On 18 October 2024 Noa performed Benjamin Britten’s Violin Concerto, Op. 15 with Konzerthausorchester Berlin, conducted by Stephanie Childress, at Konzerthaus Berlin in Berlin, Germany.
Excerpt from OMH (20/10/2024):
Britten’s once neglected Violin Concerto has been enjoying something of a renaissance of late, its popularity buoyed by an increasing number of the world’s most celebrated violinists adding this astonishingly inventive, yet technically challenging work to their repertoire. An early work – completed in the first months of the second world war in 1939 – Britten wrote it for the Spanish violinist Antonio Brosa as a lament on the Spanish Civil War. It’s both complex and emotionally mature, given Britten was only 26 when he composed it. Its three movements don’t follow the conventional pattern for a concerto, as the second is marked ‘vivace’, while the third and final, a passacaglia, is more reverential in tone.
Childress had the full measure of the work, and marshalled her large orchestral forces admirably from the mysterious opening – a muted theme on the timps followed by almost imperceptible cymbal clashes – through to the controlled lamentation of the final movement, via the bracing, brass-heavy interjections in the second movement. She also ensured her orchestral forces never drowned her soloist, Noa Wildschut, who delivered an exceptionally accomplished performance, maintaining a sense of tension from the first note to the last. She conquered all the technical difficulties with consummate ease, particularly in the very fast Scherzo – those tricky double stops, and double-stop harmonics held no terrors for her. But her interpretation wasn’t all about showy brilliance, it was perhaps in the work’s final movement, especially in the coda which starts like a prayer yet ends in a cry of anguish, where her deep emotional connection to the work really shone through, producing a stream of languid, yet impassioned tone. All in all this was a remarkable interpretation of this arresting concerto by this 23 year old Dutch violinist – rightly cheered to the echo by an appreciative audience.
Keith McDonnell
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Photo credit: Markus Werner