On the hottest night of the summer in Granada (there is always room for worse), a young Finn made his third and last appearance at the festival, where he has performed - always in the Palace of Carlos V - leading three different orchestras: the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the City of Granada Orchestra and, now, the Paris Orchestra. Klaus Mäkelä falls in love with the formations he leads, he enchants them. In Paris, the musicians unanimously elected him, without hardly knowing him, as their next titular conductor, a position that Mäkelä already holds at the Oslo Philharmonic, and other centuries-old formations are said to be after him. The year does not have enough days for the Scandinavian genius to simultaneously carry out so many tasks of maximum responsibility.
Watching this twenty-somethings lead, you understand things, and it would probably be even clearer if we could attend his preparatory sessions for the concerts, which is where the orchestras, implacable judges like few others, although not always accurate, X-ray and strip the conductors. The local group from Granada even asked to have an additional rehearsal with him before the concert they gave together on June 25, a request that is not at all frequent. And the Paris Orchestra is not known either as a submissive group or as a friend of making things easy for its directors. However, from what they have seen and heard on Sunday night, they are absolutely delighted with their decision and with the prospect of a joint future. Having decided to simultaneously hold two positions being so young,When all the orchestras raffle him to hire him as guest conductor, Mäkelä also shows that, despite his youth, he is very clear about what he wants, because his decisions clearly border on the conventional.
At
Ravel's
Le tombeau de Couperin
, which opened Sunday's program, we witnessed a display of small subtleties of all kinds, mainly timbral. The woods did not start very well intoned at the
Prélude
, but they ended up showing their great class at the
Rigaudon
, with special mention for all the interventions of the veteran Pascal Moraguès, who has been clarinet soloist in the orchestra for four decades, to which the Spanish Miriam Pastor has just joined as oboe soloist. The four pieces sounded danceable, light, precise, and the importance of the Finnish director's left arm, completely independent of the right (as required by the canons of the trade), and whose movements they always seek to achieve what he pursues, called attention. something very concrete, as happens with the fixed gazes to a certain section or soloist, or facial gestures of enormous eloquence. The orchestra observes him incessantly and faithfully follows his very clear indications: that is why so many dynamic gradations were heard, even with very short travel regulators,and that is why there were so many author details, no matter how small, in the phrasing. Mäkelä is also a very sober director and the gestures facing the gallery, so frequent in other colleagues with plenty of ego, do not seem to go with him. In a repertoire so familiar to her, she managed to get the Paris Orchestra to play a personal Ravel drawn with pencils. But the stripes were not the inherited ones, but the ones he wanted to draw at all times.
Two young talents: Daniel Lozakovich and Klaus Mäkelä. Granada Festival |
Fermín Rodríguez
After the cancellation of Janine Jansen, one of the many who has had to suffer and pay for the festival since its inauguration, she took up her position
in extremis
young Swedish talent Daniel Lozakovich. The announced work, Concert no. 1 de Bruch, although it is certain that her interpretation was little like that of the Dutch violinist. In his late twenties, in Granada he has made two things clear: his talent and his (logical) immaturity. With a slender and spindly sound, like his own body, and stylized phrasing at all times, Lozakovich seems more concerned with maintaining the technical neatness without any breakdown and with enjoying the tonal beauty that he knows how to obtain from his Stradivarius than with offering a truly personal interpretation. . Since his solo entry he abused vibrato and tended to flat phrasing and, almost always, slow, ignoring the undeniable rhapsodic or improvisatory component that this music must have.The small line prevails over the large arch, the how over the what and its neatness ends up being translated into a certain expressive asepsis that goes wrong with a musician like Bruch.
Mäkelä accompanied him with care and was very aware of him, but in the few purely orchestral passages the interpretation acquired a much more personal dimension and had another flight, without a single softness or that constant tendency to sonic preciousness that characterized the soloist part. . In the
Adagio
, very slow from beginning to end, the music did not breathe and seemed stuck in the impeccable but insipid interventions of the violinist. The very technical passages (arpeggios, scales, the thirds of the last movement) sounded very neat, but also mechanical, devoid of life. The
final
flush
made it clear once again who really lit the flames and who rather delighted in the contemplation of the glow of the embers. Outside the program, Lozakovich played the
Adagio
of the first Sonata for solo violin by Bach and its version was a copy of what we had heard, despite the gulf that opens between both languages.
Slow, romantic, out of style, just pretty, it seemed like a Bach from another time.
It is impossible not to praise the talent and solid technical background of the young Swedish violinist, but what he heard in Granada at least does not allow him to be framed within the great promises of the instrument.
However, the enormous evolution that can be expected, especially if you frequent good companies, can turn the tables at any time, of course.
The appearance of the Palace of Carlos V, the scene of the orchestral concerts of the Granada Festival on Sunday night. Granada Festival |
Fermín Rodríguez
As a closing of the program, Mäkelä deployed his entire arsenal of resources, which are many, in a complete and, at times, electrifying version of Symphony no. 9 by Antonín Dvořák, a work that does not seem to fit right away with the best virtues of the Paris Orchestra, but from which he was able to extract a formidable performance. In fact, it was inevitable to think if the Finn, in addition to offering splendid concerts, will also be able to reveal himself as a good shaper of orchestras, if he will manage to grow and improve those of which he is the owner (Oslo and Paris, for now) during his years in office. In essence, a closer relationship should serve for this and, from what has been heard in Granada, the French formation is not in its best moment either, although it is sensed, as in Lozakovich himself, a great potential for growth.This is how he must have perceived it himself to accept ownership.
In Dvořák, what characterizes Mäkelä's way of conducting was manifested even more clearly: he usually concentrates on very specific details, but without neglecting the ensemble at any time thanks to the fact that he manages to handle the orchestra with astonishing ease, with that sixth sense of great directors to perceive when and why to be more proactive. There are never abruptnesses in his speech and the whole dynamic is always carefully prepared thanks to that left hand full of authority that, always freed from the right (focused on the agogic and serving as a reference in the entrances or attacks), is handles all creative aspects. In such a hackneyed work, the Finn contributed personal aspects, either from the superb slow introduction of the first movement, or in the transition to the marked section
Little più mosso
of the second or in the codas, furiously energetic, of the last two movements.
The orchestra and audience applauded Mäkelä with great enthusiasm: his hypothetical examination as a resident artist of the festival (despite his youth, he has little to prove in relation to his true worth) has been settled on a very high note.
His talent has been a breath of northern air in the torrid nights of Granada these days.
Concerto 1700 and Carlos Mena in the impressive setting of the church of the Monastery of San Jerónimo.Festival de Granada |
Fermín Rodríguez
On Sunday morning, ancient music visited, as it usually does, the church of the monastery of San Jerónimo. In front of its monumental altarpiece, the instrumentalists of Concerto 1700 and the countertenor Carlos Mena offered a program of instrumental sonatas and infrequent sings by Spanish composers of the 18th century. Two of the members of the group, its director, Daniel Pinteño, and the theorbist Pablo Zapico, had already played at the Royal Hospital as members of Forma Antiqva. The historicist interpretation has been slow to emerge in Spain (after the initial outbreak of Great Britain and Holland, followed later by Italy, France and Germany), but it has done so with characteristics very similar to those of other countries, and one of them is that constant transfer of musicians between different groups.The personality of Concerto 1700 is an extension of that of Pinteño himself, a violinist who has reached the baroque repertoire from the modern violin, as is still evident in his playing.
The program, previously shot in other cities and festivals, and partly already on record, is a vindication of the chamber vocal music of the full Spanish Baroque, which struggled to assume its own profiles and detach itself from the Italian influences. Carlos Mena, after the relative disappointment of his recent
Giulio Cesare
in Madrid, also began hesitant and somewhat insecure, but ended up being the reliable and powerful countertenor of always in the final sung of Antonio Literes, where he showed the same power in highs and lows, self-confidence in the agility and a musicality that does not leave him even in those concerts in which the voice is not at its best.
Instrumentally, Concerto 1700 shows a great balance, with acontinuous section perhaps less personal than that of Forma Antiqva (Ester Domingo, an excellent cellist, should play at times less shyly and let her line be heard more clearly) and they were only appreciated small mismatches in the violin and oboe unison in José de Torres's singing. Splendid, saving all the technical obstacles, the contribution of the trumpeter Ricard Casañ. However, perhaps the most exciting moment, and most accomplished in every way, was the modest slow movement of the Bononcini Sonata: only 24 bars in D minor than the two violinists (Daniel Pinteño and Belén Sancho) and the continuous plus intimate (Pablo Zapico and Ester Domingo) played with ornamentation, balance,
tempo
and just phrasing.
The well-deserved applause at the end of the concert led them to perform out of the program “Don't be lost”, an aria from the sung
Bello pastor
by José de Nebra, the third great name of the triad of illustrious Spanish composers of the first half of the century XVIII.
Elisabeth Leonskaja during her recital dedicated monographically to Franz Schubert at the Manuel de Falla Auditorium. Granada Festival |
Fermín Rodríguez
A few hours earlier, on Saturday afternoon, the great Georgian pianist Elisabeth Leonskaja gave one of her constant lectures. In her recital offered at the Manuel de Falla Auditorium, she only performed works by Franz Schubert, a composer who has accompanied her throughout her career and with whom she has always shown a special affinity. He did not start, however, showing his best side in the
Drei Klavierstücke D. 946
. He approached the first with a
very lively, almost precipitous
tempo
, and, something surprising about it, ignoring the repetitions prescribed by the score. He changed his mind in the second, where he began to sound more recognizable, although his Schubert sounded more nervous than usual. It was in this
Allegretto
where he gave us his first cultivated pearl: the section in A flat minor, an absolute marvel, which, however, against his new criteria, he decided not to repeat. The third piece was again very fast and, with what seemed like small memory lapses, it seemed to reveal that Leonskaja was not quite comfortable yet.
Also the beginning of the Sonata D. 784 was nervous, hectic, nothing to do with the much more serene approach of its teacher and mentor, Sviatoslav Ríjter, another pro Schubertian. In the repetition of the exhibition he began to find his place and the development, touched almost with anger, was the first moment in which Leonskaja sounded fully recognizable. An exciting reexposition and, above all, a finale full of abrupt contrasts crowned one of the jewels of the recital. Neither of the two subsequent movements scratched at this point, although there were sound details, especially in the high register, that again revealed the immense stature of the Georgian pianist. In the
Fantasy "Wanderer"
He deployed all his technical artillery and, despite the fact that Schubert's work is often the closest thing to a minefield, Leonskaja not only emerged unscathed from all dangers, but was building, beat by beat, with a perfect thread between the different sections, a rocky version in the passages of force –with occasional irresistible outbursts– and of enormous delicacy in the variations on the melody of the Lied that gives the work its spurious title. All the polyphonic richness and, from the fugue, counterpoint of the Fantasy had a meticulous translation, with a dominating and very powerful left hand.
Despite his weary appearance, Leonskaja, with his usual generosity, offered three pieces out of the program: the fourth and third impromptus - in this order - which Deutsch cataloged with the number 899 and the slow movement of the Sonata D. 959, which like few others he embodies that Schubert who tends towards lyricism but who cannot help feeling harassed by his inner torments, which erupt with fury in the central section. In the end, with the entire audience on their feet, Leonskaja received the unanimous award that deserved the immense physical and spiritual effort that, perhaps without being in his prime, he had put in for almost two uninterrupted hours. There are very few performers like her left and her seniority this weekend has been the perfect counterpoint to Klaus Mäkelä's still overflowing youth.