Liberty or Death? The slogan for American Independence and of the Autumn Season of Welsh National Opera. For this concert given by the company’s orchestra M.D. Lothar Koenigs turned to the music of two contrasting German Composers, both revolutionaries, to continue the theme.
The first half began with Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge. The point being that here, nearing the end of his life, and totally deaf, the composer was looking to set music free of all boundaries. This is challenging, some would say puzzling, music. It stretches the bounds in every way – at times full of tortured dissonance, at times facile, ever restless and intellectually challenging. The performance by the strings of the W.N.O. was highly involving .
It was difficult to know how they could follow music of such weight . The answer was in one of the most lengthy rearrangements of the stage that I have ever experienced – maybe we all needed this 10 minute gap to readjust.
The Trumpet Concerto (‘Nobody Knows de trouble I see’) by Bernd Alois Zimmermann featured the sweet-toned German virtuoso Reinhold Freidrich. It is a one movement work that makes great demands of the soloist in terms of stamina and musicianship. It combined infusions of jazz and gospel with an expressionistic musical language in a profound anti-war statement . It received an eloquent and moving performance here.
The performance of the fifth symphony of Beethoven, with its movement from dark to light, did not have the impact of the earlier works - this would have been difficult.
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