Tag Archives: Alpesh Chauhan

BBC SSO / Chauhan

Posted on by

City Halls, Glasgow

It’s over fifty years since Ravi Shankar’s concerto for sitar made such a powerful statement on how potent the fusion of Eastern and Western instrumentalists could be. It was one of the late Shankar’s close collaborators, Indian tabla supremo Zakir Hussain, who in 2023 took things further with a Triple Concerto for tabla, sitar and bansuri just as fascinating in its cross-cultural proposition.

Hussain’s concerto was the opening work in Thursday’s East-meets-West programme by the BBC SSO, playing under its former associate conductor Alpesh Chauhan, who previously championed the work with the Symphony Orchestra of India. Hussain, himself, was due to feature in Thursday’s concertante trio, but died last December, his place taken by his equally-talented brother, Fazal Qureshi. 

Its foremost strength proved to be the superb Indian front line, the tactile intricacies of Qureshi’s tabla playing matched by the charismatic, at times rock-leaning, Niladri Kumar on sitar, and the beguiling bansuri (bamboo flute) playing of Rakesh Chaurasia, whose lung capacity facilitated moments of superhuman breath control. Their presence, sitting crosslegged on decorated daises, was visually and musically theatrical, playing out a metaphorical scenario of conflict and resolution. These interactions were mesmerising, exhilarating and imbued with action-packed spontaneity.

Against this, the orchestral writing did seem relatively bland, modally-confined, in short knowing its place in the hierarchy of things. Yet its background cinematic role benefitted from the warmth and expansiveness of the SSO’s richness and the soft relevance that emanated from that understanding. Chauhan was a consummate ringmaster, deftly in control, inspiring slick communication between the starry trio and backline support.

The remainder of the programme demanded far greater orchestral nuance and virtuosity. In Rachmaninov’s symphonic poem The Isle of the Dead, inspired by the dark and mysterious eponymous painting by Swedish artist Arnold Böcklin, the former quality was powerfully evoked, its haunting, lugubrious opening charged with ominous premonition, its arc-like structure thrillingly heated in the crashing climaxes. If the momentum occasionally faltered, it was only marginal, Chauhan handling the shaping and colouring well.

As he did with the invigorating sound world of Stravinsky’s revised 1919 suite, The Firebird. This was an electrifying conclusion to an intriguing evening. There was expectant thrill in the atmospheric turbulence of the Introduction, menace in the Firebird’s fitful dance, exotic scents peppering the Princesses’ Dance, exhaustive depravity in the Infernal Dance, and beyond the queasy whiffs of the Berceuse the resolute triumphalism of the Finale. 

Ken Walton

This concert was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3, subsequently available on BBC Sounds for 30 days

(Pictured: Zakir Hussain)

BBC SSO / Chauhan

Posted on by

City Halls, Glasgow

At least the errant mobile phone momentarily delaying the opening of Bruckner’s Symphony No 9 in D minor was in the right key. If audible to those listening at home to the live Radio 3 broadcast, be assured this belligerent and persistent D was not part of the some newly discovered revision of the symphony by a composer prone to such second thoughts. That, of course, could never be in this case here, as he died before completing this final symphony.

As it happened, Thursday’s conductor Alpesh Chauhan was quick-thinking. He not only waited for the ring tone to cease, but had the presence of mind to segue perfectly into the trenchant solemnity of Bruckner’s opening movement, effectively creating art out of an accident. (The last time I witnessed something like this was with the same orchestra in a Mahler Symphony, where the lonesome final note on double basses was matched uncannily by a passing plane, the inevitable Doppler effect unfortunately turning fortuitousness into farce.)

That aside, this was a Bruckner bicentenary performance by the BBC SSO that made its own luck. Chauhan weighed in with bullish bravado, which ensured the symphony’s mountainous peaks towered magnificently over the expansive landscape. At the other end of the spectrum he stood back from the fray, tempting the strings in particular to voice their own verdant response to the lower-lying pastures. But the middle ground was messy, imperfections of tempo change, attack and intonation (especially the woodwind), that emphasised the potential pitfalls of Bruckner interpretation, and the need for an unstoppable sense of trajectory to counter the composer’s block-like mentality.

To his credit, Chauhan’s Scherzo was a particular delight, its puckish Trio sounding like Prokofiev before his time. Either side, the extant outer movements acted as solid bookends, as cathartic as they were despairing. The hushed conclusion had question mark written all over it. Had he lived, where would Bruckner have taken us next?

Chauhan had already taken us to Italy and Russia, opening with two Puccini Intermezzi from his operas Madama Butterfly and Manon Lescaut before charting unfamiliar Tchaikovsky territory in his symphonic fantasy Fatum (Fate), a work the composer chose to destroy after its second performance, but which was reconstructed after his death. Thankfully so, for it is particular interesting, its heraldic power-driven unisons and punctuating ballistic chords not unlike a Puccini opera opening. We heard a volatile work, heated and febrile, if swithering ambivalently between operatic and symphonic ambitions. 

No such question with the Puccini, though aspects of Chauhan’s performances seemed emotionally constrained in this concert hall context. The Madama Butterfly Intermezzo opened magnificently, its heaving expectant anacrusis giving way to swooning lyrical enchantment and exotic colours, the players adding whistling to emulate the twittering birds. Principal cellist Rudi de Groote’s molten solo, in particular, set in motion a moody Manon Lescaut extract, even if later tutti moments seemed tempered by ragged entries. Nor, to be honest, did this performance absolutely capture the all-pervading resonance and glow Puccini’s music ought to inspire.

Ken Walton

This concert was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3, and is available for a further 30 days on BBC Sounds. The SSO performs Bruckner 9 again at The Glasshouse (formerly The Sage), Gateshead, on Sunday 3 March

BBC SSO / Chauhan

Posted on by

City Halls, Glasgow

This hefty BBC SSO coupling of Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler was not for the faint-hearted. Few will have left the City Halls on Thursday without feeling they’d been squeezed through the emotional wringer. On their own, Strauss’ Symphonic Fantasy based on his opera Die Frau one Schatten and Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde are exhaustive enough as examples of post-Romantic, Austro-German intensity. Together, the danger was they might be one fix too many.

That wasn’t the case. Alpesh Chauhan – until recently the assistant conductor of the SSO – seemed ever-alert to the possibility, assured in his gestures and generously poetic in his phrase-shaping, but with a modicum of reserve and judicious application of self-indulgence. For us, that meant little discomfort and an ample double-helping of gratification.

There were some obvious issues – tenor Brenden Gunnell’s intrepid efforts to be heard over the orchestral clamour dominating the opening Mahler song (he was just short of screaming at one point, to little effect), and a general feeling that not everything had been done to fine-tune the expressive dove-tailing of the sinuous orchestral textures. But besides that, the delivery was impressive.

Strauss’ Symphonic Fantasy proved fascinating for the ground it occupies away from the opera that spawned it. Never conceived as a string of greatest hits – which don’t really exist in Strauss’ more organically creative mind – the impression is one of symphonic distillation. Recognisable themes provide the essential impetus for a powerful, self-contained, cathartic stream of consciousness. 

Foremost in this performance was its thrusting inevitability, wave upon wave of tidal surge punctuated by moments of idyllic calm (the early slow, smoking crescendo by the strings) or the thwack of menacing chords. Chauhan gauged the mood swings well, from Debussy-like mirages to irreverent playfulness. It was wild and heated, tempered by a cool head.

The Mahler, once its balance was better calibrated, was exquisite and every bit as compelling, Gunnell’s soaring tenor complemented by the golden-grained mezzo of Karen Cargill. There was pastoral frivolity from Gunnell in his songs, the scherzo-like “Youth” and a captivating laissez-faire in “The Drunkard in Spring”. Cargill revelled in her more reflective selection, the wistful ruminations of “The Lonely One In Autumn” and the shifting images of “Beauty” with its rapturous climactic interlude. 

But it was in the heart-stopping “Farewell”, meltingly sung by Cargill, that the full impact hit home.  Beyond the filigree instrumental delicacies of the earlier songs, and Mahler’s confection of impressions, from chattering chinoiserie and bird-like menageries to swarthy folk scenes, it was in this final timeless transcendence that magic happened. At its impassioned peak Cargill’s low register was a scorching presence. In the final fade out, pierced by a chiming celeste, we were left only with a chilling, seemingly eternal, silence. 

Ken Walton

BBC SSO / Chauhan

Posted on by

The Sage, Gateshead

It’s always refreshing to have a change of scenery, and that applies as much to orchestras like the BBC SSO who were on Tyneside – literally – on Friday to repeat the all-action programme it had delivered the previous evening to its home audience in Glasgow and live across the nation on BBC Radio 3. A healthy turn-out greeted the visitors to Gateshead’s smart riverside Sage venue, where the SSO’s outgoing associate conductor, Alpesh Chauhan, addressed the swashbuckling adventurism of Richard Strauss’ Don Quixote alongside the questioning euphoria of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony.

Such intense repertoire was subjected to inquisitive exploration, at times probing originality, by Chauhan. Where he sought restless irascibility in the Strauss, the focus of his Shostakovich was surely its tangible dichotomy, a work written “in response” to Stalin’s personal attack on what he saw as increasingly “non-Soviet” tendencies in the composer’s music (chiefly in his opera The Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District), but which has nowadays come to represent a stinging, concealed expression of intellectual, if not political, dissent.

The latter was the most thoroughly convincing of the evening’s performances, all the more for the horrifying relevance it harnesses right now as the west faces up to – and maybe Russians themselves begin to question – the humaneness of one man’s repressive, dictatorial will. Chauhan elicited an all-important steeliness: those endless aching melodies that take flight in the opening movement offset by a chillingly spare dehumanisation; the throwaway curtness brutally exaggerated in the Scherzo; the breathtaking sumptuousness of the slow third movement soaked in irony as a deceptive foil to the agonising, empty ecstasy of the finale.

There was an unpredictability to Chauhan’s tempi that enhanced the boldness of the message, which the SSO responded to with fearsome exhilaration, the richness and focus of the ensemble as thrilling as the exceptionalism of the passing solo contributions. 

Where the Shostakovich was spine chilling, the concert opener – Don Quixote – seemed happier just to tickle the senses. The former bore the 3-D vibrance of an oil painting defined by the physicality of its bold brushstrokes, whereas the latter conveyed more the pallid self-contentment of a pretty watercolour.

This wasn’t so much an issue with the soloists, guest cellist Pablo Ferrández playing the starry-eyed eponymous hero against flamboyant support from SSO principal viola Scott Dickinson (in evocative conversation also with orchestra leader Laura Samuel), and prominently featuring tenor tuba, bass clarinet and ravishing oboe. And for the most part, Chauhan captured the cut and thrust of the music, its stormy abandon, wild cameos and generally restive abandon.

What it missed in places was a more piercing precision, sharper orchestral colourings to bring the narrative more vividly to life. There were plenty rosy moments, those characteristic Straussian eruptions filling the hall with wholesome enchantment, but such curious cacophonies as the discordant bleating sheep needed greater confidence in themselves to make a convincing musical point. 

That aside, this substantial pairing went down a storm with the local audience, making the SSO’s day trip to Newcastle in such unpredictable weather a more gladdening experience than it might otherwise have been.

Ken Walton 

BBC SSO / Chauhan

Posted on by

City Halls, Glasgow

Alpesh Chauhan set himself a mighty challenge in a BBC SSO programme that receded from the tipping point of Austro-German Romanticism in the first half to its full-blown meaty excess in the second. It was in the mountainous journey of the latter – Bruckner’s “Romantic” Symphony No 4 – that the SSO’s young associate conductor had the biggest opportunity to really flex his creative powers.

The first half was anything but a simple warm up, though the opening bars of Webern’s Op 1 Passacaglia bore the distinct uncertainty of a cold start. After the theme’s initial pizzicato statement the tempo wobbled, the instrumental coordination disconcertingly slack. Chauhan establish rhythmic control quickly enough to capture the inevitability of the work’s post-Wagnerian ebb and flow. Climaxes surged, but the missing factor in this performance was the vital detailed dovetailing of instrumental colours. That’s where the soul and momentum of this music lies.

The arrival of Scots mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill for Schoenberg’s passionate Song of the Wood Dove from his epic cantata Gurrelieder, presented here in the composer’s reduced chamber version of 1922, was a moment of instant transformation. The work is a perfect fit for Cargill’s gloriously versatile voice, whether in the rich lower depths of the opening and much beyond, or in her topmost notes as the work reaches its emotional peak.

Her integral position within the small instrumental group did nothing to limit the expressive breadth and intensity of her performance. Indeed, it helped cement the overall cohesiveness and nuanced precision of the delivery, Chauhan underpinning Cargill’s high-voltage opulence with the neat, harnessed incision of the tight-knit chamber ensemble.

Then the massed ranks for Bruckner’s Fourth, brass splayed across the upper balcony somewhat threateningly but also excitingly. Chauhan’s approach was mostly clinical, which certainly facilitated the efficient flow of the symphony, and allowed its many build-ups to shake the rafters and tingle the spine. There were plenty notable moments, whether in the melancholy poise of the Andante or the rapture of the Scherzo’s outer sections.

The problem with Bruckner, though, is combining the engineering of a performance with the overriding realisation of its soul and purpose. There was a prevailing sense here that the latter was sold short. As with the Webern, Chauhan’s grasp of the big picture was tenuous, with too many psychological hiatuses and a resulting tendency to stall the momentum and invoke nervousness in some of the orchestral response. That was inevitably disappointing.

Ken Walton

This concert will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on Tuesday 1 March, and is then available for 30 days via BBC Sounds

BBC SSO / Chauhan

Posted on by

City Halls, Glasgow 

Does the BBC SSO have its eye on Alpesh Chauhan as a possible successor to Thomas Dausgaard as principal conductor, whose contract ends next year? He’s certainly an interesting prospect – young, determined and confident – though Thursday’s appearance with the SSO revealed once again that, while he ignites a spark in certain areas of repertoire, his mastery of such core Romantic repertory as Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No 6, the “Pathétique”, is still work in progress.

Chauhan opened this live broadcast programme with Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No 2, a work completed by the composer three decades after leaving it unfinished, which consequently bears the post-Romantic excess of his pre-dodecaphonic music but with the ultra-clean textural discipline of his maturer style. A reduced SSO ensemble made the most of the challenge, producing a gritty, precise and virtuosic performance.

But it was the calculated insistence on Chauhan’s part that characterised it. The initial journey from soft teasing woodwind phrases to the seething tumult of the first big climax was as much a result of pumped adrenalin as clear thinking. And where the first movement wrestled with its dense emotional heat, the second – initially an assertive, jaunty Con fuoco – pinned its outgoing exhilaration on a combination of Schoenberg’s stabilising old-style rhythmic regularity and the elusiveness of its post-Romantic language.

This was the big hit of the evening, with mezzo soprano Karen Cargill’s pre-interval encore of Richard Strauss’s idyllic Morgen well up there with it. The latter followed Cargill’s official contribution to the programme, Erich Korngold’s achingly beautiful Absecheidslieder (Songs of Farewell), which suited the characteristically molten, earthy quality of her lower voice. 

In the opening song the mood was one of reflective seduction; the powerful Wagnerian in Cargill coloured the ensuing Dies eine kann mein Sehen with a thrilling euphoric glow; the more mystical Mond, so gest du wieder auf, with its otherworldliness and ethereal religiosity, gave way to the deeply personal Gefasster Abschied, sumptuously Straussian in mood and manner.

It was hard at times to catch all of Cargill’s performance above the wholesome orchestration, and the higher reaches of her voice seemed a little less comfortable than usual, but there was no escaping the emotive connection she has with this music, and with the exquisite Morgen that followed, featuring also the poised, poignantly understated solo violin of SSO associate leader Kanako Ita. It was just a shame that no-one saw fit to give her the curtain call she so thoroughly deserved.

Chauhan’s Tchaikovsky was a curious combination of fluid efficiency and heavy-duty indulgence. The latter turned the opening movement into a journey plagued by too many wrong turnings – agonising extremes of tempi, especially the slow ones, that jarred with the overall flow and which effected audible signs of insecurity at key attack points. When he let the music express itself in the central movements, however, things made much more sense. From that, the finale emerged with convincing gravitas, albeit susceptible – as in several previous instances – to a brass section given too free a rein at the expense of the modest string forces. 

Ken Walton

Available to stream or download for 30 days.