We left at the interval...

La Philharmonie, Paris, Monday, February 7 2022 Conductor: Gianandrea Noseda. Pianist: Beatrice Rana. London Symphony Orchestra. Beethoven: Piano Concerto N° 5 (Emperor) Shostakovich: Symphony N°15. I don't often go to La Philharmonie because, to be frank, I don't like it. In particular, I don't buy into the hall's PR claims, echoed faithfully by the press, it has outstanding acoustics. After my first evening there, I did some in-depth Googling and found a long but interesting article about acoustic variability , prompted by a visit to the brand-new house by Willem Boning, an acoustical and architectural designer working at Arup in New York, which includes the remark: 'So, when people ask me how the Philharmonie sounded, I don’t know what to say. From the two sections I sat in, it sounded terrible and it sounded amazing.' However, as, apparently, it all depends on where you sit (and even, according to Mr Boning, whether you sit back or lean forward in your seat)...

Salle des concerts, Cité de la Musique, Paris, Tuesday September 29 2020 Ann Hallenberg, mezzo-soprano. Atsushi Sakai, viola da gamba. Karl Nyhlin, lute. Christophe Rousset, harpsichord (Vincent Tibaut, Toulouse, 1691, facsimile by Émile Jobin). If music be the food of love Celia has a thousand charms O solitude, my sweetest choice Suite n° 2 in G minor (Prelude, Allemande, Courante, Sarabande) Bess of Bedlam Ah Belinda! Fly swift, ye hours I came, I saw and was undone (The Thraldom) Suite n° 7 in D minor (Allemande, Courante, Hornpipe) From Rosie Bowr's The fatal hour comes on apace Sweeter than roses Music for a while Encores: Thrice happy lovers Fairest Isle My first musical event since the Covid-9-related lockdown (and I have no more on the horizon as yet) was also, so I gathered from her Facebook page, Ann Hallenberg's: a recital of Purcell songs with a lute, a viola da gamba, and Christophe Rousset at the harpsichord. This intimate concert was originally planned to take ...

Le Studio - Philharmonie, Paris, Sunday 27 January 2018 Actor/narrator: Eric Ruf. Dancer: Alban Richard. Soloists of the Orchestre de Paris and the Ensemble Intercontemporain. When I was a teenager, on one of my first forays abroad, I had the good fortune to be invited to stay with a cultivated Swiss family in Lausanne, who opened up intriguing new worlds for me. They had real paintings, parquet floors, oriental rugs, a grand piano, and what they called their salon de l’art brut , a spare room kept empty but for their own improvised artworks. They introduced me to the first opera I ever knew and owned on record, Les Mamelles de Tirésias, which would later play a part in my getting into university, as I talked about Apollinaire's play when discussing the theatre of the absurd during my entrance interview. They also introduced me to Stravinsky’s Histoire du Soldat , the words to which the whole family seemed able to chant merrily by heart while it was on their gramophone, (wh...

La Philharmonie de Paris, Friday December 15 2017 Conductor: Mikko Franck. Elektra: Nina Stemme. Klytemnestra: Waltraud Meier. Chrysotemis: Gun-Brit Barkmin. Orest: Matthias Goerne. Ägisth: Norbert Ernst. Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. Choeur de Radio France.   A super strong Elektra at the Philharmonie last Friday night.   First of all, Mikko Franck was painstakingly attentive to the score. There are subtleties and details that don’t always make it over the edge of the opera house pit. But here, in a concert hall, with the Philharmonique on remarkable form, they were magnificently laid out in the open for all to hear. Franck’s approach leaned pointedly towards the late romantic: towards the Alpine Symphony , I thought; “towards Wagner,” said a colleague present the same evening. At any rate, more in the 19th-century symphonic tradition than paroxystic expressionism looking forward to, say Wozzeck (which is perhaps how I like Elektra  best: wild and exhaust...

La Philharmonie, Paris, Thursday September 8 2016 Conductor and piano soloist: Daniel Barenboim. Staatskapelle Berlin. Mozart, piano concerto n°26 Bruckner, symphony n°6 I know nothing about acoustics and will only try to describe what I thought I heard from my single seat the other night. But scouting round the web for better-informed opinions about Paris's Philharmonie, I came across a blog called From The Sound Up , by an acoustical and architectural designer working in New York, and an article there entitled Why I can’t review the Philharmonie de Paris but why it’s worth trying anyway: a meditation on variability , which gives the impression that the sound in the new hall is especially varied. “Variation in the sound field is the topic of this post,” he writes, “because it is all I could think about after my experience in the brand-new (or, more accurately, yet-to-be-finished) Philharmonie de Paris. During a single concert, I experienced what might have been the w...