Concert review: Laura Fleur, mezzo / Guildhall Symphony Orchestra / Roberto Gonzalez-Monjas (Barbican Centre)

The concert, which took place on 17 March, featured three twentieth century works which are renowned as orchestral showpieces. They are, in short, perfect vehicles for any orchestra to show what it is made of. More so, if the orchestra is comprised of precious and developing talents of the future, as the Guildhall Symphony Orchestra undoubtedly is.

[Image credit: Guildhall School of Music & Drama]

Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra, written between 1950 and 1954, was given an assured performance under the baton of Guildhall alumnus and faculty member Roberto Gonzalez-Monjas. The first movement impressed immediately with the imposing and purposeful opening chords that united the harps and timpani. The dance rhythms that dominate the movement were realised with a surety of purpose and deftness of touch throughout the instrumental ranges. If one quality stood out, it was the naturalistic blending and contrasting of instrumental sonorities, which surely resulted from careful preparation that went into the performance as a whole. Witness, for example, how the horns played off against the almost bickering oboes and clarinets with the appearance of the second theme. The middle movement gave a further opportunity for the orchestra’s instrumental sections to showcase their quality. Whilst the speed required by the capriccio was delivered by Roberto Gonzalez-Monjas’ aptly chosen tempo, other qualities delivered a performance that emphasised the textural aspects of Lutosławski’s score. Whereas some music relies on volume to impress, Lutosławski calls for nuanced playing and delicate layering of individual lines to achieve his intended aims. These qualities were delivered in abundance. The closing movement’s complex tri-partite structure presents challenges of contrast and integration to achieve a performance that satisfies. Roberto Gonzalez-Monjas was fully alert to these challenges, as were the orchestra. The Guildhall Symphony Orchestra drew out the drama and playfulness within individual parts delightfully to realise a score that calls for tour-de-force performance qualities.

Ravel’s Shéhérazade transported the audience away from Eastern Europe and towards the Middle East through evocations tales from One Thousand and One Nights. Ravel freely admitted Debussy was the inspiration for the work and was intent on setting difficult verse and in the opening Asie the normally restrained Ravel reaches heights of near Wagnerian ecstasy as he reaches the words “Je voudrais voir mourir d’amour ou bien dela haine”, penned aptly under A.J. Léon Leclère’s pseudonym Tristan Klingsor. Singer and orchestra are packed off on this journey supplied with all imaginable richness to deliver the listener as they recount a virtual Baedeker account of Middle Eastern sights to the delight of ear and eye. The mezzo soprano Laura Fleur proved a sensitive guide to such rich desires, her tone creamy, secure of pitch and with occasionally veiled annunciation, whilst Gonzalez-Monjas provided reassuring guidance for the orchestra. The contrasts of tone, with brightness to the fore, in the harps, celesta and piccolo accented the second song, to which Laura Fleur brought a sense of wonder through her use of the text. Then inferences of danger roused singer and orchestra alike to a conclusion of some impact in the final song.  

Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy rounded out this involving programme. Originally conceived of a four movement symphony, in its final form it became a condensed single movement written in sonata form. Therefore, on one level there is an aspect formal structure. In almost every other respect though Scriabin forged his own path: there are no themes and no development of material in the traditional sense. Whilst writing the Poem of Ecstasy Scriabin spoke of a “great joy”. This sense of uplifting passion was realised by the Guildhall Symphony Orchestra: their performance was fully alert to the iconoclasm of Scriabin’s score. Many sequences of blazing instrumental colour and textural splashes would have clearly delighted the Barbican Hall audience. None more so than the work’s music-shattering finale, which was galvanised by playing of ferocious energy.
 
Reviewed from a streamed recording

CD Review: Scriabin / Langgaard: Towards the Flame (Gustav Piekut, piano) Naxos 8.574312

 Esben Tange sums up the unusual pairing of the composers on this release effectively in his liner notes:

“Both the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin and the Danish composer Rued Langgaard were ‘sun-burnt’ – musical loners who in a related way believed that through their art they could light a sacred fire and pave the way for a spiritual world revolution. […] Despite the fact that Scriabin and Langgaard aimed at the greatest possible, they are both very much masters of the intimate format. For both of them, the piano was a primary medium. Via the piano we get close to their innermost thoughts.”

The 26-year-old Danish pianist Gustav Piekut provides a recital that alternates four pieces by Scriabin with three of Langgaard’s.

A pair of works imbued with a late Romantic sensibility begin the journey this recording presents. Scriabin’s Trois morceaux, Op. 45 (1904–05), is a trio of individually slight yet atmospheric miniatures. Feuillet d’album is wistful and reflective, whereas the ensuing 26-second Poème fantasque nervously anticipates the closing Prélude, in which Scriabin discovers something of his searching mature idiom. Langgaard’s Sponsa christi taedium vitae. Fantasia virtuosa, BVN 297 (1944), speaks unforcefully of the composer’s own religious nature through the warmth of tone and texture in his writing. What is immediately impressive in Piekut’s playing, quite apart from the delicacy of his touch, is his ability to let the music breathe and, thus, register its own inner beauty.

In his single movement Piano Sonata No. 10, Op. 70 (1913), Scriabin sought to crystalise what could be achieved within a compact form whilst exploring new and daring tonalities. Piekut’s playing holds little in reserve. He conjours the misty sonorities of its opening with beguiling effect before dispatching the successive trills convincingly against the lingering shifts of Scriabin’s somewhat pensive developing musical argument. Even in the wilder passages of the movement’s second half, everything is musically and technically secure in Piekut’s hands. The irony that Scriabin arrived back at the note of C after seeking to find an alternative tonality is caught with some inevitability here.

Langgaard’s Afgrundsmusik (Music of the Abyss), BVN 169 (1921–24), written in Venice, sets an altogether more destructive path that is merciless in its power. Cast in two parts, Langgaard pits a theme extracted from Liszt’s B-minor sonata against a chorale of his own devising. Initially the writing is demonstrative, rising to unremitting raw savagery that almost cannibalises itself by the conclusion of the Frenetico second part. Piekut’s playing meets the demands made at every turn to make a convincing case for this music. He’s aided in no small part by the ambient warmth of the recorded acoustic. You begin to realise just why the Danes long considered Langgaard something of a musical outsider.

Scriabin’s Piano Sonata No. 9, Op. 68 ‘Messe noire’ (1912–13), perfectly partners the preceding Langgaard work. Although Scriabin claimed it amongst his most depraved works, this comes through only gradually. Again, I am drawn in by the innate sense of touch that Piekut brings to proceedings. He captures the mystérieusement murmuré (in mysteriously murmuring fashion) fingerings wonderfully so the music does indeed almost seem to foreshadow itself. Quite apart from that, listen to how he skilfully integrates the sonata’s secondary material without disrupting the flow of main ideas.

A pair of works exploring the semitone round out this voyage of musical discovery. Despite this similarity, there’s a contrasting approach to be explored and enjoyed, thanks to Piekut’s thoughtful programming. Lannggard’s The Flame Chambers, inspired by Dante, draws the listener downwards to the flames of hell. Whereas in Scriabin’s Vers la flamme, to quote Esben Tange again, “we encounter aspiring music full of sweetness, which with an increasingly feverish nerve accumulates energy before, striving towards the sun, it culminates in a heavenly explosion.” As elsewhere on this disc, I can find no argument with Piekut’s enviable pianistic gifts: in this music he is a heavenly guide.

Only one fly in the ointment: coming in at a shade over 56 minutes the playing time is disappointingly short. Particularly so given that there’s plenty more piano repertoire from both composers an artist of Piekut’s quality could have usefully explored. More please, and soon!