cyntillating sounds: w

a column on the state of classics

Women sat knitting

Women sat knitting and chatting and men drank beer.

How things have changed for the Concertgebouw Orchestra since its founding in 1888.

Last evening the orchestra celebrated its 120 year jubilee with a concert where champagne

had replaced the beer and there wasn’t a knitting needle in sight. In fact it was a truly

modern gala where the audience, hall and musicians were all quiet, attentive and

dressed to the nines. Very chique, very royal, as the Orchestra itself now has been

these past twenty years, with a front row seat (literally) reserved for the Royals

and for all the business sponsors that make it work, and a crazy program only suited

to a real party, which is most certainly became as the evening progressed.

The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra has its own, distinctive sound.

Partly due to the famed acoustics of its home hall certainly, and despite a new

generation of wood wind and brass soloists now all, at least at the looks of it, no more than 35,

from the very first note of Beethoven’s stirring Egmont Ouverture, you could sit back in a sigh

and think: ah, there it is again, that sound, those strings, those trumpets…

The ouverture was actually, symphonically speaking, the highlight of the evening.

Afterwards, the orchestra accompanied two wonderful soloists and only came briefly back

to life alone (Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel is just not much to write home about)

in a terrific set of encores.

Mitsuko Uchida, who gets more daring and delightful as she becomes older,

played some of the softest pianissimo’s ever heard in Beethoven’s third piano concerto.

Hers is a profound artistry; there is never something cute or cunning in her interpretations

which just grow and grow and grow, getting deeper and deeper and deeper…

The second half made way for mezzo soprano Tania Kross who did a very good job in her

De Falla, but really went to town in two exciting encores which better showed off

her masterful vocal technique – and certainly more important- her musicality, sensuality and

true daring. One of Berio’s Folk Songs was truly reminiscent of the great vocalist Cathy Berberian,

and coming from some of us who are still Berberian’s greatest fans, that is the biggest of compliments.

When the good citizens of Amsterdam built a beautiful hall for their orchestra back in 1888,

in between beer breaks and knitting sessions, they certainly did not realize that they were

making musical history. The Orchestra still serves its Dutch citizens extremely well.

It is sincerely the hope of all that love this royal ensemble that, as it preserves a stunning past,

it manages to keep one foot solidly placed in the here and now.

With a young and versatile talent like Kross, the 121st year is off to a very good start.