand bookshop in the UK equipped with a fully-functioning harmonium) and see HMS Pinafore – it being a basic maxim of mine never to miss a chance to see G&S done professionally. Happily, at The Arts Desk, I have an editor who understands exactly where I’m coming from.

Scrivener's bookshop, Buxton.

I’ve also been writing about Berio’s Folk Songs and Vaughan Williams’ Eighth Symphony for the RLPO, and interviewing Vladimir Jurowski about Mahler for the LPO’s in-house magazine – always an astonishingly insightful and provocative (in the best possible way) interviewee. Oh and my official birthday tribute to my beloved Alexander Glazunov has gone live on The Amati Magazine – a bit of self-indulgence, very generously indulged by my terrific editor Jessica Duchen. Next stop: Rachmaninoff, Martinu and Rebecca Clarke!

Throwback Thursday: The Berlin Philharmonic in Liverpool

14 Thursday May 2015

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Berliner Philharmoniker, Jonathan Kelly, Liverpool Philharmonic, Metro, RLPO, Simon Rattle

There’s one orchestra in the news this week – though let’s be honest, as we saw in  February, everything the Berlin Philharmonic do is newsworthy. Here’s the article that I wrote for Metro in 2008, when they played at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall as part of the city’s year as European Capital of Culture. I was particularly chuffed to be able to talk to my old Birmingham colleague Jonathan Kelly for this article – not the first great musician to take the journey from Birmingham to Berlin, and not, I rather suspect, the last…


“I don’t want to sound arrogant” says Pamela Rosenberg.  “I think we’re considered to be the flagship orchestra in Germany and I know that our city, and chancellor Angela Merkel, see us as ambassadors.  But internationally, there are a lot of wonderful orchestras – and we’re in the mix”.

Fair enough.  Until, that is, you realise that Rosenberg is General Manager of the Berlin Philharmonic – and suddenly it becomes an understatement on an heroic scale.  For classical music fans, the BPO’s Liverpool gig is the unquestioned climax of 2008.  Tickets sold out months ago.  Because as anyone even remotely interested in classical music knows, the Berlin Philharmonic is arguably the finest orchestra in the world.

And best of all, it’s conducted by a Liverpudlian.  There’s not a music-lover on Merseyside who isn’t choked with pride to see Sir Simon Rattle coming home at the head of this legendary band.  But to appreciate the true significance of Rattle’s appointment as principal conductor in 2002, you need to understand the BPO’s unique place in German culture.  In the first half of the twentieth century, under its visionary conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, it established itself as the supreme interpreter of the great German classics, from Bach through to Wagner.

Later, under the autocratic Herbert von Karajan, it developed a rich, silky-smooth sound that set a new international benchmark for orchestral playing.  “You may never again hear playing as beautiful as this” one critic is said to have told a younger colleague after a BPO concert “but now you know that it can be done”.

Berlin Phil oboist Jonathan Kelly feels the same way.  “I’ve been listening to CDs of this orchestra since I was a boy.  For me it’s always been an ideal”.  And seated bang in the centre of the orchestra, he’s uniquely placed to experience the Berlin sound.

“The sound is part of the orchestra’s tradition, something it’s very proud of” he explains.  “Everyone who joins the orchestra is aware of that, and maybe even adapts their own sound to fit.  What’s special about the sound is that it has this almost animal quality that rises up in concert, like a living thing.  It’s this wonderful dark sound, but also very strong.  This orchestra has incredible reserves of energy.  Everyone, from the front to the back, gives absolutely everything in a concert.  I love that.”

So what prompted the musicians to embrace a conductor as defiantly un-traditional as Rattle?  The BPO’s Liverpool programme – Messiaen’s orgasmic Turangalîla-Symphonie – could hardly be further from the orchestra’s ancestral heartland of Beethoven and Brahms.  Rosenberg sees Rattle’s appointment as proof of the musicians’ commitment to the future.

“I think it was a signal that the orchestra wanted to embrace innovation” she suggests. “Rattle’s broad-minded approach to music, and the huge scope of his interests, from early music to the 21st century – this was of great interest to the musicians.  Now, there’s a synergy – artistic exploration is fed by tradition, and that exploration refreshes the tradition.”  Kelly agrees:

“In some ways he’s found a meeting of two traditions.  Older players in the orchestra, especially the ones who played under Karajan, are very positive about him.  They like the fact that he’s so human.  He’s not a grand maestro type – he just wants to make music with them.”

And no orchestra makes music like the Berlin Phil.  At a time when Liverpool’s own rather fine Philharmonic is scaling new heights, the BPO is an inspiring example of how an orchestra can come to embody a modern city.  Rosenberg has a message for the European Capital of Culture:

“Classical music is vital for the communal health of a city.  It can be a galvanising instrument.  Both in Liverpool and in Berlin, orchestras have the potential to make a huge difference.  An orchestra contributes to both the social and the spiritual life of a city.  Without one, you’re looking at a wasteland”.

Liverpool Phil: Kind of Blue

16 Friday Jan 2015

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Epstein, Liverpool, Philharmonic Hall, RLPO

I made a flying visit to my hometown of Liverpool on Wednesday to discuss the RLPO’s 2015-16 season. I always get a special buzz every time I step off the train at Lime Street; in what other UK city would they ever have put colossal Jacob Epstein sculptures on the façade of a department store?

Epstein 1 Epstein 2 Epstein 3 Lewis's

I go back a long way with the RLPO and its home, the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, and it’s always nice to have a chance to catch up with some old friends – both human and architectural. The Hall is halfway through a major refurbishment, and the admin team is currently camped out in a rather elegant-looking Regency terrace on Rodney Street.

But up on Hope Street, the refurbished foyer and auditorium are already back in action. I popped in for a very quick inspection, and was glad to see that the gorgeous abstract Art Deco engravings that make this (in my far-from-objective opinion) the most beautiful concert hall in the UK are still in pride of place on the front doors and the windows of the Grand Foyer.

Phil bar glass Phil deco Phil doors

The most obvious change – apart from a rearrangement to the layout of the Bar itself (the third since I started visiting the Phil in the 1980s; it looks good, though they’d be hard-pressed to fit a string sectional rehearsal in there now, as we sometimes used to do back in my Merseyside Youth Orchestra days) – is the decision to paint the Grand Foyer in a sort of dark teal colour.

It brings out the gold Deco details nicely, and creates a dramatic setting for the huge, gold mythological relief panels at each end of the Foyer. When the whole space is lit up and bustling with people on a concert night, it’ll be both smart and atmospheric. But…well, I’ll have to give it time; it’s strikingly different from the Phil I’ve always known. I’ve a feeling it’ll wear well, actually.

Phil bar

Of course what really matters is the sound in the auditorium. That’ll have to wait for another visit – I’m long overdue a reunion with the RLPO. There’s no orchestra in the UK with a warmer, more stylish sound, or that I love more. Meanwhile, walking off down Leece Street, I noticed this in a coffee house window. Always special to be in a place where an orchestra is so much part of the life and lore of the city; it even has an affectionate nickname. No-one in Liverpool ever calls the RLPO or the Philharmonic Hall anything other than “the Phil”.

Phil cafe window

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