EIF reviews: European Union Youth Orchestra | The Marriage of Figaro | Mahler 5 Inside Out

Komische Oper Berlin's production of The Marriage of Figaro | Jess Shurte

MUSIC

European Union Youth Orchestra: Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra ****

European Union Youth Orchestra: Don Quixote ****

Usher Hall

Beanbags really come into their own with kids around. And there were dozens of youngsters – plus accompanying adults of all ages – sprawled across the Usher Hall stalls for the early-evening offering from the European Union Youth Orchestra, with Britten’s Young Person’s Guide as the centrepiece to a decidedly youth-focused concert.

Those massed ranks of coloured beanbags felt like nothing, however, compared to the jam-packed stage, with 100 young musicians from 27 countries – as Festival Director Nicola Benedetti informed us – offering vivid, considered, brilliantly imaginative playing under conductor Gianandrea Noseda.

The opening third movement of Mahler’s First Symphony made use of the rather blurry sound that the removal of the stalls seating caused for some magical transitions, but Noseda offered a brisk, perceptive account. His Young Person’s Guide was similarly sprightly, but also showcased the exceptional talents of individual EUYO players and sections – from sonorous trombones to athletic violins.

Nimrod from Elgar’s Enigma Variations provided a gratifyingly no-nonsense pre-encore: in Noseda’s hands, it was big and powerful, but never had the heartstring-tugging monumentality of so many other interpretations. If any of the audience’s young people felt inspired to join the Orchestra, though, they’d be disappointed. The hugs and handshakes of unity and brother-/sisterhood that followed the encore proper – Jaime Texidor’s exuberant Amparito roca – felt all the more poignant since, following the outcome of the 2016 EU referendum, the once London-based, now Italy-based orchestra no longer accepts young UK players.

If the EUYO’s early evening concert went all out to welcome youngsters and orchestral newbies, its later evening performance was a far soberer, more traditional affair – though it retained the Orchestra’s vivid sonic identity and bristling confidence, and conductor Gianandrea Noseda’s perceptive, sometimes even balletic direction.

He was far more urgent and decisive in the concert’s energetic opener, however. Washington DC-born Carlos Simon’s Fate Now Conquers might have sounded remarkably similar to something by John Adams at times, but it was a powerful, compelling utterance all the same, its complex interlocking rhythms and surging harmonies delivered with fierce commitment by the EUYO players.

The concert’s main event, however, suffered slightly from the Usher Hall’s changed acoustics: replacing the stalls seating with beanbags made for a boomier, muddier sound, not the ideal sonic setting for the intricacies of Strauss’s Don Quixote. Nonetheless, cellist Nicolas Altstaedt delivered a passionate, appropriately larger-than-life portrayal of Cervantes’s antihero, gruff and gutsy at times, though with soaring lyricism in the piece’s visionary closing section.

Similarly, Noseda conveyed the piece’s sometimes knockabout humour with the straight face it surely needs. Closing the concert with the same two encores that had been heard earlier in the evening felt like a mis-step, certainly for any audience members who’d been to both. But hearing an EU orchestra offering the echt-Englishness of Elgar’s Nimrod twice in one evening also felt like a double-underlined message of friendship and unity.

David Kettle

OPERA

The Marriage of Figaro ***

Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, until 18 August

Everything about Kirill Serebrennikov’s production of The Marriage of Figaro for Komische Oper Berlin screamed excess, from the neon sign saying ‘Capitalism Kills Love’ to the amount of shiny bling in the final scenes. Fortunately, the vital essence of Mozart and De Ponte’s comic opera was delivered by a terrific line up of singers along with sublime music from the orchestra and conductor James Gaffigan. 

Heading the magnificent cast was Penny Sofroniadou as Susanna, outwitting the Count (Hubert Zapiór) at every turn with help from her fiancé Figaro (Peter Kellner) and Cherubina (Patricia Nolz), usually a trouser role. Instead Serebrennikov gives her an alter ego, the deaf nonverbal Cherubino (Georgy Kudrenko), one of four additional acting characters.

Serebrennikov’s upstairs/downstairs spit of the stage worked well with a spacious modern art gallery atop a cramped laundry. Other touches that gained a few laughs included the harpsichord playing a mobile ring tone and the projection of frantic texts on a large phone. He also built up tension when the Count is convinced Cherubino is in the Countess’s dressing room by having Susanna calmly smoke a cigarette downstairs.

However the other liberties Serebrennikov takes were distracting, ridiculous or in poor taste. While the Countess (Verity Wingate) asks love to give her some comfort from her cheating husband in her poignant aria Porgi, amor, qualche ristoro, art restorers are dropping paintings downstairs.

In the final scenes the basement area was turned into a trashy homeless shelter littered with discarded appliances and shopping trolleys. A contrast to upstairs where an exhibition of large silver sculptures was opening. Adding nothing whatsoever to the overall story, a young man with a knife climbs his way up the staircase of junk and stabs several women. Rather than being challenging, this production was out of step with our times.

Susan Nickalls

MUSIC

Mahler 5 Inside Out *** 

Usher Hall

After making their debut last year, the Usher Hall beanbags have returned to EIF for seven performances, including the Hallé Orchestra’s dissection of Mahler’s 5th Symphony led by their long-time music director, Sir Mark Elder, on Friday afternoon. Giving opportunity to get up close and personal with the orchestral players, who were arranged in a roughly circular shape in the stalls with all the usual seating removed, the format falls somewhere between illustrated lecture and performance.

While Part 3 of the Symphony, starting with the famous Adagietto heard to legendary effect in Visconti’s Death in Venice, was performed in full without a break, the middle Scherzo was deconstructed to hear Elder explain its main components, as was Part 1. While the beanbags themselves are surprisingly comfortable, the segmentation of a huge orchestra into sections, rather than being on stage altogether, made for disconcerting musical discomfort. It may depend, of course, on where one’s beanbag is situated, but directly below the balcony, strings were overpowered by the loudness of horns and brass. Elder’s chat was informative and not without humour, even allowing the leader, Roberto Ruisi, to admit that he absolutely did not like this music.

Carol Main