REVIEWS
Performance
Apollon Musagète/ Violence
Tramway, Glasgow
Mary Brennan
****
TAKE Me Somewhere’s 2018 season doesn’t only hit the ground running: this opening double bill throws down an ammo-packed gauntlet to the way society often assumes women should behave – and indeed pressures them to do so.
Florentina Holzinger’s take on Balanchine’s ballet, Apollon, opts for visceral subversion and the fullfrontal provocation of six naked women displacing classical choreography with the stuff of Coney Island freak shows. The acts of body piercing – involving staple-guns – are wince-inducing, but then how many women “go under the knife” or have Botox in pursuit of the physical perfection that Holzinger and her fellow performers pillory with scathing humour, shows of fierce, risk-taking strength and flamboyantly graphic bodily functions. Pointeshoes become a part of this hectic circus, with echoes of Balanchine in a mix that asks questions about the male Apollo’s ownership of the arts – not least because of how women’s naked flesh acts as both muse and material in those arts.
In Violence, FK Alexander – in frock and red stilettos – sits at a table strewn with flowers. An unused bridal bouquet, maybe? As the plaintive lyrics of Don’t they know it’s the end of the World wail out, Alexander guillotines the blossoms. Slowly walking upstage, her heels rasp like sharpening knives. Text flashes up on-screen – the suffixes “less” and “lessness” creating a litany of loss and loneliness. The slow walks, Skeeter Davis’s anthem of lovelorn despair are re-iterated but – like Andy Brown’s (live) drumming – there are hints at maelstrom of suppressed emotions. Until the final minutes where Alexander keens out a double-tracked version of the song – drawn out, off-key, reverberating with pain. Yet again this extraordinary performer makes small details tell huge stories about the hopes and heartaches that matter to us. Music
RSNO
Festspielhaus, Bregenz Keith Bruce
****
THE set for this summer’s production of Bizet’s Carmen on the shore of Lake Constance has yet to be populated, but there was not a seat to be had in the indoor concert hall of the Austrian city’s venue. The visit by Scotland’s national orchestra and conductor Peter Oundjian was the start of a five-concert tour of four countries. It could scarcely have had a more auspicious opening and won a rapturous reception from the elegant capacity house.
The big work that features in every concert is the Fourth Symphony of Johannes Brahms, which many of these ticket-buyers will know as well as the musicians and of which Oundjian gives a carefully measured reading that reveals many of the strengths of the orchestra. Led by Sharon Roffmann, the RSNO strings are currently on top form and the winds and horns, with whom they share the composer’s best tunes, feature solo voices of great character as well as sectional coherence. With the movements firmly delineated, there was little radical in this Brahms, but that was assuredly to the listeners’ taste.
The opening Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes by Benjamin Britten was less familiar territory, but it is a superb orchestral showcase with some of the composer’s most dramatic scoring. Principal flute Katherine Bryan led the list of stellar individual contributions.
Beethoven’s Triple Concerto is far from his best known work, doubtless because of the requirement for three soloists. The orchestra’s resident artist this season, cellist Jan Vogler, is flanked by violinist Nicola Benedetti and pianist Martin Stadtfeld for these performances of a piece that often seems like Beethoven at his jolliest, and with some of his brightest melodies. The role of the orchestra ebbs and flows to allow the trio to share the intimacy of chamber music in a performance certain to reveal further riches as the tour progresses.