Category Archives: In concert

Café Budapest Contemporary Art Festival – Steve Reich at 80

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Jon Jacob attends the Steve Reich 80 concert at the Cafe Budapest Festival on Sunday, 16 October 2016.

Steve Reich’s music occupies a special place in the hearts of its devotees. Concerts attract earnest (in some cases obsessive) crowds, but the spirit of inclusivity borne out of the audience’s high expectations and infectious enthusiasm in undeniable.

To mark Reich’s 80th, the Amadinda Percussion Ensemble joined forces with the Kelemen Quartet and the UMZE Chamber Ensemble to perform a selection of music by the composer.

Mallet Quartet received its world premiere in Budapest in 2009, the culmination of a 25-year collaboration between the Amadinda Ensemble and Reich himself. It’s a thought-provoking work, taking us on a journey from textbook, upbeat, joyous Reich, through pensive reflection, onto a celebratory conclusion tinged with a hint of unease. What joy there is at the beginning of the work is tempered by an unshakable tension at the end.

The most musically satisfying of the composer’s larger ensemble works, City Life also happened to turn out to be the performance highlight of the evening.

The Kelemen Quartet accompanied by UMZE Chamber Ensemble played with heart and grit in equal measure, taking us through a range of aural cityscapes, some grim, others terrifying. In the fifth movement – Heartbeats – the distinction between live music and recorded ambience was indecipherable creating what at times appeared like a nightmare vision of urban life.

In some respects hearing Reich’s music in the opulent surroundings of the Lizst Academy in Budapest seemed incongruent with the images he conjures up in his writing. The acoustic, whilst generous, sometimes muddied the rich lines from the percussion instruments. The Quartet – a work for two vibes and two pianos for example, highlighted the acoustic challenge which in turn drew attention to the demands placed on the Ensemble placing chords and ensuring unison lines were uniformly played.

Radio Rewrite – a collaboration between Reich and Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood – is different in character and, in some ways, musically less satisfying. The phrases Reich uses are longer meaning the driving rhythms we come to expect from his creation are lost in favour of complex seemingly ever-changing time changes. There was as a result a perceptible lack of punch to proceedings made the work feel a little long.

Jon Jacob writes about classical music at the Thoroughly Good site. He’s ThoroughlyGood on Twitter.

Wigmore Mondays – Nicholas Angelich plays Chopin & Liszt

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Nicholas Angelich

Chopin 2 Nocturnes, Op.55 (1842-4) (12 minutes)

Chopin 3 Mazurkas, Op.59 (1845)

Liszt Piano Sonata (1854)

Listen to the BBC Radio 3 broadcast here, until 9 November

Arcana’s commentary

A very satisfying blend of poetic 19th century piano music from Nicholas Angelich. By beginning with a well-chosen selection of Chopin he set the scene perfectly for the drama that is Liszt’s Piano Sonata, one of the great works for the instrument and a real test of any pianist’s clout.

First, though, the Chopin – and two contrasting works that bear the title Nocturne. This was a form of music that was more or less invented by the composer John Field and taken up by Chopin, who found it an expressive means with a relatively free form. The first of the two (from 1:46 on the broadcast) was distracted in mood and more than a little downcast. Thoughtfully played, it gradually became more animated before calm was restored with the theme at 5:58. The second nocturne (7:43) had a more open sound, with an almost constant ripple of watery accompaniment.

Angelich’s performances of the Mazurkas showed just how different Chopin’s interpretation of this dance could be.

The last of the three (22:10) was the most dramatic, shifting tellingly from major to minor key at 23:08, and ending there from 25:31.

You could say that Liszt’s Piano Sonata is a one-act play in four scenes – or you could equally say that it is a four-act play. Such is its formal design that both approaches work across the course of half an hour, and it really is one of those pieces the listener can be totally absorbed in.

For that you need the right performance of course, and this one from Nicholas Angelich fitted the bill in every way. The drama should begin even before the first soft, low notes are sounded, and here the period of silence beforehand built the anticipation nicely.

Then once we were under way at 27:30 Angelich set out the musical arguments, allowing the first movement to build its tension through to the start of the faster music at 28:20. After this the music really got going, though it was around the 36:27 where the tempo was really flying, leading up to a grand statement of the slow theme from Angelich at 38:05, a great demonstration of both power and grace at the piano.

This performance really came into its own in the slow movement however (from 41:00), setting a restful and uncommonly sublime mood, until a warning at 48:05 where the music from the start revealed itself again. Other points of note to look out for in the recording are at 48:43 where the fugue begins.

Angelich made a real and clear sense of this tricky passage, beginning with the theme and continuing at 48:55 with the ‘answer’ – as fugues are wont to do. Then the pyrotechnics ensued, a showy movement but one that Angelich kept under control, especially at 52:13 and a triumphant return of the big, slow theme. The coda, from 57:38, was exquisitely paced, and the end, when it came, was soft and petered out to the silence with which the Sonata began.

A performance as impressive for its quiet moments as its loud ones – and a Liszt sonata packed full of incident, drama and romance the whole way through.

Further listening

Angelich has very helpfully recorded something of a ‘concept’ album that begins with the Liszt Sonata. This work was dedicated to Schumann, so we also get that composer’s set of eight fantasy pieces Kreisleriana, one of his very best piano works. Completing the album are two Etudes by Chopin, the subject of Schumann’s dedication.

by Ben Hogwood

BBC Symphony Orchestra & Martyn Brabbins – Havergal Brian’s ‘Sinfonia Tragica’ + Rubbra & Grøndahl

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Richard Whitehouse on the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Martyn Brabbins (above) in a concert recorded at the orchestra’s home in Maida Vale

Rubbra Symphony No.11 Op. 153 (1979)

Grøndahl Trombone Concerto (1924)

Brian Symphony No.6 Sinfonia tragica (1948)

Jörgen van Rijen (trombone), BBC Symphony Orchestra / Martyn Brabbins

Maida Vale Studios, Tuesday 11 October

The BBC Symphony continues to schedule some of its most distinctive concerts at its Maida Vale studios, and this afternoon saw Martyn Brabbins at the helm for a sequence of English and Danish music – all being pieces that are rarely, if ever, encountered in UK concert halls.

When Edmund Rubbra’s Eleventh Symphony received its premiere at the 1980 Proms, it must have felt appreciably more distant in aesthetic than it now does. Yet timelessness was central to the composer’s music; nowhere more than this 18-minute summation of both his symphonic and orchestral thinking. Its two continuous sections – a ‘moderate’ Andante, then a ‘calm and serene’ Adagio – offer only incremental expressive change, though the cumulative emotional impact as Rubbra evolves intervallic motifs via a seamless process of developing variation is undoubted; as also his fashioning of alternately diaphanous and granitic instrumentation. This latter was superbly rendered by the BBCSO, with Brabbins attentive to the music’s wealth of detail and its by no means untroubled emergence towards an eloquent plateau of tranquillity.

jorgen-van-rijenNext came a welcome revival for the Trombone Concerto by Launy Grøndahl, best known as a conductor (he premiered Robert Simpson’s First Symphony in Copenhagen) but who, on the basis of those pieces to have been recorded, evinced a modest while appealing compositional talent.

The outer movements of his concerto alternate between trenchant and lyrical ideas, the latter having a deftness to offset the hints of rhythmic stolidity elsewhere, but it is the central Andante – in its initial blues-inflected theme and resourceful deployment of piano – that most readily confirms its composer’s prowess. Here, as throughout the piece, Jörgen van Rijen (above) was unfailingly perceptive – underlining the extent to which Grøndahl, a violinist by training, had mastered the technical range of an instrument whose overall potential remains to be realized.

During the break, Van Rijn performed Slipstream by the German-born composer and metal guitarist Florian Magnus Maier (b1973) – its interplay of live playing and recorded repetition, via a loop-station operated by the musician, affording a fresh twist to Reich-style minimalism.

Brabbins has championed Havergal Brian extensively on disc; his live advocacy so far limited (!) to a revival of the Gothic symphony at the 2011 Proms. At just under 20 minutes, Sinfonia tragica comes near the opposite end (albeit conceptually) of his orchestral output. Envisaged as the prelude to an opera on J. M. Synge’s Deirdre of the Sorrows that was soon abandoned, it was not incorporated into his canon for two decades, yet its symphonic status is not hard to discern.

The BBCSO duly had the measure of its progress, as unpredictable as it is inevitable – from the fugitive gestures of its opening section, through the (surprisingly?) long-breathed melodic writing at its centre, to the eruptive activity and stoic processional of its final pages. A persuasive reading of a piece that ranks among its composer’s most immediate utterances.

Indeed, this was a persuasive concert overall – one that made light of the turgid accusations sometimes levelled at Rubbra, or the unplayability too often associated with Brian. Hopefully the BBCSO and Brabbins will continue their exploration of this rewarding music at future studio concerts.

This concert will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 during November – further details to follow

Remus Azoiţei and Eduard Stan play Enescu at the Romanian Cultural Institute

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azoiteistanduoofficial1Enescu Concerts Series 2016/17 – Remus Azoiţei (violin) and Eduard Stan (piano) Photo: Cristian Drilea

Romanian Cultural Institute, London; Thursday 6th October, 2016

Porumbescu Ballade (1880)

Enescu Impressions d’enfance, Op. 28 (1940)

Fauré Violin Sonata No. 1 in A, Op. 13 (1876)

Ravel Tzigane, M76 (1924)

Almost a decade on from its inception, the Enescu Concerts Series is central not only to the activities of the Romanian Cultural Institute but also performance and wider understanding of George Enescu’s music in the UK. This latest season got off to an impressive start with a recital given by Remus Azoiţei and Eduard Stan, whose traversal of Enescu’s music for violin and piano is the recorded benchmark for this crucial aspect of the composer’s output; not least in the case of the Impressions d’enfance that was Enescu’s last major work for the medium.

Completed at the outset of the Second World War, Impressions could be described as a suite were it not for the motivic rigour informing every aspect of these 10 vignettes of childhood not merely evoked but recreated by Enescu over the course of a piece no less cohesive than the violin sonatas preceding it. Such was the impression left by tonight’s hearing – from the deft stylization of Moldavian street music in The Fiddler, through the exquisitely detailed recollections of ‘things lived and dreamed’ that emerge as the music unfolds, to the Sunrise that makes an eloquent and emotionally heightened apotheosis. The often intuitive interplay between the two musicians was undoubted, while the spontaneity with which they rendered Enescu’s detailed expression markings confirmed their appreciation of this music’s essence.

The account of Fauré’s First Violin Sonata was hardly less impressive. As the composer’s breakthrough piece in terms of wider acclaim, it has retained its place in the repertoire and this duo assuredly had the measure of the opening Allegro’s darting flights of fancy then the Andante’s melodic easefulness over Fauré’s favoured barcarolle underpinning. The scherzo had wit and insouciance aplenty, and if the finale can feel just a shade contrived in context, the formal and expressive conviction with which it rounds off this work was never in doubt.

Either side of these works came showpieces with a vengeance. His operettas remain unknown outside Romania, though Ciprian Porumbescu (1853-83) lives on through the Ballade which emphasizes the ‘doina’ melodic style that became a mainstay of later Romanian composers. Enescu was doubtless familiar with this piece and also championed Ravel’s Tzigane which, however uncharacteristic of the French master it may seem, is a rhapsody firmly within the virtuoso tradition and given here with just the right combination of soulfulness and panache.

Azoiţei and Stan duly returned for an encore in the guise of the Bagatelle by Ion Scarlatescu (1872-1922), whose quick-fire virtuosity brought this recital to an engaging close. This new series of the Enescu Concerts could scarcely have been launched in more impressive fashion.

Richard Whitehouse

Remus Azoiţei’s and Eduard Stan’s recording of Enescu’s complete music for violin and piano is on Hänssler Classics

Meanwhile The Enescu Concert Series continues at the Romanian Cultural Institute on Thursday 3rd November, when pianist Raluca Stirbat plays Enescu‘s Prelude & Scherzo and Third Sonata, along with Franck‘s Prelude, Choral et Fugue and Liszt‘s First Mephisto Waltz. Further details can be found at the Romanian Cultural Institute website

Wigmore Mondays – Steven Isserlis & Olli Mustonen in Prokofiev, Schumann and Mustonen

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Steven Isserlis (cello), Olli Mustonen (piano) (both above)

Schumann 3 Romances, Op 94 (1849) (11 minutes); 3 pieces from Album für die Jugend, Op 68: Sheherazade; Winterszeit I & II (1848) (9 minutes)

Olli Mustonen Frei, aber einsam (UK premiere) (2014) (4 minutes)

Schumann arr. Isserlis Intermezzo from F.A.E sonata (1853) (3 minutes)

Prokofiev Cello Sonata in C, Op 119 (1949) (23 minutes)

Listen to the BBC Radio 3 broadcast here, until 2 November

Arcana’s commentary

Schumann is arguably Steven Isserlis‘ favourite composer. The clues are there in the enthusiasm with which the cellist talks about his music, the affection he gives to each of the melodic lines, and in this concert the construction of an imaginative suite of works for cello and piano, where his natural and extremely intimate lyrical side was to the fore.

Schumann did not write a fully-fledged sonata for cello and piano, but he did complete a number of pieces either directly for the combination or in a form that could be naturally arranged. Such is the case with the 3 Romances, published for oboe and piano as Schumann’s Op.94 but making a seamless transition to the cello.

In this performance the first Romance (from 1:47 on the BBC iPlayer) is a little doleful, the second (from 5:22) is notable for a relatively stormy central section, while the third (9:13) brings the instruments together in thoughtful unison.

After this Isserlis sat head bowed, listening intently as Olli Mustonen performed pieces from Album for the Young as though he and the listener were the only two people in the room. The first piece is Sheherazade (from 13:19), finding the level of intimacy that Schumann’s pieces for the young so consistently achieve, then from 17:10 we hear Winterszeit I and then the changing moods of Winterszeit II (19:01)

Mustonen himself then turns composer, with Frei, aber einsam (from 22:06), a piece for Isserlis alone written with the grace and intimacy of Schumann. It also has a bit of his childlike mischief when it gathers confidence – rather like a bird emerging from the nest – and starts flying along.

Mustonen uses the notes F-A-E as his starting point – which offers a strong like to the next work, heard from 26:46 we hear a tender performance of an arrangement of Schumann’s Romance for the collaborative FAE Sonata, a work written in tandem with Brahms (who contributed the famous Scherzo) and Albert Dietrich. It uses the notes ‘F-A-E’ in the simplest possible way – but also the most personal.

Following this attractive suite is the Cello Sonata of Prokofiev. Typically for the Russian composer this is full of good tunes, and in this performance (from 32:26) Isserlis and Mustonen bring them all to life in a vivacious performance. Isserlis had his way with the audience in the hall, too, with a few glances that sent up the more humourous moments of the second movement perfectly (from 42:46). There is music of romantic power, too, whether in the powerful climax of the first movement (at 41:11) or in the big finale (from 47:27) which sweeps impressively through its return to the main tune at 51:47.

A wonderfully affirming concert ends on a sad note with a tribute to the late conductor and violinist Sir Neville Marriner, the face of the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields, who passed away the day before at the age of 92. Isserlis chose the second of Schumann’s Five Pieces in Folk Style (from 56:42), and with Mustonen proceeded to give a touching and affectionate encore.

Further listening

For more music related to this concert, try the Schumann and the FAE playlist on Spotify below. This includes the whole of the collaborative FAE Sonata, the oboe and piano version of the 3 Fantasy Pieces in a wonderful recording from Heinz Holliger and Alfred Brendel and, to finish with, a rare recording of the Cello Sonata no.1 by Myaskovsky. He was the composer who raved about Prokofiev‘s Cello Sonata after its early performances – so here is his own moment in the sun:

by Ben Hogwood