Review: Dream Team at Liverpool Philharmonic Hall ****1/2
With Easter being so late this year, it’s still the best part of a fortnight until the day we British know as Shrove Tuesday – and much of the world as Mardi Gras.
But while carnival season is yet to start, and pancakes are yet to be flipped, you can generally guarantee a fiesta when Pacho Flores and Domingo Hindoyan get together on stage.
Throw in a UK premiere, with its composer on piano to boot, and this latest Dream Team concert really hit the spot on a dark February night.
It also proved a real workout for the Phil, with the entire evening’s programme - covering almost 150 years - vibrating with propulsive energy, whip-quick playing and colourful melodies.
Hindoyan and orchestra set out their stall early on with José Pablo Moncayo’s Huapango, navigating the dance-inspired work’s shifting and reshaping rhythms and melodies with energetic skill.
Flores wasn’t the only trumpet player to enjoy a busy evening. The orchestra’s Brazil-born section leader Fabio Brum also shone, both in Huapango and in Stravinsky’s Petrushka – performed in its revised 1947 iteration.
A Russian among Latin Americans true, but Stravinsky’s story of puppet love and jealousy would have complemented the overall mood of the evening even without its opening festive Shrovetide Fair musical tableau.
Seamlessly moving on from Moncayo with a similar sense of restlessness and motion, there was, additionally, a lovely soaring-on-the-thermals flute line from Cormac Henry which preceded a jazz-tinged melody with muted brass which Hindoyan coaxed and burnished.
It’s less a fanfare than a fan of instruments which heralds Flores’s arrival, with a couple of glistening examples appearing on a piano stool during the interval, and three more arriving cradled in the Venezuelan’s arms at the start of the second half.
Just as Flores is today, violinist and composer Pablo de Sarasate was a Liverpool favourite in the final years of the 19th Century, visiting the old Philharmonic Hall many times. I suspect the Victorian Liverpool audience were treated to Zigeunerwiesen on at least one of those occasions.
Above: Pacho Flores always brings a selection of instruments with him as this photo from a previous performance shows. Top: Flores, composer Daniel Freiburg and conductor Domingo Hindoyan.
This arrangement by Flores for trumpet showcased the technical clarity of but also the feeling in his playing, both in the soft, soulful and almost melancholic passages of its lento section and – with a quick swap of instrument – the runaway speed of its ‘molto vivace’ finale, with nimble support from the Phil.
Composer Daniel Freiburg describes Flores as “my trumpet superstar hero….he’s like a brother to me and it’s very emotional when I hear him play my music. It’s a privilege.”
Not only was this Thursday night performance the UK premiere of his concerto Historias de Flores y Tangos (which translates as Stories of Flowers and Tangos but also, of course is a story of Flores and tangos), but according to Freiburg it was the first piece of his music to be performed in Britain.
Opening with a mystical orchestral swirl, it was delivered with real panache – the first movement an evocative and cinematic piece of modern jazz which moved from relaxed, sunshine vibes via a percussive interjection and the splashy cymbals of a drum kit to full on party mode. Complete with an ‘ay caramba’ exclamation from Flores.
The ‘tanguero’ second movement pitched listeners into a sultry, nocturnal atmosphere, courtesy of Elizabeth McNulty’s harp. Flores switched instruments to wind out a brisk, light melody reflected through the strings before he and Freiburg joined in some late-night jamming on trumpet and piano, followed by a cheeky solo cadenza directed at his old El Sistema colleague on the podium.
For those who didn’t make a timely dart, there was also the value-added pleasure of an encore from Flores and Freiburg.
If you missed the concert, or just want to enjoy it again, there’s a chance to catch it on March 19 on Radio 3.