Tag Archives: Bruno Delepelaire

RSNO / Sondergard

Posted on by

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

It would be foolish to ignore an obvious reason why Brahms’ Double Concerto for Violin and Cello is less often heard – it necessitates the paying of two quality soloists rather than just one. Yet there is something in the genesis of the work, the last orchestral piece the composer wrote, which also explains its comparative lack of success.

When the violinist for whom Brahms composed his immediately successful and perennially popular violin concerto, Joseph Joachim, suspected his wife of an affair, the composer’s sympathies lay with the woman, and a letter he wrote expressing them was cited in the divorce court. Unsurprisingly, that led to a rift between virtuoso and composer, which, three years later, the Double Concerto sought to heal, involving the cellist in Joachim’s quartet as a sort-of intermediary.

Perhaps that whole background could be painted as the story of the work’s first and most fascinating movement which begins with an orchestral statement, features long solo passages for cello and violin before the two join forces and become partners with the whole ensemble, but it is probably fruitless to pursue such an analogy.

What is true is that there is a lot of fascinating music for the soloists to play from the very start of the work, and it helps if they know one another’s style well. For this performance, the RSNO and conductor Thomas Sondergard had the American First Violin of the Berlin Philharmonic, Noah Bendix-Balgley and his Principal Cello colleague Bruno Delepelaire, an A-team by any standards.

They were superb, too, and – as orchestral musicians – supremely sensitive to their relationship with the players around them. It is possible that this was as fine a performance of the work as you are likely to hear, and the intricacies of that opening movement were the most fascinating part. Later it becomes a little more like the Brahms everyone knows and the RSNO horns and woodwind were on top form for the richly harmonic Andante, while the dotted rhythms and changes of pace in the folk-flavoured finale are the most obvious nod to the earlier violin concerto.

What is also true, however, is that there is no big tune in the whole work to compare with those in earlier Brahms concerti and symphonies, and that is surely a more compelling reason why it was poorly received in Cologne in 1887 and struggles to find a place in the repertoire today.

In this concert it was the first-half prelude to Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, and that was an exemplar of the fine, disciplined work that the RSNO and Sondergard do together.

Played not especially fast – although there are certainly longer Tchaik Fives available – there was a pace and energy about the performance that only helped communicate the restless ambiguity of the work. Although he wrote a lot of prettier music, the Fifth is where the composer works his material most thoroughly, and if Sondergard’s reading perhaps lacked a little warmth, the wonderful craftsmanship of the music could not have been clearer.

There is great music for clarinet, notably at the start with the low strings and in the counter melody in the slow movement. Principal horn Amadea Dazeley-Gaist was superb as the main soloist there, and her whole section was magnificent throughout.

There were no weak links on stage, however, the full might of the orchestra’s strings in absolutely top ensemble form and the brass as disciplined as the RSNO brass now always is.

Keith Bruce

Picture of Noah Bendix-Balgley by Nikolaj Lund

RSNO / Chang

Posted on by

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

IT is not going too far to say that Han-Na Chang’s take on Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony will be one against which to judge other performances of this crucial work by Scotland’s national orchestra. Whether it remains a favourite may, however, be a matter of personal taste.

It was certainly highly individual and impossible to listen to without complete attention, and that in itself is remarkable for such a familiar war horse of the Western classical canon. The South Korean, who has become the toast of Trondheim in Norway, where she is Artistic Leader and Chief Conductor of the symphony orchestra and opera company, conducted from memory and created a performance of Beethoven’s Third that played by her own rules. There were period band elements in there – most obviously in Paul Philbert’s smaller timpani – and a light chamber music touch to the strings in the first movement, albeit with the heft of six double basses.

Where there was muscle from the low strings, Chang asked for a featherlight touch from the violins and the balance at the start of the second movement Funeral March was quite remarkable. Instead of being dense and doomy, there was so much space in the sound. Details of the score were sharp and clear because they seemed to be floating in the ether.

If that airiness was often unlike other Eroicas, so too was Chang’s pacing. After the two opening chords, there were none of the brisk tempi we are now accustomed to hearing in the composer’s early works. Even the Scherzo was taken at a quite deliberate pace, and the entrance of the horns was comparatively muted.

But it was the Finale that seemed especially bold, finding rhythmic echoes of the funeral march but also seeming quite remarkably quiet and very slow indeed. Whether that was actually the case is almost beside the point – it was an absolutely compelling listen.

Chang’s conducting style is a mix of big gestures and surprising immobility at times, but it is clear that she gets her intentions across, and misses none of the detail. A cello soloist before her conducting career, she also gave us an Elgar Cello Concerto that was refreshingly free of cliché.

That was clearly also the intention of Bruno Delepelaire, the French first cello with the Berlin Phil, who was the soloist here. Although he had told RSNO leader Maya Iwabuchi, in a pre-concert talk, that seeing the famous film of Jacqueline du Pre playing the work had made him want to learn the instrument, his approach was intense and precise and very much his own – and not at all demonstrative. Nothing was overplayed or overstated, as it often is, and another oft-heard work sounded all the fresher for it.

The same might be said of the concert opener, Rossini’s Overture to William Tell. Everyone knows it for the brass charge at the end, whether it is military cavalry or a Wild West posse that springs to mind, but Chang’s William Tell – again conducted without a score – will be remembered as much for the precision of the cello section in its opening bars.

Keith Bruce

Picture by Jessica Cowley

RSNO / Sondergard

Posted on by

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

It is a matter of small debate whether Igor Stravinsky was Diaghilev’s third choice for The Firebird for his Ballets Russes, or the fourth composer to be asked. It is also a score that shamelessly plundered the work of others, not solely folk sources and Rimsky-Korsakov, but also Scriabin and Debussy. All of that is by-the-by, however, when one of the best showcases of the range and power of a symphony orchestra is played with the precision and panache that the RSNO displayed under music director Thomas Sondergard at the climax of their season-opening programme.

If the source of the ingredients is not an issue in a work that is quintessential Stravinsky – music that established his name and precipitated his move to Paris, where it was first performed – the opportunity it presents as one of the concert hall’s most exciting prospects is undiminished. The clarity of the playing across the whole ensemble here, from leader Maya Iwabuchi to the trio of off-stage trumpets, was exemplary. Sondergard’s command of the tempo gradations and dynamic variations of the work was masterly, in a performance that was by turns both hugely moving and terrifically exciting.

Even better, it came at the end of a genius programme that progressed by delicious increments toward the symphonic ballet score. The concerto element at the end of the first half was Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations, with the first cello of the Berlin Philharmonic, Bruno Delepelaire as soloist. A player of immaculate poise and fluency, he was matched by string ensemble that incorporated the elements of Baroque crispness and Romantic fluidity that the work demands.

The concert also had the luxury of two opening works, Shostakovich’s Festive Overture itself preceded by Matthew Rooke’s The Isle is Full of Noises!, a world premiere in the orchestra’s “Scotch Snaps” strand.

It is a little gem that is surely certain to be heard regularly, its folk themes predicting those in the Stravinsky later and its filmic quality close kin to to the Shostakovich that followed. The Festive Overture may have been music swiftly written for state purposes, a crowd-pleaser and perhaps Stalin appeaser, but the grand orchestration is of a piece with the whole tone of this evening – announcing the full-scale return of a mighty musical force.

Keith Bruce

Picture: Bruno Delepelaire