The Daily Telegraph - Features
An oblique cry of protest against war
Daniel Kidane premiere LPO, Royal Festival Hall, London SE1
★★★★★
New symphonies may be distinctly thin on the ground, but the concerto never loses its lustre for composers. And the violin is still a favourite concerto instrument for the same reason it was favoured by Beethoven and Brahms and Stravinsky: the way it can dominate an entire orchestra through lyrical intensity and dazzling virtuosity, rather than force.
The strange thing about Daniel Kidane’s new concerto, Aloud, premiered on Saturday night by the German virtuoso Julia Fischer and the LPO, is that it forswore both these routes to musical enjoyment. His concerto is a cry of protest against armed conflict, particularly the Russo-Ukrainian War (Kidane has skin in the game, as he is part-Russian and his partner is Ukrainian), and at its heart is a folk song in which an injured Cossack defies the bird of ill-omen that predicts his death.
All this promised something life-affirming and strongly etched. But the folk song was so thoroughly transformed and hidden, I never caught even a glimpse of it, and the concerto itself felt more like a concerto for orchestra than for violin. There were many striking inventions, but they were all in the orchestral music, which under conductor Edward Gardner’s balletic direction danced and parried in strikingly beautiful sounds of marimba, pizzicato strings and seductively liquid clarinets. The violinist also danced and parried, sometimes with the orchestra, sometimes in dialogue with it; rarely did it soar, in true concerto fashion.
Great player that she is, Fischer seized on the splintered fragments and the rare moments of austere dissonant stillness, and made sure they told. Even so, Kidane’s determination to be oblique, and never to settle into an obvious narrative of triumph over adversity – while admirable in principle – was ultimately frustrating.
The other main event of the evening was Mozart’s unfinished but potentially awe-inspiring Mass in C minor, which unfortunately didn’t shine in this performance. The opening chorus should have a minatory heaviness, but here it seemed merely well-turned, and the London Philharmonic Choir lacked body. As for the four soloists, they too were unimpeachably elegant, but their sound seemed constrained. Only bass-baritone Ashley Riches’s sound charmed the ear – it was a shame Mozart gave him so little to sing that one hardly had time to enjoy it.
No further performances