Archivo del Autor: Georgina Williamson

«Distancing ourselves physically but not emotionally»: Minnesota Orchestra, March 2020

Marzo de 2020

Last week the Minnesota Orchestra took the difficult decision to cancel forthcoming performances with immediate effect, as a preventative measure against the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19). We had enjoyed a wonderful week of rehearsals of Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony and Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto with the superb Kirill Gerstein. The concert on Friday 13 March went ahead without public, for the live radio broadcast on Classical MPR. We wore concert dress, an excellent decision taken by the orchestra, as it helped us focus under unprecedented circumstances, and the concert was an incredibly moving experience for us all.

I would like to sincerely thank each and every member of the Minnesota Orchestra and Kirill Gerstein, not only for their willingness to go ahead with the broadcast, but also for the exceptional level of the concert, an experience I will never forget. We were all touched by the many messages on social media from the public who were listening live, and I think the words of Warren Park who kindly wrote to the Star Tribune express it much better than I do:

«What a wonderful experience for us out in radio-land, social distancing ourselves physically but not emotionally. Many, many thousands of listeners tuned in throughout the 46 broadcast stations in the MPR network. Thank you so, so much Minnesota Orchestra, for letting us hear you play, even though the concert had been canceled. Wow! We deeply appreciate it. You are wonderful musicians and the finest humans.»

Thank you, Mr Park, we will play for you in person before too long.

Críticas elogiosas del disco de «La Vida Breve» de Manuel de Falla

“…A characteristic of Mena’s musical approach is a strongly lyrical, poetic style. He has a gift for bringing out the gentler aspects of any piece he conducts. That is very much the case here, in a profoundly beautiful, even devout, performance of this classic of Spanish music. This beauty of sound is matched in a characteristically warm Chandos recording, admirably suited to a performance such as this. Throughout one is conscious of the love thrown over the whole work, as well as the meticulous preparation of all involved. A great deal of thought has gone into the recording, with all-Spanish forces, apart from the ever-admirable BBC Philharmonic. The RTVE Symphony Chorus obviously flew to Manchester for the occasion. This opera, despite its brevity, depends very much on the quality of the chorus, and the authenticity pays dividends…” (Michael Wilkinson, musicweb-international.com)

“… Mena prises open textures and sonorities with great subtlety and attention to detail, so that we’re fully able to appreciate the shifting colours of Falla’s writing for strings and woodwind, much indebited to Dukas and Debussy, and his refined yet telling use of brass and percussion. The playing immaculately blends clarity with sensuousness, while the Coro de la Radio y Televisión Española sing with admirable warmth of tone…” (Tim Ashley, Gramophone Magazine)

«I admired Mena’s previous release of Falla’s masterworks so his refined ear and idiomatic flair pays dividends here, aided and abetted by superb recorded sound – the haunting opening with offstage men’s chorus ideally balanced and the anvils for once sound convincing.» (Warwick Arnold, Limelightmagazine.com.au)

“…This Chandos recording really gains in having been captured in an extraordinarily clear, spacious but not over-resonant acoustic. This allows much of the brilliance of the orchestration to register as never before. Juanjo Mena and the BBC Philharmonic have worked hard to get these aspects dynamically balanced…» (Alexander Campbell, classicalsource.com)

“… Mena’s enthusiasm for the work must have rubbed off on [the orchestra], because they are instrumental in creating the work’s all-important atmosphere. Those dark, sinuous strings of the opening are hair-raisingly good, as are the sparkling Act 2 dances and the bright winds of the Intermezzo…. This disc is worthwhile, particularly as proof that a British orchestra can play Spanish music like the best of them.” (Simon Thompson, musicweb-international.com)

Se puede comprar el disco, descargar el audio y leer más información aquí.

Falla: «La Vida Breve»

La vida breve is the first great work by Manuel de Falla, not only on account of the brilliance of his achievement, but also because in this score the powerful musical personality of the composer shines through. It introduces an orchestral scope that was previously unheard of in Hispanic musical theatre; there are direct references to folklore; there is the very remarkable role of the choir, and the incredible ability to evoke the magic of the Albaicín in Granada. The idea of the story came to Falla when he read, in the periodical Blanco y Negro, a short poem of clear social content, written by Carlos Fernández-Shaw, which would become the heart of the libretto.
‘I am filled with emotion at the prospect of releasing this disc, because for all Spanish conductors Manuel de Falla’s La vida breve is the highpoint of Spanish opera and a fundamental work in our repertoire.’ – Juanjo Mena

You can see the full track listings and download the audio here.

Arriaga: Orchestral Works, «Herminie» and Air from «Médée»

Former Chief Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic, Juanjo Mena continues the series ‘La Música de España’, which has seen the recording of orchestral works by de Falla, Turina, and Albéniz, with another important Spanish composer: Juan Crisóstomo de Arriaga, known for years after his early death as the ‘Spanish Mozart’.

The orchestral overture to Los esclavos felices (The Happy Slaves) is all that survives of an opera which the child prodigy Arriaga wrote aged fourteen. When Arriaga moved to Paris in 1821 to study under Fétis, Guérin, and Baillot, he revised the overture, making changes to the instrumentation and removing a third theme. It is the revised version which is heard on this recording.

Air de l’Opéra Médée and Herminie are included in the largely autograph volume ‘Ensayos lírico-dramáticos’ (Lyric-dramatic Essays), and here feature one of Scandinavia’s most sought-after concert singers, the soprano Berit Norbakken Solset. Tonally ambiguous, the D minor Symphonie à grand orchestre, which begins and ends in D major, and the Overture, Op. 20, in D major, which was written ‘without having learnt the principles of harmony’, are proof that the death of Arriaga at age nineteen was a ‘sad loss to Basque music’.

You can see the full track listings and download the audio here.

Ginastera Orchestral Works Volume 3

In his final year as BBC Philharmonic’s Chief Conductor, Juanjo Mena completes a highly-acclaimed Ginastera series with this third volume. Like in his previous series ‘La Música de España’, Mena brings the composer’s creative genius to a more deserved fame, showcasing here three works that belonged to three different period of his compositional life.

While the Concierto Argentino is the most significant score of his early years, drawing directly on Argentinian folk music and full of youthful exuberance, the Variaciones Concertantes (more a concerto for orchestra than a set of variations) assumes a more personal and abstract form in accordance with the development of his harmonic ideas in the later stage of his life.

The rhythmic energy and magic scoring of the ‘neo-expressionist’ piano concerto (as Ginastera defined the third phase of his life) is faithfully expressed by the highly technical and virtuosic playing of Xiayin Wang, widely praised for her recent solo recording of piano works by Enrique Granados.

See full track listings here

Crítica de 5*, Juanjo Mena con la London Philharmonic Orchestra: «La perfecta mezcla de fuerza y finura, en una emocionante celebración de la Primavera»

«Under [Juanjo Mena’s] darting baton, The Rite of Spring ceased being the textbook leviathan of musical modernism and became, supremely, music for dancing — urgent but lithe.»
«At 105 years old, Stravinsky’s ballet score still felt raw, dangerous and new.»
(Geoff Brown, The Times)
Available here as a PDF

«Here was a Rite that could be danced to, as well as being thrilling, and with an observant regard for the score’s folksong aspects, often overlooked in gung-ho approaches. Musical clarity was Mena’s watchword, no cheap thrills here, and no short-changing of the music either, and the opening of Part Two was unusually bewitching in its mystery and distance, yearning even.»
«The LPO was precise, dynamic and responsive throughout, Mena playing the long game so that the ‘Sacrificial Dance’ was the inevitable corollary to everything that had gone before. It was quite something to hear The Rite not treated glibly and used as a showpiece vehicle, for this was not a sensation-seeking account but one that gave a more-complete view of music easy to abuse that nevertheless fully conveyed the work’s sense of ritual and carousal, the final drop-dead chord properly emphatic.»
(Colin Anderson, Classical Source)

«Outstanding Stravinsky from Mena and the LPO […..] It is possible to become over-familiar with Le sacre, so that its dramatic force becomes diminished. But on this occasion everything sounded completely fresh.»
(Alan Sanders, Seen and Heard International)

Crítica: National Symphony Orchestra, Washington, con Juanjo Mena y Garrick Ohlsson

«Making his debut with The National Symphony Orchestra, Spanish-born Conductor Juanjo Mena, elegant in tails and passionately eloquent in gesture and carriage, was in full command, not of the orchestra, but in full partnership with the orchestra. And not only here, but in the two thoroughly divergent, yet somehow essentially – musically, creatively or emotionally – complementary selections that would complete the program: Samuel Barber’s Piano Concerto, Op. 38, and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 74, the “Pathétique.”

Puede leer la crítica entera de Leslie Weisman aquí.

Watch Juanjo Mena’s debut with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks

Juanjo Mena stepped in to conduct three performances of Mozart’s Third Violin Concerto with Janine Jansen, and Mahler’s Symphony No 1 with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks last week, following the cancellation of Gustavo Dudamel due to illness. Friday’s concert at the Herkulessaal in Munich was streamed live, and you can watch it here: