How wonderful to be able to learn and laugh at the same time.
I think I would have to own up as being guilty as charged on this one. The excuse is on a par with "I'd best not keep you any longer" as a method of terminating a conversation.
And this has always seemed to me to be entirely expedient.
My first regular Phil concert of the new year was originally programmed as a salute to Domingo Hindoyan's mentor Daniel Barenboim. However, the maestro (in his eightieth year) has rapidly succumbed to debilitating ill health and so was not present.
We kept the original programming of Lutosławski's very pleasant and tuneful Little Suite and a well balanced but brisk and emotive performance of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No4.
In place of the advertised attraction, we got Víkingur Ólafsson, no less, in Schumann's Piano Concerto. I'd not heard this work live since Angela Hewitt gave the piece a sprightly going over back in 2009. Ólafsson made the work feel new minted in every bar capturing it in bright and freshly coloured glory.
Every superlative that I have heard about this young man and his approach to live performance has been entirely accurate. All I can offer after just one hearing is that his touch of the keyboard is magnificently well controlled to give the appearance of effortless spontaneity whilst creating exquisite sonorities. You live for evenings like this which transcend the mundane and give you glimpses of a collective eternal.
As Roland had it, sad though we may all have been not to have bidden farewell to Barenboim, in Ólafsson we saw and heard the future. There is a good chance that he will return to the Phil. I would hope to be there to see him.
And then, some five days' later, I got to hear some more of Hindoyan's excellent Bruckner. After last year's infrequently heard Symphony No8, we had some more familiar repertoire with the Symphony No4 given the name of Romantic. It was one of the last works I heard live before the first lockdown of 2020 in a highly enjoyable performance under Andrew Manze.
I can't say that this performance was better than that but both had inestimable merits. Manze's sound world was as clear as alpine air with just a romantic hint of numinous Caspar David Friedrich mists. Hindoyan's sound world was the romantic hero's internal struggle with the troubles of this world in the face of whatever awaits in the next hereafter.
There was a real struggle in the first and third movements. The second, marked andante, moved me near to tears which I have never experienced before in this work. The finale built inexorably to a blazing, life-affirming climax. Brass was fabulous. Woodwind impeccable. Timpani spot on. Strings glorious. I may not have been as elated as I had been for Ólafsson's Schumann but the music making certainly re-charged my batteries.
Before all of that excitement, we had Bruch's Scottish Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra. I'd not heard the piece live for decades since I was a student and then it was fronted by a young star named Myung Wha Chung no less. We had Timothy Chooi on the fiddle and he was very, very, good. I am more aware of pianists that I am of violinists but his is a name I shall look out for in future seasons.
The work, four movements over twenty-five minutes, has the rag bag nature of a fantasy and could be one long yawn until the most well known part - the final movement. Chooi, however, had the whole audience hanging on every note of all four sections. And technically, he was just stunning. OK it helps to have a Stradivarius tucked under your chin but, without the technique and the temperament to match, the extra heft to the sound counts for naught.
How excellent to have encountered two bright, young, stellar musicians in the early stages of their respective careers.
I met up with Colin to travel in to FACT in Liverpool to attend a matinée performance of the Metropolitan Opera's new David McVicar production of Giordano's Fedora.
It can't be claimed as a masterpiece but it is good forthright entertainment particularly when it's as well sung as it was here by Sonya Yoncheva as Princess Fedora Romazov and Piotr Beczała as Count Loris Ipanov. Marco Armiliato allowed the orchestra to do its thing.
I can honestly say that I enjoyed this much more than I did the Theodora of a week ago. But I also think that the Theodora was the finer of the two performances and works.
Recently, Tom Baker (one of my favourite actors to have played the role of Dr Who) celebrated his 89th birthday. This story shows his essential humanity and the way what is good can have an effect which travels far beyond what you are capable of comprehending.
