Category Archives: In concert

In concert: Pavel Haas Quartet at Wigmore Hall – Suk, Martinů & Korngold

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Pavel Haas Quartet [Veronika Jarůšková, Marek Zwiebel (violins), Šimon Truszka (viola), Peter Jarůšek (cello)]

Suk Meditation on an old Bohemian Chorale (St Wenceslas) Op.35a (1914)
Martinů String Quartet no.2 (1925)
Korngold String Quartet no.3 in D major Op.34 (1944-45)

Wigmore Hall
Monday 12 June 2023 1pm

by Ben Hogwood

An unusual and intriguing program from the Pavel Haas Quartet contained music by two fellow Czech composers (Suk and Martinů) and one (Korngold) born in Moravia before moving to America.

The quartet began with a moving piece by Suk, his Meditation on an old Bohemian Chorale (St Wenceslas). This poignant pre-war utterance carried an air of deep profundity right from the first phrase of Simon Truszka’s viola, its elegiac tone enhanced by relative lack of vibrato. The air of solemnity carried throughout, though there was considerable strength in depth as the music grew in stature.

Though a Czech composer, Martinů spent a good deal of time overseas – largely out of necessity. By his early 30s he was in Paris, studying with Roussel, bringing a neoclassical language and tidiness to his music. The String Quartet no.2, though, is a curiously lopsided work, very front heavy with its first movement a combination of substantial slow introduction and quick section. There were close links to the St Wenceslas Chorale here, too, found in the solemn intonations of the Andante. This was the spiritual heart of the piece, dark and uncertain at times and contrasting greatly with the thoughtful but lightly coloured manner in which the quartet began. A resolute first movement found a mood that Martinů reprised in the closing Allegro, a propulsive dance number with a spring in its step. There was an undeniable French flavour to the music here, which the Pavel Haas Quartet brought forward, its elegance at odds on occasion with the rustic dance tunes.

There was tension in the final work, too, though this was undeniably the making of a mature composer. The String Quartet no.3 was Erich Korngold’s last published chamber piece, adjacent in publication to the Violin Concerto, with which it shares the same key of D major. The Pavel Haas Quartet gave a superb account of the piece, exploring its unusual musical language through music that would have presented considerable technical challenges.

The awkward but compelling violin melody in the first movement was brilliantly negotiated by Veronika Jaruskova, who conveyed its uncertainties through sweet tones and phrases. In spite of a convincing and full bodied outburst from all four players, the movement was dominated by this figure, which left a question in the mind. The Scherzo went some way to answering this, a black and white film scene easy to conjure up in the mind as the furtive darting of the main theme ensued. Again this was brilliantly played, as was the heart melting trio, its big tune (from the recently completed score to Between Two Worlds) full of tender longing and given appropriate glissando for expression.

The silvery slow movement flickered in the half light like a candle burning low, but with the flame essentially undimmed. The quartet’s sense of purpose was key here, with burnished lower string tones as viola and cello often combined, a notable cushion on which the searching violin melodies (using material from The Sea Wolf) could rest. Romance was in the air but although some of the music was borne of Hollywood, its intimate confines gave the music a deeply personal air. The atmosphere was heightened as a thundercloud hovered over the Wigmore Hall.

The motorised finale brought conviction and a strong sense of homecoming, not dissimilar to its equivalent movement in the Violin Concerto. Although emphatic in its resolution there were moments where the quartet moved into a different tempo or unexpectedly distant harmonies, Korngold momentarily distracted by edgier thoughts until his focus returned.

The Korngold string quartets have had something of a renaissance of late, with several new recorded versions and a marked increase in performance. On this very cultured evidence it would be no surprise if the Pavel Haas Quartet committed their version to disc soon – but it is to be hoped the other works will join it, for this was a fine concert indeed.

For more livestreamed concerts from the Wigmore Hall, click here

In concert – CBSO Centre Stage: Bobbie-Jane Gardner & Tchaikovsky

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Eugene Tzikindelean, Kirsty Lovie (violins), Adam Römer, aDavid BaMaung (violas), Eduardo Vassallo, aArthur Boutillier (cellos)

Gardner True Self (2023) [CBSO Centenary Commission: World Premiere]
Tchaikovsky String Sextet in D minor, Op. 70, ‘Souvenir de Florence’ (1890)a

CBSO Centre, Birmingham
Thursday 8 June 2023 (2pm)

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

This last of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s Centre Stage programmes for this season brought together the most heard work for the relatively limited medium of string sextet with a Centenary Commission for string quartet by a composer born and based in Birmingham.

Best known for her diverse arrangements of African-American classics taking in Odetta and Alicia Keys, Bobbie-Jane Gardner has also written extensively for classical ensembles; most recently Up on the Toes (the slippery stair dance) for brass quintet (recorded by Onyx Brass), and now True Self. Taking its cue from the Buddhist virtue of absolute happiness, this latter unfolds along an ‘innocence to experience’ trajectory prior to a new awakening – the whole piece founded on a motif whose ‘childlike’ innocence is pervaded by its own vulnerability.

Harmonically subtle and rhythmically agile, True Self received what sounded a committed reading from the CBSO players – notably in the opening section when the music stirs gently but insistently into life, and towards the close when it touches on a resolution not so much tentative as anticipatory. Maybe these nine minutes could yet prove the first stage of a large-scale work or series of pieces? At any rate, it left a thoughtful and affecting impression, and will hopefully be taken up by other quartets seeking a worthwhile addition to the repertoire.

Souvenir de Florence has never been out of its respective repertoire, and this performance gave it its due – not least an impetuous opening Allegro as made the most of Tchaikovsky’s frequently dense part-writing, with a thrillingly climactic lead-back to the reprise, followed by an Adagio whose emotional build-ups were never indulged or overbearing. Even so, the speculative central interlude (with its edgy sul ponticello exchanges) might have benefitted from a touch more ambivalence to set the expansive sections either side into greater relief.

There was no doubting the trenchancy of the Allegretto, outwardly an intermezzo but with a scherzo-like capriciousness across its trio, while the unabashed rhetoric of the final Allegro was finely controlled as this movement reached a close of suitably breathless exhilaration.

You can read all about the 2023/24 season for Centre Stage at the CBSO website. Click on the composer name for more information on Bobbie-Jane Gardner, or visit her Soundcloud page

In concert – Tier3 Trio play Tchaikovsky – In Memory Of A Hero @ St Giles’ Cripplegate, London

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Tier3 Trio [Daniel Grimwood (piano), Joseph Wolfe (violin), Jonathan Ayling (cello)]

Tchaikovsky Piano Trio in A minor Op.50 (1881-2)

St Giles’ Cripplegate, London
Friday 9 June 2023

Reviewed by Ben Hogwood

Summer Music in City Churches is a week-long festival in London’s Square Mile, bringing a wide range of classical music to the capital’s audiences in a format that brings fond reminiscences of the much-missed City of London Festival.

For their fifth year, the City Churches concerts run under the theme Legends & Heroes, inspiring creative programmes from solo piano (Mark Bebbington’s Liszt-themed hour) through to a centenary performance of Walton’s Façade and a welcome pairing of Haydn’s Nelson Mass and Bliss’s Pastoral: Lie Strewn The White Flocks, closing the festival on Thursday 15 June.

St Giles’ Cripplegate played host to the Goliath of piano trios, the Tier3 Trio bringing us Tchaikovsky’s sole but very substantial essay in the genre. The composer had tried his hand at the format within the confines of his Piano Concerto no.2, writing the slow movement almost exclusively for violin, cello and piano. Here, he seems to go the other way, writing music for trio that sounds orchestral both in concept and sound. The piece is a sizeable memorial, the subtitle ‘À la mémoire d’un grand artiste’ a recognition of Tchaikovsky’s great friend and mentor, pianist Nikolay Rubinstein.

The challenge facing Tier3 – named after the pandemic conditions in which they were formed – was to get their sound to fill the roomy acoustic of St Giles without it losing detail, and this they commendably achieved. The balance between the instruments was ideal, thanks to Daniel Grimwood’s sensitive and clear phrasing at the keyboard, as well as careful attention to dynamic detail from violinist Joseph Wolfe and cellist Jonathan Ayling.

This is such a passionate piece that it would be easy to peak too soon, but this interpretation was borne of experience and a clear love for Tchaikovsky’s music. The sizeable first movement, clocking in at over 20 minutes, was ideally paced and compelling throughout. A sense of sorrow pervaded the soulful opening, with a profound solo from Ayling, but gradually chinks of light began to show, especially in Grimwood’s heroic second theme, block chords pealing like bells.

Despite its orchestral outbursts the trio does contain music of great tenderness, and these were found in sweetly toned violin and doleful cello, set against arpeggiated chords from Grimwood’s piano – a telling episode before the return of the main theme, radiating great sorrow.

The second and third movements effectively merge into a huge finale, Tchaikovsky presenting a Theme with 11 variations and a vast coda of boundless invention and variety. Here they kept the audience on the edge of their seats.

Early on there was brilliant virtuosity from Grimwood, the tumbling variations of the third variation giving it a balletic quality. These led into a passionate cello solo from Ayling, immediately contrasted by celesta-like sonorities from the upper range of the piano. An appropriately heroic seventh variation led to a fugue of impressive clarity and dexterity, before the figurations of the ninth variation unexpectedly conjured the vision of flowers falling onto a coffin.

A quirky tenth variation and relatively serene counterpart led us to the coda, an emphatic and exuberant theme surging forward. Here the players were at the limit but rose to the occasion magnificently, emotions close to the surface, before the final twist when the music returned to the minor key. Here there were parallels to the funeral march from Chopin’s Piano Sonata no.2 before the music gradually and respectfully subsided to silence.

This was an extremely fine performance of a piece whose impact remains considerable, an outpouring keenly conveyed to the St. Giles’ audience by players relishing the experience. As an encore Tier3 made a most imaginative and suitable choice, giving us a the fourth of Widor’s short Pieces en Trio. Titled Sérénade, it was a charming complement to the sunshine outside.

You can read more about Summer Music In City Churches at the festival website – and click on the artist name to read more about Tier3 Trio.

Online Concert: Orsino Ensemble at Wigmore Hall – Britten, Reicha & Janáček

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Orsino Ensemble [Adam Walker (flute), Nicholas Daniel (oboe), Matthew Hunt (clarinet), Amy Harman (bassoon), Alec Frank-Gemmill (horn), Peter Sparks (bass clarinet)]

Britten Movement for wind sextet (1930)
Reicha Wind Quintet in E flat major Op.88/2 (1811)
Janáček Mládí (1924)

Wigmore Hall, Monday 5 June 2023 1pm

by Ben Hogwood

This attractive programme of works for wind ensemble began with a rarity.

Benjamin Britten seldom wrote for wind – a shame, since his writing for the instrumental family as soloists or in an orchestral context is remarkably assured. The Movement for Wind Sextet performed here by the Orsino Ensemble is thought to have been a response to Janáček’s Mládí – and is scored for the same forces. This account was shady and elusive to begin with, reflecting its elusive melodic and harmonic figures. There was beautiful control from Nicholas Daniel’s oboe solo before a quicker section featured some lovely ‘burbling’ sounds from the clarinets, oboe and flute pushing for the higher reaches. Ultimately this piece remains beyond reach, an intriguing if slightly frustrating sign of what might have been had Britten committed more wholeheartedly to the wind ensemble.

It made a welcome change to hear the music of Anton Reicha. Born in Bohemia in 1770, Reicha – a flautist – soon found himself leading the court orchestra in Bonn, where his musicians included a certain viola player named Beethoven. Moving on to Paris, Reicha taught at the Conservatoire, where his pupils included Berlioz, Franck and Liszt. In spite of these big-name links, his own music is not heard as often as it should be. He did however write prolifically for wind ensemble, completing 24 accomplished quintets, which are among his most-heard compositions.

The Wind Quintet in E flat major is a particularly attractive example, and received the ideal performance here. The Orsino Ensemble began with a brightly voiced Lento, with the added plus of Amy Harman’s characterful bassoon in the lower register as the ensuing Allegro began. This provided the impetus for the ensemble to exchange attractive melodies, enjoying the beautiful sonorities a wind ensemble can create. The Menuetto had a lovely lilt to its triple time, with busy inner parts to support the genial melody. The third movement also had a winsome lilt to its rhythmic profile, albeit a good deal slower – and with lovely operatic solos from oboe and clarinet. The perky last movement added humour to the mix, with some thoroughly enjoyable interplay, delivered here with virtuosity and style.

Janáček’s sound world is immediately different to those around it – as is the case with the intriguing wind sextet Mladi. Written as a ‘memoir of youth’, and composed around the same time as his masterpiece The Cunning Little Vixen, the work looks back to a childhood in Hukvaldy. Premiered in Brno in 1924, it was first performed in Britain – at the Wigmore Hall in front of the composer – in 1926.

The conflicting accounts of youth, refracted through the mind of a 70 year-old composer, are fascinating to the ear, with joyful moments tempered by unexpected, melancholic asides. There is however an underlying positivity running through the music.

The Orsino Ensemble enjoyed the raucous folk-based tunes along with the doleful asides that are such a characteristic of his work. The rich shades of colour were ideally exploited. Shadows lengthened over the second movement, depicting the composer and his mother parting at a train station. The third movement had the vigour of youth, with some sparky themes, while there was a motoric element to the last theme, generated by the horn – before more complementing aspects of joy and melancholy.

This was a very fine concert, with an encore dedicated to the recently passed Kaija Saariaho. Nicholas Daniel introduced the second of Oliver Knussen’s 3 fantasies for wind quintet, preceded by the poem How Sweet To Be A Cloud, part of the composer’s Hums and Songs of Winnie-the-Pooh. The sonorities we heard here were unexpectedly true to Saariaho’s sound world, and formed a characteristically striking memorial.

For more livestreamed concerts from the Wigmore Hall, click here

In concert – Benjamin Grosvenor, CBSO / Riccardo Minasi: Schubert, Chopin & Mozart

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Benjamin Grosvenor (piano), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Riccardo Minasi

Schubert Overture in C major ‘In the Italian style’ D591 (1817)
Chopin Piano Concerto no.2 in F minor Op.21 (1830)
Mozart Symphony no.41 in C major K551 ‘Jupiter’ (1788)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Thursday 1 June 2023 (2.15pm)

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

It is not often these days to have a whole concert of music from the late Classical and early Romantic eras, but that was just what the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra provided this afternoon under the disciplined as well as immensely assured direction of Riccardo Minasi.

There was no mistaking the inherent classicism of Chopin’s Second (sic) Piano Concerto – not least the simmering impetus in its opening Maestoso where, after a forthright tutti, Benjamin Grosvenor rendered those main melodies with requisite poise, and the emotional eddying of its development in direct contrast to the terseness of its coda. Most memorable was a Larghetto of melting eloquence but also, in its central episode, a volatility only gradually dispelled. Here, and in the final Allegro, the almost concertante role allotted to bassoon was characterfully taken by Nikolaj Henriques – as were those brass fanfares and col legno writing for strings (was this really Chopin’s idea?) which see the latter movement on its way to a spirited close. A limpid take on Chopin’s Nocturne in C sharp minor from the same year made for an appropriate encore.

Mozart symphonies rarely conclude a programme nowadays, yet the last four are ideal for this purpose and none more than the Forty-First – by some distance the weightiest and the most physical such work prior to Beethoven’s Eroica. This was the highlight of Minasi’s recording of the final triptych (Harmonia Mundi), with the opening Allegro likewise a statement of intent in its rhythmic tensility and general bravura, though its more ambivalent asides were never downplayed. Less distinctive melodically than its two predecessors, the Andante is memorable for its expressive understatement and a subtlety – with wind and strings enfolded into a textural continuity – that accentuates its pathos. Nor was there any lack of suavity in the Menuetto, its outer sections finding ideal contrast with a trio whose pert expectancy was delectably pointed.

The final Allegro crowns this work in every respect and, here again, Minasi did not disappoint. Not that there any sense of merely ‘going through the motions’ with his inclusion of first- and second-half repeats, each of which brought added intensity to what had gone before as well as enabling the wealth of contrapuntal detail to come through as it too rarely does. For its part the CBSO more than rose to the challenge, not least in a coda whose methodical combining of this movement’s themes makes possible an apotheosis such as felt truly visceral in its affirmation.

Schubert evidently had other preoccupations when essaying his two overtures ‘in the Italian style’, both of which have fallen out of the repertoire this past half-century but which make for attractive and appealing curtain-raisers. Especially that in C major with its teasingly portentous introduction, jocular and lilting main themes, then coda which sees it through to an effervescent close. The CBSO players (woodwind in particular) audibly enjoyed making its acquaintance, and it would be a real pity were such pieces relegated to the lower reaches of today’s playlists.

Hopefully a performance such as that by Minasi will make this just a little less likely. One looks forward to his future collaboration with this orchestra, which returns next Wednesday with its chief conductor Kazuki Yamada in a programme featuring Holst, Beethoven and Rachmaninoff.

You can read all about the 2022/23 season and book tickets at the CBSO website. Click on the artist names for more information on Riccardo Minasi and Benjamin Grosvenor