Well, was it really right of, in this case DeSingel, to make such a big fuss about the cellist Anastasia Kobekina instead of conductor Martijn Dendievel? The first reason to make a fuss about Dendievel: his highest artistic approach. The second reason: he is a countryman and we should give him a bit of a leg up, shouldn't we?
Be that as it may, whether he or the cellist Anastasia Kobekina was the draw of the poster, it was a programme that Klassiek Centraal was at least drawn to DeSingel for. With courage and determination, two reviewers made their way through far too cold wind and hail – March and its showers – to the Antwerp temple of arts to enjoy Brahms, Haydn, Sassier and Mendelssohn in the afternoon. The poster itself promised to provide the warmth that the weather denied us with the missing sun.
The Symfonieorkest Vlaanderen opened with the Variations on a Theme by Joseph Haydn by Johannes Brahms (1833-1897). A richly varied work that makes a beautiful opener for an afternoon that makes you forget the bad weather and immediately makes you feel better. Martijn Dendievel immediately shows that he is so familiar with the tricks of the conducting trade that you forget the craft and simply drift along on the musical sentences.
Anastasia Kobekina storms the stage almost like a late teenage pop singer about to start wailing. She doesn't, because she has her cello in hand. Barefoot, she steals the show immediately, wearing a specially childlike-looking outfit. Why this is necessary is anyone's guess, it's not a show of populist nonsense, no, it is indeed the Concerto for Cello and Orchestra No. 1 in C, HobVIIb:1 by that good Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) that you look forward to with longing.
What do we hear? Precisely what we see on the stage. A rocky girl who doesn't care about the orchestra and the conductor and flails away with her bow, far too crude, groaning, as fast as possible – our world time trial champion Remco Evenepoel can't compete. Unfortunately, to use language to describe how unmusical this wild child is, you can write Music off. Show and show and nothing but show. How sad for the conductor and the orchestra who deserve so much better, who deserve respect, who deserve ensemble playing, but no. Who decides which soloist gets to grace the stage with tricks rather than music? I'm never going to listen to that again.
After the interval, it was torture for the ears once more with a new and simultaneously already outdated avant-garde composition under the misleading title Mendelssohn Variation (SOV Composers' Academy) by composer Adrien Sassier. We've really had enough of that experimental stuff that's been passé for a long time. To do violence to Mendelssohn, that's what you do with this work. Shame and please scratch it definitively from the programmes.
Fortunately, the concert ended in the most grandiose, memorable way. The conductor and orchestra could not have proved themselves better than in the Symphony No. 5 in D, opus 107 'Reformation' by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1809-1847), also taken too young. A masterpiece of a work, blessed melodies, grand orchestration without being bombastic, balanced, pure, healthy. Look, Sassier could learn something from this, but didn't understand it at all. Martijn Dendievel proved himself once again as one of the greatest conductors of the moment. What an interpretation! All the colours, all the phrasings, all the accents, breathing pauses, broad lines and everything you can mention to describe the richness of this work, everything was present and emphasized the way only a very great visionary as a conductor can. Dendievel is such a rare conductor who is very well aware of what he is doing, what he is engaged in, what work he must guide in good directions – no roads with potholes. It was not only a relief from the show girl who didn't care about anything or anyone and the rigid, hippie-like failed Mendelssohn variations of Sassier, it was so much so that the more negative experience, like the bad weather outside, was musicalized away to the dustbin of history. What an orchestra, what a conductor. We may not, but we must be proud of that!
