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Critical Plaudits for ESO in Hereford

The popular blog “The Classical Reviewer” has published a rave review of the ESO’s 7 February concert in Hereford’s Shirehall.

ESO Hereford
A vocal ovation for the ESO’s performance of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with Alexander Sitkovetsky

“Kenneth Woods drew a fine vigorous opening from the orchestra in the Allegro con brio of Beethoven’s Symphony No.3 in E flat major, Op.55 ‘Eroica’ with a crisp incisiveness and a great sense of panache and spirit, a real allegro brio” wrote critic Bruce Reader. “This was a performance of great life and character which brought a real freshness to Beethoven’s vision. Kenneth Woods is clearly achieving fine results with the English Symphony Orchestra.”

The concert opened with the UK premiere of Emily Doolittle’s “green/blue” described by Reader as “an impressive work full of colour and ever evolving ideas.”  Following the Doolittle came a performance of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with soloist Alexander Sitkovetsky, who “immediately revealed his beautifully sweet tone in the Allegro molto appassionato of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor, Op.64. Both orchestra and soloist brought a great energy and forward momentum to this spirited performance. The orchestra demonstrated its ability to bring weight yet with great transparency.  Sitkovetsky brought great control of dynamics, a fine rubato and a powerful edge to his lovely tone with some wonderfully fleet passages as well as a beautifully shaped cadenza with moments of fine purity of tone and a beautifully affecting lead up to a quite thrilling coda…This was a very fine performance from this brilliant young soloist with Kenneth Woods and the English Symphony Orchestra on fine form.”

The Hereford Times also covered the concert, giving particular attention to the debut of the ESO’s Orchestral Scholars programme. “THE performance by the English Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Kenneth Woods. at the Shirehall in Hereford on Sunday, February 7 was an exciting event for a number of reasons. For four Herefordshire youngsters, the concert provided the opportunity to sit and play alongside professional musicians during the performance of Beethoven’s Third Symphony. “It was brilliant to see and to be a part of the routine followed by a professional orchestra,” said Orlando, a member of Herefordshire Youth Orchestra, who was joined in this project by Tara Dudhill (violin) and William Thomson (clarinet), fellow members of HYO, and also by a member of the Academia Musica Orchestra at Hereford Sixth Form College.”

Also noting the “a stunning performance of the famous violin concerto in E minor by Mendelssohn,” the article ends by noting “a great feeling of warmth in the concert hall and it is a delight to see and hear the ESO right on our doorstep.”

 

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Explore the Score- Mendelssohn Violin Concerto

The ESO are next performing the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with Alexander Sitkovetsky on 7 February, 2016 in Hereford Shirehall at 3 PM.

Tickets available here. 

Mendelssohn

Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1809-1847)

Concerto in E minor for Violin and Orchestra, Opus 64

There were surely many Felix Mendelssohns, but perhaps the most singular of them is the figure described by Michael Steinberg as “the most astonishing of all the composing prodigies.” The major works of his teens—the Octet for Strings, written when he was only sixteen, the miraculous Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream written at age seventeen, and the harrowing First Symphony, written when he was but a fifteen-year-old boy ( to say nothing of his first Violin Concerto, written when he was 13)—reveal an incomprehensible perfection of technique allied to a fully-formed musical personality and an astounding fluency of thought. And these works seemed to flow from his pen almost as fast he could write them down.

It is from these early years that dominant image of Mendelssohn as rather-too-facile genius emerges, but one can already see other Mendelssohns present in these early works, in which moments of high tragedy, longing and anxiety sit alongside passages of frothy wit and dreamy lyricism. Mendelssohn was always a ferociously hard worker—projects like the resuscitation of the Bach Saint Matthew Passion involved not only great musical commitment but an incredible administrative effort. As a conductor, Mendelssohn was a tireless and incredibly effective advocate for new music, giving important premieres of many works by his contemporaries, including his friend Robert Schumann.

Mendelssohn’s workaholic lifestyle took a terrible toll on his health- at the time of his death at the age of just 38 he was reported to have the body of an eighty-year-old man. As he grew into adulthood, works came with more struggle and took longer to produce, and Mendelssohn became progressively more self-questioning  during the compositional process. The Violin Concerto was to be his last major orchestral work, and took over six years from conception to completion. Mendelssohn, who had written a Concerto for Violin and Strings at the age of thirteen (the piece was neither performed nor published until the 20th C.), was inspired to return to the genre by his collaboration with the violinist Ferdinand David, concertmaster of the Leipzig Gewandaus Orchestra where Mendelssohn was Music Director. David and Mendelssohn had been friends since childhood and had a close working relationship at the Gewandaus. David even took over conducting duties from Mendelssohn for projects such as the premiere of Schumann’s D minor Symphony in 1842.

Mendelssohn originally suggested the idea of a concerto in E minor to David in 1838, finally completing work on the score in 1844, but right up to the date of the premiere, Mendelssohn seemed wracked with insecurity, repeatedly soliciting advice from David on both compositional and technical details. The work received its first performance under the baton of Niels Gade and was almost immediately hailed as one of the most important, even perfect, works ever written for violin and orchestra- an estimation which has never changed.

For the listener, the Violin Concerto completely belies the insecurities and frustrations the composer seems to have suffered while working on it. It comes across as music conceived and executed with supreme self-confidence, full of originality, emotion and energy.

For much of the 19th C., the prevailing image of Mendelssohn was the one cultivated by his first biographer (and nephew), Sebastian Hensel as “a man always equable, happy and placid in temperament.” Socially, he was famously good company and charming, especially when compared to his more mercurial contemporaries like Schumann, Berlioz or Chopin, but he could also be prone to outbursts of violent temper and periods of deep insecurity. The genial Mendelssohn is very much on show in the Finale of the Violin Concerto, music which must surely rank among the most sublimely untroubled great music ever written. More questioning and serious in intent is the Mendelssohn we encounter in the Andante of the Concerto. There is hopeful lyricism, but also a great deal of longing and even moments of genuine despair. But perhaps the truest of the many Mendelssohn’s is the Romantic firebrand who gave us the first movement of the Violin Concerto.  This Allegro moto appassionato is music of high tragedy, full of anger and anxiety, very much the work of the author of the desolate Hebrides Overture and the largely stony, austere and bleak Scottish Symphony. That music of such tension and pain could lead so flawlessly and apparently inexorably to the sunny exuberance of the Concerto’s finale is greater testament to Mendelssohn’s unique genius than even the astonishing achievements of his teenage years.

— Kenneth Woods c. 2014