Portugal Marvão Worldwide Music Competition [1]: Veronika Eberle (violin), Juliane Banse (soprano), Cologne Chamber Orchestra / Christoph Poppen (conductor). Castelo de Marvão, Portugal, 20.7.2024. (LV)

Beethoven – Coriolan Overture, Op.62; Violin Concerto, Op.61
Mendelssohn – Live performance Aria ‘Infelice’, Op.94

On an open-air stage within the courtyard of windswept Marvão Fortress, Veronika Eberle gave a efficiency of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto for the ages to a sold-out viewers on the tenth Marvão Worldwide Music Competition. With a digital camera crew posted like sentries on the battlements and spectators sitting on the ramparts, she and conductor Christoph Poppen discovered the form of simplicity that results in the chic.

The primary motion set off at a reasonable tempo, triggered by the long-lasting 4 notes within the timpani that have been measured and exact. Every little thing within the opening orchestral introduction – from the nuanced woodwinds to the cellos’ triplets, with Poppen protecting the ability beneath wraps till it was able to be unleashed – was immersive and absorbing. When Eberle entered together with her opening solo, wealthy in colours but easy in line, her intimately reflective perspective shone via. Even the timpanist phrased like a poet. Remarkably, the gusting winds, which reached as much as 30 mph, didn’t appear to hassle any of the musicians. Eberle’s dialogue with the bassoons in thirds was intense and lapidary, her sense of quiet earlier than the large striding triplets was deeply affecting and her triplets in opposition to the lengthy traces of the strings have been charming. She navigated Fritz Kreisler’s cadenza with finesse, firming down the pyrotechnics in favor of heat and sentiment, as if it had been written by Beethoven himself.

Within the sluggish motion, Eberle once more phrased so merely and so proper. The tempo was a bit fast and would quicken a bit extra within the Rondo which, beneath the circumstances – did I point out it was windy? – made good sense from a sensible viewpoint. She performed the large arching passages exquisitely and the cadenza was spontaneous, after which she had a particular sweetness left for her final upward phrases earlier than Poppen and the orchestra ended with an incredible shout, and the grandeur of the entire efficiency was full.

Ten years in the past, Renaud Capuçon had singled out Eberle among the many younger lions for the purity, which was in hanging proof at her efficiency Saturday night time. She didn’t play Jörg Widmann’s phantasmagoric cadenzas, together with a duet episode with the double bass, as she had final yr in her recording with Sir Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra. However as excellent because the recording was – I chosen it as one of many yr’s greatest in my annual round-up for Strings – her efficiency with the Kreisler cadenzas was infinitely extra transferring.

The live performance had began with a bracing efficiency of Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture that caught the battle of the protagonist and was suffused with the eloquence of the cellos within the closing bars. Subsequent, Juliane Banse got here onto the stage for what would develop into a courageous, generally melting and sometimes sensible efficiency of Mendelssohn’s live performance aria which had been written for the classical music energy couple of Maria Malibran and Charles de Bériot. Though obscure, the aria was within the repertoire of the good Dame Janet Baker and was lately recorded by soprano Anna Samuil together with her sister Tatiana taking part in the violin solo. It was Konrad Elias-Trostmann on this event who carried out the violin half which was characterised by the hovering fantastic thing about his solos.

Curiously for an open-air live performance, the musical influence was robust and direct, and there was an enhanced sense of dimensionality and depth. It confirmed the worth of studying music from tablets slightly than printed music, though in the course of the Mendelssohn a second of confusion within the first violins confirmed that even with digital expertise, it may possibly generally be troublesome to be on the identical web page.

Laurence Vittes