Review
Review of the Orchestra of Opera North
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28/03/2009
Yorkshire Post review of the Orchestra of Opera North at Leeds Town Hall on the 28th March 2009 as part of Leeds International Concert Season.
Orchestra of Opera North
Leeds Town Hall, 28th March 2009
Only in the superior performance and planning talents of Opera North and Leeds International Concert Season can you find so intriguing a mix as Debussy, Shostakovich, Busoni and Stravinsky - composers isolated from tradition and compelled to be original.
In each half of the concert a reflective work preceded one of vast and vivid creative scope - all revolutionary in different ways and all delivered brilliantly by Richard Farnes and his ever-incandescent Orchestra.
Debussy's Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune was tonally transparent, subtly matt in colour, and hugely satisfying.
The passions, ironies, grotesqueries and ambiguous droleries that tumble over one another in Shostakovich's Second Cello Concerto were all perfectly delineated by the Orchestra, but soloist Adrian Brendel maintained the same dynamic throughout, with little tonal variation or colouration.
Farnes gently allowed the truly visionary harmonic and rhythmic ideas of Busoni's Berceuse élégiaque to reveal themselves clearly - ideas that perhaps influenced 20th century composition even more than Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, which brought the concert to a wild conclusion.
Although this work seems exotic rather than barbaric nowadays, its technical demands remain frightening and were executed with panache and incisive accuracy.
Book for the Orchestra of Opera North performing as part of Leeds International Concert Season on Saturday 5 December 2009
Book for the Orchestra of Opera North performing as part of Leeds International Concert Season on Saturday 27 March 2010
Author : Chris Robins
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