The Palace Courtyard is a magical venue. Despite it being a hot, airless night last Wednesday, people turned up in their hundreds to listen to soprano Lydia Caruana singing with tenor Dmytro Popov and the Berwald Symphony Orchestra of Stockholm under the baton of Manfred Honeck in a concert which most disconcertingly was called Love Is In the Air; a more ridiculous and ill-conceived soubriquet I have yet to hear of!
I have been reviewing music since I was 17; that's an awfully long time. I have never had trouble finding my critics' seats which according to long-standing tradition are well placed somewhere half way down the aisle towards the middle. I feel that I must point out that for the first time ever the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts have seen fit to either shove us critics to the side as they did for the Shakespeare or not keep any seats for us at all as they did for this particular concert in the Palace Courtyard. After being turned away by the ushers who had no idea what should have been done, I sat towards the back where I had to put up with whiffs of cigar or pipe smoke from the person in charge of some soundboard or light board and where I could hear all the noises of the ushers shuffling their papers, pacing up and down and whispering among themselves. An interesting experience and one that teaches one there are unfair advantages in life that render you unaware of how the other half lives!
My colleagues threw a bit of a wobbly and were allowed to sit on reserved seats that were not theirs in the front. I was not asked to join them by the ushers, who all knew I was there, which is, I am sure you will agree, bad form. If the organisers of these events do not think that we critics are important enough to keep a seat for, then they need not ask our newspaper to cover the event. We have over the years been instrumental in promoting, guiding, educating and providing tangible and quotable appreciations for many of Malta's leading singers and musicians. I am sure this is an oversight and that the organisers will take note and remedy the situation forthwith.
Back to the concert itself and we had a programme that is a reviewer's nightmare. Nothing that you can put your finger on specifically but which can only be compared to a buffet where fish and meat and everything and anything are all served simultaneously in one jumbled plate and which I find all begins to taste the same after a bit or absolutely awful.
I strongly feel that concert programmes should be like well-planned dinner party menus. There should be variation, there should be homogeneity too but, above all, a concert of the most popular, not to say hackneyed, concert arias and duets simply cannot gel with random aristocratic abstractions of movements from Mozart and Haydn symphonies and concertos, let alone Vivaldi, plonked in between! It was rather like putting my CD player which takes six discs on Random Play with music from different times and styles and expecting to have a satisfying medley. It doesn't work; at least for me it doesn't!
If one had to describe Manfred Honeck's conducting style, articulately deft would do it to a T. In all the pieces played, whether Gounod, Mozart, Verdi, Haydn or Puccini, there was this ethereal lightness and clarity which made choice of works worthwhile listening to. This was I am afraid a concert of "most popular pieces" which we have listened to over and over again. I am dying for a change from the usual Verdi Puccini fare being dished out time and again. Some interesting but intense contemporary sounds like Peter Lieberson's Five Neruda Songs or some profound J.S. Bach Cantata like Ich habe genug for instance would make a pleasant change.
I especially enjoyed the "classical" pieces. Mozart's Jupiter was in an unusually light if not skittish mood that one does not usually associate with that lascivious and hen-pecked deity; the first movement is usually tacked in a more maestoso style befitting the great statue in the Capitolino that was one of the Seven Ancient Wonders of the world. The plaintive largo with its dripping rain from Vivaldi's Winter Concerto was beautifully performed, watercolour by the leader of the Berwald, Per Sporrong. Although I thought that initially the first movement Mozart G Minor Symphony was taken a trifle too fast to allow the pathos to show through the rhythm, I found that the sadness increased as it flew along; an original and daring approach to a work which we are constantly exposed to; even on mobile phones and telephone exchanges!
The adagio from Mozart's totally miraculous Clarinet Concerto was in my opinion the loveliest piece played. Johan Fransen played the soaring and deceptively simple melodic lines with a passion and expression that certainly moved me as did, in a totally different way, the finale of Haydn's Symphony No. 88 with its fritillaric flights and exquisite dynamics. The thing is that there was enough material here to have two concerts: An operatic one and a classical one had all the movements of the various symphonies and concertos been played. Fusing bits and pieces of the two did not have harmonious results. Had the arias and duets sung not been Verdi, Puccini and yet more Verdi but Mozart, Gluck and yet more Mozart then the overall effect would have been far more felicitous.
The concert within a concert had one interesting and satisfying trait with regard to programme planning. The four excepts from La Traviata in the first half and the three from Madama Butterfly in the second made sense. However, had they been reversed the Brindisi that must have been planned as an encore would have been far more satisfying. Be that as it may a movement from a Vivaldi Concerto appearing smack after the Traviata Act 1 Prelude and two arias and preceding the duet Parigi o cara was disconcerting as was the Haydn Symphony appearing like a rabbit out of a hat in the middle of the Puccini pieces!
Tenor Dmytro Popov has a very powerful and expressive voice which still needs to mature a bit; it's rather like a vineyard that presently produces a Grand Cru eventually becoming a Grand Cru Classe. His Italian accent needs working on as during the Rigoletto, his Gonzaga Duke sounded as if he had been too influenced by his Habsburg mother! Apart from that his addio fiorito asil, which is definitely the loveliest and most romantic aria to be sung by a cad like Pinkerton, was absolutely lovely.
Our own Lydia Caruana was I found a trifle subdued. It sounded as if she was holding back something which only occasionally shone through. It was a very careful performance and one in which it was obvious that maximum attention had been given to create just the right dynamics and just the right tone. What it did lack was that joie de vivre, that total immersion in the music and that generosity that has made Lydia the leading singer that she is. Lydia is a singer who is a giver. She never usually holds back and yet not until the gorgeous Puccini duet did her full expression come into play. It was not that the other pieces that she performed had anything wrong with them but they lacked her special brand of crackle and sparkle. It may, of course, have been the heat. It could also have been the acoustic that made the orchestra sound muffled at times; at least from where I was, however, if some new influence is putting too much emphasis on being too schooled and too controlled, I would rather have slightly flawed passion any day than icy and emotionless perfection that makes coloratura sound like a sublime sewing machine and bel canto too contrived. Apply that attitude to the raw passion of Puccini and the romanticism of Verdi and the result is a precise but oh so cold rendering!
I have been reviewing music since I was 17; that's an awfully long time. I have never had trouble finding my critics' seats which according to long-standing tradition are well placed somewhere half way down the aisle towards the middle. I feel that I must point out that for the first time ever the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts have seen fit to either shove us critics to the side as they did for the Shakespeare or not keep any seats for us at all as they did for this particular concert in the Palace Courtyard. After being turned away by the ushers who had no idea what should have been done, I sat towards the back where I had to put up with whiffs of cigar or pipe smoke from the person in charge of some soundboard or light board and where I could hear all the noises of the ushers shuffling their papers, pacing up and down and whispering among themselves. An interesting experience and one that teaches one there are unfair advantages in life that render you unaware of how the other half lives!
My colleagues threw a bit of a wobbly and were allowed to sit on reserved seats that were not theirs in the front. I was not asked to join them by the ushers, who all knew I was there, which is, I am sure you will agree, bad form. If the organisers of these events do not think that we critics are important enough to keep a seat for, then they need not ask our newspaper to cover the event. We have over the years been instrumental in promoting, guiding, educating and providing tangible and quotable appreciations for many of Malta's leading singers and musicians. I am sure this is an oversight and that the organisers will take note and remedy the situation forthwith.
Back to the concert itself and we had a programme that is a reviewer's nightmare. Nothing that you can put your finger on specifically but which can only be compared to a buffet where fish and meat and everything and anything are all served simultaneously in one jumbled plate and which I find all begins to taste the same after a bit or absolutely awful.
I strongly feel that concert programmes should be like well-planned dinner party menus. There should be variation, there should be homogeneity too but, above all, a concert of the most popular, not to say hackneyed, concert arias and duets simply cannot gel with random aristocratic abstractions of movements from Mozart and Haydn symphonies and concertos, let alone Vivaldi, plonked in between! It was rather like putting my CD player which takes six discs on Random Play with music from different times and styles and expecting to have a satisfying medley. It doesn't work; at least for me it doesn't!
If one had to describe Manfred Honeck's conducting style, articulately deft would do it to a T. In all the pieces played, whether Gounod, Mozart, Verdi, Haydn or Puccini, there was this ethereal lightness and clarity which made choice of works worthwhile listening to. This was I am afraid a concert of "most popular pieces" which we have listened to over and over again. I am dying for a change from the usual Verdi Puccini fare being dished out time and again. Some interesting but intense contemporary sounds like Peter Lieberson's Five Neruda Songs or some profound J.S. Bach Cantata like Ich habe genug for instance would make a pleasant change.
I especially enjoyed the "classical" pieces. Mozart's Jupiter was in an unusually light if not skittish mood that one does not usually associate with that lascivious and hen-pecked deity; the first movement is usually tacked in a more maestoso style befitting the great statue in the Capitolino that was one of the Seven Ancient Wonders of the world. The plaintive largo with its dripping rain from Vivaldi's Winter Concerto was beautifully performed, watercolour by the leader of the Berwald, Per Sporrong. Although I thought that initially the first movement Mozart G Minor Symphony was taken a trifle too fast to allow the pathos to show through the rhythm, I found that the sadness increased as it flew along; an original and daring approach to a work which we are constantly exposed to; even on mobile phones and telephone exchanges!
The adagio from Mozart's totally miraculous Clarinet Concerto was in my opinion the loveliest piece played. Johan Fransen played the soaring and deceptively simple melodic lines with a passion and expression that certainly moved me as did, in a totally different way, the finale of Haydn's Symphony No. 88 with its fritillaric flights and exquisite dynamics. The thing is that there was enough material here to have two concerts: An operatic one and a classical one had all the movements of the various symphonies and concertos been played. Fusing bits and pieces of the two did not have harmonious results. Had the arias and duets sung not been Verdi, Puccini and yet more Verdi but Mozart, Gluck and yet more Mozart then the overall effect would have been far more felicitous.
The concert within a concert had one interesting and satisfying trait with regard to programme planning. The four excepts from La Traviata in the first half and the three from Madama Butterfly in the second made sense. However, had they been reversed the Brindisi that must have been planned as an encore would have been far more satisfying. Be that as it may a movement from a Vivaldi Concerto appearing smack after the Traviata Act 1 Prelude and two arias and preceding the duet Parigi o cara was disconcerting as was the Haydn Symphony appearing like a rabbit out of a hat in the middle of the Puccini pieces!
Tenor Dmytro Popov has a very powerful and expressive voice which still needs to mature a bit; it's rather like a vineyard that presently produces a Grand Cru eventually becoming a Grand Cru Classe. His Italian accent needs working on as during the Rigoletto, his Gonzaga Duke sounded as if he had been too influenced by his Habsburg mother! Apart from that his addio fiorito asil, which is definitely the loveliest and most romantic aria to be sung by a cad like Pinkerton, was absolutely lovely.
Our own Lydia Caruana was I found a trifle subdued. It sounded as if she was holding back something which only occasionally shone through. It was a very careful performance and one in which it was obvious that maximum attention had been given to create just the right dynamics and just the right tone. What it did lack was that joie de vivre, that total immersion in the music and that generosity that has made Lydia the leading singer that she is. Lydia is a singer who is a giver. She never usually holds back and yet not until the gorgeous Puccini duet did her full expression come into play. It was not that the other pieces that she performed had anything wrong with them but they lacked her special brand of crackle and sparkle. It may, of course, have been the heat. It could also have been the acoustic that made the orchestra sound muffled at times; at least from where I was, however, if some new influence is putting too much emphasis on being too schooled and too controlled, I would rather have slightly flawed passion any day than icy and emotionless perfection that makes coloratura sound like a sublime sewing machine and bel canto too contrived. Apply that attitude to the raw passion of Puccini and the romanticism of Verdi and the result is a precise but oh so cold rendering!