Nigel Kennedy – Grand Opera House, York

Director: Nigel Kennedy

Reviewer: Maggie Poppa

The Public Reviews Rating:

The only word which comes to mind when trying to describe Nigel Kennedy is surely ‘unconventional’. And it’s perhaps this reputation of unconventionality which filled the Grand Opera House with Kennedy fans tonight. If there were any purists who arrived expecting to hear Vivaldi’s ‘The Four Seasons’ played as it was played on Kennedy’s original recording of this work, (the recording which earned a place in the Guiness Book of Records as the best selling classical work of all time) then they might have been disappointed. The second half of the concert was given over to ‘The Four Seasons’ but this was the revised version, described in the programme as ‘The Kennedy Rewrite’. To say it was embellished was an understatement, at one point departing from Vivaldi altogether into an improvised rendition of the Duke Ellington standard, ‘It don’t Mean a Thing if It Ain’t Got That Swing’. Still Kennedy’s virtuosity shone through when allowed to and the final Allegro in the fourth movement – ‘L’Inverno’ – was a joy to listen to.

In the first half of the evening we had been treated to a performance of Kennedy’s own composition ‘The Four Elements’ music inspired by similar motivation to that of Vivaldi’s ‘The Four Seasons’ but Kennedy’s work is inspired by air, earth, water and rounded off by a movement he has designated as an ‘underture’. Here Kennedy’s affiliation to jazz music is obvious, and the work had a wide variety of rhythms ranging from haunting slow melodies to frantic Latin American sambas, and using electric effects reminiscent of 80’s rock musicians.

For quite a number of years now Kennedy has divided his time between living in the UK and Poland, with his Polish wife. His supporting orchestra, The Orchestra of Life, has been put together by Kennedy and is made up of mainly young Polish musicians who excel in their work. It’s difficult to single any one musician out for special mention but Beata Urbanek-Kalinowska, the lead cellist, was achingly beautiful as she duetted with Kennedy in two of Bach’s Inventions. Also featured both in Vivaldi’s ‘The Four Seasons’ and in Kennedy’s ‘The Four Elements’ were four vocalists, their role at times to shadow the musical theme with harmony and in other sections adding whispered words.

The audience showed their appreciation of Kennedy’s brilliance by demanding encores producing perhaps one of the most beautiful moments of the evening, a simple rendition of ‘Danny Boy’ just Kennedy and his violin, and not an electric tweak to be heard.