As a slightly belated birthday celebration for me we went to hear the BBC National Orchestra of Wales’ commemoration of the centenary of Pierre Boulez in Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff. I’d never been to a concert here, although I have used it as a rehearsal venue a number of times, so this was the first time I’d entered it from the main lobby of the WMC. We sat at the front of the raked block.<\/p>\n
The concert featured works by Boulez himself as well as music he was renowned for conducting. The Livre pour cordes<\/i> arranges two movements from a string quartet for string orchestra. Given the density of the textures, it was hard to imagine what the quartet version would have been like. <\/p>\n
The first half ended with Ava Bahari playing Berg’s violin concerto, the acoustic of the hall allowing all of the orchestral lines to come through clearly. For years I knew the concerto mainly through Boulez’ own recording with Menuhin<\/a>, where soloist (a romantic approach with lots of portamento) and conductor (in I’d-rather-be-conducting-Webern mode) are somewhat at odds with one another. Bahari and Daniel Cohen were more in agreement. <\/p>\n The other Boulez work was Mémoriale<\/i> for solo flute, played by Matthew Featherstone. This is part of the complicated history of his … explosante-fixe … <\/i> though it did not feel like an arrangement and was more accessible than Boulez is popularly thought to be.<\/p>\n Messiaen’s Les Offrandes oubliées<\/i> by contrast did seem more contrived, written to fit an explicitly religious programme. It’s an early work though so he had some excuse for this.<\/p>\n The concert ended with what many regard as the starting point of modernism, the prelude and Liebestod<\/i> from Tristan<\/i>. Comments from the orchestra in the car park afterwards indicated that they appreciated this ending after the rigours of the other pieces.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As a slightly belated birthday celebration for me we went to hear the BBC National Orchestra of Wales’ commemoration of the centenary of Pierre Boulez in Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff. I’d never been to a concert here, although I have used … Continue reading