United Kingdom Tarkiainen, Ravel and Stravinsky: Alexandre Tharaud (piano), Tom Service (presenter). Aurora Orchestra / Nicholas Collon (conductor). Queen Elizabeth Corridor, London, 23.10.2024. (CSa)
Outi Tarkiainen – The Ring of Fireplace and Love
Ravel – Piano Concerto in G
Stravinsky – Firebird Suite (1945)
The promise of a bit of musical color, heat and magic is at all times welcome, notably on a uninteresting, chill Autumn night time on London’s Southbank. The promise was honoured final week, some 4 days earlier than the clocks went again and eight days earlier than Halloween, by the aptly named Aurora Orchestra below the wand of its founder and principal conductor Nicholas Collon. Their providing – a splendidly different programme culminating in a spellbinding rendition ‘by coronary heart’ of Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite (1945).
Established nearly 20 years in the past, the orchestra precisely claims to be the pioneer for memorised orchestral live shows and the primary on the earth ‘to interrupt down bodily obstacles …by eradicating sheet music and stands for giant scale works’ and allowing gamers to maneuver fluidly on stage and flow into amongst the viewers. There are additionally different necessary elements to their performances: an erudite however accessible verbal introduction to every of the items performed, coupled with goodhearted viewers participation. These fortunate sufficient to have been current at their Beethoven/Richard Strauss live performance earlier this 12 months (evaluation right here) or at their semi-dramatised model of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on the BBC Proms final August, will know the way these modern musical explorations attain deeper below the pores and skin of the music. The Aurora’s tantalising mission assertion strives to create ‘experiences past the extraordinary’.
The live performance started with a bubblingly enthusiastic preview by BBC Radio 3 presenter Tom Service. At this level the gamers (conventionally seated) launched into a brief single motion composition of mysterious magnificence by the Finnish composer Outi Tarkiainen, entitled The Ring of Fireplace and Love. Delicately organized and incorporating a vivid tapestry of colors, Tarkiainen used the total forces of the orchestra to summon the volcanic eruptions and photo voltaic eclipses after which the piece is called. She additionally supposed Ring of Fireplace as a metaphor to explain in music what a lady feels when, as she offers start, the child’s head passes by her pelvis. It’s, as she put it ‘probably the most harmful second within the child’s life’. In a efficiency of brilliant readability and precision, a mix of supple winds, piercing brass, shimmering strings, harp and percussion was skilfully deployed to create an iridescent, nearly spectral soundscape, through which passages of turbulence are succeeded by intervals of cosmic tranquillity. The richly textured rating often introduced Sibelius, Stravinsky and (within the smooth trumpet solo) even Miles Davis to thoughts, however nonetheless retained all through the distinctive voice of its gifted composer.
The second merchandise on the programme, Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G, introduced us again sharply from the phenomena of the pure world to gritty city life, particularly to a few of the machine powered, technologically pushed cities of North America which the composer visited within the late Nineteen Twenties. It’s mentioned that when George Gershwin requested Ravel to present him composition classes, Ravel requested him how a lot cash he was making from writing music. On being instructed the astronomical sum, Ravel exclaimed ‘Maybe I ought to take classes from you!’ Though Gershwin’s affect permeates this ‘love letter to jazz’ as Tom Service put it, Ravel was not a lot motivated by potential earnings as he was impressed by the skyscrapers of Chicago, and particularly the huge mechanised meeting strains he witnessed on the Ford manufacturing unit in Detroit.
From the whipcrack first notes of the Allegramente, dextrous pianist Alexandre Tharaud and the Aurora gamers fused to present a exactly calibrated but whimsical account of the primary motion. Theraud’s keyboard virtuosity was by no means unsure. Alternating between astonishingly quick runs and bluesy harmonic progressions, he captured Ravel’s continuously altering shifts of moods and themes in all their syncopated element. The second motion, an Adagio of serene magnificence flowed in an unbroken line of melody, whereas the third motion – a fast paced, rapid-fire dialogue between piano and orchestra – was executed with superior pace and panache.
After a twenty-minute break, concertgoers returned to a naked platform to await a deconstructed and reassembled Firebird, performed from reminiscence and defined in a lightweight contact however illuminating commentary by a totally miked Collon and Service. Who knew that the fantastical magnificence and monstrous nightmares of evil King Kastchei’s enchanted realm as evoked by Stravinsky’s fairy story ballet rating, might be attributed to the composer’s use of harmonic intervals, alternating main and minor thirds and suspenseful tritones? Who would have anticipated to search out parallel connotations of menace and evil within the theme tune for Peppa Pig? And who would have imagined the viewers becoming a member of the orchestra to sing certainly one of Firebird’s central melodies to the phrases ‘The monsters are out tonight?’
This instructional warmup was not merely entertaining, it was revelatory, and drastically enhanced the standing and scoreless efficiency, which, when it got here, was electrifying. Every part was razor-sharp, and successive soloists have been on the prime of their recreation. From the darkish and brooding woodwind within the Introduction to the extreme, pounding rhythms and dissonant harmonies of the Infernal Dance, the enjoying blazed and sparkled. In contrasting and gently lyrical actions, comparable to The Princesses’ Spherical Dance and the Berceuse, strings and woodwind (notably a haunting bassoon solo from Amy Harman) successfully mixed to create a dreamlike world of peace and contemplation. In the meantime, the supernatural Firebird swooped and fluttered with mystical magnificence, due to Jane Mitchell’s agile flute and Rebecca Larsen’s sprightly piccolo. A triumphant finale was rewarded with joyful applause, and to normal delight, was reprised as soon as the gamers had left the platform to scatter and stand amongst members of the captivated viewers. True to its phrase, the Aurora had labored its magic and even exceeded its promise to make an unconventional Southbank live performance a unprecedented expertise.
Chris Sallon
