Alexander Briger - Rayfield Allied

Alexander Briger
Selected Reviews
I was looking at the ceiling and then I saw the sky
Teatro dell’Opera di Roma (September 2015)
“Alexander Briger dirige benissimo sette cantanti ideali per i loro rispettivi ruoli e otto eccellenti strumentisti (tre tastiere,
chitarra elettrica, contrabbasso, sax, clarinetto e percussioni).” - Mauro Mariani, Il Giornale della Musica
“Il piccolo e ottimo ensemble (tre tastiere, chitarra e basso elettrico, sax, clarinetto e batteria) compost da elementi
dell’Orchestra del Teatro dell’Opera, era diretto con giusta energia dall’australiano Alexander Briger, al debutto italiano.” - Luca
Della Libera, Il Messaggero
“Alexander Briger concerta l’insieme con ritmi teatralissimi.” - Dino Villatico, La Repubblica
“In merito è ancor più dettagliato il direttore d’orchestra Briger, che rivela di essere nipote di Charles Mackerras…” - Lorenzo
Tozzi, Il Tempo
Katya Kabanova
Opera de Toulon (January 2015)
“Cette vérité intimiste, intensément émouvante, la direction d’Alexandre Briger la restitue remarquablement. La biographie du
chef australien ne ment pas, et l’on entend les enseignements de Pierre Boulez dans cette lecture d’une admirable clarté, qui
rend intelligible la structure dramatique de la composition, avec une tension qui ne se relâche jamais. Si les pupitres de
l’Orchestre de l’Opéra de Toulon privilégient parfois la texture à la limpidité, ce qui pourrait passer pour un certain romantisme
ne trahit cependant jamais l’instinct de Janácek.” – Gilles Charlassier, Concertonet.com
“Saluons enfin la performance d’Alexander Briger à la tête de l’orchestre de l’orchestre symphonique l’opéra de Toulon qui a
obtenu de boulersantes sonorités.” – Jaqueline Cnobloch, In Concerto
“On sent qu’ils donnent le meilleur d’eux-mêmes pour répondre à la direction extrêmement fouillée d’Alexander Briger.” –
Maurice Salles, Forum Opera
“Au pupitre, le chef australien Alexander Briger sait capter toute la douceur de cette musique, autant que sa vigueur. Passant de
la tendresse de la dernière scène qui réunit Katia et Boris à la folie graduelle du tableau de la confession, son approche de
l'architecture de la partition est d'une grande sûreté, à la tête d'un Orchestre de l'Opéra de Toulon au jeu précis et proprement
articulé.” – Opera Online
CD: Beethoven Symphony No.9, Australian World Orchestra
ABC 481 0550
“This particular recording emanated from one of the most exciting of recent concert events, the inaugural season by the newly
created Australian World Orchestra, an initiative to bring together the finest of Australian orchestral musicians from around the
country and across the world. Thus, it saw players return from such illustrious orchestras as the Berlin and Vienna
Philharmonics, Chicago and London Symphonies, the Concertgebouw and Gewandhaus, to be part of this concept orchestra.
Bringing the whole project together, as its artistic and musical director, was conductor Alexander Briger, who has established
himself on the world stage as one of the new dynamic conductors of this era.
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Alexander Briger
Selected Reviews
With total command and intelligent insight, Briger produced a remarkable concert (and thus CD recording) of extraordinarily
powerful music, with playing that possessed the richness and assertiveness of a thoroughly seasoned orchestra.
Bringing this grand tutti of a work to a conclusion in the mighty finale movement, with its anthem-like passages, are four
soloists in fine voice, Cheryl Barker (soprano), Elizabeth Campbell (mezzo soprano), Steve Davislim (tenor), Teddy Tahu Rhodes
(bass), along with the full-voiced singing of the Sydney Philharmonia Choir.” - Barry Walmsley.com
I was looking at the ceiling and then I saw the sky
Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris (June 2013)
“Quant à la partition, on l’a dit, si virtuoses que soient les huit instrumentistes admirablement dirigés par Alexander Briger, qui
présidait déjà aux destinées de Nixon in China l’an dernier, elle laisse plus d’une fois l’auditeur sur sa faim.” – Laurent Bury,
Opera Forum
“La production du Châtelet affiche de sérieux atouts : un ensemble instrumental impeccable que la direction tonique
d’Alexander Briger fait sonner, cuivrée et groovy.” – Chantal Cazaux, Avant-Scène Opéra
“Si les attaques du pétillant chef d'orchestre Alexandre Briger sont franches, les fins des séquences sont souvent brouillonnes.”
– Philippe Chevilley, Les Echos
“Résurrection éblouissante, sous la baguette d’Alexander Briger, mardi soir au Châtelet….un triomphe mérité.” - Eric Dahan,
Liberation
“Alexander Briger, qui dirigeait aussi la reprise de Nixon in China l’an dernier mène magistralement cet ensemble de musiciens
ainsi que les parties chorales.” – Olivier Brunel, Altamusica
“Déjà présent l’an passé dans Nixon en Chine, le chef d’orchestre Alexandre Briger, attentif à ne pas mettre plus encore ses
chanteurs en difficulté, opte pour des tempi assez retenus sans jamais sacrifier à la rythmique si entraînante d’Adams. Un
compositeur qui aura encore les honneurs d’une nouvelle mise en scène au Théâtre du Châtelet l’an prochain, avec son dernier
opéra composé en 2006, A Flowering Tree.” - Florent Coudeyrat, Les Trois Coups
Nixon in China
Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris (April 2012)
“the Orchestra de Chambre de Paris, conducted by Alexander Briger, and the excellent Châtelet chorus keep a tight grip on every
treacherously syncopated bar.” - Francis Carlin, Financial Times, 13.4.2012
“Excellente participation du Chœur du Châtelet et de l'Orchestre de chambre de Paris (nouveau nom de l'Ensemble orchestral),
sous la direction d'Alexander Briger, qui mise toutefois plus sur les climats et couleurs que sur le mordant et la netteté.” Christian Merlin, Le Figaro
“Musicalmente, la produzione è uno splendore. L'Orchestre de Chambre de Paris raffinatissima, sotto la bacchetta sicura ed
intelligente di Alexander Briger, ha la meglio su una partitura piena di insidie techniche e ritmiche.” - Alessandro di Profio, Il
Giornale della Musica
“Dans la fosse, Alexander Briger peine d’abord à discipliner les pupitres de l’Orchestre de chambre de Paris (ex-Ensemble
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Alexander Briger
Selected Reviews
orchestral). D’un geste souvent plus mesuré que celui d’Edo de Waart dans l’enregistrement officiel (Nonesuch), il parvient
néanmoins à exalter les richesses d’une orchestration gorgée de réminiscences wagnériennes et straussiennes…” - Emmanuel
Dupuy, Diapason
“Alexander Briger tient l’œuvre, évite – autant qu’il peut se faire dans une telle musique – le décousu des séquences, précis,
fluide et coloré, plutôt bien suivi par l’orchestre – et très bien par le chœur.” - Didier van Moere, ConcertoNet.com
“Mais le principal intérêt de la soirée est l’orchestre. Rarement on aura entendu l’Orchestre de chambre de Paris (ex Ensemble
Orchestral de Paris) autant galvanisé. Le chef d’orchestre Alexander Brigertient fermement ses troupes et sait faire ressortir
l’orchestration brillante de John Adams.”- Maxime Kaprielian, Resmusica
“La réussite du spectacle doit également énormément à la formidable direction d’Alexander Briger à la tête d’un très bon
Orchestre de Chambre de Paris...La direction du chef australien est extrêmement dynamique, faisant ressortir les arêtes de cette
musique (bien plus complexe qu’il n’y paraît), les rythmes jazzy tout comme les références à la musique romantique quand il ne
s’agit pas purement de citations (par exemple de la Symphonie Alpestre de Strauss).” - Pierre-Emmanuel Lephay,
ForumOpera.com
“Sous la direction finement nuancée de l’australien Alexandre Briger, l’Orchestre de Chambre de Paris (ex-Ensemble Orchestral)
a bien pris les couleurs, volutes et spirales de la musique de John Adams.” - Caroline Alexander, WebThea
Carmen, State Opera of South Australia
“For this State Opera of South Australia performance of Carmen, Alexander Briger and the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra made
sparks fly right from the prelude.” – Elizabeth Silsbury, Opera Magazine
“Conductor Alexander Briger has done a mighty job with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra." - Matt Byrne, Adelaide Now
"The Adelaide Symphony Orchestra were like greyhounds flying out of the gate as conductor Alexander Briger, led them into the
opening of the overture at a cracking pace. The orchestra's playing is impeccable." - Barry Lenny, Glam Adelaide
"The Adelaide Symphony Orchestra contributed solidly to the musical ambience under Alexander Briger." - Sandra Bowdler,
Opera Britannia
Recording: Walton Cello Concerto/Shostakovich 1st Cello Concerto, Jamie Walton (cello) & Philharmonia
Orchestra
5 Stars
“Jamie Walton is a marvellous young cellist, and this new disc of Walton (no relation) and Shostakovitch is out of the top drawer.
Walton's Cello Concerto, a bittersweet work from 1956 first performed by Gregor Platigorsky, requires a special type of player,
one able to capture the magic without excess and an effortless technique. Jamie Walton is such a player, and right from his first
entry - a beautifully taut, gutty moment - he carries us with him to the end. Alexander Briger, who has collaborated with him on
earlier discs, conducts with superb understanding. The same applies to the Shostakovitch. Every cellist must compete with the
memory of Rostropovitch in this work, but Walton is his own man in a performance I will return to often.”
– John Button, The Dominion Post
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Alexander Briger
Selected Reviews
Alexander Briger conducts the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra
“This all-Mozart program contains two popular works, music as well known as anything else by the composer, and two
underplayed, small-scale gems...
A definite success was conductor Alexander Briger who showed a good-humoured energy and worked manfully to support both
the night's soloists...
In fact, the symphony performance achieved the unexpected goal of shedding new light where you might have thought nothing
new was left to be found. The woodwind choir invested the two middle movements with hefty eloquence, particularly a beguiling
weight of expressiveness in the Minuet-and-Trio's antiphonal passages, with William Hennessy's hard-working strings dotted
with reinforcements from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.”
– Clive O'Connell, The Saturday Age
English Chamber Orchestra dedicated to the memory of Sir Charles Mackerras, Cadogan Hall, 2.12.10
“This concert was dedicated to the memory of Sir Charles Mackerras (1925-2010) and had a decided and appropriate Czech bias
to the chosen repertoire. Alexander Briger (nephew of Sir Charles) imbued the Dvoøák with the breath of the delightful
Bohemian countryside allowing the limpid themes that seem to come so naturally to this composer full exposure.
Olivier Roberti seems a self-effacing musician capable of answering the question of “why do you need the score?” with the
answer “I can read music” (as did Otto Klemperer apparently!). It still came as a surprise that such an experienced performer
needs to have the score for Mozart’s most-famous (“Elvira Madigan”) piano concerto. Roberti’s performance was gentle and
mild-mannered, delightful in a restrained sort of way but leaving whole tracts of Mozartean feeling well alone.
A newly discovered work by a friend of Mozart’s, known to posterity as “the divine Bohemian”, was performed by flautist Ana de
la Vega, who has recorded the work. Josef Mysliveèek was one of many composers from Mozart’s day who are completely
forgotten today. Mysliveèek wrote delightful, tuneful music that deserves occasional performance and this Flute Concerto is
clearly one of them. Ana de la Vega clearly believes in the work offering plenty of spirit and gusto in such charming and wellwrought music.
Only at the end did the concert really catch fire with the unalloyed masterpiece, Mozart’s ‘Prague’ Symphony. The Austrian
composer could be regarded as a Bohemian, perhaps, as so much of his time and energy went into visiting and writing for the
city of Prague, particularly in his later years. It was Prague that gave the premiere of his “Requiem” and, of course, “Don
Giovanni”. Briger and the ECO caught the essence (in a way missing earlier in the piano concerto) of Mozartean style and
substance. Generous with repeats (but not on the scale of Britten’s recording) Briger set the tone with a grand entrance to a
sublime masterpiece, thereafter scooting away through the first movement with relish and a sense of unrestrained joy. The slow
movement floated on air allowing the graceful simplicity of the themes their full effect. The finale was mercurial and unflagging
in its energy; a performance full of feeling and generosity.” – Edward Clark, classicalsource.com
Sir Charles Mackerras Memorial Concert, Royal Festival Hall 4.11.2010
Sir Charles Mackerras was master of his art
“I once interviewed Mackerras in Prague, where he was recording a Janácek opera. He said Janácek demanded rugged playing;
Czech orchestras had it in their blood, non-Czech orchestras had to learn it. With Mackerras’s nephew Alexander Briger
conducting, the Philharmonia showed that it has the knack. The Cunning Little Vixen suite (Mackerras’s own arrangement) had
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Alexander Briger
Selected Reviews
warmth and tensile strength, while the opera’s closing scene was sung (in English: Janácek and Mackerras would have liked
that) with real authority by Thomas Allen. This was the music Mackerras wanted played at his funeral; it made a touching end to
a heartfelt tribute.” – Nick Kimberley, The Evening Standard
“In the last year of his life he was, as a colleague noted when we learned of Charles Mackerras’s death, the wise old gamekeeper
in the spring forest of Janácek's Cunning Little Vixen. No wonder Mackerras, we were told last night by his conductor nephew
Alexander Briger, wanted that most ecstatic celebration of the natural order for his memorial, just as Janácek had had it played
at his funeral. Was it trivialised by an encore number from Mackerras’s deliciously arranged Sullivan potpourri-ballet,
Pineapple Poll? Not a jot, mate.
He gave his final unforgettable concerts with the Philharmonia last December, but he'd pencilled in more years in advance. Last
night was to have been his, too, which of course in a sense it remained, but it now became a splendid three-headed monster
shared between the period-instrument group he loved so much, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and his bigger band.
While I didn't shed the expected tears at Mackerras's last, rather fraught performance of the Vixen at Covent Garden, they flowed
freely last night. So much of his vibrant life was here, starting with presenter Anthony Andrews, who grew up next door to the
Mackerrases. Janácek's recurring cycle found itself reflected in the meeting between our best-loved veteran baritone, Sir
Thomas Allen, and a treble frog (Sebastian Cox) who gets the last youthful word, as well as a sharing of conducting duties
between the new maestro embraced by Rattle in Berlin, Tomáš Netopil, nephew Briger as a worthy keeper of the flame and the
likeable, communicative Stephen Devine directing the OAE from the harpsichord.
...Wouldn't it have been Mozart which Mackerras wanted to take as his one score to heaven? Not so, Briger told us: over a glass of
wine in a break from their joint work on ENO's The Makropulos Case, his uncle insisted that the final scene of Janácek's Cunning
Little Vixen was his favourite piece of music. That's good to hear, since his recording (pictured left) has been my top desert island
disc since I first heard it.
Briger served that great love glowingly. The suite which runs the opera's first two scenes with only two cuts was often precipitous
and even hair-raising in Janácek's sudden changes of tempo and colour, but underlined the autumnal melancholy which
dominates the first two scenes until the Vixen grows up - something that's so often obscured in the cute-animal parade of
various productions. There was more extraordinary teamwork here, not least in the heartbreaking dying fall of front-desk violins
Zsolt-Tihamér Visontay and Maya Iwabuchi with the Philharmonia's flautist of exquisite sensibility, Emer McDounough.
And I have to say that, while I didn't shed the expected tears at Mackerras's last, rather fraught performance of the Vixen at
Covent Garden, they flowed freely last night. Allen basked in the orchestral glow of the final scene's natural rebirth and pulled
out the stops for the sudden ecstatic surges. I think it was right to hear those euphoric words about the woods in English: "People
will pass by in silence and bowing their heads, and all the joy of heaven will unfold, covering them in glory."
At that Mackerras, a pantheist according to his daughter Catherine in a treasurably illustrated souvenir programme, was no
doubt giving us the open smile in evidence throughout his last performances. As for the dashing encore string of Sullivan tunes
dressed up with glorious counterpoints and brilliant colours, we could have done with more than just the opening of Pineapple
Poll.” – David Nice, theartsdesk.com
Baz Luhrmann's "A Midsummer Night's Dream", Opera Australia: February/March 2010
“Among the beauties of Shakespeare's play is its deft evocation of three very different worlds within a single spot, and Britten's
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Alexander Briger
Selected Reviews
score manages a similar feat, assigning each world its own distinctive soundscape. Conductor Alexander Briger does a fine job of
both delineating and interlacing these varied textures, drawing out coherent, atmospheric playing. At times the orchestra's
placement behind the action upsets the balance, but it is nevertheless a welcome change to see them freed from their atrocious
pit and on such resplendent display.” – Sarah Noble, The Opera Critic
“A brilliant aspect of Catherine Martin and Bill Marron's gorgeously coloured design is the three-layered pagoda with the
uniformed orchestra performing on the middle level like a band, while the other layers take on magic functions. It is a joy to hear
the clarity of sound of the Opera and Ballet orchestra and the conductor, Alexander Briger, teases out its imaginative textures
with care and refinement.” – Peter McCallum, Sydney Morning Herald
“...a superb production which is familiar but fresh. The all important bandstand conducted by flamboyant Alexander Briger and
the creative genius of designer Catherin Martin and Bill Marron, only add to the beautiful wonderland...Lose yourself in this
wondrous world.” – Emma McGowan, sydney.citysearch.com.au
“There were plenty of musical rewards to be savoured under the firm and helpful guiding hand of conductor Alexander Briger,
who brought out a spellbinding musical quality to Britten's world of dark enchantment.”
– Melissa Lesnie, North Shore Times
“Alexander Briger directed a gauzy, shimmering account of this magical score.” – Deborah Jones, Opera Magazine
Komische Oper Orchestra, Berlin, March 2009
“One was astonished at how disciplined and uniformly rich in colours the orchestra was. This symphony was a total success for
Alexander Briger. I can only recommend this opera house to re-invite him.” – Kulturradio
From the House of the Dead / Canadian Opera, February 2008
“The COC orchestra, led by Australian conductor Alexander Briger, is the star of the show. In Janacek's universe, the instruments
tell as much of the story as the actors. They also get tremendously difficult material to play. It came together with an assured
balance and in vivid colour, masterfully guided through time-shifting minefields by Briger's assured baton.” – Toronto Star
Camerata Salzburg, April 2007
“The public was fascinated by Alexander Briger…Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony followed and its form was interpreted with most
subtle details: musical and displaying great skill, it was fresh and new-sounding. Alexander Briger motivated the musicians with
highly rousing conducting gestures to give their very best performance.”
– Dreh Punkt Kultur Salzbur
Rigoletto / English National Opera, April 2006
“Debuting with the company was Alexander Briger, who seems to be making a positive impression everywhere he goes. The
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Alexander Briger
Selected Reviews
nightmarish prelude reached a hair-raising climax, and everything that followed flowed with a natural sense of rhythm and
dramatic dynamism.” – Opera Magazine
Rape of Lucretia / Royal Opera House, June 2004
“Briger’s handling of the score and both the players and singers was masterly, perfectly paced and probably the principal cause
of the almost palpable and near unbearable tension generated.” – Opera Opera
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, January 2002
“He conducted a scintillating account of Shostakovich’s great Symphony No. 5, conducted from memory with a winning
combination of control and passion, and played in electrifying style.” – Glasgow Herald
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