Hans Keller's mischievous essay on “Phoney Professions” lists both viola players (“it’s just a big violin”) and conductors among its targets. This performance refuted that, as surely as it delighted everyone else.
Written for a large virtuoso orchestra, Ravel himself reduced La Valse's teeming complexity to a very difficult piano solo – it is not uncommon to find “complete” live or recorded surveys of the composer’s piano music which simply omit it. But it held no terror for this artist.
Natalya Romaniw, a diva to her fingertips, proves an ideal Floria Tosca in ENO's open-air performance at the South Facing Festival in Crystal Palace Bowl.
Rarely has so distinguished a group been assembled to give this work live; it would have shone as a highlight even in a normal year of visiting foreign ensembles and performers.
When Igor Stravinsky left Europe for life in America in 1939, his flight was due to more than the impending war. Three generations of his family had died within six months and his neoclassical works no longer met with universal admiration from influential critics.
Britten's four lovers were costumed in quasi-contemporary, even glamorous manner, stripping to their underwear for the end of Act 2... so more Love Island than Ancient Athens.
The finale’s thrilling ardour was not diminished in the empty hall, as we approached the triumphant ending that Sibelius, despite being armed with bass drum, cymbal and triangle, omitted to write.
“Pulcinella was my discovery of the past, the epiphany through which the whole of my late work became possible. It was a backward look of course – the first of many love-affairs in that direction – but it was a look in the mirror too.”
