Today has been such a busy day that I’ve only got time for a quick post. This morning was spent preparing and delivering a revision lecture, and this afternoon preparing and delivering a Departmental Colloquium. That done I headed straight for the railway station to get the train into Dublin and thence by foot to the National Concert Hall.
So here I am, sipping a glass of nicely chilled white wine as I wait for tonight’s performance. I’ll post a review tomorrow but, until then, Cheers!
Last night was my first trip of the year to the National Concert Hall in Dublin. I had planned to go on 17th January but by the time I got around to buying a ticket it was sold out. Fortunately, it was broadcast live on the radio and is still available on the RTÉ Player. I had a ticket for last Friday’s concert but bottled out of going because of transport worries about Storm Éowyn. That concert went ahead, apparently, but wasn’t broadcast so I missed it. Last night was third time lucky, and I’m very glad I got there!
The conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra for last night’s performance was Columbian-born Lina González-Granados in what I believe to have been her first appearance with the NSO. I certainly hope she comes back as she was very good indeed. I think the members of the orchestra enjoyed themselves as much as the audience!
As you can see from the programme, the concert opened with a very familiar piece, Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune by Claude Debussy, which was performed with all the shimmering sensuality it demands. Some very lush playing by the strings on this one, and lovely work by the woodwinds made it sound very fresh although I’ve heard it many times.
After that tenor Gavan Ring joined the orchestra to perform the Irish Premiere of The Celestial Stranger, a song cycle composed by Belfast born composer Stephen McNeff. This consists of settings of five poems, two by Thomas Traherne (including the one that gives its name to the collection, a remarkable work that I will post in its entirety later on). The next poem is by Walt Whitman and is titled As The Time Draws Nigh in the programme, but is not the well-known Whitman poem of that title but seems to have been adapted from various texts, including Years of the Modern. After that is a famous poem by Dylan Thomas, The hand that signed the paper and the cycle concludes with an adaptation of Farewell to Thee, written by Liliʻuokalani (former monarch of Hawaii). It’s a varied collection but there is a narrative behind the choice: a visitor from outerspace (the Celestial Stranger) arrives on Earth and reacts joyfully to begin with. As time goes on, however, he finds out more about war and and death and finally takes his leave.
The music is as varied as the choice of verse. I felt some influence of Britten in the first piece, but the rest is very different. Gavan Ring was in fine voice and the orchestra responded very well to the very different demands of this work compared to the first.
After the interval it was time for the main course of the evening, Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony. It’s a remarkable work because it’s not only a “proper” symphony in its construction and development but also the best part of an hour of one glorious melody after another. It’s a gorgeous work altogether, but the third movement (Adagio) is especially beautiful. I love the way Rachmaninov starts this movement one of his big romantic tunes, but then hides it while passages develop through a solo clarinet and strings. You know the tune is coming back though, and when it does the emotional impact brought the audience to a collective swoon. This is romantic music in all senses of the word, just the ticket for a cole January evening. It was a very fine performance, not least because you could see how much both conductor and orchestra were enjoying themselves. Hats off to Lina González-Granados who had just the right balance of control and expressiveness. She look quite exhauasted at the end, actually. She had worked hard to earn her standing ovation.
It was a dark and stormy night but I braved the inclement weather to travel to the National Concert Hall in Dublin for what will be my last concert of 2024. It look like being a nearly full house when I booked my ticket, but in the end there were quite a few empty seats perhaps because various groups decided not to make a journey owing to Storm Darragh. My own travels went without a hitch and in fact I even managed to walk from Connolly to the NCH before the performance and back to Pearse after it without getting rained on.
Anyway, there were two items on the menu: Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Major by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with soloist Stefan Jackiw, and the Symphony No. 7 in E Major by Anton Bruckner. The National Symphony Orchestra was conducted by Hans Graf.
Mozart wrote at least five violin concertos, and he was at most 20 when he wrote the last of the five that are known. During last night’s performance I was thinking a lot about all I had failed to achieve by the age of twenty! Influenced by his father Leopold, the violin was Mozart’s first instrument, but he later moved on and preferred to play keyboard instruments. Perhaps he wanted to escape from his father’s domination, which might explain why he didn’t write any more pieces for solo violin in the rest of his (short) life.
The 5th Violin Concerto is sometimes called “The Turkish” though there isn’t much of a Turkish influence in the music. Whatever the name, it is a very enjoyable piece in three movements, played quite beautifully last night by Stefan Jackiw and by the pared-down NSO. The soloist got a very warm ovation and responded with a solo encore in the form of a largo movement from a Bach violin sonata.
After the wine break we returned to find the stage much fuller with a large brass section and extra strings added to the smaller forces required for the Mozart. Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony is a huge and varied work lasting over an hour in performance. The radiant first movement, with its noble melody soaring over shimmering violin tremolos is very reminiscent of Wagner, as is much of the rest of the Symphony (especially in terms of the orchestration). Bruckner famously idolized Wagner and this composition is at least partly a tribute to his musical hero. It is said that Bruckner had a premonition of Wagner’s death in 1883 and the cymbal crash during the second (slow) movement symbolizes the moment that he found out that his premonition had come true. That whole movement (marked Sehr feierlich und sehr langsam; very solemn and very slow) is very moving: sombre though not excessively mournful. The third movement Scherzo is marked Sehr Schnell (very fast) but I found the tempo last night vigorous, but not epecially fast. I was expecting something a bit wilder. The last movement actually sounded to me more like Mahler than Wagner, with a resounding climax.
The Seventh is probably Bruckner’s best known and most performed Symphony. It was certainly a big hit for him when it was first performed in 1884. The composer was born in 1824 and last nigtht’s concert was billed as Bruckner 200. I think the 7th was a good choice to mark the occasion and the performance, with superb playing by the brass section (including the Wagner tuben), and the orchestra very well marshalled by Hans Graf, was a fitting tribute.
My next trip to the NCH won’t be until January, but I’m already looking forward to the Leningrad Symphony after the Christmas break!
Last night’s concert at the National Concert Hall featured star mezzo-soprano Tara Erraught (who is from Mullingar, in County Westmeath, and is artist-in-residence at the National Concert Hall for this season. She was accompanied by the National Symphony Orchestra directed by Laurence Cummings. You can tell how much I like Tara Erraught by the fact I went to the concert despite there being a harpsichord involved in some of the pieces; fortunately it was pointed away from the audience so we couldn’t hear it.
Before the concert, I was trying to remember when I heard her sing before. A look at my back catalogue revealed that it was this concert at which she sang a Mahler song-cycle. Last night’s performance comprised very different material, all from the 18th Century. There were three vocal pieces: a cantata in four sections by a name quite new to me, Marianna Martines, also known as Marianne von Martinez; a concert aria by Joseph Haydn; and by far the most exciting piece, Mozart’s wonderful Exsultate Jubilate. Tara Erraught was in fine voice throughout but I was particularly impressed with the precision of her articulation of the ornamented phrases in the last work. The audience loved it too.
The concert was all about Tara Erraught, however. The first half included Symphony No. 25 by Joseph Haydn, a funny little work only 13 minutes long and lacking the usual slow movement that seemed to me like it wasn’t really finished. It’s certainly not among Haydn’s best symphonies, anyway. It was a bit unfair on Haydn to have Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 “Jupiter” on the same menu as that it is one of the great symphonies by any composer. It did however demonstrate very powerfully how much the symphonic form had evolved in the twenty-odd years separating the two compositions (which incidentally are both in the same key of C Major). The Jupiter symphony is not only brim full of ideas, but the themes are woven into a much richer fabric. I might add that it was very well played by the NSO in a performance that was forceful and energetic without being too bombastic.
Last night’s Concert at the National Concert Hall in Dublin was billed as Puccini 100 as it was primarily intended to mark the centenary of the death of Giacomo Puccini. Guest conductor Carlo Rizzi had a long association with Welsh National Opera and is well-versed in Puccini’s operatic repertoire but this concert featured a rare treasure in the form of the Messa di Gloria, a large-scale work for choir, two soloists and orchestra Puccini wrote as a graduation piece when he was still a music student in Milan. Contrary to what you might infer from the title, it’s actually a full setting of the Latin Mass. Although written when the composer was only 20, the piece was never officially published until 1952, long after Puccini’s death. He did, however, recycle some pieces from it during his career as a composer of operas, chiefly in Manon Lescaut.
Although I’m a fan of Puccini’s operas I had never heard the Messa before and didn’t really know what to expect. It was turned out to be quite a revelation. As you might have anticipated it does sound more “operatic” than you might expect of a religious work and that dramatic certainly heightens the impact of the performance. I’m told that the National Symphony Chorus worked like crazy last week in rehearsals for this concert, and it certainly showed. The choir sounded absolutely amazing. Congratulations to choral director David Young! The two soloists were Welsh tenor Gwyn Hughes Jones and South African bass-baritone Simon Shibambu, both of whom were in fine voice. I particularly enjoyed the duet between them in the final Agnus Dei that brings the piece to a surprisingly gentle conclusion.
I really enjoy concerts that feature compositions I’ve never heard before, and this was a great example of that. I’m really glad that the Messa was chosen to mark Puccini 100. I must get a recording of it…
But the Puccini was only half the concert. Before the wine break we heard a very nice orchestral overture in C Major by Fanny Mendelssohn and then the evergreen 4th Symphony (“The Italian”) written by her kid brother, Felix, as a celebration of the time he spent in Italy on a Grand Tour. It was interesting to hear the two pieces played together as there is so much in common between the styles of composition, but so many subtle differences in voice. It’s a great pity that the sexism of the day prevented Fanny Mendelssohn from fulfilling her potential as a composer.
Yesterday I once again headed off after work into Dublin by train to attend a concert by the National Symphony Orchestra this time under the direction of guest conductor Dinis Sousa (whose name is new to me). The programme consisted of two very familiar works, Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor by Grieg and Elgar’s Enigma Variations by Elgar.
To start with, however, we heard a very interesting short piece by Anna Clyne called Masquerade which I enjoyed very much. This is only about five minutes long in performance, but full of energy and dynamics, and was a very suitable appetizer for the courses to follow.
The soloist for the Grieg Piano Concerto was Louis Schwizgebel who played it very well indeed. His articulation was crisp where necessary but also flowing when called for in the more romantic sections. The performance was very well received by the audience and by me. Actually I think that was the best performance of this work that I’ve heard live. Incidentally, I’m told the piano on which he performed was a brand new Steinway. Also incidentally, Edvard Grieg was only 24 when he wrote this piece.
During the second movement a member of the viola section of the orchestra had to leave the stage. I don’t know if she had broken a string or was just feeling unwell. I suppose both of these most happen from time to time in concerts, but I’d never seen it before. Thankfully she was back for the second half.
The Enigma Variations is another piece that is performed quite frequently. I’m not a huge fan of Elgar but this work definitely has its moments and I think anyone who doesn’t find Variation IX (“Nimrod”) uplifting must have something wrong with them. That said, that part is often played too slowly for my taste and can sound funereal rather than inspirational. Anyway, I hadn’t heard this in live performance for a long time so it was very pleasant to hear it again. I had forgotten that there is an organ part to this, actually, and it was good to hear the splendid NCH instrument used especially in the finale.
Overall it was a short (just 66 minutes playing time) but enjoyable concert. I’ll certainly be looking out for Louis Schwizgebel’s name on recordings in future as I think he is a fine soloist.
Last night found me once again at the National Concert Hall in Dublin for a concert by the National Symphony Orchestra conducted this time by Leonard Slatkin, who has a long association with the NSO and who was 80 years old on 1st September. I must say he looked very sprightly for a man eighty years of age!
To start the programme we had the world premiere of a piece by Leonard Slatkin’s son, Daniel. Voyager 130 was inspired by the Voyager space mission, and especially by the Golden Records carried by the Voyager probes. Among the pieces of music included on those records is the exquisite Cavatina from Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 13 (Opus 130) from which the composer borrows thematic material for this piece. Daniel Slatkin was actually in the audience for this – in fact he was sitting just two rows in front of me – and went up on stage after the very enjoyable performance.
After that, and some rearranging on stage, we had a performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 with Dublin-born soloist Hugh Tinney. Although for its time it was very unconventional in structure, this is now a very familiar piece in the concert hall. For the most part it was played very well but I did think the orchestra were a bit stiff and lacking in expression in places. The performance was warmly received by the NCH audience, and Hugh Tinney received a standing ovation at the end.
After the wine break we had another familiar work, the Symphony No. 3 by Johannes Brahms, which Leonard Slatkin conducted without a score. I’m persevering with Brahms. I still don’t find that he moves me as much as many other composers and so many people rave about him that I think I must be missing something. The 3rd Symphony is a very fine work, offering lots of variety across its four movements while maintaining a strong sense of coherence and remaining relatively concise – it lasts about 33 minutes in performance. I’m no expert on Brahms but it seems to me that the 3rd Symphony is where he really found his voice as a symphonic composer and stepped out from the shadow of Beethoven.
Apart from the first piece, it was a very conventional programme but I enjoyed it as did the audience. It’s a pity there weren’t more people there, though. I’d guess that the NCH was about 2/3 full at most.
P.S. Last night Leinster rugby were playing a match at Landsdowne Road (beating the Dragons 34-6) and Shelbourne were playing Sligo Rovers at home in the League of Ireland (a 0-0 draw) so the train home was a bit busier than last time but still uneventful. When I got home later I decided to listen to a recording of the Beethoven Strong Quartet No. 13 before bed…
It was just over a year ago that I last went to the National Concert Hall in Dublin. That occasion was the opening of a new season of concerts for 2023-4 by the National Symphony Orchestra. After a year away on sabbatical, last night I went to the season opening of the next year of concerts by the National Symphony Orchestra, this time under the direction of Mihhail Gerts. I’m hoping to see more of the forthcoming season than I did the last!
The programme for the concert is shown in the picture. The first half was dominated by legendary mezzo-soprano Dame Sarah Connolly, resplendent in a turquoise frock, who sang six songs by Alma Mahler (born Alma Schindler) who was of course the wife of Gustav Mahler whose 1st Symphony we heard in the second half. Gustav famously (and reprehensibly) told Alma that she had to give up composing music when they married (which they did in 1902). Until then she had written not only songs but also piano music. Few of her compositions survive, however. Apparently she destroyed many of the manuscripts herself in later life. Of the fifty or so songs she is thought to have written, only 17 (including the 6 we heard last night) still exist on paper. She at least responded by outliving him by more than 50 years: Gustav died in 1911 and Alma Mahler passed away in 1964.
It’s very unfair to compare Alma Mahler’s settings with those of Gustav Mahler, who was a master of the orchestral song cycle. The compositions we heard all all quite short, three or four minutes, and are definitely influenced by Wagner. The first song, for example, deploys the famous Tristan Chord and there are passages that are clearly influenced by the Wesendonck Lieder. None of the manuscripts are dated, but in terms of style they do sound like late Romantic works from around 1900 when she was very young. Overall these works not at the same level of achievement of either Richard Wagner or Gustav Mahler but, with Sarah Connolly in fine voice, there was much to enjoy. I had never heard any of these songs before this evening, and it left me wondering what Alma Mahler might have achieved musically had she continued to compose. We’ll never know.
Before these songs we heard the concert overture In Nature’s Realm by Antonín Dvořák. This is also a piece that feels very late-19th Century (it was composed in 1891). It’s a sort of homage to the beauty of the composer’s native Bohemia with distinct echoes of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, I thought.
After the interval wine break we returned for the second half which consisted of (Gustav) Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 in D Major. This is a very familiar concert work nowadays, but it’s worth remembering that it didn’t exactly set the world on fire when it was first performed in 1889 and Mahler revised it extensively before it arrived at the form now usually performed. Like all Mahler symphonies it covers a vast territory. One of the most famous Mahler quotations is “the symphony is a world”, but in the case of his own symphonies each movement is a world. The first movement begins in hesitant and fragmentary fashion before bursting into life with a metaphorical evocation of daybreak. The second movement is earthier and more forceful, quoting from folk songs and country dances. The third is my favourite, with its humorously up-beat references to Klezmer music before ending in a kind of funeral march. The final movement is tempestuous at first, then calm, then erupts into a glorious finale.
Last night’s performance was broadcast live on RTÉ Lyric FM but what radio listeners won’t have got was the thrilling sight of a symphony orchestra in full flood. At the end of the last movement, members of brass section stood up to give extra power to the climactic resolution of the piece. Mahler does “loud” very well indeed, but I was impressed by the spectacle too: the lights gleaming off the array of trombones and horns as they blasted out the final phrases (in another context I would call them “riffs”). Great stuff, and very well received by the audience.
P.S. On the way into Dublin to see last night’s concert I realized that the Irish Rail timetable had changed while I was away so, instead of terminating at Connolly (the station, not the mezzo-soprano), the train I was on went all the way through to Pearse, thereby saving me a bit of time walking. It only takes about 20 minutes (for me) to walk from Pearse to the NCH, in case you’re wondering, and I do like a bit of a walk to stretch my legs before sitting down for a couple of hours at a concert.
Last night I went to the Opening Concert of the new season by the National Symphony Orchestra at the National Concert Hall in Dublin. I’ll be away for most of the year, so I thought I’d make the most of the time I’ve got before I depart to get a fix of culture.
This year is the 75th anniversary of the founding of the National Symphony Orchestra, and the very first piece they performed at their very first concert back in 1948 was Academic Festival Overture by Johannes Brahms. I found it an especially fitting piece because this week we have been having graduation (conferring) ceremonies all week in Maynooth. It’s a familiar work, but provided an enjoyably upbeat start to the show.
The next piece was a a world premiere of a special commission for the National Symphony Orchestra. I was looking forward to this because it was to be the first time I’ve ever heard the uilleann pipes on the concert stage. The piece is a lot of fun, full of great tunes and robust humour. The uilleann pipes are a rather quiet instrument, however, and I have to say I hardly heard a note from them over the rest of the orchestra. At the end a Scottish piper walked on stage to play the bagpipes during the finale. These pipes are a much louder instrument, and even they were hard to hear with the rest of the band on full throttle.
Anyway, after the wine break, we had the Symphonie Fantastique by Hector Berlioz. I was put off this piece at school by a teacher who was obsessed with it and spent nearly a whole term banging on about how wonderful it is. While it is undoubtedly very imaginative – and very innovative for a piece written as early as 1830 – I remain unconvinced by all the hype. It’s basically a fever dream resulting from the composer’s experiments on opium and I find it rather gimmicky. Nevertheless, there is much to enjoy in a live performance of the work. Conductor Jaime Martín began the performance with a genial introduction to some of the “crazy” elements which he got the relevant musicians to play snippets representing, for example, the bubbling cauldron in the last movement which represents witches doing their stuff.
After the full performance the National Symphony Orchestra got a standing ovation. I joined in only briefly because the conductor’s introduction to the Berlioz meant that the concert was longer than I expected and I had to leave to catch my train back to Maynooth. I needn’t have worried. The train was 20 minutes late.
Yesterday, after a nice walk through the sunny streets of Dublin, at the National Concert Hall for the final concert of the season by the National Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Mihhail Gerts, who were joined, for the second half, by the National Symphony Chorus directed by David Young and three star vocalists. The progamme consisted of two pieces by Sergei Rachmaninov (who was born 150 years ago this year) and one by Eduard Tubin (an Estonian composer who was new to me before last night).
The first item one the menu was The Isle of the Dead, Op. 29 by Sergei Rachmaninov, inspired by a painting of the same name by Arnold Böcklin and written around 1908. The rhythms of the opening passage evoke the motion of a boat moving across the sea to the island, from which point the piece develops among a cloud of increasingly dense harmonic layers into a dark atmosphere full of foreboding. It’s a darkly dramatic work that I’ve enjoyed every time I heard it and last night was no exception.
There then followed the Sinfonietta on Estonian Motifs by Eduard Tubin introduced by conductor Mihhail Gerts, who is himself from Estonia. It’s a work in three movements inspired by the folk songs the composer heard as a child growing up in Estonia. I knew that much before the performance started but didn’t realize it would turn out to be such a weighty composition. The two outer movements are rhythmically complex in a way that’s reminiscent of Stravinksy (especially Petrushka) and the overall mood is far from the pastoral tranquility I’d expected: the music is rather edgy, in fact. I suppose that’s not surprising given that it was written in 1940. I enjoyed this but it is strange how much it reminded me of other composers: as well as Stravinsky, there are clear nods in the direction of Sibelius and at times it also reminded me of Arnold Bax. You might say it is a little bit derivative. I couldn’t possibly comment.
After the wine break we had The Bells, a choral symphony for soprano, tenor, bass-baritone, chorus and large symphony orchestra by Sergei Rachmaninov (Op. 35). The words are based on a Russian translation of the poem The Bells by Edgar Allan Poe which was very popular in Russia in the early 20th century and which clearly resonated with Rachmaninov:
The sound of church bells dominated all the cities of Russia I used to know, they accompanied every Russian from childhood to the grave and no composer could escape their influence. Most of my life was lived amid vibrations of of the bells of Moscow.
Sergei Rachmaninov
The Bells is in four movements, echoing the four stanzas of the poem, and representing the journey “from childhood to the grave”, the last movement being a Lento subtitled The Mournful Iron Bells. The three soloists sing in one part each; the third movement involves orchestra and chorus only. Ukrainian tenor Valentyn Dytiuk sang in the first movement, Estonian soprano Mirjam Mesak the second and Ukrainian baritone Andrei Bondarenko the fourth. All three soloists were superb but particularly enjoyed the sinewy muscularity of Bondarenko’s baritone which gave a sense of rawness to his performance.
It was a fitting finale to the season. Congratulations to the National Symphony Orchestra for a great performance, and to the National Symphony Orchestra who were outstanding too.
Walking back to Pearse Station to get the train for Maynooth I found myself wondering when my next visit to the National Concert Hall will be. I’ll be away on sabbatical most of next year. Still, there’ll be plenty of music where I’m going…
In the Dark 