Daniele Rustioni makes a successful debut at the PROMS with his Ulster Orchestra
«Daniele Rustioni made his overdue Proms debut with the Ulster Orchestra, of which he is chief conductor, in a programme of Austro-German Romantic (Wagner, Strauss, Mahler, Schumann) that took him into very different territory from the Italian operatic repertory with which he is primarily associated. The qualities that characterise his work in the theatre, however – flair, intelligence, an immaculate sense of pace, tension and drama – also very much formed the basis of an exceptional concert that found him and his orchestra on terrific form. (…)
Rustioni’s ability to tease out detail, while thinking in terms of span, was also apparent in the performance of Strauss’s Four Last Songs that followed. Speeds were on the swift side without suggesting undue urgency, but allowing soprano Louise Alder, her voice silvery rather than opulent, to let the soaring lines live and breathe with ease and sensitivity. In contrast to the wordless warbling of some interpreters, she gave us the text with admirable clarity, and Rustioni’s way with the textures, almost imperceptibly darkening as death looms, was wonderfully well judged. It was one of the most moving accounts of the work I’ve heard for a while. (…) Mesmerising to watch, and at times almost balletic on the podium, Rustioni danced and stamped his way through it with great glee. A marvellous evening.»
The Guardian, Tim Ashley
«Clearly that was partly what drew such a large audience to the Ulster Orchestra’s concert and its inspirational Italian conductor, Daniele Rustioni. (…) Wagner has been a staple of the Proms since its very first season in 1895 when Sir Henry Wood conducted the Tannhäuser overture several times that year. ‘Previously at the Proms’ (always one of the more fascinating parts of the programme notes) suggests that, along with the Venusberg and various fantasias, this work might be the most played at the Proms with a plausible 300 performances. Very few, however, can surely fall into the great, even probably memorable category. Klaus Tennstedt in his London Phil Prom back in 1992 does – and, I think, Rustioni and the Ulster Orchestra in this Tannhäuser will, too. It was a fabulous performance. Still just 39-years old, Rustioni eschews a certain kind of firebrand conducting in Wagner; rather, what we got was something sweeping, burnished, romantic and monumental. Listening to Rustioni I sometimes felt I was listening to Riccardo Muti, although not the young version of him. (…) When the horns gave way to a trio of trombones, playing at forte, nothing was lost. And this, too, was where Rustioni was such a master of tension. The dynamics of Wagner’s score were just wonderfully articulated, with no loss of power along the way. The final work, Schumann’s Symphony No.4, took us very much back to the Wagner that begun the concert. (…) Rustioni took a much more expansive and menacing approach. So huge were his baton movements that you sometimes felt he was going to engulf the entire orchestra in a single sweeping tsunami. Basses which hadn’t always projected much depth earlier now had a striking lava of richness to their bottom. The precision in the violins was astonishing – something really only an opera conductor can ever hope to get a symphony orchestra to do with the delicacy, suppleness and rhythmic flow we heard here. (…) As a showcase for the Ulster Orchestra and its conductor Daniele Rustioni this had been a superb concert.»
Opera Today, Marc Bridle
«Under its justly-praised chief conductor Daniele Rustioni (formerly assistant to Antonio Pappano at Covent Garden), the Belfast-based outfit crackled and glowed in every department but especially at the back, where a robust, assured and often lyrical brass team delighted a virtually full house. (…) Even if I’ve heard heftier (more Germanic?) horns as Tannhäuser set out on his pilgrimage, Rustioni and his brass found a grace, ease and warmth in the opening hymn that nicely prepared the way for the explosive colour and energy of the Venusberg bacchanalia. Athletic, even gymnastic, on the podium, Rustioni performed all the drama of the score but these were not mere empty baton-waving gestures: the orchestral textures felt firm and well-defined, with a clarity of articulation, dynamic variation and a strong sense of instrumental dialogue. He gave a savoury, characterful voice not just to the Wagner – with each individual brick nicely pointed in the wall of sound – but the evening’s other items too. In the Four Last Songs, (…) Alder and Rustioni conveyed their dramatic pivots of colour and feeling as well as the twilit serenity of the overall effect. Rapt and still, silent at the close, the audience played its part too. (…) Rustioni’s high-impact, high-contrast style found a fitting vehicle in the Schumann Fourth. He converted its choppy, stop-start form into a virtue with playing that turned the abrupt translations and reversals into a wild, exhilarating ride. The Ulster ensemble gave us the revised, 1851, version of the piece: grander, more heroic, and arguably more cohesive, although Rustioni still found plenty of musical somersaults to turn. And in the finale, Rustioni positively bounced and flew as he unleashed its salvo of stormy climaxes. (…) There will be more adventurous Proms this summer, but few that give so much compact and well-packaged pleasure. It’s hard to imagine a neater, sweeter summer night.»
The ArtsDesk, Boyd Tonkin
«Robert Schumann’s Fourth Symphony (1851 revision) concluded this without-interval Prom (good idea, several benefits) in grand style, Daniele Rustioni favouring spacious speeds, expressive largesse, and clear detailing (not least timpani) and dynamics: a momentous traversal, with a few foot-stamps along the way, through the four linked movements (well done for omitting the Finale’s repeat), and with space for spontaneous increases of pace, such as when concluding the outer movements. The evening had opened with an excellent account of the ‘Overture & Venusberg Music’ from Wagner’s Tannhäuser (…) well-chosen tempos from Rustioni, the music not allowed to linger yet without denuding its solemnity, and exciting propulsion elsewhere, the playing vivid and punctilious during the bacchanal (the castanets always make me smile), and then the slumbering post-pleasure was most sensitively, even sensually distilled. (…) Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs found Louise Alder in glorious voice, the performance owing much to Rustioni and the Ulster musicians, the soprano radiant, soaring, shapely of phrase, exhibiting luxurious tone and word-painting (Hesse and, final setting, Eichendorff) – fine horn and violin solos, too, with the very end, on this occasion, sounding as if we really were on the border of the next world. No-one clapped until all four songs were over, and the Radio 3 announcer avoided what some of his colleagues are too prone to do, such as telling us what we should listen out for and/or giving their post-performance opinion. Thank-you.»
www.colinscolumn.com, Andrew McGregor