Tag Archives: Philharmonia Orchestra

EIF: Philharmonia Orchestra

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Usher Hall/Broomhouse Hub, Edinburgh

RESIDENCIES by orchestras (and opera and theatre companies) are nothing new at the Edinburgh International Festival, but they had become rarer than in the event’s earliest years because of the speed, convenience and lower cost of international travel.

Environmental concerns and accountability for carbon footprints brought the residency back to the top of the agenda, and that process was accelerated by the rethink necessary during the years of the Covid pandemic.

This year’s Festival music programme was built around a series of residencies and ended with the most varied of them all when the London’s Philharmonia arrived for a four-concert sequence at the Usher Hall and a Virtual Reality outreach project that took their work to a housing estate in Broomhouse.

That last ingredient, which also involved the Festival’s artistic director Nicola Benedetti as violin soloist, is another step on the path of sustainable musical practice that recent events and thinking are bringing about.

The technology that was installed at the Space@Broomhouse Hub during the last week of EIF 2024 is nothing new to the Philharmonia, which has been working with Virtual Reality for a decade. Some of their earlier VR films can be seen in old-fashioned 2D on the orchestra’s YouTube channel, but that cannot compare with the experience of hearing and seeing Benedetti and the Philharmonia play The Lark Ascending via a VR headset.

Recorded at Battersea Arts Centre, with the musicians, under the leadership and direction of Benjamin Marquise Gilmour, playing in-the-round, the film and soundtrack places the viewer in their midst, with 360-degree vision of the performance. It is genuinely immersive, to correctly employ a term much abused at this year’s Festival Fringe.

The perspective of the view changes during the performance, specifically geared to the role of the violin soloist during the work’s 20 minutes, but throughout a turn of the head allows the viewer to look instead at the wind players or sections of the strings. Not only is every detail of the instrumentalists’ skills visible up-close, but their interpretation of the score is minutely appreciable. Beautifully lit and perfectly recorded, this is cutting-edge technology in the service of access to artistic excellence. Parties of schoolchildren and the elderly citizens of Broomhouse were equally wowed by the experience.

In the Usher Hall, the Philharmonia’s live appearance began and ended with captivating performances of a more conventional sort. Not that conventional, however, in the case of the National Youth Choir of Scotland’s contribution to Julia Wolfe’s Fire in my Mouth.

Christopher Bell’s young singers have surely done the Bang on a Can composer a great service in showing that her moving work about the New York garment factory blaze that claimed 146 lives at the start of the 20th century can be sung and acted by non-professionals. With the Philharmonia’s Principal Guest Conductor Marin Alsop on the podium, this was a superb UK premiere of a brilliant contemporary piece, and a repetition for the orchestra’s home audience in London would be the least it deserves.

The young women of NYCOS not only dealt with the tricky rhythmic demands of the score, singing in Yiddish and Italian as well as English, but had learned a wealth of fully-costumed movement, with props, that filled the stage and stalls during a few days of rehearsal. With highly effective film content part of this project too, and the Philharmonia (with guests including the BBC SSO’s Scott Dickinson leading the violas and RSNO principal cor anglais Henry Clay) on magnificent form, it was an unforgettable concert.

The star of the Festival’s Closing Concert, where  the Philharmonia was conducted by Alexander Soddy, was soprano Malin Bystrom as the Countess in Richard Strauss’s last opera Capriccio. She led a quality cast that included Dame Sarah Connolly as Clairon and featured a last minute jump-in by Emma Morwood as the Italian Singer, completing a trio of sparkling female voices.

The most animated of the men were tenor Sebastian Kohlhepp, in fine voice as composer Flamand, and baritone Bo Skovhus as the Count, but the stage was all Bystrom’s at the end. She was off-the-book for the final scene, lifting a concert performance that suffered a little from the limitations such events have.

That was none of Soddy’s doing, however. The conductor had the unenviable task of steering an event conceived as a showcase for Sir Andrew Davis, who died shortly after this year’s International Festival programme was announced. If Bystrom was the star, it was his expert guidance of singers and instrumentalists through the score that made the most of the lovely music.

Keith Bruce

Pic of Malin Bystrom, Dame Sarah Connolly and Bo Skovhus by Andrew Perry

EIF: Fidelio & Anne Sofie von Otter

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Usher Hall & Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh

One of Scotland’s main promoters of chamber music once told a sceptical me that singers were a harder sell than instrumentalists. My dubiety was, admittedly, based on the star names that appear in the Edinburgh Festival’s Queen’s Hall series, and the appearance of Swedish mezzo Anne Sofie von Otter certainly produced the first full house the venue has seen this year.

That audience undoubtedly went home happy to judge by the ovation she received after the Schubert encore. That was the only occasion in which all the musicians involved – pianist Christoph Berner and string quartet Quatuor Van Kuijk – performed together, but which required von Otter to recite rather than sing.

It was a somewhat odd conclusion to a brief recital that bracketed a pocket “Shubertiad” with songs by Rufus Wainwright. That combination may have made more sense with originally advertised string quartet Brooklyn Rider, who were apparently unable to travel to Edinburgh and yet are joining the singer in Kilkenny and Copenhagen over the next few days. As it was, the two trios of Wainwrights were accompanied by piano, as were von Otter’s four Schubert songs, interspersed with the four movements of the Death and the Maiden quartet, played by Quatuor Van Kuijk.

Whether the imaginative programming served the material is a matter of taste. Wainwright’s unpublished Trois Valses Anglaises are a fine addition to von Otter’s “pop” repertoire, sitting nicely alongside the Brian Wilson songs she recorded with Elvis Costello some years ago. Employing small slides in pitch, she uses a different tone for these than she employs on “classic” art songs, with some show tune intonation, specifically reminiscent of Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George here.

The three Songs for Lulu that followed the Schubert are from Wainwright’s 2010 album and without his own distinctive voice revealed older influences, Sad With What I Have kin to Sinatra Sings For Only The Lonely, and Who Are You New York? nodding to Ol’ Blue Eyes’ strutting hymn to The Big Apple.

Von Otter’s diction in German is crisper than her English, truth to tell, as her Schubert songs, Death and the Maiden and three from Winterreise, demonstrated. The hymn-like simplicity of Die Nebensonnen was the most suited to her mezzo, while Der Wegweiser and Einsamkeit cry out darker hues.

The string players sounded particularly fine on the Scherzo and Presto Finale of the Death and the Maiden quartet. Earlier leader Nicolas Van Kuijk and cellist Anthony Kondo had been over-dominant in the group’s balance.

The singer turned stage manager for some of the shepherding of her colleagues in the lunchtime recital just as home-town hero Sir Donald Runnicles adopted that role for the curtain call at the concert performance of Fidelio in the Usher Hall later in the day.

Sir Donald Runnicles conducts this concert performance of Beethoven’s only opera, telling a moving story of a wife’s devotion and the resilience of human nature. Usher Hall, Edinburgh.

Using Sir David Pountney’s added English narration, delivered by Sir Willard White, the luxury cast of soloists included a superb Leonore from Emma Bell, who stepped in to replace Jennifer Davis. Like Gunther Groissbock’s glorious Rocco, she was entirely “off the book”, but that was not true of everyone, with Kim-Lillian Strebel, as Marzelline, turning to the score at one point and Markus Bruck reading the music throughout.

Terrifically well sung by the Philharmonia Voices chorus as well as the principals, and played by the Philharmonia Orchestra in the last appearance of its busy Festival residency, this Fidelio was musically outstanding, and rapturously received for that. Runnicles was in his element.

However, it cannot go down as a classic in the recent history of EIF operas-in-concert. Although some of the cast, notably Groissbock, seemed to be trying to guide things, it lacked some directorial shape, with Willard White poorly placed behind his narrator’s desk and the arias and ensembles delivered in a parade-ground line across the stage. Fidelio is fantastic music, but it needs a bit of help to be drama.

Keith Bruce

Pictures by Andrew Perry

EIF: Queen’s Hall Openers

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Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh

Going by the first few Queen’s Hall morning concerts this year, audience figures can only get better. The two performances – Saturday’s chamber miscellany by players from Festival residents the Philharmonia Orchestra, and Monday’s piano trio fronted by wild-haired pianist Ronald Brautigam – certainly warranted a little more support than they got.

In what was no doubt a pertinent nod to Hans Gál’s role in helping initiate the Edinburgh International Festival in 1947, the Philharmonia Chamber Players began with a string trio by the Edinburgh-based academic and composer who fled his native Vienna after the 1938 Nazi Anschluss. Those who know Gál’s music – heavily rooted in Brahmsian rhetoric, but tinged with hints of wider European progressiveness – will appreciate its fundamental austerity and stinging seriousness. 

There was a sense of deference in this performance, which struggled initially to define much character in the opening movement, but which seemed more open and at ease in the wittier Presto and resourceful Theme and Variations. It’s a style of music that requires, but didn’t always get, persistent emotional initiative from the performers.

Richard Strauss’ Metamorphosen was the game-changer, especially in this novel (to most of us) version for string septet, a considerable reduction on the standard 23-string version that Strauss opted for in its 1946 premiere. The composer evidently drafted the condensed version early on in the compositional process, but it remained unknown until it was rediscovered in 1990, which encouraged the cellist Rudolf Leopold to prepare a performance edition.

If the obvious effect is to trim the fuller version of its sugared opulence, the leaner instrumentation does not lack the passion and heartache that lies at the core of Strauss’ postwar threnody to German culture. Yes, there is a sharpened focus, but as this performance illustrated, that can be its strength. Led by violinist Zsolt-Tihamér Visontay, the septet harnessed the music’s rapt momentum, distinguished by the pulsating clarity and unceasing interaction of their playing.

The player numbers were maximised for Louise Farrenc’s Nonet in E flat, as important for its 19th century craftsmanship as for its composer, a woman in what was then almost exclusively a man’s world. Farrenc was no shrinking violet, demanding and winning equal pay for women on the staff at the Paris Conservatoire in 1850, well before the BBC and Glasgow City Council faced a similar challenge from its female employees. 

Coolish to begin with, this performance blossomed into the peach that this work is, solidly symphonic in structure, yet relaxed in its versatile mix of playfulness, lyrical sweetness and robust argument. Like Schubert’s Octet, the juxtaposition of strings and wind is defining, often the source of wit. 

Fast forward to Monday, when pianist Ronald Brautigam exercised his musical eccentricity playing a 19th century Erard piano that was the centrepiece of a piano trio programme he shared with violinist Esther Hoppe and cellist Christian Poltéra. The instrument was the defining feature in music by Fanny Mendelssohn (sister of Felix), Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert.

What did it bring to the performances? Initially a slight awkwardness, admittedly on my part, gradually tuning into the tonal containment of an instrument that soon proved its worth in recalibrating the modern piano trio to a shared dynamic more commensurate to the 19th century origins of the music. Instead of the dominating power exercised by the modern-day Steinway, here was an instrument more modest in volume, more delicately voiced, yet technically capable – as in the finale of Schubert’s Piano Trio No 2 in E flat – of quick repetition on one note.

The Schubert dominated the programme, both in length and substance. It’s not so long since East Neuk Festival-goers will have heard it in Crail with Elisabeth Leonskaja on piano. This was like another piece altogether, Brautigam’s pianism brilliantly versatile, yet possessing a scale and sweetness of tone that allowed Hoppe and Poltéra ample scope to explore the softest nuances in the knowledge their sound would carry over even the busiest of piano textures. 

The first half paired the boldness of Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio in D minor, from its turbulent opening to the melodic freshness of the inner movements, with the characterful contrasts of Schumann’s Fantasiestücke, its flirtatious Humoreske and the loving expressiveness of the Duett shared by violin and cello among its many highlights.

Ken Walton

Image: Ronald Brautigam by Andrew Perry

EIF: Rusalka

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Festival Theatre, Edinburgh

Retiring EIF director Fergus Linehan has identified residencies as a key ingredient in reducing the carbon footprint of the industry, and the presence of Garsington Opera and the Philharmonia Orchestra in Edinburgh at the start of his last programme is part of that. The suggestion must be that the Buckinghamshire company could become a regular partner of the Festival in the way that Glyndebourne was 75 years ago.

This is a big thing for Garsington as well as Edinburgh, as making work for a big proscenium arch indoor stage is new to them, and it will be hoping that such a showcase may lead to further outings for this production as well as more new work travelling to Scotland. Edinburgh has seen many visually stunning opera productions from European companies (Turin’s Boheme five years ago springs instantly to mind), and the good news is that director Jack Furness and designer Tom Piper’s Rusalka can stand happily in such company.

Regular visits by Garsington might also mean the frequent return of Natalya Romaniw, as the company has nurtured the career of the Swansea soprano, and that would also be no bad thing. She was cheered to the rafters by the opening night audience – acclaim that was matched only by the reception for homecoming conductor Douglas Boyd.

Romaniw is absolutely at the peak of her powers, both vocally and as an actor. Furness and Piper have incorporated aerial artists into the watery world of the spirit and her cohorts, and there is a fair amount of crossover in the onstage action, for Romaniw on her own as well as with the three nymphs, Marlena Devoe, Heather Lowe and Stephanie Wake-Edwards. Often ankle-deep in water, the whole cast seem to revel in the elemental aspects of the staging.

That physicality not only chimed nicely with the Festival’s opening event, MACRO at Murrayfield, and the acrobatics of Australia’s Gravity & Other Myths there, but is part of a trend in contemporary opera production also to be seen in Phelim McDermott’s staging of Glass’s Akhnaten with Gandini Juggling. The aerialists here serve a similar purpose in keeping the stage full of action during the crucial instrumental passages of Dvorak’s score.

Boyd and the Philharmonia are as pivotal to the story-telling as that music unfolds, with its vocabulary of themes tied to the characters. Those three nymphs immediately suggest the Ring’s Rhinemaidens, and the Wagnerian parallels were also obvious in Christine Rice’s characterful Jezibaba and Musa Ngqungwana’s ambiguous, ambivalent Vodnik.

On the human side of the story, Gerald Schneider brings a wealth of experience in the role to the Prince and Sky Ingram, who has played the title role, is a stylish, predatory Foreign Princess. However, for all the individual brilliance – amongst the orchestral soloists in the pit as well as onstage – this Rusalka is ultimately a very fine ensemble creation. The darkest of adult fairytales, as far from Disney’s Little Mermaid as you might imagine, it is full of contemporary resonances 120 years on from its premiere – and they leap quite startlingly from the surtitle text in this Czech language production.

Keith Bruce

Further performances on Monday and Tuesday. eif.co.uk

Picture of Rusalka’s Three Nymphs by Andrew Perry