This evening was my first visit to the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, and the first time I have had the pleasure of lsitening to their orchestra live. I was there to listen to late Romantic / early 20th century music from Scandanavia and Russia, but in particular to watch young violinist, Maria Duenas, perform in Sibelius's Violin Concerto. However, let's start from the beginning.
The Philharmonic Hall in the centre of Liverpool (Hope Street), is an art-deco building from the late 1930s, and is beautiful in its grandiose simplicity and decorative minimalism. The large stage area allowing planty of room for the 80-plus orchestra members to move with ease. Holding the baton this evening was Domingo Hindoyan, the orchestra's current chief conductor.
The first piece in the concert was the overture to 'Pan And Syrinx' by Danish composer Carl Nielsen. Only nine minutes' long, but the music goes through a dizzying array of dynamic changes. The opening solo cello phrase being instantly recognisable, and its return at the end signals the diminuendo to fade out (ppp) of the final phrase.
It was then time to welcome an extremely talented up-and-coming young virtuoso from Granada in Spain, Maria Duenas. At just 19 years' old the mastery of her instrument (the viollin), and understanding of the music in general was beyond reproach. Skilled, dextrous and intelligent, the powerfully emotive music filled the auditorium. Duenas, already the winner of several accolades, and still on her way up, is a must-see performer. The work she played was Sibelius's Violin Concerto, a work that shows Sibelius at both his most vulnerable and his most patriotic. The sweeping, but dark and brooding structure of the first movement which uses a Karelian folk melody at it's core is full of intensity, whilst the slower and more sedate second movement allows Sibelius to expose a warmer and more flawed side to his personality, and the elegaic denouement leading to the final note of this movement was just beautiful. The final movement's jolly opening melody on the violin to timpani accompaniment is (I think) unique in orchestral writing of this nature, and this then mutates to a broader and fuller look at Sibelius's Karelian homeland during both the best and worst of times, ending quite abruptly and decisively with three fortissimo chords.
Unsurprisingly Duenas received a long and deserved ovation, and her encore, a short piece (unknown to me) for solo violin was technically difficult, but tuneful, and one could have heard a pin drop in the auditorium whilst she was playing.. we hung on to her every bow stoke. Just brilliant!
After the interval, and we travelled over the border from Finland into Russia to listen to Prokofiev's 5th Symphony. To my almost certain knowledge, I have never heard this piece before (unlike the previous two); and knowing that Prokofiev was something of a renegade compositionally making full use of his expertise at mimicry and satire, I knew this could either be an explosion of discordant sounds or something a lot more lyrical and harmonic. As it turned out, it was a happy mixture of both. Listening to the piece for the first time, I could certainly hear a disturbed and perturbed Prokofiev, and the turbulent, war-like scoring of the symphony made an impression on me. I came home to find that indeed I was right, and that the work had been written in 1944 during the height of the war in Soviet Russia. My mind strayed during the concert to the current plight in Ukraine, and when realising upon my return home that the symphony had been written during war-time, I found it slightly odd that no mention of the Ukraine conflict had been made at the concert. Other companies / orchestras etc have been dedicating certain pieces to the Ukrainian struggle, and I was even at a theatre only the night before where the orchestra played the Ukrainian National Anthem before commencing the performance. Of course, that did not diminish the playing or the music this evening, it was just a personal musing. The symphony itself was quirky, ironic, unsettled, tumultuous, and aurally extremely pleasing.
A hugely enjoyable concert, played by one of the UK's premier orchestras, The Liverpool Philharmonic, under the conducting of the talented Domingo Hindoyan. I look forward to being able to come along to another concert in the near future.
Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 31.3.22
on - 31.3.22
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