Black skies and a downpour heavy enough to silence the gulls only added to the mood of cheer at Fiesta!, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra’s last concert of the season. This programme of bracingly rhythmic Latin music by some of South America’s leading classical composers felt like a triumphant rebuttal to the rain gods. Moreover it was a sharp riposte to anyone who says audiences only come to what they know. With accents of salsa, mambo or merengue seeping insistently into the six works performed, from Mexico, Venezuela, Puerto Rico and Argentina, this was music that defied you to sit still.
Only one piece was familiar: Alberto Ginastera’s Four Dances from Estancia, which has been played occasionally at the Proms. The names of the other composers, including Evencio Castellanos, Antonio Estévez and Inocente Carreño, are unlikely to roll off many concert-goers’ tongues as yet. Their short, atmospheric works, especially Estévez’s heady Mediodía en el Llano (Midday in the Plains), could grace any programme. Loyalty aside, what persuaded the Philharmonic Hall crowd to come? One answer was the RLPO’s chief conductor for the past two seasons, the Armenian-Venezuelan Domingo Hindoyan. Before a note was played, the extension of his contract, to 2028, was announced, to resounding applause.
The orchestra has made a smart choice. As a violinist, Hindoyan graduated from Venezuela’s El Sistema education programme and played in the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, before becoming an assistant conductor to Daniel Barenboim. He works at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, and other international houses, but Liverpool is his first chief conductor job. He brings to it a seriousness, flair and charisma this city welcomes.
Another draw last weekend was the virtuoso trumpeter Pacho Flores, Hindoyan’s Sistema-trained compatriot and for the past year the popular artist in resident with the RLPO. Playing multiple instruments with contrasting timbres, manufactured for him, Flores displayed the trumpet’s song-like beauty and dazzle in two concertos: first the infectious, high-energy Altar de Bronce by Gabriela Ortiz, rooted in the folk rhythms of her native Mexico, co-commissioned by the RLPO and receiving its UK premiere; then Roberto Sierra’s Salseando, which Flores premiered with the orchestra in 2020.
This last gave an opportunity to the RLPO’s principal percussionist, Graham Johns, retiring after 40 years with the ensemble. (I reported in February on the 18 church bells now owned by the RLPO. A 19th, with Johns’s name on and paid for by musicians from around the world, was given to him in farewell tribute.) Flores ushered his orchestral colleague, complete with set of bongos, to the front of the platform, then the pair embarked on a duetting riff that got faster and faster, whatever the conductor’s baton was doing. Amid the noisy cheers were shouts of “Papa!” by Hindoyan’s two young children, in the audience with their mother, the star Bulgarian soprano Sonya Yoncheva, who will sing with the orchestra in November. The orchestra, with new principals on viola and cor anglais, sounded on terrific form, Concerts arouse many reactions, but what a reward, for once, to come out grinning.
A Scottish thread ran through the Maxwell Quartet’s concert at Shoreditch church with the pianist Alasdair Beatson. We Are Collective (English premiere), by their fellow Scot James MacMillan, opens with a strident fanfare then collapses into a five-note motif on which the music builds. Piano interludes sound winningly baggy and smoky, though this being MacMillan, they are in fact taut and expressive. Lyricism and humour shape this engaging work. The excellent Maxwells played Eleanor Alberga’s Quartet No 2 – a single, fluid movement, full of intricacy and invention – as well as their own, atmospheric collection called Gather – folk music foragings from Shetland reels, fishermen’s songs and the like given a quartet makeover. As a finale, César Franck’s Piano Quintet in F minor filled this handsome east London church with grandeur and expression.
Little need be said about the Royal Opera House’s revival of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro in David McVicar’s 2006 production, except go if you can – not least to witness soprano Dorothea Röschmann’s metamorphosis from one-time magnificent Countess to the wittiest, raunchiest Marcellina on the block. In a striking house debut, Joana Mallwitz conducts with assured, brisk tempi. McVicar has returned to direct, revitalising this deft, classic staging – designs by Tanya McCallin, lighting by Paule Constable – with Mattia Olivieri a charming, bustling Figaro, Siobhan Stagg astute and nimble as Susanna and Stéphane Degout imperiously creepy as the Count.
The cast works as a top ensemble, each voice strengthened by being part of a whole. True, it was funny, with many comic turns and much laughter. It was also tough, cruel, transgressive. I keep reading that the word “masterpiece” is now off limits. If there’s another way to describe Mozart’s opera, I’m struggling to find it.
Star ratings (out of five)
RLPO/Hindoyan ★★★★★
Maxwell Quartet and Alasdair Beatson ★★★★
The Marriage of Figaro ★★★★
The RLPO’s Fiesta! concert is available to watch on Medici TV
The Marriage of Figaro is at the Royal Opera House, London, until 22 July
