The violinist María Dueñas was Caruso and Paganini on the National Auditorium | Culture | EUROtoday

“I want confirmation, an answer to a question of decisive importance to me: is there still a place and an opportunity for music with expression and feeling, with long melodic themes, formed and developed on the principles of the music of the classical masters conceived in the heart and not built on paper?” Thus begins the press launch that Erich Wolfgang Korngold wrote for the premiere of his Violin Concerto in St. Louis (Missouri), in February 1947, and which is preserved in manuscript amongst his private papers deposited within the Library of Congress of the United States. So, the reply was damaging for this baby prodigy from Vienna who had triumphed in Hollywood since 1935 as a composer of soundtracks for a number of movie classics.

In the next paragraphs of this assertion, which Korngold would by no means disseminate, the composer says that he’s neither a reactionary nor an old school. He talks about rising up with Elektraby Richard Strauss, and that he was one in every of Stravinsky’s first admirers. However, after the Second World War, classical music took more durable and extra experimental paths. And his compositions for the live performance corridor and the opera home didn’t start to resurface till the commemoration of his centenary, in 1997. A piece vehemently promoted by musicians and students, comparable to John Mauceri, who narrates in his newest e-book War and music. The paths of classical music within the twentieth century, which has just lately been revealed in Siruela in Spanish.

What Korngold did publish on the premiere of his Violin Concerto was a short notice in this system by the St. Louis Symphony: “Despite the virtuosic demands of the finale, the work, with its multiple melodic and lyrical episodes, was intended more for a Caruso of the violin than for a Paganini. It goes without saying how delighted I am that my concerto is performed by Caruso and Paganini in the same person: Jascha Heifetz.” A remark that would absolutely be utilized, as we speak, to the younger violinist María Dueñas (Granada, 22 years outdated), after her sensible efficiency final Sunday, January 12, on the National Auditorium, along with the British Philharmonia Orchestra and the conductor American Marin Alsop (New York, 68 years outdated), inside the Ibermúsica cycles. A efficiency that’s a part of a Spanish tour that inaugurated the Canary Islands Festival, on January 10 and 11, and that may culminate as we speak, Monday, on the Palau de la Música Catalana.

Dueñas has the golden, singable and vibrant sound that this music masterfully composed by Korngold utilizing songs from his soundtracks requires. His interpretation of the 2 lyrical themes of Moderate nobleman preliminary was exemplary. He raised the primary one, which is the opening theme of one other daybreak (1937), with an beautiful use of portamento. And the second, which comes from the gorgeous portrait of Carlota in Juarez (1939), allowed him to exhibit his great legato and management of dynamics, but additionally his pure capacity to wriggle with the tempo. After the transient growth, within the cadence, she confirmed alone that she can also be an completed virtuoso. But the issue with the primary motion was within the orchestral accompaniment: a flat studying with out pressure or brightness that promptly lined the violinist.

Everything bought higher in Romance central on problems with Anthony Adverse (1936). Now, Alsop and the Philharmonia offered the best sound planes for Dueñas’ beautiful phrases to circulate, filled with creativeness and expressive inflections. This gradual motion was, surely, the very best of the night time. The solely facet of the violinist’s doubtful style in all her masterful efficiency was her inclination to make use of the pure harmonic (a boring, boring sound) because the climax of some phrase. But Dueñas, along with Caruso, was additionally Paganini. And he confirmed it within the virtuosic and playful Finalebased mostly now on The prince and the pauper (1937), which offered a verve that ended up infecting the orchestra, the place issues of stability and stability reappeared.

Dueñas closed his efficiency with two beneficiant ideas: two compositions by fellow violinists of the previous and current. Hungarian virtuoso Franz von Vecsey performed his Vals unhappyfrom 1913, with out piano accompaniment, however with one other emulation of Caruso by way of lyrical exquisiteness. And the multifaceted Russian violinist Alekséi Igudesman carried out his virtuosity Applemania (included on their 2016 album Fasten Seat Belts), to which the Granada violinist added a pressure and zigzag very a lot within the model of Paganini. In truth, Dueñas’ subsequent launch on Deutsche Grammophon, which can hit platforms subsequent month, will focus exactly on the 24 Caprices for solo violinby Paganini.

The live performance had begun with a horny pattern of how present artistic music is altering within the United States. I’m referring to one of many best-known works by the violinist and composer Jessie Montgomery (New York, 43 years outdated), titled Strumwhich could possibly be translated as “strum.” It is a horny and colourful composition from 2006, initially for cello quintet, which has gone by a model for string quartet till changing into, in 2012, a chunk for string orchestra. Alsop emphasised the preliminary pizzicato strum, which serves because the rhythmic assist for all the work, and exactly drew its arc, from the nostalgic to the celebratory, guaranteeing its a number of ostinatos, which at instances recalled Janáček and Bartók.

The second half targeted on a number of the three suites that Sergei Prokofiev ready from his masterful ballet Romeo and Juliet (1935). The choice was carried out by Marin Alsop herself, though she included extra numbers than these indicated within the hand program. They started with a weak and incisive model of Montagues and Capulets, and continued with two numbers not indicated in this system: Scenewith a powerful bassoon solo by Robin O’Neill, and morning dance, the place the English orchestra confirmed verve and distinction. Curiously, Young Juliet was performed shortened, because it started straight within the More peaceable (virtually andantino), with the motif of Juliet’s unhappiness, performed fantastically by flute soloist Samuel Coles. Below are three numbers during which the orchestra continued to point out off its high quality with Alsop guaranteeing stability and precision: Masks, Friar Lawrence y Danza.

The downside arose with the drama of The dying of Tybalt. After all of the virtuosic escapades, the well-known fifteen beats of the timpani that marked his homicide sounded aseptic. Next, there have been two different numbers not indicated in this system, each nicely resolved as a result of high quality of the set: the Dance of the Antillean Maidens and the morning serenade. However, the drama was as soon as once more the Achilles’ heel ultimately, and the shortage of pressure weighed down the emotion within the final two points, Romeo at Juliet’s tomb y Juliet’s dyingregardless of the superb high quality of the brass and strings of the British orchestra.

Alsop reciprocated the viewers’s applause with two competition ideas. The first of them made some sense, because it was a piece by the Englishman Edward Elgar, and his glowing The wild bearsthe ultimate variety of the second suite of The wand of youththough it sounded considerably limp. But the final straw was ending with a bombastic model of the well-known Hungarian dance no. 5by Johannes Brahms, asking the viewers to clap in rhythm as an imitation of the New Year’s Concert. However, by then multiple was conscious of the soccer setback that Barcelona was inflicting on Real Madrid in Arabia.