Servenikas in Munich!

in April my much-admired Robertas Servenikas will be conducting at the Munich Staatsoper - wow! He was invited to conduct the Gubaidulina viola concerto (hey, what a choice!) for a premiere of ballets by Martin Schläpfer, Hans van Manen (no less!) and Simone Sandroni. Welldone!

I see the website says he is the musical director for the whole evening, though only one piece involves an orchestra.... The violist is Dietrich Cramer, one should mention out of viola solidarity. Apparently Servenikas has had a good chat with Gubaidulina about the concerto and is now all set. There will be six performances in total, though most in June.

I wish him luck - he will do a fine job!

Last review this year....

....promise!

I could have had my hands full - the Filharmonija had 7 concerts in various locations, the state symphony orchestra, the opera house, all theatres are busy and sold out, the restaurants have concerts (my friend Pavelas Giunteris is playing at a restaurant where the tickets cost about 90 Euros, though I hope you'd get fed, too - at the opera house you can pay more than that and just get a measly glass of sparkling wine...). You should know that some of the orchestras involved have also toured rural parts of Lithuania with the same programme; in addition the Filharmonija has had concerts every day since 26th December, so all Lithuanian musicians will be knackered.

Being a cheapskate, I always wait till January before I go to see repeat of the New Year Eve's premiere at the opera house. Then it's cheaper. The State symphony orchestra's concert this year particularly was not my thing, and so I ended up as usual at the St John's church with the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra. They do two sittings on the same evening; I got the first when they were still fresh.

The programme is always standard and fairly popular classical or baroque stuff. This year the delightful Robertas Servenikas conducted a Bach orchestral suite (not the one with the Badinerie), a number of arias and duets, and as always the Haydn farewell symphony. I wonder if we always need the same thing, but then what would the Vienna New Year's concert be without the Radetzky march?

It all went quite well; in the Bach I noticed that the orchestra is moving towards a more historically informed approach, which was nice. There were also some very fast moments. One of the movements seemed to have a divorce between the woodwinds and the cellos, but otherwise it went well. Church acoustics don't really help here; this church is particularly strong on resonance.

This was followed by an interlude of operatic and oratorio arias sung by Ignas Misiura and Milda Smalakyte, including an aria from Judas Maccabaeus in English, I think(wrong time of year), the 'how many shags has he had' aria from 'Don Giovanni' (wrong setting, in a church), an aria or two and a duet from Figaro (my memory is getting hazy here), and Franck's Panis Angelicus sung as a duet. This sounded odd to me, and reminded me of a few days ago when my son and I played the Bach double violin concerto on violin and viola (a version exists), where the viola with its stronger voice rather dominates the violin. This website suggests that PA is for soprano and SATB choir, which makes more sense. Here I thought they were just singing the notes, rather briskly, but not putting in the feeling of utter devotion that I would expect from this piece. And the lower voice was far too dominant.

Finally the farewell symphony with its well-rehearsed act of the players leaving the stage, which the orchestra has performed on New Year's Eve every year since 1966. Jee, the orchestra blistered its way through the Presto! Shame that Papa Haydn did not take into account the capacities of future players when only one or two were left on the stage. But everyone was happy and floated out of the church with the feeling 'what a good end to the year'.

What story did he make up for himself this time?

Last time I heard Freddy Kempf it was when I played with him. Let me rephrase that - I was at the Dartington Summer School as was Freddy and his trio, where they worked as coaches. Only most people were so deeply in awe of this lot, that they did not dare ask them for tutoring. A friend and I did, and since the friend (a pianist) was the one who was particularly keen on the Arpeggione Sonata we picked on Freddy. Also there was no way I would have exposed myself to a cellist for the other part of the sonata. So he came along - and I was so in awe of being in the same room as him that I could barely hold my instrument the right way up! The main thing I brought back from that session was how useful it was to make up a little story about the music to help express what it said; and we made up a very nice, albeit slightly depressing, story about this sonata. The previous time I had heard him live was in Glasgow in 1992 when, aged 15, he won the young musician of the year competition. I'm not sure whether he has changed since....

Anyway, here he was in Vilnius, playing the Rakhmaninov second piano concerto. And wow, he blistered into it, and gave that piano laldy! Fingers flying everywhere, bravely battling against the occasionally overwhelming orchestra, beautifully cooperating with the conductor and the cellist opposite him - there were moments of utter bliss. Until you see a guy playing this stuff you don't appreciate the intricacy of it all, like when at least 10 fingers are hitting the keys (says she, who can do one hand on a piano, has trouble with both hands at the same time, and as for two hands and one foot - oh forget it!). And he was so mobile and full of expression and communication - the audience lapped it up and got him to play a Chopin etude as an encore. Another piano lesson on having the 'tune' on one finger with the others just providing a wash of background (says she whose hands are siamese twins on the piano, and as for divorcing just a finger ....). Totally awesome!

Those of you who live in the UK - Freddy Kempf and the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Robertas Servenikas, in November are doing a tour of mainly England (12 concerts; there must be one near you!). Go and see them! They are playing all of Rakhmaninov's piano and orchestra pieces (not in the same concert), and some other stuff, too.

For the rest of the concert the orchestra was transformed, compared to the week before. It's all, and entirely and totally, due to the talented Robertas Servenikas, who conducts more and more like Simon Rattle every day. He did a thing with his left shoulder which Rattle does, too. Though on the whole Servenikas has nicer hair. Here the orchestra blistered its way through the William Tell overture (after an absolutely heart-rending start by the lead cellist, Edmundas Kulikauskas -oh, that first note - play it again, and again, Edmundas! - and his delightful group), and then launched into Nielsen's first symphony. Nielsen is one I should be familiar with, what with the Scottish chamber orchestra, and possibly the RSNO having had Nielsen seasons, but I could not remember anything about this symphony - I would have heard it only once, anyway.
I see Nielsen is described as post-romantic composer; that's about right, on the showing of this symphony. Nothing modern or atonal about it (atonal? wash my mouth out with soap and water), but apparently it already displays Nielsen's habit of starting a piece in one key and ending in another. That would indeed make it post-romantic. It's a very powerful work, with the first movement ending as if the whole piece had ended (unfortunately for the audience who burst into premature applause). The third movement had moved as far away from a minuet or scherzo form as you might get. The orchestra was totally under control and well-rehearsed; a Nielsen series of concerts would be a very nice idea.

(Photo courtesy of IMG Artists website).

Premiere

Tonight, back in Vilnius, a concert of the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, the conductor Robertas Servenikas, and the Russian pianist Aleksey Volodin. Mozart's piano concerto No 25 and two pieces by the US composer William Bolcom.

Volodin had apparently played in Vilnius before (maybe standing in at short notice for Denis Matsuev?), possibly one of the usual piano warhorses. Even then there were some issues. However, with the Mozart today there were big issues. It seemed the music had no forte or piano (except right at the beginning of the second movement). Everything else was played at a mezzo forte, and it seemed as if all the movements had a big 'cantabile' written over them. The last movement was incredibly slow and REALLY SAFE. The conductor kept giving the soloist very precise entries. A totally spineless performance. There was some oddness (intentional??) in some of the cadenzas, and some more oddities in the second movement which had ornaments in places where they should not have been.

The Bolcom pieces were interesting; both involved an orchestra with a piano as an orchestral instrument. The first, 'Almost', a 'comedy' for 18th century orchestra consisted of tunes/harmonies straight from the 18th century mixed with shrill modern music (though perhaps not as shrill as Schnittke. Probably Bolcom has not suffered as much pain in his life as Schnittke). The symphony, apparently of 4 movements but I could only distinguish 3 movements, was quite interesting. It started and closed with white noise from the violins with different bits of tune, squeaks and tootles from the winds and the piano/celesta/keyboard (the pianist Sergey Okrushko was spinning like a top). The second movement was very American, with a beautiful country and western waltz just for the violas, followed by some yee-haw kind of stuff. The orchestra enjoyed this, as did the audience. It was quite fun music, and the orchestra managed to hang on in there thanks to the very clear conducting. Was not as good as the concert 11 days ago, though.