Review DRVE Layton Petri and Ugis April 2011
News April 2011
Reviews DR VE ´The Nightingale ´ and various works with Stephen Layton conductor , and Michala Petri Recorder , commissioned work by Ugis Praulins
With this you don´t need to have pictures …
By: Soren Schauser 04/03/2011 22:30 Berlingske Tidende
There was ´The Vocal Ensemble. And there was Michala Petri. But the collaboration on the 'Nightingale' beat it all .
Four handfuls of singers has become a common sight on the flat screen: You see The Vocal Ensemble embark on today’s song of the Day
on the new adult channel several times a week.
The program's visuals can at times go haywire and turn out redundant smiles.
So you have to by all means experience the talented cast at their home field.
That would be when the gather up with the ladies and gentlemen left to right and just ... sing.
For that´ is what they do best. If one decline to go listen to this groups nationwide events tour these recent days,
with songs in Danish and Swedish and English, to music from before and especially now -
then you miss out on something that can only be regarded as a genius strike.
How should one listen those harmonies? Good choirs can sing as one voice one minute and fan out
into a whole dozen of colors the next. The unity comes with their professionalism,
the colors by the mix of their different natures.
And Danish Michala Petri is just herself. Cause yes, she is yet to be found.
She was with the choir on its tour. And she is still one of this continent's royal artists at playing her instrument.
By the way a simple recorder sounds great at DR's huge concert hall. It becomes reinforced
throughout the balconies and floors. People sit as enchanted by the wonderful adult virtuoso and her playing.
Petri still shapes her music a bit too mechanical at times. Where is the melody mowing towards?
But she also stands for overwhelming surprises. As was the case in the Latvian ´ Ugis Praulins' music of 'The Nightingale' Saturday afternoon:
The artists in the choir and her on recorder melt together like gold with gold. Chords in major and minor
suddenly waves through the hall - for the first time in the event.
Complete with imperial harmonies and artificial singing birds.
The work starts off like scattered ideas without professional glue between.
And it steals a lot of effects from the last half-millennium of music.
But if the commissioned work was not the afternoon's most artistic, it was the most accessible.
Thus ´The Nightingale ´ fully deserved the standing ovation and everything.
Ancient virtues supplanted by contemporary sounds.
And does it matter?
By Søren Schauser major paper Berlingske Tidende 03/04/2011 22.30
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Nightingale singing in strange/ mysterious Latvian sound disguise
By CHRISTINE CHRISTIANSEN Jyllands posten
Af CHRISTINE CHRISTIANSEN
published 02.04.11 kl. 21:24
published 02.04.11 kl. 21:24
4 Stars out of 6 !!!Latvian Ugis Praulins did in his new work ”The Nightingale" send the DR vocal ensemble and Michala Petri cruising through a sea of musical styles.
Classical concert
DR Concert Hall
DR Ensemble
Michala Petri Recorder
Stephen Layton conductor
Saturday afternoon 02.04.2011
The concert is repeated on Sunday the 3rd April at. 15 of Black friars Abbey Church in Viborg.
It lies just at one´s core to let crisp flute tones illustrate a nightingale´s sparkling trills, and that's what Latvian Ugis Praulins is doing in his newly written piece "The Nightingale" - commissioned to DR vocal ensemble and recorder player Michala Petri.
Saturday a rather full DR Concert hall heard the piece with its extensive English lyrics consisting of fragments by Hans Christian Andersen´s fairy tale about the magical/ enchanting bird.
53-year old Ugis Praulins has roots in Latvian rock and folk music, and in "The Nightingale's" variegated tonal flow he is constantly shifting between musical styles. There were fragments of atonal Latvian folk music, soft jazz rhythms; floating choral´s with flute virtuoso layered on top, spoken word, spontaneous handclaps and a section that most of all reminded one of Howard Shores ethereal soundtrack from "Lord of the Rings".
Complex tonal universe
On the podium tall, English Stephen Layton guided the singers and recorder soloist safely through the complex tonal universe. Several of the vocal ensemble members appeared at various times as soloists. With the help of tuning forks that were constantly held up to their ears, they navigated with or against the flute's extraordinary shapes. Beautiful and special at the same time.
The work was the robust conclusion/ ending to an afternoon that contained another interesting combination work for recorder and choir: Swedish Daniel Bortz (b. 1943) uses in his divine "Nemesis Divina" the recorder as an independent voice that alternately grows out of contrasts and merges with the choir´s voices.
In this Michala Petri moved deftly between recorders of high and low tonal registers. Stephen Layton managed again to get the singers' rhythmically displaced beats and the insistent chanting sounds to vibrate clearly in the hall, and the culminating with the high, shrill sopranino recorder scream was extremely powerful/ effect full.
Partita in C minor
No recorder performance without baroque tones: Michala Petri first played JS Bach's Partita in C minor in a version for alto recorder. She moved the fingers with furious/ breathless speed in the dance like parts of Bach, but the phrasing decreased unnatural, and I simply missed depth and meaning. Then it was more fun to hear her romp at the different recorders in the Dutch 1600-century composer Jacob van Eyck´s, "The Recorder´s Pleasure Garden" with playful variations and exuberant virtuosity.
Jersild´s Three romantic choral songs with beautiful lyrics about dreams, roses and dampened rain showers, sounded so delicate and fine in the vocal ensemble singers' throats. Too bad, words were not copied into in the program. It had been a joy to be able to follow
http://kpn.dk/klassisk/koncert/article2389535.ece
