Rendering 15 (Music)

The article I’m going to analyze is taken from The Guardian and is entitled “Valery Gergiev 60th birthday gala – review.” It was published by Tim Ashley on 24 May 2013 and discusses the concert dedicated to the famous Russian conductor Valery Gergiev, at the Barbican, London, UK.

The author starts by saying that Valery Gergiev turned 60 earlier this month, an event formally celebrated at the Barbican with a London Symphony Orchestra concert billed as a gala, but which was actually more modest than that. Apart from a chorus of Happy Birthday at the end, there were few frills. Thus< according to Ashley, the programme, for the most part serious, consisted mostly of concertos and opera, avoiding any of the familiar Gergiev orchestral showstoppers that might have placed him centre stage.

Giving appraisal to the situation, it’s necessary to point out that the first half, in which he was joined by Alexander Toradze and Leonidas Kavakos as soloists, was the better of the two. For instance, Toradze gave the listeners Shostakovich's Second Piano Concerto, which, in the author’s words, suits him rather well, since it allows him to show off his dexterity without indulging his habit of seeming to batter the piano rather than play it. Kavakos, meanwhile, offered three bravura pieces on Gypsy themes – the Rondo from Paganini's B Minor Concerto, Ravel's Tzigane and Sarasate's Zigeunerweisen – all done with exquisite tone and staggering virtuosity.

A for the second half of the concert, we learn from the article that after the interval came act five of Berlioz's Les Troyens, a work that Gergiev has conducted at the Mariinsky, though not, as yet, here. Ashley is evidently not in favour of the conductor’s work, as, in his words, he hasn't quite got the measure of it on this showing: there were some wayward speeds and evidence of that lack of surety in pacing that can sometimes affect him away from the Russian operatic repertoire. The Russian/British cast, meanwhile, proved inconsistent in style and quality. Especially Ed Lyon and Lukas Jakobski are praised for performing their vocal parts of Hylas and Pantheus respectively.

So, the gala concert is evaluated as satisfactory by the author, for Tim Ashley wasn’t evidently much impressed. As for me, I can’t say I’m a connoisseur of the classical music, though I am very much respectful to those performing it, but I believe that it’s much better to visit such a concert than, for example, the one of some unknown pop group, members of which hardly know notes.