Te Martyrum candidatus laudat exercitus - and the heather is still damp

(translated, somewhat iffily, as 'the noble army of martyrs praise thee' from the Te Deum). It ain't muslim martyrs we are talking about, for once.

Tonight's noble army of martyrs was sitting in the audience, unless they were the Kaunas State Choir, who sounded as if they had walked all the 100 km to the Vilnius Congress Palace. Tired or what?

But anyway. Tonight's concert by the Lithuanian State (Not National) Symphony Orchestra was extremely unusual in that it was conducted by Juozas Domarkas of the Lithuanian National (Not State) Symphony Orchestra. I never thought that would happen - nor did anyone else. But it's time they started collaborating in advance of the 2009 European Capital of Culture year.

It was all Berlioz. Whose idea was it to programme 3 overtures all after each other? That really did not work Could they not have dropped two and done Harold in Italy instead? Interesting scoring for Benvenuto Cellini, with a bass clarinet and 5 percussionists, including two timpanists almost falling over each other. Pavelas Giunteris, the best percussionist in Vilnius, used a most fetching pair of red-headed drum sticks. Despite all that, the heather was not set alight, though - very pedestrian performances. I noticed talented Povilas Jacunskas was leading the cello section; he did so well in the Fortvio concert on the weekend, but it seems he still needs to get the hang of leading a group. At least he was confident on the notes.

Berlioz Te Deum in the second half of the concert was dull, to put it mildly. At one point I measured the distance from my seat to either end of the row, but it was too far to walk out. Dull, dreary, dreadful, deadly.

I see the piece is scored for huge forces, with two choirs, a children's choir, and a vast range of instruments, including 12 harps (not in the choral sections). I doubt we have twelve harps in Lithuania, never mind twelve harpists. This was a bit of a shoe-string production then, what with apparently only two flutes instead of four, no harps, a Korg 'church organ', and the rest of the band. To be fair, I see that three of the movements are described as 'Prière', which I suppose means 'Prayer' and perhaps they should be sung quietly and without excitement. But it's a fifty minute piece, without drama or development. Can't exactly say that Berlioz was ahead of his time and link him to folk like Morton Feldman, who wrote extremely slow-moving, contemplative music. Not with forces like this. Lord, spare me from this one.

Would not recommend going to the Congress Palace in the next week or so. They are putting on the Magic Flute (in a concert hall); seems to be a staged performance what with all the building gear lying around, and the main entrances into the auditorium blocked off for the public. How does the fire police allow this?

Terminal Bewilderment

As soon as I got to work I realised I had forgotten to take my concert ticket. This meant having to run up the hill, past the concert hall, grabbing the ticket, and a very quick bite to eat, and rushing downhill again (for another climb up after the concert). Not happy!

At 6 pm I burst out of the office and shot home, belting past an elderly couple on the final approach - where the husband was gently swaying in the breeze/due to wine/due to exertion, and the wife gave a startled squeak as I rushed past, taking two steps at a time. Picked up the top ticket from my pile of tickets (which are always in date order, aren't they???) and found that the concert had started at 6 pm. Aaarggh. Couldn't be bothered to run down again, so settled down to reheat my stew (third out of 4 or 5 sessions....), and then went and plugged in my computer....passing my pile of concert tickets, with one for today right on top now ... I had moved what I thought was today's ticket into the 'concerts I (almost) attended' pile (in fact that was a ticket for 30 or 31 January). And guess what? The concert was due to start at 7 pm. It was 7.20 pm.

Out I burst of the house, down I hurtled the steep slope to the concert hall, over I tumbled and skint my knee, up I picked myself and into the concert hall/opera house I shot. I had had no idea what the programme might be, though from the numbers on the poster I suspected it might be classical or baroque ('No 29' for example). And I was right - it was an evening of Mozart music. I got into the building at the start of symphony No 29, and after the interval we had a very early symphony (No 10?? 3 movements) and a piano concerto (No 17). It was the Opera and Ballet Theatre Chamber Orchestra (with the only bassist a female!), under George Babuadze, and pianist Valerian Shiukashvili, a dapper young man with a Chopin hairstyle.

The conductor was very active and managed to get some very nice expression out of the orchestra, doing particularly well on the dynamics. Naturally one cannot expect period instruments here, but his interpretation was pretty middle of the road, not lush (or even slushy) as you might get from some Eastern European Chamber Orchestras, not Harnoncourt either, but quite pleasant. His winds rather let him down, creating a bit of a sound soup - maybe like a spinach soup where the spinach has not been washed properly. The lead violist seemed to be enjoying himself. The pianist's and the orchestra's interpretations did not always quite match, and the pianist did not seem quite as at ease with the music as one might have hoped. The piano part had rather interesting cadenzas, three of them (which is a bit unusual, no? one for each movement). The first movement's cadenza quoted the opening bars of 'Eine Kleine Nachtmusik' nicely set against the movement's themes; the second movement's cadenza quoted that Figaro aria 'Se vuol ballare, Signor Contino'- this was rather neat. I don't know if these are well-known cadenzas for that piano concerto, but they made it a bit different and interesting, and the orchestra loved them.