Review
Berlioz - La Damnation de Faust,
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Gianandrea Noseda
Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, 25 April 2009
28 / 04 / 2009
La Damnation de Faust - Berlioz
Marguerite - Monica Groop
Faust - Gregory Kunde
Brander - James Rutherford
Mephistopheles - Ildar Abdrazakov
City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus
Philharmonia Chorus
City of Birmingham Symphony Youth Chorus
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
Conductor – Gianandrea Noseda
Bridgewater Hall, Manchester
'Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust has claims to being one of the most extreme works in the classical repertoire. Visceral in its emotional content, it subjects ideas of form and genre to drastic scrutiny in its demands that we view experience as part of a wider cosmic drama in which soul and psyche are prey to forces barely within our control. It's a gift for a maverick conductor, such as Gianandrea Noseda, whose radical and individualistic approach to music-making has affinities with Berlioz's own.
Even by his usual, exacting standards, Noseda's performance with the BBC Philharmonic was exceptional in its attention to detail and focus on the work's emotional ferocity. Noseda's judgment of the equation between fractured metaphysical boundaries and the ceaseless invention of new sonorities was immaculate. The shifts between beauty and violence were faultlessly negotiated, and there were moments of almost hallucinatory vividness as Ildar Abdrazakov's Mephistopheles gained his ascendancy over the mind of Gregory Kunde's Faust.
Kunde, big-voiced and fastidious, strongly conveyed Faust's weariness of spirit and his fatal lack of moral discrimination, while Abdrazakov, insidiously seductive rather than ironic and snarling, was all too plausible as his nemesis. Their victim, Monica Groop's passionate Marguérite, was touching and eloquent, if occasionally shrill. The choral singing - with the City of Birmingham Symphony and Youth Choruses augmented by the Philharmonia Chorus - had tremendous force and clarity, even when Noseda, in his quest for almost frenzied immediacy, adopted speeds that were close on breakneck. Thrilling, even dangerous stuff, and absolutely outstanding.'
Tim Ashley, The Guardian, 28 April 2009 - 5 stars
