Kazuki Conducts Beethoven’s Eroica, CBSO, Symphony Hall, Birmingham, Wednesday 13 December, 2023.

5*****": David Gray & Paul Gray.

Strauss – Don Quixote Beethoven – Symphony No. 3 (Eroica)

This evening was trumpeted as a new, highly experimental and perhaps slightly nervous foray by the CBSO into a brave new world of multimedia performance. Audience feedback was actively being sought and we were exhorted to scan and comment. QR codes were everywhere for the purpose of. If you felt so inclined, you could even scan an usher!

The object of the exercise here is to reach out to new audiences by augmenting the traditional concert experience. Three giant projection screens formed a backdrop to the event, and coloured lights swept around the performers, setting the mood.

To an extent this worked for the first piece of the evening, Strauss’ Don Quixote. It is a programme piece where the music is intended to express and describe a series of fantastical events from the Cervantes novel. Helpful, silent movie-style captions, guided us through the action without the need for constant recourse to programme notes. The Gustav Dore illustrations were illuminating and not at all distracting. Strauss’ music is never far from the opera house, so the whole thing had a familiar, slightly semi-staged feel about it. All well-and-good.

On the negative side, there was a scene-setting sequence which paralleled ‘cello soloist, Eduardo Vassallo preparing for the concert; as Knight Errant preparing for his quests in a suitably quixotic manner. This kind-of-worked, but then did not, because it was not followed through. Also: camera shots on the orchestra did not necessarily focus on the sections (or other orchestral soloists) actually playing at any given moment. A lengthy shot of the wind section doing nothing bordered on the uncomfortable.

As far as the music went, the performance was truly fabulous. During a pre-performance discussion with concept director, Tom Morris, conductor, Kazuki Yamada talked with passion and trademark good humour about spontaneity, and the uniqueness of every note in a performance arising out of a sensitivity to the uniqueness of the moment; and thus to the relationship between performers and audience.

Maestro Yamada’s reading of the Strauss - and the orchestra’s response to him - gave testimony to this philosophy. This was a fresh, immediate version of the score, totally in focus, unfailingly energetic, remarkably expressive and technically accomplished. BRAVO!

Seeing and hearing the orchestra in its entirety (of around 90 players), and playing at this level, was the calling-card of top-flight excellence. This new, young, Kazuki Yamada - as Chief Conductor of the CBSO – brings a whole new and transformative sense-of-purpose. This is terrifically exciting.

The relationship between visual effects and music was less helpful during the Beethoven. The orchestral players had been asked to disclose their heroes (Eroica, you see?); pictures of which were paraded over the course of the first movement. After a couple of minutes I realised I had been drawn into a game of who’s-who. After congratulating myself on successfully identifying Duke Ellington, and having a tussle ever whether the drawing of the man with the big beard was Erasmus – or perhaps Tyndale - it turned out to be Da Vinci. I realised I was not listening to the jaw-droppingly amazing musical performance going on. Thereafter, I decided to do my best to ignore the multimedia pictures and concentrate on the sounds.

In the Beethoven, Kazuki had gone for an on-the-large-side orchestra and a big romantic reading. This was superbly detailed, without being precious: authentic in the sense of emotional truth. The performance pulled-off the Holy-Grail of taking an incredibly well-know work, yet making you feel you were hearing it for the very first time. Indeed, the Funeral March - in particular - was explored with revelatory detail and imagination. It was like wandering around the melancholic mind of the composer himself. Again, the orchestra hurled itself headlong into the experience with passion and precision. We have not heard the CBSO play like this for a while.

So, a mixed bag: fabulous music making, sometimes helped, sometimes hindered by imagery. The concept was, at its best, when it simply illustrated. When it tried to superimpose meaning and narrative over the top of the music, it rather became a dangerous distraction. Traditionalists may - and did - moan; but I have a feeling this is the future.

Kazuki Yamada – Conductor

Eduardo Vassallo – ‘Cello

Chris Yates – Viola

Kazuki Yamada & Tom Morris – Concept

Rod Maclachlan – Video Design

Zeynep Kepekli – Lighting Design