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- Roger Jones and John Quinn
Editors for The Americas - Bruce Hodges and Jonathan Spencer Jones
European Editors - Bettina Mara and Jens F Laurson
Consulting Editor - Bill Kenny
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Founder - Len Mullenger
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SEEN AND HEARD UK
CONCERT REVIEW
Bernstein: Three Dance Episodes from
On the Town (1944, arranged 1949)
Rachmaninov: Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini,
op.43 (1934)
John Adams: The Chairman Dances (1985)
Borodin: Symphony No.2 in B minor
(1869/1877)
Tonight, the Eagle and the Bear met in serious musical
combat and both factions showed typical examples of
their best work, but the lines of demarcation were
blurred by the fact that Rachmaninov had a foot firmly
placed in both camps. However, whatever was available it
was a closely placed contest.
Bernstein's Dance Episodes from On the Town
were given a splendid performance, racey and brilliant,
the whole orchestra sounding like a full blown big band;
the lazy blues of the middle piece was graced with the
plaintive trumpet of Elle Lovegrove. Simon Callaghan
joined the orchestra for a fine performance of what is
probably Rachmaninov's best work - the Paganini
Rhapsody. Soloist and conductor had a strong view
of the work and brought out the symphonic nature of the
structure of the music. Callaghan played with all the
bravura necessary for the work and the whole grew
logically and obviously, no one part standing out but
rather being a part of the whole, so the famous
Eighteenth variation, by being withheld, felt perfectly
at home within the scheme of things. As an encore,
Callaghan gave a delicately paced performance of one of
the Three Mazurkas from Chopin's opus 63.
John Adams's The Chairman Dances was given in a
straightforward way, the rather bluff approach
heightening the humour of the music and throwing the
lyrical episode into bright relief. The ending, where
the music slowly disintegrates into percussion noise,
was admirably handled.
Quite why we hear Borodin's Second Symphony so
seldom - actually, to be honest, scarcely at all - in
concert is a mystery to me for it has everything from
high drama, in the first movement, to the spirit of the
fair in the finale - it is no surprise that those
musical grave robbers Robert Wright and George Forrest
took these movements for two of the numbers in the
musical Kismet. At times we're in the Steppes of
Central Asia, then, with a deft flick of the
compositional wrist, we're in a Tchaikovsky ballet. Most
interesting of all, in view of tonight's USA/Russia
juxtaposition, is that in the slow movement there is a
strong feel of the melodic contours of Dmitri Tiomkin, a
Glazunov pupil, who moved to Hollywood and wrote,
perhaps, the most defining American anthems, in the
title songs for Fred Zinnemann's High Noon and
the 1960s TV series Rawhide. Parikian held the
music back, which aided the sound, for the scoring is
very thick - too much so, at times, and it needs a
little help. The first movement was fiery and dramatic,
the second light and almost balletic, the third came
from an old and fabled time, and the final was every
inch a real Bazaar of the Caravans.
With very committed performances, insightful
interpretations and intelligent programming this was a
most memorable evening. And as for USA v Russia, the
winners were the members of the audience, who obviously
enjoyed every minute of the show.
Bob Briggs