Osmo Vänskä leads the Minnesota Orchestra, but Joshua is the Bell of Barbican

By -

Jennifer Taylor for The New York Times
Joshua Bell performed with the Minnesota Orchestra under the baton of Osmo Vänskä at the Barbican Centre Tuesday night, starting their European tour on solid ground. London is the first stop on a European tour for the Minnesota Orchestra, continueing on to Berlin, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Luxembourg and Vienna. Osmo Vänskä lead the orchestra through a thrilling programme of Adams’s Slonimsky’s Earbox, Barber’s Violin Concerto and Beethoven's Eroica. With a sold out crowd, it was a stunning way to start the trip.

Both conductor and violist were praised for their performances, but it was Bell who won the night.Neil Fisher of The Times (London) wrote:

"America’s favourite preppy violinist was on ravishing form, offering sweetly sustained lyricism that never threatened to teeter into schmaltz. The reward for the audience’s ovations was a fiendish encore (Henri Vieuxtemps’ Souvenir d’Amérique) that flashed virtuosity in all the right ways."

Edward Seckerson of The Independent was equally as admiring of Bell.

"Joshua Bell played the Violin Concerto with rapt, confidential, beauty, slipping into the salon-like texture of the opening so unassumingly that he might easily have been just another member of the Minnesota string section. It was that awareness of his surroundings, that chamber music intuition, that made this performance so revealing. The virtuosic finale still sounds like an afterthought to me – a last ditch attempt to get some fireworks into the piece. Bell took those in his stride like a mischievous Puck gone bad."

Even with the star light shinning on Bell, Vänskä held his own with an exceptional performance. Martin Kettle of The Guardian wrote:

"As one would expect from the imaginative Osmo Vänskä, the Minnesota programme was exceptionally well constructed. John Adams's Slonimsky's Earbox, written for the Hallé in 1995 and a turning point in the composer's move away from minimalism, allowed the orchestra to display some pulsatingly loud virtuosity, though its most haunting passages are its rare moments of restraint.

"In the second half, Vänskä offered a fast, well-prepared account of Beethoven's Eroica symphony. The opening movement, tense and exciting, fared best, along with the finale. But in the funeral march, weight and tone were sacrificed for bite and momentum, and the interpretation slightly lost its way."

Neil Fisher's also spoke highly of Vänskä, "the Finnish conductor and his brilliant American orchestra punched, teased, charmed and thrilled their way through Beethoven’s Eroica symphony." With a grueling tour ahead of them, it's nice to see it start on such a high note.

Performances by the orchestra, most of them recordings, are being broadcast on BBC Radio 3 every night (or heard on the BBC's iPlayer), with each program hosted by Brian Newhouse of Minnesota Public Radio. Tuesday’s concert by the Minnesota Orchestra at London’s Barbican Centre will be re-broadcast Friday (Feb. 27) at 8 p.m. on MPR’s classical station, 99.5 FM.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Role of Music in Opera

By -
There are numerous books on the topic, and every composer, librettist, director, singer and audience member has their opinion as to what role the music should play in an opera. In a play without music, the words ought to support the meaning behind a character's actions. However, in the case of action movies, often times the action is what tells the story and there aren't words, just images to forward the plot. We might hear music to accompany action, build tension, but the action tells the story. Musicals tend to speak until the emotion of the moment just "has" to break out in song - unless it's something like "Mama Mia" where the dialog is the rails we travel on between songs; the songs themselves, written before the concept of the musical, are the focus of the production, while the story is secondary. Operas are a different beast. The music provides emotion to the words spoken, but it also plays the role of ambience when there is only action. In &quo
Read more

Acclaimed Fauré Quartett returns to Deutsche Grammophon with their first recording of Brahms

By -
Image
The Fauré Quartett continues to add authoritative recordings to the chamber music catalog with their new recording of two Brahms quartets, available from Deutsche Grammophon on January 12, 2010. These large, some say symphonic, works test the limits of technical and musical capabilities, and the Fauré Quartett once again proves why they are one of the most acclaimed ensembles performing today. Within a short period of time the Fauré Quartett has conquered the great concert halls of London , Paris , Berlin , Amsterdam , Brussels , Geneva , Hamburg , Frankfurt, Milan , Buenos Aires , Rio de Janeiro and elsewhere. “They attract superlatives wherever they go,” wrote The Strad following a concert at London ’s Wigmore Hall, while the Süddeutsche Zeitung praised them for a performance that “brought tremendous pleasure by highlighting interpretative details that had scarcely ever been heard before”. The Fauré Quartett strives to achieve a unique sound for Brahms (as indeed for every work)
Read more

Episode 210b: Joyeuse le départ

By -
Image
Podcast:  Play in new window  |  Download Subscribe:  Apple Podcasts  |  Android  |  Google Play  |  Stitcher  |  TuneIn  |  RSS Provost Cunningham has Transmigrated, but to where! What is Dr Sage going to do with his body? And how can she bring home her friends, Abigail and Erasmus, without also bring home Cunningham? What are they going to say when they find the “skeleton” she’s hiding in her closet? Cast: Eddie Louise Clark  as Dr Sage Chip Clark  as Professor Savant Justin Bremer  as the Narrator Emily Riley Piatt  as Abigail Entwhistle, Calypso & Dean Stewart Written by  Eddie Louise Theme music by  Unwoman Sound Design by  Chip Michael
Read more