Orchestre de Paris - Paavo Järvi - Gidon Kremer / Salle Pleyel

Ludwig van Beethoven and Alan Berger
Orchestre de Paris conducted by Paavo Jarvi with Gidon Kremer
Salle Pleyel
10th March, 8pm
10-60 euros

****

Following the critical and commercial success of Théâtre La Colline's staging of Alban Berg's opera Lulu in December of last year, Paavo Järvi conducts the Orchestre de Paris with violinist Gidon Kremer, performing the composer's best-known violin concerto, 'To the memory of an angel', at the Salle Pleyel.

Legendary Latvian violinist and prolific recording artist, Gidon Kremer performs with characteristic sensitivity, bringing out all the pained delicacy of Berg's concerto and amply illustrating the composer's vision of the violin's dark expressive possibilities within the new idiom of modern music.  His handling of the very difficult passages of the Allegro is, as expected, flawless. Tonight's billing provides a rare opportunity to hear one of the world's foremost violinists and, further, a musician who has become widely respected for his experimentation with unconventional repertoire, and it has sold out the Salle Pleyel on a Thursday night.  The audience is generally young, their style rather avant garde for this grand institution of the 8th arrondisement.

The Berg revival continues to gather momentum throughout Paris' 2011 Season; the composer's work has featured in four concerts at the Salle Pleyel thus far this year; Christopher Eschenbach will conduct three more of his pieces in the same hall later this month; and Lulu will return to the Parisian stage at Opera Bastille in October.  Berg's dark and complex psychological themes, along with his convoluted and remorselessly violent modern style may not be to everyone's taste but they do seem to be appealing to a growing audience.

The evening's programme opens with Beethoven's overture  Consecration of the House (Die Weihe des Hauses), op.124, and closes with his Symphony No. 4, providing an energised, rousing contrast to Berg's melancholic and uncomfortably angular concerto.  Järvi's assured, if reserved, style induces a performance of remarkable control and precision from the Orchestre de Paris, and there is a much energy to be felt during the Symphony's anticipatory lulls as during its magnificent climax thanks to the impressive restraint he inspires.  Beautiful violin solos from Philippe Aiche and Roland Daugareil, and a spectacular performance from the brass section, once again emphasise restraint and precision and never permit Beethoven's finesse to be obscured by the high energy of his composition.  A very good performance indeed that bodes well for both Paavo Järvi's first season conducting the Orchestre de Paris and Alban Berg's ongoing presence on the Parisian stage.

Kafka's Monkey / Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord

Kafka's Monkey
Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord
14th September - 4th October 2010
Monday- Saturday 9pm, Saturday 3.30pm, 50 minutes duration
14-28 euros
In English with French subtitles

**** 

In Colin Teevan's excellent adaptation of Kafka's allegoric short story 'A Report to an Academy', Kathryn Hunter plays an ape who has achieved the ultimate evolutionary feat; to ensure his survival at the hands of cruel human captors, Red Peter has become a human himself. An all-drinking, all-smoking, all-talking, even all-lecturing, assimilated member of human civilisation. Over 50 minutes, Red Peter presents to the academy the story of his life, from his infancy amongst fellow apes on the Golden Coast, through his capture, anthropomorphosis and finally to his squalid, lonely existence as a heavy-drinking variety performer on the very bottom wrung of the social ladder. Following a run at the Young Vic Theatre in London, where it received mixed critical reviews but overall commercial success, Walter Meierjohann’s original english-language production of Kafka's Monkey is shown at the spectacular Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord this month.

In London, Hunter's performance drew heavily on the intimacy provided by the Young Vic's sparse Maria Stage. With an audience of just 150, seated on temporary benches facing bare studio space, the former ape hunted for tics in the hair of those sitting in the front row, offered bananas to his spectators. As in Will Self's satirical novel 'Great Apes', the intimacy and warmth of simian group grooming was emphasised in contrast to the physical isolation of humans, the supposedly advanced civilisation. The grand four-tierd auditorium of the Bouffes du Nord creates quite a different atmosphere and, to the benefit of the drama, Hunter's performance throughout is tempered by the physicality of the more theatrically conventional staging. The former ape's crumpled and besuited body, his posture halfway between that of an ape and a man, seems tiny upon the thrust stage, immersed in the great round sea of audience. The pressure to perform a predefined role for an expectant audience is palpable, almost gladatorial, in the claustrophic arena-like space; the premise of the play may be the presentation of an academic report but the atmosphere is more akin to the circus.

Kathryn Hunter's performance is remarkable, a true joy to watch. Nervous and fidgetty, and with an arsenal of impressively honed monkey mannerisms, Hunter plays Peter as truely pathetic in his desperate endeavour to ingratiate himself, to assimilate, and to find his place in a companion- and peer-less society. Yet Peter is as much a human as he is a monkey, and in Teevan's adaptation we recognise the familiar themes and fears of Kafka's work; persecution, isolaton and loneliness born of the desire for conformity and uniformity, whether it be one's own or society's at large. The ability to "adapt" perfectly, and at will, to one's surroundings is shown to be both a myth and a dangerous desire to harbour; Peter now occupies a lonely no-man's, and no-monkey's, land between two societies that equally repel and reject him.

A truly excellent adaptation of an important and oft-neglected component of Kafka's canon, which provides the material for an equally excellent performance of theatrical versatility from Kathryn Hunter.

This will be the Bouffes' final English-language production this season, although forthcoming operas such as The Magic Flute (from 9 November, directed by the theatre's previous long-running artistic director Peter Brook), The Second Woman (from 26 April) and Gertrude Stein's avant-garde libretto Doctor Faustus Lights The Lights (from 17 May) may also be of interest to audience members who only speak English.