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PHILHARMONIA/SALONEN AT THE FESTIVAL HALL
Geoff Brown
Times Online/uk
June 15, 2010
To close Esa-Pekka Salonen's London concerts with the Philharmonia
Orchestra this season, what better than something fantastic? Or,
indeed, Fantastique? The romantic bone-shaker and firecracker that
is Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique receives many concert outings,
but it takes a special performance these days to reignite the work's
revolutionary fervour and make its sounds seem truly extraordinary,
raw and new.
This was such a special performance. As the opening movement lurched
forward from listlessness to tenderness and rage, we felt ourselves
right inside Berlioz's head, mad like him with unrequited passion for
the actress Harriet Smithson. Yet for every autobiographical fantasy
that followed, Salonen, wise man, never abandoned tight control of
timbre and texture, or the timing needed for dramatic effects.
In a symphony crowded with fortissimo blasts, decibels were still
kept in store for the lethal, roof-lifting final pages. This was a
Witches' Sabbath with real warts and teeth, and the sonic earthquake
of Sensurround. The March to the Scaffold flayed the eardrums too. The
Philharmonia gave us whipcrack precision and startling hues, from
ghostly rasping strings to the rudest brass. Quieter drama wasn't
forgotten in the slow-burning adagio, beautifully shaped, with aching
solo winds, while the second movement's ball scene engagingly waltzed
from light velvet strings towards the trumpet-topped bounce of a
theatre orchestra. Magnificent phantasmagoria, this.
It was such a contrast to the concert's first half, featuring Brahms's
Violin Concerto, given an intensely focused rendering by the talented
young Armenian, Sergey Khachatryan. No grandstanding tricks for him.
Head down, Khachatryan just fiddled away, the music's servant,
his fingers lyrical, his face tortured - never more so than in the
anguished fragility of his Bach sarabande encore. Repeatedly in the
Brahms he tapered phrases toward the most delicate of pianissimos.
Admittedly, in the rondo finale Gypsy fire was a little subdued. But
you can't have everything in life, and this concert already gave us
more of everything than most.
From: A. Papazian
Geoff Brown
Times Online/uk
June 15, 2010
To close Esa-Pekka Salonen's London concerts with the Philharmonia
Orchestra this season, what better than something fantastic? Or,
indeed, Fantastique? The romantic bone-shaker and firecracker that
is Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique receives many concert outings,
but it takes a special performance these days to reignite the work's
revolutionary fervour and make its sounds seem truly extraordinary,
raw and new.
This was such a special performance. As the opening movement lurched
forward from listlessness to tenderness and rage, we felt ourselves
right inside Berlioz's head, mad like him with unrequited passion for
the actress Harriet Smithson. Yet for every autobiographical fantasy
that followed, Salonen, wise man, never abandoned tight control of
timbre and texture, or the timing needed for dramatic effects.
In a symphony crowded with fortissimo blasts, decibels were still
kept in store for the lethal, roof-lifting final pages. This was a
Witches' Sabbath with real warts and teeth, and the sonic earthquake
of Sensurround. The March to the Scaffold flayed the eardrums too. The
Philharmonia gave us whipcrack precision and startling hues, from
ghostly rasping strings to the rudest brass. Quieter drama wasn't
forgotten in the slow-burning adagio, beautifully shaped, with aching
solo winds, while the second movement's ball scene engagingly waltzed
from light velvet strings towards the trumpet-topped bounce of a
theatre orchestra. Magnificent phantasmagoria, this.
It was such a contrast to the concert's first half, featuring Brahms's
Violin Concerto, given an intensely focused rendering by the talented
young Armenian, Sergey Khachatryan. No grandstanding tricks for him.
Head down, Khachatryan just fiddled away, the music's servant,
his fingers lyrical, his face tortured - never more so than in the
anguished fragility of his Bach sarabande encore. Repeatedly in the
Brahms he tapered phrases toward the most delicate of pianissimos.
Admittedly, in the rondo finale Gypsy fire was a little subdued. But
you can't have everything in life, and this concert already gave us
more of everything than most.
From: A. Papazian