A violin and a Mermaid  wo
major Romantic works yesterday at the Royal Festival Hall, performed by the
London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Emmanuel Krivine. After opening with
Brahms's Tragic Overture, Sibelius's Violin Concerto was performed by the
Latvian violinist Gideon Kremer. The concerto is strongly
influenced by the composer's homeland, FInland, and has a dark-ish but not
gloomy tone for much of the time - ending with a lively if slightly ponderous
dance tune. Kremer's performance was warm and affectionate: endearingly his
movements in the lively sections almost amounted to the sort of near-dance that
one might have seen from a folk fiddler in a Scandinavian dance-hall. This was
one of the best performances I've ever heard of this well-known work, and justly
received a tremendous
ovation. The
second half of the concert consisted of a little-known late Romantic work by
Alexander Zemlinsky, who studied under Mahler
and later taught Korngold: he composed several operas - mostly on fairy-tale
themes - but has never caught the popoular imagination. Die Seejungfrau
is a forty-minute tone poem based on Hans Christian Andersen's The Little
Mermaid - forget the Disney film, the work reflects the harsher story of the
original, with no happy ending. The work is lushly romantic and densely scored,
and though it perhaps stretches its main themes out a little it is involving and
attractive: an excellent performance all round.Posted: Thu - January 24, 2008 at 09:30 AM by Roger Wilmut |
Quick Links
About Me:
Roger Wilmut XML/RSS Feed
MY PODCAST
Archives
Calendar
Blogroll
WEBRINGS
Statistics
Total entries in this category: Published On: Mar 11, 2016 05:00 PM |
||||||||||||||||||
