Review: Season Opening Concert at Philharmonic Hall *****

It’s been a long time coming – five months, if we’re counting, since the full forces of the RLPO were last on the Philharmonic Hall stage.

And while it may nominally be the same orchestra as May, give or take some retirements and half a dozen new faces among the sections (welcome to Liverpool!), the stage itself has received a smart makeover during the extended summer break.

But while it’s smart-looking, it’s also smart sounding, creating what seems to be a vivid, warmer, more unified or rounded tone, which I’m presuming is the result of the back wall acquiring an attractive, aurally sculptured new form.

It was particularly noticeable in an opening concert programme which had plenty of bang and pizzazz in places, but also brought mouth-watering and at times moving melodies to the fore.

Perhaps unbelievably, this is the start of Domingo Hindoyan’s fourth season as chief conductor. And over the past few years, Liverpool audiences have become used to – and indeed look forward to – him sharing the insistent rhythms and vibrant soundscapes of Latin America here in Liverpool.

But anyone expecting a firecracker fiesta from Venezuelan Juan Bautista Plaza’s Vigilia, opening the new season concert, was in for a surprise.

Instead of percussion and brass blazing away, Plaza’s lyrical love letter to his future wife unfolded like the petals of an exquisite bloom from Drake Gritton’s winding cor anglais opening melody and newbie Miquel Ramos Salvado’s rising clarinet theme onwards.

A lovely radiance endured as Hindoyan guided the sections towards - heralded with a deep rumble of trombones - an ending that was pure Gone with the Wind lushness.

It was a radiance which continued through Strauss’s Four Last Songs, with German soprano Sarah Wegener – possessor of a soaring soprano voice of lustrous warmth and clarity – captivating the room with a delicate and intimate performance which was matched by empathetic, eddying accompaniment (even if, and being terribly picky, the orchestral swell in the opening Spring occasionally subsumed the solo).

Wegener’s voice, lifting on the gentlest of thermals, was complemented by Thelma Handy’s violin which took up the melody in a stand-out Upon Going to Sleep, and similarly there were snatches of sweet, singing solo violin in an ethereal At Sunset.

Above: Domingo Hindoyan conduct the RLPO in the opening concert of the 2024-25 season. Top: Soprano Sarah Wegener with the orchestra. Photos by Gareth Jones

While the Phil may not be repeating the full Mahler cycles of previous seasons, the Austrian’s symphonies are still finding their way into its regular programming.

Hindoyan opened the 2022-23 season with the Fourth, and last October he conducted the Fifth, while the New Year brings with it performances of the Third and Fourth (again).

There’s something special though about Titan, a youthful and enthusiastic Mahler’s first foray into the symphonic canon, and this season opener performance was quite the stunner.

Hindoyan marshalled his forces with poise and restraint in the opening movement which came complete with murmuring brass, cuckoo-ing clarinet, a trio of faraway trumpets and an ominous grandmother’s footsteps from the basses, all expanding incrementally into an explosion of musical colour.

The following landler scherzo was fashioned in crystalline relief, while the transition to and from the thrumming solemnity of the Frère Jacques melody which underscored a measured third movement to the lilting gorgeousness of the Klezmer-like central section was beautifully rendered. Mood music indeed.

It was in sharp relief to the expansive, Valkyrie-like tumult of Mahler’s ‘Stürmisch bewegt’ which was wrought with beautifully contrasted sections and long lines of melody leading to a satisfying, burnished, wall of horns-filled finale.

The programme is being repeated on Sunday afternoon.