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It Takes More than Bad Acoustics
to Keep a Good Orchestra Down!
The Daily Telegraph
Symphony Hall, Birmingham
& The Dome, Brighton
It was a good move on the part of the Brighton Festival to secure such a fine orchestra as the Detroit Symphony for its opening concert at the weekend, just as it proved prudent to have taken the opportunity to hear the orchestra on the previous night as Birmingham's Symphony Hall.
On its current tour of 16 European cities the Detroit is unlikely to encounter any
auditorium as unflattering as Brighton's Dome: the acoustics are not so much dead as
buried in woolly shroud. In Birmingham, the hall nurtured the orchestra's freshness, 
vibrancy and clarity; and even in Brighton, despite the sound being
suffocated as soon as it was uttered, the orchestra's characterful identity was preserved.
This was most strongly felt in the emotional power of Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony
(played in Birmingham) and in the way in which Schumann's orchestration in the Rhenish
Symphony was shown to have more color, subtlety and instrumental individuality than is
sometimes the case in performance.
The swing, swagger and tangy sweetness of the American works in these two concerts – Samuel Barber's Overture to School for Scandal and Aaron Copland's Billy the Kid – revealed both the orchestra's candid temperament and its stylistic discretion. Neeme Järvi, who has been the Detroit's music director since 1990, elicits spontaneity and suppleness, concentration and an engaging directness of interpretation.
There was a precise meeting of minds between conductor, orchestra and the soloist Leif Ove Andsnes in Prokofiev's Third Piano Concerto. The combined brilliance and intelligence of Andsnes's performance, while appreciated more acutely in Birmingham, remained undimmed by the sorry acoustics in Brighton. The soloist knows and shows that Prokofiev's idiom is not all acid and dyspepsia. At the heart of the concerto lies a nugget of lyricism, which glows in all three movements in amongst the fearsome technical bravura. Prokofiev's art and wit, as was clearly expressed here, derive from the way he blends melody, rhythmic and virtuoso traits, without letting one annihilate another. At the same time, as Järvi recognized, the orchestral part is conceived with particular timbres in mind, either because they cosset an idea (as in the cello theme of the finale) or because they catch the ear through their strangeness.
In these comprehensive, thrilling performances Andsnes confirmed his standing as one of the most inspired and exciting musicians playing today. He was sensitive, rhythmically propulsive, maintaining firmly focused energy and fluency of phrasing. In Birmingham the applause was sufficiently prolonged to earn a solo encore. Prokofiev's mood of tongue-in-cheek was echoed by the Polka from Shostakovich's The Age of Gold, all the more comic for Andsnes playing it absolutely straight.
Brighton Festival runs until May 24. Information 0 121 370 9708
Geoffrey Norris
Motown's finest zip along in high style
Evening Standard, Tuesday May 5, 1998
Detroit Symphony Orchestra ***
Barbican
It might be easier these days to remember the names of American cities which do not have world-class orchestras. In the third concert of their European tour on Sunday, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra played with a lightness of touch that placed them among the best.
They zipped through Samuel Barber's School for Scandal overture like salivating greyhounds off the leash. Dainty strings barely touched the ground. Agile brasses had Star Wars panache.
The harps were tightly wound springs, which, at the top of their register, became plinky-plonk saloon bar pianos in Copland's Billy the Kid suite.
William Grant Still's Afro-American Symphony had easy elegance, subtle wit and considerable feeling. The laid-back midnight style came naturally to Detroit's finest. European orchestras always self-consciously overdo the syncopated beat when they play the jazz-inspired repertoire.
This orchestra owes much to its wonderful Estonian conductor, Neeme Järvi, who shapes everything and nowhere merely marks time. He works frequently with the Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes who, here, gave a thrilling account of Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3.
Soloist and conductor were together from the on. Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe Suite No. 2 saw out the evening with delirious abandon . Madrid will rave.
Rick Jones
Damn Good Yankees
The Guardian, Tuesday 5, 1998
Arts Reviews
Inspired... Neeme Järvi conducts the Detroit Symphony Orchestra
We expect first division American orchestras to be good, says Edward Greenfield, but
the second division can be just as dazzling.
As recordings have regularly shown, the quality of American orchestra can be dauntingly fine, not just the old top five—New York, Boston, Philadelphia-Cleveland and Chicago—but those in the second division. On this showing it would be hard to exaggerate the achievement of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, whose tour of Britain culminated in a Barbican concert not just of dazzling brilliance—we expect that of American players, but of stirring warmth too.
The program could hardly have been more taxing, a sequence of orchestral showpieces American repertory in the first half, Prokofiev and Ravel in the second. If dazzle was what we expected and got, it was the inspired conducting of Neeme Järvi that set the performances on a higher plane. He did not just bring out pin-point ensemble, but persuaded the players to perform with a flexible expressiveness akin to what one expects of a solo player, not a whole orchestra geared to precision. That came out forcibly in the rarity in the program, the Afro-American Symphony of William Grant Still, the first black composer to storm the symphonic citadel in America. This is an amiable piece of four ripely lyrical movements, episodic rather than symphonic in structure. With the main blues theme smoothly persuasive, this performance totally disarmed criticism. If the opening overture, Barber's School For Scandal, had warmth in it as well as clean textures, Copland's Billy The Kid Suite had its darker, more intense side fully brought out. After the interval, even greater ballet music, the Suite No. 2 from Ravel's Daphnis And Chloe, was as sensuous as could be, not least the ravishing flute solo of the Pantomime, with the principal player giving a wonderful demonstration of Detroit artistry. The soloist in Prokofiev's Third Piano Concerto, the Norwegian Leif Ove Andsnes was well-chosen, too. He is a poet of the keyboard. who showed what big virtuoso guns he packs by being commanding in the heavyweight chordal writing but warmly expressive too. The encore, a fun piece to send us away laughing, was American Patrol. Done with swagger, keenly atmospheric in the approach and departure, and at the end wittily pointed, all thanks to Järvi. He has been music director in Detroit since 1990. For the orchestra's sake, let us hope he is persuaded to stay.
Edward Greenfield
Impressive Prairie Pictures
Der TagesspiegelWednesday, May 13, 1998
The Detroit Symphony Orchestra in the Philharmonie
The Detroit Symphony Orchestra began its effective concert under Neeme Järvi in the Philharmonie with the Wild West ballet "Billy the Kid" of Aaron Copland, which is seldom to be heard in concert halls over here. Copland, like his friend and student Leonard Bernstein, counts as one of the great creators of American music in our time. This dance music, no longer brand new, to be sure incorporates plenty of richly contrasting cowboy music. Still, rather than whipping up shrill excitement, it is elegiacally seductive, broad-breathed and unmistakably American in its coloration. Most impressive of all are the depictions of the prairie.
Neeme Järvi, Günter Herbig’s successor in Detroit, and his highly competent American orchestra, which produces a healthy, powerful sound, played it all with such transfiguring confidence that it seemed to be their own composition, so greatly is the music in their flesh and blood. Streamlined virtuosity pushed to the limits, such as the Chicago Symphony displayed here a short time ago, is not so much the hallmark of the orchestra (founded in 1914) from the "Automotive Capital of the World" (which displayed several of its top of the line products in the lobby of the Philharmonie!). Both conductor and orchestra next immersed themselves in the sound world of German romanticism with no less devotion. The celebrated Pamela Frank performed the Violin Concerto No. 1 of Max Bruch, the perennial public favorite, with bright pure tone, with surprisingly serene transparency. In the outer movements, which Neeme Järvi handled with poise and dignity, Pamela Frank played with the glittering elegance and playfulness which never cease to astound in American soloists.
The third movement from the Violin Concerto Opus 14 of Samuel Barber followed as an encore. The American guests took everyone’s breath away with fiery bravura. On the other hand, the not altogether successfully balanced C Major Symphony of Robert Schumann was lacking in technical brilliance and richness of variety in the orchestra sound. It was somewhat heavier going here for Neeme Järvi and his sympathetic orchestra. The crowd pleasing encores which followed were all the more rousing.