Philharmonia/Alsop/Weilerstein Review – The Difficult Mute for Audio Drama | classical music

THere are the spaces that enhance performance—the spaces that subtly hone, refine, or clarify—and those that hinder it. A recent concert at the Philharmonia Orchestra’s residence at Canterbury’s Marlowe Theater indicates that this beautiful building is sadly among the last. The sound system is not so much dry as dry, revealing the slightest imperfections and providing all the anechoic room ambiance.

Dynamo Orchestra’s principal guest conductor, Maren Alsop, presumably knew what she was up against, having made her local debut last year. The concert began with an elegant and delicious performance of “Danzon No. 2” by Arturo Márquez. And the opening act – dark clarinet, piano, strings, and stringed pizzicato – was loose-limbed. A trumpet solo was introduced with very slow vibrato, and the strings strutted to order.

The music of fellow Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz requires a more precise approach. A recording of the “Dzonot” cello concerto (“Abyss”) has already won a 2026 Grammy Award, and here it received its UK premiere from Alyssa Wellerstein, the cellist for whom it was written. There was a gap to make adjustments to her wobbly chair (“We’ve worked on this before,” Allsopp smiled) and an awkward moment at the end when Allsopp motioned to Ortiz from the audience, only to find there was no way onto the stage. In the middle, there was a veritable maelstrom of influences and textures – post-romantic fervor, waves of solo rubbing as if Led Zeppelin had played the cello, swirls of simple repetition, and ethereal shimmering percussion. Weilerstein’s virtuosity was evident but the sound kept the potential magic of the score clearly on the floor.

None of this boded well for Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, in which audio drama plays a vital role. The solos were given ample space by Alsop, and the chamber music moments were beautifully intimate. Some passages rose convincingly louder. But in other places, the strings were uncharacteristically choppy, clearly unable to hear each other. By the time Alsop returned to perform Anna Klein’s noise-filled “Turbulent Oceans,” the performative frustration of this work seemed all too real.