12
Sep
Hitting the right note demands a good understanding of each other, reveals this team from the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
Jiri Belohlavek, chief conductor, and Stephen Bryant, leader, BBC Symphony Orchestra.
Jiri: Every conductor has a great concern - the quality of his musicians and especially the leading ones. The leader is the closest the conductor gets to a partner, and this relationship is crucial for the whole collaboration to work. I am blessed to have a great concert master in Stephen. I love to work with him, not only for his excellent professionalism, but also for the way he approaches the members of the orchestra. He has a very specific style - calm but exciting at the same time - and he has a marvellous British sense of humour.
Stephen: Leaders and conductors need to trust each other in order to get the freedom they need to work. Jiri is not only a consummate musician but he knows how they tick. He never stifles the strings and therefore the sound he gets from the orchestra is beautiful. It’s inspiring. Best of all, there’s no ’side’ to him. What you see is what you get and there is none of the ‘bluff’ that some conductors employ and that orchestral musicians see through so easily. He even understands my peculiar sense of humour, although, admittedly, it has taken him quite a few years!
From BBC Ariel magazine 2008
16
May
This letter, Time Out article and Strad review all relate to my performances of the Korngold Violin Concerto. In 1982, when I was at music college, a friend and myself were keen fans of Jascha Heifetz’ playing. One of my favourite recordings at that time was Heifetz playing the Korngold Violin Concerto with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and, having an urge to learn it I looked about for the music. I found that it wasn’t available in this country but, as luck would have it, my friend was going to visit his father in America and picked up the music there for me. On his return he bet me £10 that I wouldn’t be able to learn it in three weeks ready for a concerto competition at the Royal College of Music.
Spurred on by the money (I was a penniless student!) I managed to learn it for the competition and later that year performed it with the RCM Symphony Orchestra. To my great surprise I was informed by the Korngold Society that this was the first British performance of the piece. It was only later that the Korngold Violin Concerto started to be played and to gain in popularity – nowadays everyone plays it – then, nobody played it! I sent a recording of the performance to George Korngold, Erich Korngold’s son, and you can see his reply. Feeling a special affinity with this concerto I then went on to perform it many more times including two broadcast performances with the BBCSO in 1994 and 1998.
15
May
Film buffs at Friday’s free BBC concert may detect familiar strains in Korngold’s headily dreamy Violin Concerto. Themes from the ex-child prodigy’s film music, notably the Erroll Flynn costume comedy ‘The Prince and the Pauper’, are noticeable. ‘It sounds a bit duff put like that,’ syas the soloist Stephen Bryant, ‘but it’s cleverly fitted together.’
At ten the Moravian-born Korngold was called a genius by Mahler, at 13 acclaimed for a ballet. Today he’s remembered mainly for film scores (‘Robin Hood’, ‘Captain Blood’), and for the lush, sweet-sherry Violin Concerto.
Bryant was surprised to find he’d been given the British Première of it as a student. ‘I’d admired the Heifitz recording and a friend got me the music in America. Then he got irritated and bet me £10 I wouldn’t be able to learn it over Christmas for some concert trials at college.’ Bryant won the bet, inadvertently giving the first British performance of a swooningly Romantic work that leaves one wondering what little Erich Wolfgang might have achieved if he’d resisted the lure of tinseltown.
15
Apr
The concerts reviewed took place from April 9 to May 14
…Still, things could have been worse -Ms Kim might have elected to play the Korngold Concerto instead of the Wieniawski. How this would have fared stipped of its bedizened orchestral mantle is hard to imagine. Happily the Salomon Orchestra realized its part of the score beautifully when I heard the work a few days later (St John’s, Smith Square, May 14), and I was only too willing to wallow in its gorgeous sonorities. The orchestra did brave things too in Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra; only some high-lying violin phrases, the start of the fugue, and some ragged ensemble here and there betrayed its amateur status. If Schumann’s Rhenish Symphony was less successful, it was partly due to the acoustic at St John’s, the composer’s orchestration, and Malcolm Binney’s insistence on a seemingly relentless forte, all of which combined to make the sound stodgy rather than luminous.
But the Korngold stands or falls by the performance of the soloist. Here it stood proudly. I thought it wiser not to remind myself of Heifetz or Perlman’s recording of the work before attending this concert, but there need have been no fears as to the youthful Stephen Bryant’s abilities. He proved a splendid soloist with a beautifully integrated tone, impeccable intonation, and sovereign technique. Perhaps his manner was a little cool, but that is all to the good in a work where self-indulgence could turn those luscious melodies sickly. Andrew Mikolajski…
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