Glistening with gusto

Glistening with gusto

Japanese conductor Hide Shindori wows Bangkok

SOCIAL & LIFESTYLE
Glistening with gusto
(Photos courtesy of RBSO)

Invariably energetic on the podium, the inspirational Japanese conductor Hide Shindori has made annual visits to direct the Royal Bangkok Symphony Orchestra for quite a few years now, so that returning audiences know exactly what to expect from the podium when he is at the helm. He has a wonderful way with the Classical period masters in particular, and the recent "Italian Festival In Thailand 2019" concert in the small hall of the Thailand Cultural Centre featured joyous, highly listenable works by Josef Haydn, Ignaz Malzat and Mozart which positively glistened with gusto from beginning to end.

Haydn's Overture In D Major started proceedings with a veritable explosion of energy, a particularly active timpani part propelling the orchestra forward with great vigour. Interestingly, the longtime Esterházy composer's kettledrum parts are usually more sparse than the younger Mozart's, but for this performance it had clearly been decided that more equals more.

Timpanist Paopun Amnathan revelled in the prominent rhythmic role assigned to him, which then continued into the centrepiece of the programme.

Traditionally attributed to Haydn as Oboe Concerto In C Major, recent musicological research has in fact identified the obscure court composer Ignaz Malzat as the most likely composer of this wonderful "masterclass" in oboe writing. A contemporary of Mozart, Malzat was court oboist in Salzburg and later in Passau, making his claim to authorship of this beautifully written work very believable.

Renowned Italian oboe soloist Paolo Verrecchia gave an exquisitely shaped rendition of the attractive work, reminding one that this difficult double-reed instrument would surely have a larger repertoire of concertos, were it not for its relatively limited dynamic range in large concert halls. But such commanding playing as executed by Verrecchia rose above this limitation, with the sweetest and most focused of timbres cutting through, and indeed sailing above, the full orchestral texture.

Admittedly, his instrument experienced no small amount of trouble with humidity (it had been a stormy day), but his experience and expertise saw Verrecchia through a most memorable, committed performance which overcame unfortunate mechanical issues with the oboe's keys. Such was the beauty of his singing tone, not to mention the virtuosic handling of rapid passage work, that many patrons in the audience were visibly moved into a trancelike state -- their eyes shut tightly and their minds transported to inner worlds of bliss.

Oboe soloist Paolo Verrecchia.

The sublime central Andante movement was especially touching. Composed circa 1790, one can easily imagine that Malzat was heavily influenced by Don Ottavio's aria Dalla Sua Pace La Mia Dipende, from Don Giovanni, the tunes from which were certainly common musical parlance for the entire European musical community in the late 1780s.

The audience made it quite clear that an encore was in order, and Verrecchia obliged in slightly unorthodox fashion with the sentimental movie tune The Lady Caliph from the 1970 film score by Ennio Morricone -- a longtime colleague of his as principal oboist of the elite Italian Cinema Orchestra of Ennio Morricone.

The second half belonged solely to Mozart. Written when he was just 18, the youthful overture to La Finta Giardiniera (The Pretend Garden Girl) is in two parts, Presto and Andantino grazioso. It was rather curious that only the first section was performed on this occasion, but nevertheless the audience was once again drawn forcibly into Shindori's sheer magnetic authority in this specific repertoire.

The stage was thus set perfectly for yet another of Mozart's most treasured, early uncomplicated gems, his simply perfect Symphony No.29 In A Major. Written only months before La Finta Giardiniera, it possesses an almost identical spirit of unbounded optimism and joie de vivre. That infectious rebounding of the very first sequential theme between different sections alone, betwixt stage right and stage left, swept the whole auditorium seemingly into a frenzy of Mozartania -- that rare shared experience when music truly transcends our normal perceptions of time and space, and reaches even further for the eternal potential in all of us.

Bangkok has known this truth for quite a while now, but it is worth repeating once again here: Shindori absolutely has the measure of Mozart, perhaps in part due to his formative training with the likes of the great Bernard Haitink at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. It does indeed take a specialist of superior insight to attain the baton technique required to galvanise any orchestra towards the ultimate Mozartian ideal. It is to be hoped that Shindori returns to the RBSO soon.

It only seemed fitting that such fine music-making was capped off with a charming surprise encore. Moving forward somewhat in time, Ottorino Respighi's Antiche Danze Et Arie Per Liuto for strings was a most touching nightcap, the viola section enjoying the last word with three beautifully tuned tutti artificial harmonics.

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