Sydney Symphony’s fiery night in Spain brings cheers and castanets

You could almost smell the tapas and feel the fiery pulse of flamenco when Spanish conductor Jaime Martin stepped up to the rostrum.

Russian pianist Eva Gevorgyan won hearts and minds with her debut with Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

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You could almost smell the tapas, feel the fiery pulse of flamenco and hear the cheers of the corrida when Spanish conductor Jaime Martin stepped up to the rostrum for Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s latest concert.

All the works on the bill were either from Iberia or were French with heavy Spanish influences, and while the star of the show, 21-year-old pianist Eva Gevorgyan, is Russian she is currently studying in Madrid as well as Moscow. Her sparkling performance of Manuel de Falla’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain showed she has a firm grasp of her material.

Earlier in the week she had impressed with a recital of works by Beethoven, Brahms, Ravel and Schumann, setting the audience alight with her dazzling virtuosity and natural stage manner. At both concerts seasoned audience members marvelled at her maturity and expressive musicality and while the de Falla piece is less of a showcase than your average piano concerto, there is a high degree of technical difficulty in its surging rhythms and crossed hand passages.

Most of all piano and orchestra need to be exactly on the same page and this was a faultless performance from both Gevorgyan and Martin, whom we last saw with the SSO a year ago when he conducted an all-Beethoven program with Spanish pianist Javier Perianes, who coincidentally returns here later in the month.

The orchestra was in wonderful form throughout the evening which was bookended by two works by Maurice Ravel, the son of a Basque mother and whose 150th anniversary is being heavily celebrated. The program started with his Alborado del gracioso, the pizzicato opening so strong that concertmaster Andrew Haveron broke a string, pulling a new one from his pocket and replacing it during Todd Gibson-Cornish’s delightfully evocative bassoon solo.

This was the perfect piece to set the scene for a night in Spain, with tremolo effects on the muted trumpet and strummed strings imitating guitars while woodwinds whizzed and swished like the dress of a flamenco dancer.

After Gevorgyan’s superb handling of the de Falla piece she followed up with an encore from the same composer, Ritual Fire Dance, which Chinese superstar Lang Lang had included as an encore in his recent recital in Sydney. His treatment was more full blooded and spectacular, with high hand movements and showmanship, but she managed to inject plenty of fire and passion into the piece.

Martin’s infectious enjoyment of the music, along with his precise gestures and expressive facial expressions, were all on show for the second half which featured the two orchestral suites from de Falla’s ballet The Three-cornered Hat. The Miller’s Wife’s Dance from the first suite was suitably erotic and steamy, while the stiff and hesitant portrait of the Magistrate – more quirky bassoon, with Martin miming along – raised a smile. The final dance was a thrilling climax, perfectly delivered with thunderous brass and castanets.

Guest principal horn Alberto Menendez Escribano and cor anglais principal Alexandre Oguey both got well deserved ovations, but the biggest cheer of the night was for percussionist Rebecca Lagos for her 15-minute snare drum tattoo in Ravel’s Bolero which closed the evening.

DETAILS

• CONCERT Ravel & Falla: Sydney Symphony Orchestra

• WHERE Sydney Opera House Concert Hall

• WHEN July 12, 2025