Category Archives: Small scale

In concert – Steven Isserlis and Friends – Fauré at the Wigmore Hall (1)

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Steven Isserlis (cello), Joshua Bell, Irène Duval (violins), Blythe Teh Engstroem (viola), Jeremy Denk, Connie Shih (pianos)

Fauré Violin Sonata no.2 in E minor Op.108 (1916-7)
Saint-Saëns Piano Trio no.1 in F major Op.18 (1863)
Nadia Boulanger 3 pièces for cello and piano (1914)
Fauré Piano Quartet no.1 in C minor Op.15 (1876-9, rev. 1883)

Wigmore Hall, London
Friday 1 November 2024

Reviewed from the online stream by Ben Hogwood Photo (c) Satoshi Aoyagi

As the saying goes, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. And so it was that this five-part festival at the Wigmore Hall, two years in the planning to mark 100 years since the death of Gabriel Fauré, was compromised by bad fortune that had violinist Joshua Bell suffering from sickness, unable to perform the first work on the programme.

Yet, as cellist and curator Steven Isserlis announced from the platform, there was a silver lining, thanks to Irène Duval – who stepped in to head the Violin Sonata no.2, programmed instead of its predecessor. Thus we heard the first chamber work of the French composer’s celebrated late period, dating from the middle of the First World War, when Fauré had lost his hearing and his son Philippe had been sent to the frontline. Not surprisingly the sonata is invested with concentrated feeling, brought straight to the surface by Duval’s searching tone and Connie Shih’s assertive piano, both fully inside the music. The first movement found brief consolation in its third principal theme, though this was a brief respite in music of passionate and occasionally fraught discourse. The second movement was initially bittersweet in these hands but more obvious serenity was achieved in the long melody of the second theme, beautifully phrased by Duval. The finale, where Fauré finds positivity in the face of his troubles, was sunlit in these hands, with a thoroughly convincing surge to the finish.

Rewinding just over 50 years, we heard music from Fauré’s teacher and long time friend Saint-Saëns – his first major chamber work. The Piano Trio no.1 is full of charm and good humour, and the trio of Shih, Duval and Isserlis enjoyed the cross rhythms of the first movement. Shih met the demands of the composer’s inevitably tricky piano part head on, with some sparkling passages in the right hand. The captivating second movement took us outside, evoking the French mountain regions with a memorable folk-derived theme, recounted by the strings in a solemn unison. Contrasting with this was the light-footed Scherzo, the players enjoying Saint-Saëns’ playful syncopations, and the confident finale, surging forward with a conviction confirming the composer would have many more such moments in his compositional career. The players’ enjoyment was abundantly clear.

After the interval came music from Fauré’s pupil Nadia Boulanger, usually renowned as a teacher but increasingly recognised as an accomplished composer. The 3 Pièces for cello and piano fully deserve their more frequent airings in concert halls today, for they are brilliantly written and full of originality. Isserlis enjoyed the singing high register of the Modéré, its melody gradually descending to ground like a butterfly. The two players enjoyed the canon of the second piece before the bold outlines of the quickstep third, a little prophetic of Debussy’s Cello Sonata a year later. Isserlis and Shih were brilliant throughout.

The Piano Quartet no.1 in C minor is one of Fauré’s (above) best-loved works, though it experienced a turbulent composition period in the wake of the dissolution of the composer’s engagement. This is however rarely evident in the music, constructed with elegance and control – though there is plenty of room for expression, as the four players found here.

The first principles of chamber music were on show from the start – for this quartet were playing as one, very much a team rather than a collection of soloists. Such a quality is of great importance in Fauré, his music often containing long and thrilling melodies such as that found at the outset, beautifully played.

Joshua Bell showed commendable energy in spite of his ill health, his sweeter violin tone complemented by Jeremy Denk’s authoritative piano playing, the burnished tone of Blythe Teh Engstroem’s viola and Isserlis’ cello, with lovingly phrased melodies as part of the all-important counterpoint. The syncopations of the second movement, one of Fauré’s calling cards, were deftly handled by the trio and brilliantly led by Denk, the players watching each other closely. Meanwhile the Adagio found time for contemplation, laden with sadness but with an enduring brightness led by Bell’s brighter tone.

The finale found renewed strength in its assertive unison themes, winning through to a thrilling and jubilant finish in spite of the occasional shadow cast in the quieter passages. The closing flourish put the seal on a wonderful first concert which bodes well for the series, providing – as Isserlis said – that the players stay in good health. Should they do so a whole series of treats await.

For more information on the Fauré series, visit the Wigmore Hall website – while you can also read Arcana’s interview with Steven Isserlis about the French composer

Published post no.2,350 – Saturday 2 November 2024

In concert – Quatuor Danel: Shostakovich & Weinberg #6 @ Wigmore Hall

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Quatuor Danel [Marc Danel & Gilles Millet (violins), Vlad Bogdanas (viola), Yovan Markovitch (cello)]

Weinberg String Quartet no.9 in F# minor Op.80 (1963)
Weinberg String Quartet no.10 in A minor Op.85 (1964)
Shostakovich String Quartet no.9 in E flat major Op.117 (1964)

Wigmore Hall, London
Wednesday 16 October 2024

by Richard Whitehouse Photo (c) Marco Borggreve

Quatuor Danel reached the effective mid-point of its Shostakovich and Weinberg cycle with this programme featuring two of the latter composer’s lesser if still absorbing string quartets alongside one from the former that has come belatedly to be held among his most revealing.

Coming soon after his Fifth Symphony (arguably the finest of this cycle), the Ninth Quartet finds Weinberg at something of a stylistic crossroads with those essentials of his subsequent phase almost within reach. It opens with an Allegro which is among his most visceral in any medium – the Danel (rightly) giving full rein to a seething energy, barely held in check, then to which the Allegretto functions as a shock absorber given its intermezzo-like speculations. The ensuing Andante ventures further towards that secretive and often confessional intimacy central to its composer’s thinking henceforth, though here its introspection is mitigated by a finale which unfolds almost as a synthesis of what went before – the Danel duly mindful of a gradual momentum that does not bring resolution as evade the issue with a nonchalant shrug.

Barely a year on, the Tenth Quartet has the same four-movement and 25-minute dimensions but is otherwise a very different proposition. Here the initial movement is an Adagio whose rhetorical fervency has turned in on itself well before the end, leaving an Allegro to provide oblique continuity with its simmering intensity that never quite risks outright confrontation. If the Adagio that follows promises such, its gestures prove too brittle and short-winded to sustain a more expansive movement – the intensity soon making way for a final Allegretto that sounds intent on avoiding closure with its succession of fugitive interactions, elegantly articulated here, whose lilting gait ultimately alights on the tardiest of cadences. As with its predecessor, any bringing of the work emotionally full circle is conspicuous by its absence.

Now that a first movement has been realized and performed, it is clear what Shostakovich had intended as his Ninth Quartet would have been very different from what emerged – the trenchant while slightly foursquare manner of that earlier effort replaced by the undulating lyricism of a Moderato as methodically sets out all those salient motifs for what follows. Its equivocation was ideally conveyed here – no less than the elegiac character of its successor, then a central movement of a liveliness increasingly waylaid by questioning and self-doubt.

From here, a second Adagio veers between inward musing and explosive pizzicato outbursts as provoked impassioned responses. The emotional ante duly upped, the final Allegro surges forth with new-found energy and purpose – taking in a truculent, folk-tinged episode before breaking off for a return to those pizzicato exchanges. Performances of this work often lose focus at this juncture, but the Danel brooked no compromise as the movement fairly hurtled to a close of manic defiance in what was a notable instance of music ‘playing’ its musicians.

Quite a performance with which to end this latest instalment of the Danel’s dual odyssey but, as has become usual, an encore was forthcoming: the Polka from the ballet The Golden Age affording a sardonic postlude with the insouciance of an earlier, not necessarily ‘golden’ age.

You can hear the music from the concert below, in recordings made by Quatuor Danel -including their most recent cycle of the Shostakovich quartets on Accentus:

For more information on the next concert in the series, visit the Wigmore Hall website. You can click on the names for more on composer Mieczysław Weinberg and Quatuor Danel themselves.

Published post no.2,236 – Saturday 19 October 2024

In Concert – Alina Ibragimova & Cédric Tiberghien @ Wigmore Hall: Janáček, Enescu, Barry & Beethoven

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Alina Ibragimova (violin), Cédric Tiberghien (piano)

Janáček Violin Sonata in G sharp minor JW VII/7 (1913-15, rev. 1916-22)
Enescu Violin Sonata no.3 in A minor Op.25 ‘Dans le caractère populaire roumain’ (1926)
Barry Triorchic Blues (1990, rev. 1992)
Beethoven Violin Sonata no.9 in A major Op.47 ‘Kreutzer’ (1802-03)

Wigmore Hall, London
Saturday 28 September 2024

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

The duo of Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien has offered some memorable recitals at Wigmore Hall during the past few seasons, with this evening’s typically diverse programme ranging over almost two centuries of compositions for the combination of violin and piano.

A first half of complementary opposites began with the Violin Sonata by Janáček. Ensuring cohesion across its four highly contrasted movements is no easy task, but the present artists succeeded admirably in this respect. Thus, the opening Con moto had an edgy ambivalence which was allayed in the Ballada – its relative repose and expressive warmth infused with a nostalgia as likely reflects the composer’s youth (and may indeed derive from one of those long-lost sonatas written while studying in Leipzig and Vienna 35 years earlier). Despite its marking, the Allegretto is a tensile scherzo whose frequently combative interplay was much in evidence here; the final Adagio then pivoting between stark plangency and a heightened eloquence which subsided into an ending whose muted regret was unmistakably to the fore.

Whatever the conceptual or aesthetic gulf between them, Enescu’s Third Sonata followed on with some inevitability. This was inspired by and recreates without quoting traditional music, as its subtitle duly indicates, and Ibragimova was alive to the musing inwardness of an initial Moderato whose ‘malinconico’ consistently undercuts any formal or expressive resolution up to a close where the songful and dance-like themes disperse into silence. The highlight was a central Andante of sustained though unforced intensity, its improvisatory aspect a stern test of coordination violinist and pianist met head-on. Almost as compelling, the final Allegro lacked a degree of inevitability in its unfolding – Tiberghien’s superbly articulated pianism less than implacable at the close, for all that Ibragimova conveyed its ominous ecstasy in full measure.

Beginning life as a test-piece for solo piano and adapted for numerous media, Triorchic Blues is Gerald Barry at his most uninhibited and would have made an ideal encore in this context – but its ever more scintillating opposition of instruments was not out of place after the interval.

This second half ended with the grandest of Beethoven’s violin sonatas, its ‘Kreutzer’ subtitle misleading yet indicative of this music’s inherent virtuosity. Ibragimova and Tiberghien made an impressive cycle of these works for the Wigmore’s own label, so it was surprising to find them at slightly below their best here. Not in the central Andante con variazioni, its judicious fusion of slow movement and scherzo rendered with unfailing poise and an acute sense of the profundity drawn out of so unassuming a theme. Yet, after its suitably arresting introduction, the first movement lacked drama – the duo playing down its rhetoric not least in a less than impulsive coda. The relentless tarantella-rhythm that underpins the finale felt similarly reined in with, again, too little of an emotional frisson as this music vividly reinforces the home-key.

What was never in doubt was their quality of playing individually and collectively, making one anticipate future recitals by these artists which will hopefully find them exploring more of that extraordinary corpus of music for violin and piano of the early and mid-20th century.

For more on the Autumn season visit the Wigmore Hall website. For more on the artists, click on the names Alina Ibragimova (violin), Cédric Tiberghien (piano), and click here for more on composer Gerald Barry

Published post no.2,316 – Sunday 22 September 2024

In Concert – PRS Presents – Classical Edition: Manchester Collective @ LSO St Luke’s

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Manchester Collective [names not given in the programme but assumed to be Rakhi Singh (violin, director), Jonathan Martindale (violin), Alex Mitchell (viola), Christian Elliott (cello)]

Mason Muttos from Sardinian Songbook
Finnis String Quartet no.2
Wallen Five Postcards
Campbell 3AM
Mason Eki Attar from Tuvan Songbook
Tabakova Insight
Hamilton In Beautiful May
Glass String Quartet no.4 ‘Buczak’ (2nd movement)
Meredith Tuggemo

Wigmore Hall, London
Wednesday 25 September 2024

Reviewed by Ben Hogwood

This inspiring concert, the first in a series presented by the enterprising team at the Performing Rights Society (PRS), revealed the innovation afoot even in the most traditional classical music forms. The string quartet has been an established medium for close on 300 years, but the four players assembled by the Manchester Collective showed where future possibilities lie.

Christian Mason’s work reproduces throat singing for the medium, often with vocal contributions from the players themselves – and the Collective’s performances of Muttos and Eki Attar were gripping and rhythmically vital.

Grabbing the attention in a very different way were quieter works by Edmund Finnis and Jocelyn Campbell. The former’s String Quartet no.2 inhabited the rarefied atmosphere that Finnis seems able to conjure at will, with interlocking phrases and melodies given an unexpectedly tender accent. The Manchester Collective played with beautiful sonority, enhanced by microphones – which in the case of Jocelyn Campbell’s 3AM was an asset, portraying the streets of London in the hour of the day where they are at their most deserted. The slights of hand, the nocturnal rustlings, the shadows we couldn’t quite make out – all were beautifully rendered and sculpted by a composer whose painting in sound is uncommonly vivid.

This was before the elephant in the room – Andrew Hamilton’s In Beautiful May – was dealt with. A piece for solo violin and electronics, it was delivered with great virtuosity by Rakhi Singh, who warned us ahead of the performance that it would be a ‘marmite’ piece. She was absolutely right, playing music that was definitely not for everyone’s enjoyment – and certainly not this reviewer. Hamilton’s collage of jarring violin phrases and pop song snippets meant we jumped between Singh and snatches of Shalamar’s I Can Make You Feel Good, Take That’s Back For Good and Will Young’s Evergreen. The short attention span of the music was infuriating, its cut and paste approach chopping the music into small bits and spitting it against an unforgiving wall. Yet personal feelings should be qualified, as Hamilton’s piece got one of the strongest reactions of the night!

Perhaps surprisingly the second movement from Philip Glass’s String Quartet no.4, Buczak, provided some much-needed balm, with an elegance not normally associated with the American composer. The Manchester Collective gave a beautiful legato performance allowing time for reflection.

Meanwhile Dobrinka Tabakova’s Insight made a strong impression, its folk melodies and rhythms winningly played and melded into an extremely convincing whole, offering further proof of the Bulgarian composer’s assured and compelling writing for strings in particular.

Errollyn Wallen’s Five Postcards, for violin and viola, were given a brilliant performance by Singh and Alex Mitchell. These were a lot of fun, ranging from bluesy musical chats to intimate asides, and a reminder that the combination of violin and viola – used so effectively by Mozart but surprisingly few composers since – is well worth revisiting.

Finishing the concert was Tuggemo by Anna Meredith, using the old English word for a swarm of birds or flies. It made for a suitably hedonistic note on which to finish the concert, with its driving four to the floor beat and jagged quartet riffing. While meant to be loud, the beat swamped the quartet on this occasion, its ultimate destination the middle of a dancefloor before the piece broke off and left us hanging.

This was, however, another example of Manchester Collective’s remarkable virtuosity and further evidence of their clever programming. Both elements combined to make this a memorable and highly stimulating concert.

Published post no.2,313 – 26 September 2024

In Concert – Leila Josefowicz & John Novacek @ Wigmore Hall: Debussy, Szymanowski, Bray & Stravinsky

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Leila Josefowicz (violin, above), John Novacek (piano, below)

Debussy Violin Sonata in G minor L140 (1916-17)
Szymanowski 3 Myths Op.30 (1915)
Bray Mriya (2023) [Wigmore Hall commission: World premiere]
Stravinsky Divertimento from Le Baiser de la fée (1928, arr. 1934, rev. 1949)

Wigmore Hall, London
Saturday 21 September 2024

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

Long among the more adventurous violinists from her generation, this latest Wigmore recital found Leila Josefowicz focussing on music traversing the boundary between Impressionism and neo-Classicism, together with a recent piece such as conveyed a meaningful relevance.

It might not be such a good idea to launch a recital with Debussy’s Violin Sonata, as this last and conceptually most fluid of its composer’s late chamber works is essentially a culmination rather than starting-point. Having rather harried its opening Allegro, Josefowicz brought keen imagination to its Intermède which none the less lacked that fantasy and lightness intended. Most convincing was its finale, the headlong succession of ideas deftly propelled to a payoff not merely decisive but of all-round conclusiveness – whatever Debussy may have intended.

Whereas this piece was admired but initially found relatively few exponents, Szymanowski’s Myths was early recognized as a milestone in its medium and has latterly regained that initial eminence. Josefowicz duly recognized these innovative qualities with an impulsive yet never wayward take on La fontaine d’Arethuse, its capriciousness finding an ideal complement in the simmering emotion and alluring poise of Narcisse – self-aware rather self-regarding as to expression – or increasingly recalcitrant playfulness of Dryades et Pan with its teasingly delayed – even almost avoided – close. Just occasionally, Josefowicz’s snatching at a rhythmic gesture denied the music its high-flown eloquence but, overall, this proved a perceptive and involving account where her interaction with John Novacek’s attentive pianism was absolute.

Those who hear the Szymanowski as a ‘sonata malgré-lui’ might feel likewise about Mriya by Charlotte Bray, which tonight had its first hearing. Its Ukrainian title variously implying ‘dream, vision, ambition and vow’, this four-movement work charted a course of terror but also resolve. The first of these infused its disparate while distinctive ideas with a momentum as merged directly into the feline capering of its successor; after which, a slower movement offered a measure of sustained if hardly serene calm, before the finale once again marshalled its disjunct gestures towards a culmination which was pointedly withheld. A symbol, perhaps, of the Ukrainian people’s struggle as is far from reaching closure let alone victory? Whatever the case, this is absorbing and deeply felt music that received a suitably committed response.

From here to Stravinsky’s Divertimento from The Fairy’s Kiss was some conceptual leap. One of several such adaptations its composer made during its career as a duo-recitalist with Samuel Dushkin, this takes in most of the ballet’s initial two-thirds – the Sinfonia by turns pensive and restive, while the rumbustious Danses suisses was irresistibly despatched. The Scherzo exuded a capering charm and the Pas de Deux moved effortlessly from its soulful Adagio, via nimble Variation, to an initially dextrous then increasingly uproarious Coda.

This recital ended in a wholly different aesthetic world from which it began, but Josefowicz’s acuity could not be gainsaid. ‘Uproarious’ was also the watchword of the encore – Novacek’s Intoxication Rag, arranged by Itzhak Perlman no less and rendered with appropriate abandon.

For more on the Autumn season visit the Wigmore Hall website – and for more on the artists, click on the names Leila Josefowicz and John Novacek

Published post no.2,309 – Sunday 22 September 2024