The Filter^ REVIEW

Monte Carlo: Orchestre Philharmonique & François-Frédéric Guy

Nestling twixt the giants of the Monaco's social and sporting calendar is a fascinating miniature arts festival, Printemps des Arts. You wouldn't think it so miniature from the hoardings and posters that are plastered around the Principality, but this is a festival during which you could happily attend every event without any onset of performance fatigue. A perfect size, you could say.

Two-thirds of the way into this two-week long, boldly programmed affair the pianist François-Frédéric Guy was well into his performance of the complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas. In two concerts last Wednesday (9 April) he played Nos 15-21 at the Salle Empire, part of the spectacular Hotel de Paris complex adjacent to the famous Casino. It took a while to get used to Guy's style of playing in Sonatas 16-18. His it not scientific Beethoven, more philosophical - and the unevenness of some of his runs and ostinati were uncomfortable, as was the lunging drama of his interpretation.

In the second of the performances (beginning at 9pm - this is a town which comes alive at night), Guy seemed more settled into his Beethovenian vein. He picked out lines in the textures of the 15th and 20th sonata with a graceful beauty, and his 'sturm und drang' performance manner was more at home with the lyrical, almost operatic feel of the later sonatas, even if his dramatic conceptions occasionally trespassed on the music's sense of line and radiance. And you wouldn't have wanted to be the careless mobile-phone user who found him or herself on the receiving end of Guy's dagger-stare after his Beethovenian tirade was interrupted.

The following night, after aquarium, palace, museum, restaurant and opera house visits (the latter is quite unique and a genuine treat), it was off to the cliff-edge Auditorium Ranier III for a performance from the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo, a 150-year-old ensemble that says goodbye this year to distinguished maestro Marek Janowski, saying hello to Yakov Kreizberg in his place. But for this concert, the functionally titled 'Portrait Schoenberg', it was Eliahu Inbal who took to the podium.

The Auditorium Ranier III isn't the finest place to witness a concert - think London's Barbican Hall with the ceiling lowered by more than half its height, and you've got something of a picture - and the audience was inexplicably small. Beginning was a new work by Gilbert Amy; an interesting, entertaining and taught piece of post-Schoenbergian orchestral music which despite some special moments didn't quite hang together; harshly judged, a bad piece of good music. In Schoenberg's Violin Concerto the Orchestra played with discipline if not flair, but the talents of soloist Kolja Blacher made up for that. He tamed the beast, giving a warm but prickly performance of this slippery piece and finding new lyricism in many an obsinate corner.

The main-course was mouth-watering even when viewed from the menu: Schoenberg's gloriously luscious and only-just-pre-serialist tone poem Pelleas et Melisande. The murmurings that open the piece were rather clinical, but with encouragement from the rich, Romantic first violins the Orchestra soon got into its tragi-heroic stride, negotiating the sudden lunges, halts and introspections of the piece with genuine passion. As it climbed the peaks of Schoenberg's work, the Orchestra was stifled a little by the auditorium's unforgiving blast, but this was a fine performance nonetheless, which did its best to transcend the confines of an atmosphere-less hall. So if any Monte Carlans out there are wondering what to do with that spare 70-million euros, how about building a new orchestral cocnert hall for the Principality? This innovative festival and orchestra both deserve one.

Andrew Mellor

La Boheme / Finnish National Opera 11.1.08

    Helsinki's 1992-built ‘neo-art-deco’ opera house is perhaps the most beautiful and user-friendly in any European capital – even more so when it’s filled with Finns. The repertoire of its home company ranges from Monteverdi to Sariaaho, but last weekend it was ‘old chestnut’ Puccini’s La Boheme that filled the petite, rotund auditorium.

    After something of a year-long Sibelius trail, it seems strange to think of listening to Puccini in Finland – a country with a musical identity seasoned with minor keys, silences and suggestion. But some of the darkness of Finnish ideology fed into this rendition of Puccini’s heart-on-sleeve music: notably stark, industrial design and a chilling sense of the cruelty of winter. Reto Nickler’s unimposing production is a fundamentally musical one; the ‘moments’ from the score are fulfilled with some simple and obvious touches – Mimi and Rodolfo’s wonder into the blacks at the end of the first scene perhaps the finest and yet most obvious of them. But some hammy and disengaged acting also stalked this opening scene – the pantomime of the artists’ squabbling was a little over-played, and Rodolfo combined his ‘Be mine!’ proclamation to Mimi with the tidying up of wine bottles. Perhaps that was irrelevant though, because once Helena Juntenen’s Mimi arrived, you couldn’t take your eyes off her.

    Juntunen undeniably has something special. Though her voice is agile and beautiful, it wouldn’t place her in the highest echelons of world singing – yet. And still her complete performances are unique; she has a poise and presence that are extraordinary. Mimi might be too a obvious role for her – a wide-eyed, charming and immature character that Juntunen slipped seamlessly into – and thus it was at times difficult to separate the working opera singer for her illness-ridden alter-ego. But there was a rare belief and commitment to her performance. She somehow communicates the physiology of her technique when she sings, and by her on-stage death at the opera’s conclusion, you felt her exhaustion as she struggled to give birth to each of her still ravishing lines.

    Ari Grönthal’s Rodolfo was a little disappointing – his voice is attractive, but he wasn’t entirely in control of it and some of the big vocal moments lurched uncomfortably to their apex (it makes you realise how much some of this music demands). The chorus of adults and children were dealt with very suavely by Nickler; they never got to close to the protagonists, and the inclusion of a chillingly frozen vision of the children’s chorus at the start of the second act was effective. Perhaps the finest voice on offer was that of Juna Kotliainen playing Marcello, whose rounded, chocolatey tone is particularly pleasing. Pietro Rizzo conducted with great conviction, and the orchestral playing was concurrently forthright, sensitive, and exceptionally musical.

    The Finnish National Opera (Suomen Kansallisooppera) is a company built on quality, demonstrable in this double-cast production which highlights the talent on offer in Finnish opera, even when performing a staple of the Italian repertoire. But we mostly knew that already. What’s fascinating is to see an established opera come to life, full of its implicit international flavour, in the relatively small capital city of a relatively small country. Almost every seat was occupied by a grateful and unpretentious crowd of locals, who could have picked up a ticket for as little as €9. Not bad for the most pleasant and well-designed opera house I’ve had the good fortune to visit.

Andrew Mellor

[this review was written on the 15 January]

The Great Communist Bank Robbery (2004)

In early December Andrew and myself went to Ciné lumière for an exciting double-bill. I'll let him comment on the Finnish short, and focus my own attention on the 2004 film, "The Great Communist Bank Robbery". The background:

One quiet morning in August 1959, a car belonging to the National Bank of Romania was robbed in front of a central office in Bucharest. Four armed and masked men and one woman ran away with a huge amount of money, high-jacking a taxi. Less than a year later, a one-hour film on the robbery was already fascinating audiences throughout Romania. After they were caught, only months after the attack, the ‘gangsters’ agreed to play their own parts in this would-be ‘reconstruction’ scripted by Romania’s Political Police.

The 1960 film on the robbery, named "Reconstituirea" was aired for Communist Party members and was a bold move. At that point the Soviet Communists saw a Hollywood infatuation with gangster films as a reflection of the inevitable excesses of capitalism, and therefore there were no gangsters in Romania. As often happened, the "wish it were so" became an actual behavioural assumption, and it was simply considered impossible for bank robberies to take place. Consequently security was very loose, and the taxi was an easy target. Rather than cover up the robbery, however, they decided to turn it into a propaganda event.

It's not clear whether the 'gangsters' believed that participation in the reconstruction would reduce their sentence, but for several reasons the film is cloaked in ambiguity. Much of the content is Communist propaganda, from one of the most closed countries in Europe. Were they the real culprits? Why did they do it? What was the evidence? But "Reconstituirea" is a movie-within-a-movie, as another layer of documentary is added.

We see interviews with the original cameraman. We see interview with the children of bank employees who went missing during the night. We see interviews with a woman who was tortured. We also see interviews with prison guards, whose job it was to extract phantom information from innocent people. Have we reunited the tortured with the torturers? Why do they look the same?

Is the whole thing a charade?

The 'gangsters' were known as The Ioanid Gang, and at the time their fates were uncertain. All were sentanced to secret execution apart from one member, the female Monica Sevianu who was given life imprisonment, and later allowed to leave for Israel.

According to Nick Fraser, Series Editor of BBC Four's Storyville:

Alexandru Solomon's film is both a bizarre recreation of a crime of which the motive is still difficult to fathom and an astonishing evocation of a lost world of Romanian Stalinism.

It may not have been pleasant to live in 1950s Romania, but the images in the film have an eerie beauty.

In the sense that the sound of wooden planks rapping the bare souls of innocent people has "an eerie beauty", and ideological pornographers find solace in the depiction of the high years of history. This nightmarish portal raises many questions, not least how documentaries can exist within political repression. It's fitting that the BBC - an organisation that has voluntarily surrendered it's objectivity and search for truth - finds such beauty in a piece of theatrical brutality. The black and white camera work blends in and out of the original film, the voiceover hangs with an air of timelessness, amnesia, and possible regret. Eastern Europe's tragedy from the heart of the system.

But remember,

“These people have nothing in common with the construction of socialism in Romania”.

Of course not.

Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra, 5.12.07

Not heard of Tampere? It's Finland's third-largest city, often compared to Manchester, and its municipal orchestra has been making its debut tour of England this week (The Filter itself will touch down in Tampere on the 10th January en-route to Helsinki as part of Finland Filtered). The 77-year-old Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra, under Principal Conductor John Storgårds, has been taking in a succession of not-quite-major concert halls in the South East and Midlands since its arrival earlier in the week.

At Cadogan Hall in Chelsea the Orchestra presented an all-Sibelius concert (Pohjola's Daughter, Violin Concerto, Symphony 4), and it felt like every Finn in London was there - with plenty of trendy spectacles gracing the post-show reception celebrating 50 years of Finnish independence (in the same year as we mark 50 years since the death of Jean Sibelius). With this distinct feeling of home territory in terms of repertoire and audience, a spacious European rehearsal schedule no-doubt consolidated by the tour, and the 'generous' playing atmosphere of Cadogan Hall, one would do well to keep the superlatives in check. But there's no getting around it: the Orchestra's performance was breathtaking.

Initially striking was the warm, organic violin sound. Their 'step-up/step-down' sequencing, a Sibelius symphony hallmark, was played with subtlety and impeccable blend. So much of the composer's symphonic writing demands patience and intuition from players, and here that patience sculpted a smooth, delicate panorama which seemed carried by its own invisible Karelian breeze. From the opening attack of the cellos that launches the symphony you knew you were in for a piercing and illuminating account, and the brass followed suit with strong but shapely cascades; the rasping horns were magnificently sensitive. There are some who have long wondered what Sibelius is 'supposed' to sound like, why the orchestration can sometimes seem burdensome, and what his often unorthodox musical ideas mean. This performance of the composer's most elusive and introspective symphony provided one perfectly conceived answer, almost as if Sibelius himself was leading the first violins. A deeply moving experience.

Jennifer Pike's performance of the Violin Concerto exposed her main asset: a rich, wooden, almost Jewish tone in lower registers which gave much of the performance a sense of urgency. But the last movement was a touch too quick for her - Sibelius himself once commented that this movement should be taken 'fast, but no faster than it can be played perfectly' - and whilst the sound musical sense of her playing wasn't lost, she struggled to keep up and tuning suffered. Still, this was an engaging, stylish and sensitively accompanied performance.

Conductor John Storgårds steps down as the Tampere Philharmonic's Principal Conductor in 2009 to become Chief Conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic. Understated in terms of technique, it was his gentle pull of the Sibelian ebb and flow that showed he was inhabiting the music. The encore, Finlandia, was menacing from its opening brass salvos, and rose to an almost crushing climax. The obvious and perhaps passé question is, can only a Finn read Sibelius like this? Perhaps not, and this reading was different to those of Oramo and Berglund - more languorous, more shiny. But Storgårds' real achievement seems to be his building of this Orchestra's sound, For this part-time critic at least, not since the Mariinsky in January 2005 has a visiting orchestra in London played with such sonorous unity and instinct.

A performance as special as this should have been gifted to a busy Royal Festival Hall - it would have had everyone out of their seats by the encore. But this is an orchestra that needs spotting, and before its peaking form begins to wane. Proms, Barbican, Southbank, Bridgewater, Symphony Hall, Millennium Centre bosses - if you're out there, please get the TPO back here, and soon! 

Lahti Symphony / Bergen Philharmonic, 15-16.8.07

First there was Gustavo Dudamel's Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra playing a rapturous Mahler 5 in an acoustic test at the then not-yet-opened Royal Festival Hall, and now two months later we've had visits from two Scandinavian orchestras on consecutive days at the Proms. So for those interested in Scandinavian music and musicians, happy days. Members of the invited audience for Dudamel's concert on 2 June were forbidden from commenting on the concert in public arenas, but now it's probably safe to say that the 25-year-old Venezuelan presided over a performance of incredible maturity, direction and intellectual sense: the prospects posed by his future career for once live up to the hype of the press releases. He becomes Principal Conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, the national orchestra of Sweden, this autumn (and Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2009), and I can feel the Scandinavian Airways loyalty card beckoning already...

Back to real time, and Osmo Vänskä's Lahti Symphony Orchestra playing an all-Sibelius programme on Wednesday night, in this the 50th year since the composer's death. Vänskä has led the orchestra for over twenty years, putting it on the musical map in the process (though Lahti still seems uncannily tricky to find on the actual map - apparently it's some miles north of Helsinki). The Lahti Symphony certainly has a singular approach to this music, both in concert and on record, and Sibelius's Seventh seemed even more concise than usual - at its opening brisk, angular and breezy rather than lingering and retrospective. That said, the Lahti strings found genuine atmosphere in the first movement, conjuring an icy, opaque northern feel to their impassioned climax that seemed hewn from Finnish granite. The silhouetted solos from the trombone and thereafter other brass were also quite different and somehow un-romanticised - certainly a refreshing view of Sibelius, or is this how we should hear his music all the time?

On Thursday Norway's Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra marked the 100th year since the death of Edvard Grieg, who was born in Bergen in 1843. This is a more globalised ensemble than the Lahti - the personnel list included a smattering of Anglophile names, players that Music Director Andrew Litton may well have coaxed from his previous ensembles in Bournemouth and Dallas on the promise of clean, mountainous air and a beautiful lifestyle. And with New-Yorker Litton at the helm, the orchestra's sound was distinctly more globalised - or dare one say American - too. There weren't the introspective and opaque qualities of the Lahti players, but rather a sound that was full-on, almost brash; seriously impressive nonetheless though. In Grieg's Piano Concerto and Funeral March for Rikard Nordraak the quality of every orchestral section was apparent - particularly the low strings and brass who played with fine blend and intuition. But a layer of American gloss seems to have fallen with Litton's leadership - 'Norway' and 'Grieg' aren't at its heart in quite the same way as 'Finland' and 'Sibelius' are with the Lahti ensemble.

Boris Berezovsky was a delightfully understated soloist in the Grieg - his glissandi sensitive, smooth and atmospheric - but communication suffered at times and there was the occasional lapse in piano-orchestra ensemble. The soloists who joined the Lahti the night before deserve a special mention. Firstly double-bass player Petri Lehto, who stepped up to sing the tenor role of Trinculo in Sibelius's incidental music for The Tempest before returning to his stool to continue on the bass. Quite extraordinary - and if it weren't for his evident talent in both roles it might have seemed like amateur night.

Then there was soprano Helena Juntunen, who sang Juno in The Tempest before turning to a selection of Sibelius's orchestral songs after the interval. Clearly Juntunen was relishing her first appearance at the Proms, and the audience was similarly enthralled by her excitable outward gaze and frank, athlete-like preparation before each song. Her voice has a particular light and agile quality, and she immediately conjured an atmosphere from the opening phrase of Hostkvall (Autumn Night). But it's her poise sets her apart - she has an unpresumptuous yet striking stage presence, and here injected her performances with character; never patronising her audience or over-egging the drama of her delivery. For a country of 5 million, Finland has produced a staggering number of exceptional conductors and soloists, many of whom are active all over Europe and beyond - at the Proms and with UK orchestras in particular. Let's hope Helena Juntunen joins their ranks before too long, and gets the chance to capture the imagination of a UK audience with her peculiar Nordic charm. Otherwise it really will be Scandinavian Airlines to the rescue... 

Andrew Mellor

Jenufa / Nabucco (Opera Holland Park)

Opera Holland Park have a new theatre - and you might think on reading their publicity material for this season that the arrival of a bigger, whiter and apparently more comfortable tent in W8 is more exciting than the business of what's scheduled for its stage. Perhaps the operas speak for themselves in the context of publicity; this year's fascinating line-up opened with two masterpieces which on the surface couldn't be more different: Janacek's baby-killing psycho-drama Jenufa, and Verdi's biblical romp Nabucco. 

The former work is so packed with piercing drama that it requires both sensitivity to maintain its essentially conciliatory dramatic point and also intense energy for those half-dozen moments where Janacek screams pain and grating human truths through his music. That's not easily done in a tent, when the cast can't rely on lighting or effects to match the often terrifyingly vivid music, and where extraneous noise (from birdsong to joggers) can puncture the moments of equally unsettling stillness and loneliness. But this production punched above its weight in that respect, even if it did save the most effective dramatic gestures for the last act (there's plenty of scintillating drama pre-interval -'Laca, you did it to her on purpose').

After the Act III revelation that the latter has drowned the former's child, Jenufa reached out to her step-mother - their hands almost touching in forgiveness, but somehow not able to make contact; an electrifying moment, perfectly conceived for the dramatically demanding Holland Park auditorium. Director Olivia Fuchs thrust the Kostelnycka and Laca into the foreground as the vulnerable villains, and she had two great talents to turn to: Tom Randle captured the somewhat pathetic Laca, a beautiful melancholy shot through his rich but delicate voice, whilst Anne Mason's driven, deranged and rapidly descending Kostelnycka was reminiscent of Kathryn Harries's performance in Glyndebourne's benchmark 2004 production by Nikolaus Lenhoff. During the twists and turns of the final act, which journeys from comedy to the most acute human pain, this production conjured something special - stemming largely from Randle and Mason - which silenced even the birds and the aeroplanes; suddenly the comfort of the tent wasn't important.    

Despite effective no-nonsense conducting from Stuart Stratford - a conductor of considerable technique - there was some sloppiness from the City of London Sinfonia in the pit (the opening xylophone passage may be perilously tricky, but it's not supposed to sound so). The ensemble seemed underpowered come some of the big moments, but Stratford dealt well with a small band in a noisy room, highlighting and emphasising wherever possible. The chorus was a delightful surprise: a disciplined and dramatically aware confection of young singers which performed with style and an ensemble quality that can prove elusive on St Martin's Lane and in Covent Garden. 

In Nabucco the Orchestra faired rather better - revealing impressive detail in the score despite some breakneck tempi from another efficient conductor, Brad Cohen. The chorus was exemplary again, but its members did have proximity to assist them; penned like sheep for most of the evening, which weakened the dramaturgy of their Part III chorus, though it was sung with extraordinary sensitivity and shape (they are OHP's crown jewells, but no chorus master was listed in the programme).

Though this was an attractive production, the dramatic ideas couldn't run the course. It opened with the classic 'twentieth-century exile' imagery of unaccompanied suitcases, and lurched into a somewhat messy view of Nabucco's forces as a tortuous circus troupe - like a nightmare vision of an Arts Council-enforced circus skills project for immigrant groups. Thus Nabucco's descent into madness had already been debased, and his repentance at the opera's conclusion seemed concurrently obvious and meaningless. There was derivative and cliched acting on offer too, from both the singing cast and the hired acrobats who seemed always in the way.

Andrew Rees as Ismaele shone above the rest of the cast, and credit is also due to Yannis Thavoris for effective and versatile designs. But overall this was a production that struggled for attention in the tent. So in a sense there was the opportunity to get excited about the extra seat padding trumpeted in the brochure - that, at least, didn't disappoint.   

Andrew Mellor   

Westminster Abbey Choir / St James's Baroque (Lufthansa Festival)

Westminster Abbey was the venue for the penultimate concert in the 2007 Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music: a performance from the Abbey choir and St James's Baroque under Master of the Choristers James O'Donnell. And the airline executives were out in force, perhaps tempted by some home-soil programming in the form of motets, cantatas, sinfonias and the rare 'Lutheran Mass' by Johann Sebastian Bach.

The Abbey choir was on unfamiliar ground here, literally speaking: positioned on staging in front of the quire screen and perhaps a little perturbed to be without the antiphonal reassurance its members are used to in the stalls. And you don't have to be Larry Kirkegaard to realise that this isn't the best spot acoustically for singers or players (or audiences, for that matter) - the choir sounded hesitant and underpowered (which they usually don't), and when the orchestra welcomed its trumpets and drums, they too seemed a mile away. In fact, it was only in the final work, the cantata O ewiges Feuer, O Ursprung der Liebe (BWV34) that the choir and orchestra settled into some sort of effective dialogue and equilibrium, a default symptom, perhaps, of the cantata's frequent forte dynamic markings - at least they could hear each other. If there was one moment of impressive musical focus and style, it was in this cantata's final chorus, well-paced and effectively cast-off by O'Donnell.

But elsewhere there were problems, perhaps stemming from the hearing difficulties of the performance area, or perhaps from the occasional ambiguity of the bar-to-bar beat provided by O'Donnell - a fine musician with a deserved reputation for interpreting renaissance polyphony (and other hardcore, non-orchestral liturgical fare), but who didn't reveal the punchiness of Bach's instrumental writing. Stand-in soprano Rebecca Outram was characteristically bright and baroque-savvy, but struggled periodically with the sheer complexity of the music which one imagines she'd first read just hours before, whilst counter-tenor Charles Humphries wasn't always in control of his nevertheless attractive and powerful voice.

In its unaccompanied pieces, particularly the motet Komm, jesu, komm (BWV229), the Abbey choir phrased impressively and maintained impeccable tuning, but there could have been more light and shade, and from a choir known for its clipped 'Englishness', a more sophisticated blend. The strings of St James's Baroque played sensitively and with direction and shape both in the choral and purely instrumental works (their leader Sophie Gent stepping up to play solos with poise and elegance) but the brass were rather more gung-ho - though you felt for them back there, blasting it out may have been the only way forward, and one struggled to hear the woodwind at all. It had you wondering why we couldn't have heard the same concert at St John's Smith Square, the venue for the rest of the Lufthansa Festival. It might have been a squeeze on the stage, but at least we'd have had the clarity that this programme deserved. Besides, the ensemble could have done with rubbing shoulders a bit more, both literally and musically.

Andrew Mellor

Ensemble La Fenice / Arianna Savall (Lufthansa Festival)

On London's conveyer-belt of concerts, it's not often that a performance rolls along with quite the imagination and background thought of this offering from Jean Tubérys Ensemble La Fenice and soprano Arianna Savall. Concerts (and discs) inspired by the medieval pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela aren't rare; the geographical (France and Northern Spain) and chronological (17th century) co-ordinates represented by this concert are particularly rich in musical creations. But don't expect any of the usual compositional suspects here: Tubery plucked works by a litany of rare French and Spanish composers for his line-up - Loth, Coferati, Moulinie, Falconieri, Bataille, Escalada (ring any bells?) - each taken from a stop-off point on the pilgrims' route. The result was akin to a musical wine-tasting tour from Strasbourg to Santiago; yes, some works were distinctly more palatable than others, but all were of interest historically (explored in a wonderful programme-note by Lufthansa Festival founder Tess Knighton). And as the landscape of France turns ever more Hispanic on traveling south through the Languedoc, so the music performed seemed to take on an intravenous dose of Spanish 'villancico' as the concert journeyed towards its conclusion.

If there was one great success in the execution of this stage-bound pilgrimage, it was in the vivid atmosphere of collective journeying that the ensemble and Arianna Savall managed to create. Readings in English, French and Spanish coloured the 'story' of the pilgrimage, and the ensemble of six proved genuine travel companions, turning their collective hands to many musics, trading instruments across the stage (sometimes even playing two or three at once), singing together where necessary and supporting solo spots with attentive devotion. Surprising, then, that in terms of acute blend and ensemble, the result was often rough and disparate; wholly authentic, perhaps (the medieval pilgrims wouldn't have had the Hanseatic League fly in a specialist ensemble to accompany them), but one might have expected some more innate, natural integration from the talent on offer, even if they were imitating medieval amateurs. 

There was consistent and pleasing musicianship from Tubéry himself, from his organist/harpsichordist Michaël Hell and from Arianna Savell. Tubéry's performance in Salaverde's Canzon per canto e basso on the cornett from the balcony of St John's Smith Square opened the second half and was beautifully shaped - soaring through the building and melting away its classical poise in favour of medieval gravity: the apex of the evening. Savell's performances were effective too, addressing the music almost as if her instruments of voice and harp weren't there at all, aptly communicating the directness of the sound-world.

The instrumental and vocal combinations worked best in the more ceremonial and polyphonic works (not least Adam Waidman's serene Sanctissime Jacobe qui meruisti), which were also the most accomplished in terms of their composition. But there were rough edges here too from some instruments, whilst the more folk-inspired pieces just didn't satisfy in terms of instrumental balance or musical interest. The final work performed, a celebration of the pilgrim's arrival in Santiago, was a just reward for some of the tribulations of the already-traveled terrain: a glorious and uplifting ensemble piece (performed as an encore and unaccredited in the programme) which highlighted just how well conceived this concert was in terms of programming and presentation - even if some of the technologies and creations don't fare too well four hundred years on.

Andrew Mellor 

Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin / English Voices (Lufthansa Festival)

The bosses of the Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music, now in its 23rd year, have managed again to assemble a baggage-carousel of mouthwatering concerts that use local as well as international talent; each concert seeming - in terms of repertoire at least - as tempting as the other. This is also a festival that has a knack of providing a platform for artists who don't always hog the early music limelight but prove scintillating talents nonetheless, of which Saturday's concert at St John's Smith Square proved another keen example. Unfortunately though, the performance of Handel's Solomon was revealing an airport-like logistical fatigue even before it had got off the ground: soprano Veronica Cangemi, cancelled; conductor Ivor Bolton, cancelled.

Enter stage left (or rather, up the asile) Bolton's replacement Timothy Brown. He happens to have prepared the professional chorus English Voices for this performance, so might have been the natural choice as a substitute conductor, and anyone who was lucky enough to hear his peaking turn-of-the-century choir at Clare College Cambridge will be aware of his outstanding gifts as a trainer of ultra-disciplined choirs. And he didn't disappoint here, either, maintaining watertight control of tempi and blend, even if some in the otherwise-perfect chorus attempted the odd crude breakout (yes, we know you're all aspiring soloists!).

If Brown's primary concern was the chorus, then the instrumentalists from Berlin's Akademie fur Alte Musik did nothing but support and inspire. Framed by Brown's tempi - which seemed as on-the-mark as those of Paul McCreesh - the instrumentalists phrased and shaped Handel's sequences and repeats with great beauty and understanding; 'da capos' were never labored, and there was interpretative invention in almost every bar. This is a period instrument ensemble without, it seems, the rough edges, whilst its Leader, the clearly inspiring Stephen Mai, seemed with his players to be grateful to Brown for a sensitive, democratic approach (there was no interfering in the shaping of the recitatives or accompagnatos here as with the Freiburgers the other week).

Of all the soloists, Joanne Lunn stunned the hall with Will the sun forget to streak, delivered with a poise and sensitivity that wasn't always on offer from the rest of the cast, whose curtain-call confusion was reflected musically in their occasional misunderstanding of the 'in-concert' format and a pot-pourri of comings and goings (why not just use six chairs?). Still, the younger singers had a master to learn from in the form of James Gilchrist, whose delivery is always clear and sensitive and never patronising: you don't need to walk slowly and haughtily onto the stage gazing skywards to create an atmosphere, you just need to perform well, unfortunately counter-tenor Timothy Mead did both when the latter would have sufficed. That said, you couldn't fault any performance vocally, give or take a period of settling into the wham-bam acoustic of St John's.

Apparent in this performance, and singularly lacking in some other similar promotions in London recently, was a sense of enjoyment and discovery. Is it the label of a 'festival' that does this? Is it the enthusiasm and focus of a conductor and his players? Is it the infectious momentum of Handel's music? It's probably when all these factors meet on a single co-ordinate, and that doesn't always happen. When the timpanist Friedhelm May urged his colleagues towards Handel's climaxes with his sharp rolls on 'authentic' sticks and drums, the excitement and anticipation were palpable and spine-tingling.   

Andrew Mellor

Freiburg Baroque Orchestra / Jacobs

Much-acclaimmed baroque officionado and period-instrument-ophile Rene Jacobs brought the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra to the Barbican last week for a concert performance of Handel's masterpiece of opera seria, Giulio Cesare. Well, it was billed as a concert performance, but wasn't it more of a semi-staged affair? That was rather the trouble; the singers on stage seemed caught in something of a dramatic no-man's-land, someone obviously wanted to capitalise on the fact that the cast had performed the work in a fully staged production in Germany the week before. It was a shame: a straight concert performance would have allowed the singers to concentrate on their vocal performances (which, in some cases, they could have done with). As it was, the half-baked acting drew only a few moments of effective dramatic realisation of the work, and a whole load of awkward, confused and repetitive gestures.

From the opening bars Jacobs flicked the so-called 'Freiburgers' into something like the brisk Handelian style we've come to know in recent years, but though his opening tempi were always exquisitely paced, it seemed he relied on the orchestra to maintain them; caught himself in the maelstrom confusion of his own beat (which in Acts 2 and 3 was supplied by a biro - beware the Barbican's interval baton-thief...). And why did Jacobs insist on conducting the recitatives? They could have flowed effortlessly in the hands of the FBO's continuo players and their appointed soloists, but instead they suffered from the enforced bureaucracy of a conductor and were lumbering and cumbersome.

Though this four-hour opera with limited brass and chorus can seem like a slog, there's no doubting that it contains some of the most sublime music Handel wrote. Many of the arias are themselves mini-masterpieces, none more so than Caesar's hunting aria - though Marijana Mijanovic in the title role didn't overwhelm with her grasp of Handel's musical language, she thankfully pulled this one off, just about (though if having period instrument horns play the obbligato procludes them from playing the right notes and with an even tone, there's something of a debate to be had...). Elsewhere Mijanovic seemed off-the-mark in terms of Handelian phrasing - her runs at worst demonstrating all the finesse of a baroque technique learnt on a correspondence course. And are those painful facial expressions really either necessary or acceptable? Mijanovic did, however, cut a suitably cold and oppresive Caesar; when she was performing, you knew who was in control, and it wasn't Rene Jacobs.

Performances from Malena Ernman as Sesto and Christophe Dumaux as Tolomeo pleased more. They were vocally sensitive (qutie beautiful at times), and made the best of the confused scenario, cutting their dramatic exploits off at the limb the moment they became redundant. There were some beautiful offerings from solo string players in the orchestra - the cello continuo shone throughout - though wind solos were more dissapointing with some rather shoddy tuning. Tuning problems also contaminated some of the vocal performances - the creeping pitch of one of the FBO's harpsichords under the hot Barbican lights was noticeable and undoubtedly contributed.

Some performances can absorb rough edges because they achieve something that doesn't concern itself with detail. Not this one. Things just never seemed to come together, and the beauty of Handel's score dragged past as if viewed from the window of an uncomfortable train.

Andrew Mellor