EIF music reviews: São Paulo Symphony Orchestra | Mustafa Said | Kleio Quartet | Tirzah

Mustafa Said | Ryan Buchanan

São Paulo Symphony Orchestra ★★★★

Usher Hall

There were quite a lot of boxes being ticked in the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra’s eclectic, vibrant concert under principal conductor Thierry Fischer.

Some colour and rhythm from the orchestra’s native Brazil? Tick: the five brief movements from Guarnieri’s Vila Rica Suite made for a brilliantly buoyant opener, and showed off the orchestra’s sonic gleam and chiselled definition to exemplary effect.

More hardcore, serious South American music? Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera’s Violin Concerto made for a thorny, uncompromising addition, angular and anguished, and given a forceful performance of utter conviction by Roman Simovic, drafted in to replace an indisposed Hilary Hahn.

Something lighter from the star violinist? Tick: but you can’t help wondering whether Waxman’s Carmen Fantasie had originally been programmed to show off Hahn’s virtuosity in more audience-friendly fare. Whatever the case, Simovic had a ball with the piece, his skittering, soaring playing thick with vibrato and portamento as he indulged his unforced showmanship.

How about something weighty and European to confirm the Orchestra’s serious credentials? Tick: Fischer led a fine, powerful performance of Strauss’s Alpine Symphony that drew impressively on the Orchestra’s sonic brilliance, even if it felt a little short on visionary awe.

In any case, it was a lot to digest – perhaps not the most ideally balanced programme for listeners, even if it showcased the Orchestra to a tee.

David Kettle

Mustafa Said ★★★★

The Hub

Cutting an austere, be-robed figure on the platform, Mustafa Said, Egyptian master of the oud - the round-bellied Arabic lute often seen as the precursor of the guitar - took us on an eight-century journey, all in one maqam or mode.

A tireless researcher and rescuer of historic Arab music, he initially plucked the smaller of his two ouds with a feather quill, reflecting the practice of the 13th or 14th centuries, later switching to plectrum and a larger, more resonant instrument for material from the 16th century on.

His plangent, quavering singing was at times yearning, incantatory or impassioned, at times holding and elaborating on a prolonged syllable, at others following the intricacies of his playing, the oud strings ringing, thrumming percussively or whining in elaborations of their own.

His repertoire of historic works took us right up to the 1960s; thereafter he played his own material, both instrumental and accompanying ancient poetry settings.

Blind from birth, Said gave us a sweeping insight into Arabic music across centuries, but his spoken introductions were indistinct.

The programme’s promise of “visual enhancement with documentary excerpts” didn’t materialise, and more efficient explanation would have properly complemented his powerful performance .

Jim Gilchrist

Kleio Quartet Queen’s Hall ★★★★

Winners of the prestigious Carl Nielsen Chamber Music Competition 2023 and currently BBC New Generation Artists, the youthful Kleio Quartet are riding high. Judging by their International Festival debut, they’re surely an ensemble to watch, and one with plenty to say.

A bit too much, perhaps, in the first half of their Queen’s Hall concert. They pushed their opening Britten Divertimenti hard, with quite a surprising amount of force and vigour, transforming the wit and sophistication of these character pieces into something far darker, more grotesque.

There was a similar intensity to their Haydn Quartet Op 20 No 4, with dynamics pushed to extremes, and a decidedly raw sound (intentionally) at times. It was vivid, characterful and compelling, but also somewhat exhausting to listen to.

Perhaps paradoxically, things calmed down after the interval in what was the concert’s most exuberant music. Wynton Marsalis’s blues-drenched, New Orleans-inspired At the Octoroon Balls got a breathtakingly vibrant, idiomatic account, full of scrubbing bluegrass fiddling and down-home tunes, refracted through Marsalis’s kaleidoscopic imagination.

The Kleio players were alive to every swooping melody and every foot-stomping rhythm (and there were plenty of those) – but at 45 minutes, and across seven substantial movements, it’s a work so stuffed full of ideas that it’s hard to take them all in. A magnificent performance, nonetheless.

David Kettle

Tirzah ★★★

Queen's Hall 

Essex singer/songwriter Tirzah Mastin is a slowburn cult favourite, known for her collaborations with composer Mica Levi on albums such as Colourgrade and Trip9love. Live, she enchanted with her lullaby croon and pretty melodies often set against a glitchy soundtrack triggered onstage by her bandmate Coby Sey. 

This was certainly one of the coolest bookings at this year’s EIF in more ways than one. Tirzah’s stage presence was still and unassuming but atmospheric backlighting, silhouetting her form and showing off the Queens Hall to magical effect, compensated for the diffidence and she took her time to build anticipation with an opening soundtrack of white noise and weird chants, while Sey’s sonic backdrops ranged from the distorted guitar samples and plangent keyboard chords of Their Love to the slightly gothic industrial trip-hop strains of No Limit.

As Sey introduced drum’n’bass rhythms and ramped up the beats, the serene Tirzah was lost in the music, her soothing and mesmeric tones in danger of being subsumed yet staying afloat in a delicate dance, one which threatened to fall into a banal pattern before the closing number Nightmare changed the tune with the toughness of the beats softened by dubby reverb and electric piano chords.

Fiona Shepherd