Online Concert: Nash Ensemble @ Wigmore Hall – Mozart & Fauré

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Nash Ensemble [Alasdair Beatson (piano), Corey Cerovsek, Michael Gurevich (violins), Rachel Roberts (viola), Adrian Brendel (cello)]

Mozart Piano Concerto no.14 in E flat major K449 (1784)
Fauré Piano Quartet no.1 in C minor Op.15 (1876-9, rev. 1883)

Wigmore Hall, Monday 17 April 2023 1pm

by Ben Hogwood

Mozart and Fauré make a good concert match, and it was a nice touch by the Nash Ensemble to choose one of the piano concertos with which to start this BBC Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert

Although Mozart wrote two piano quartets, in 1785 and 1786, he was in the middle of a white-hot streak of creativity between where he wrote a dozen piano concertos in two years. This remarkable period of musical fluency began with the Piano Concerto no.14 in E flat major, which as it happens is highly suitable for the piano quartet combination of piano, violin, viola and cello. To this combination Mozart added one more violin, securing a highly successful domestic first performance in 1784.

The Nash Ensemble players clearly enjoyed this authentic showing. Alasdair Beatson took the solo role by balancing flair and sensitivity, while the strings ensured this attractive work was off to an airy start. That said, they weren’t afraid to dig in when the music turned towards the darker side, and the key of C minor, but E flat won out with its purely positive energy, especially when Mozart’s trill-like figure was introduced. Beatson’s cadenza was beautifully judged, virtuosic but lyrical too.

A softly rendered second movement brought through the piano’s florid figurations but also enjoyed the sweet, still motion of the strings. The Wigmore Hall seemed sunnier for the group’s approach, as it did in the bright and breezy third movement, with sparkling exchanges and a thoroughly enjoyable triple time section which the players clearly relished. This was a fine performance, fulfilling the first principles of chamber music.

Some of Fauré’s very best music can be found in his chamber works, a remarkably consistent body of work running through his career from the First Violin Sonata of 1876 to the String Quartet of 1924. The two piano quartets sit towards the top of this list, the first an outpouring of feeling in the wake of his broken engagement with Marianna Viardot.

The Nash Ensemble communicated this intensity from the passionate swell of the first melody, but there was resolve and determination too, even in Corey Cerovsek’s bittersweet violin solo during the flowing central section. This was where we felt the unique shafts of sunlight that Fauré throws into even the stormiest fast movements, and the harmonic sleight of hand that would be a standout feature of his music.

The second movement Scherzo showed off another of the composer’s traits, the ability to write light-hearted music with long phrases and unusual syncopations. The sleights of hand here were most enjoyable, with purity of tone from the strings and a dextrous piano part from Beatson.

Yet it was the slow movement that contained the emotional heart of the performance, Beatson listening attentively to the playing of his colleagues, Adrian Brendel‘s yearning cello phrase taken up in unison by the strings. Under the twinkling of Beatson’s right hand those strings spoke deeply and longingly.

Fauré had trouble with the finale, revising it after some less than positive feedback from his friends. This 1884 revision, however, turns its thoughts to the future with music of renewed resolve, another characteristically broad phrase looking outwards from the strings over typically tricky piano figures. Needless to say, the Nash Ensemble harnessed all these qualities, capping a memorable performance.

For more livestreamed concerts from the Wigmore Hall, click here

Switched On – James Holden: Imagine This Is A High Dimensional Space Of All Possibilities (Border Community)

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by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

Four albums down, James Holden is showing another side to his artistry. Holden has always been closely associated with electronic music, but this instalment finds him looking to recreate what rave music was about in the early 1990s.

To do that he has in tandem a fleet of classic analogue synthesizers, and has personalized his approach with recordings of the young Holden on violin and piano.

What’s the music like?

The wordy title is a homage both to rave classics of the time but also brings to mind early Pink Floyd or 1970s Krautrock excursions. All are present in Holden’s music, though he keeps well away from derivative writing, instead bringing through riffs that are fresh, vital and energetic.

It is a big but wholly enjoyable album, one that goes back to first principles in making music for enjoyment, pure and simple. You Are In A Clearing is evidence of that, referring to some of the work Steve Hillage has done with System 7. Like Hillage, Holden gets his synths to talk, sometimes with dolphin-like keening noises, other times with soaring arpeggios.

The young Holden gets his look-in on Contains Multitudes, a longer expression of musical warmth where the violin and piano recordings complement the synths. Worlds Collide Mountains Form also uses the violin, though here it acts of a drone with a dubby bass for company. Common Land occupies similar ground, returning to the early Ibiza triumphs of 808 State for inspiration.

Does it all work?

It does. It may be a long album, but the high dimensional space does indeed realise all possibilities.

Is it recommended?

Enthusiastically. This is a joyous homage not just to early 1990s rave but also the more fantastical end of 1970s Krautrock – and yet James Holden makes the album even more than a sum of those parts. A wonderful and essential album that somehow works.

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In concert – Behzod Abduraimov, CBSO / François Leleux – Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto no.2; Brahms: Serenade no.1 & Academic Festival Overture

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Behzod Abduraimov (piano, above), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / François Leleux (below)

Brahms Academic Festival Overture Op. 80 (1880)
Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto no.2 in C minor Op.18 (1900-1901)
Brahms Serenade no.1 in D major Op.11 (1858-9)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Thursday 13 April 2023

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

Its first concert since returning from a European tour saw the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in a programme which tellingly placed Rachmaninoff’s most famous composition within the context of less often heard or uncharacteristically (?) humorous pieces by Brahms.

Cinematic and other extra-musical associations often obscure the purely musical qualities of Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto, so credit to the Uzbek pianist Behzod Abduraimov for duly underlining these in a reading full of incident and unfailingly cohesive. Among the former might be mentioned the limpid elegance of the first movement’s second theme and its improvisatory continuation before the coda, bewitching transition from the Adagio’s central scherzo back to the main melody, and those evocative interludes after the finale’s ‘big tune’ – this latter returning to cap the whole work in unforced ardour. Integration between piano and orchestra was unfailing, as too the emotional immediacy of the CBSO’s response, and who could question Abduraimov’s decision not to provide an encore after so fine a performance.

Rachmaninoff and Brahms seldom complement each other in concert, though the Academic Festival Overture provided an ideal curtain-raiser. Typically more than a potpourri of student songs (drinking or otherwise), the cunningly fashioned sonata design was deftly unfolded by François Leleux so that its portentous and uproarious elements were held in perfect accord. The percussion audibly relished its rare outing in a Brahms score, not least at the close when the hymn-like ‘Gaudeamus igitur’ emerges to see this piece through to its exhilarating close.

Following the interval, a relatively infrequent hearing for Brahms’s First Serenade. Originally planned for chamber ensemble and later rescored for late-Classical forces (with four horns), its equivocally symphonic ambitions and proportions were inevitably overshadowed by what Brahms went on to achieve, but its musical attractions are many and Leleux had its measure. Not least during an initial Allegro, its dextrous horn theme setting the tone for a movement whose impetus was engagingly maintained through to the touching insouciance of its coda.

Omitting repeats in this movement’s exposition and the first half of the Scherzo – which latter anticipates Brahms’s intermezzos in its speculative aura and understated progress – ensured a viable balance with the Adagio. A pre-echo of slow movements to come, the observance of its ‘non troppo’ marking prevented any loss of expressive focus across the methodically evolving whole. If the remaining movements are closer conceptually to serenade rather than symphony, Leleux gave them their due – whether the twin Menuettos with their enticing contrast between woodwind and strings, a second and more rhythmic Scherzo with rustic horn writing here and in the trio, then the final Rondo in which Brahms looks back to those comparable movements from early Beethoven and Schubert with a lack of inhibition he was only rarely to recapture.

Such was the effect of an account that received an enthusiastic response from the near-capacity house. The CBSO strings take the stage next Saturday for a coupling of Schubert arranged by Mahler and Vivaldi interspersed with Piazolla, directed by their leader Eugene Tzikindelean.

You can read all about the 2022/23 season and book tickets at the CBSO website. Click on the artist names for more on Behzod Abduraimov and François Leleux

Switched On – Nathan Fake: Crystal Vision (Cambria Instruments)

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by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

There is no sub plot to Crystal Vision, Nathan Fake’s sixth album.

The Norfolk-based producer describes his approach as “music for music’s sake – recorded without angles, agendas and themes”. This means a continuation of his energetic electronica, creating powerful minds-eye visions with its bold colours and busy rhythms.

What’s the music like?

Crystal Vision pulses with energy. The music here often feels like part of a bigger machine, especially in the cymbal-rich percussion, which on tracks like Boss Core feels like some sort of euphoric process, the repetitive motion of its beats leading to greater highs.

Vimana is a bracing and colourful track, using its synths to trace bright lights across the sky. Bibled grows inexorably over a thudding breakbeat, while the urgency of Hawk also whips up a storm, while uncannily describing its subject matter.

Wizard Apprentice gives an appropriately cool vocal to The Grass, while the closing Outsider is a busy and rewarding collaboration with Clark that takes a restless, probing single line and spins it out across an urgent beat and a wide sonic panorama, the music becoming ever more dense and thrilling as it progresses.

Does it all work?

Yes, it does – fulfilling Fake’s promise that the music is there for its own sake, creating positive energy and thoroughly rewarding experiences.

Is it recommended?

It is indeed, enthusiastically so – a strong addition to what is now a formidable discography.

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On Record: Don Banks: Vocal and Chamber Music (Toccata Classics)

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Don Banks
Horn Trio (1962) a
Five North Country Folk Songs (1953) b
Prologue, Night Piece and Blues (1968) c
Three Studies (1954) d
Piano Sonatina in C sharp minor (1948) e
Violin Sonata (1953) f
Tirade (1968) g

(bg) Jenny Duck-Chong (mezzo-soprano), (c) Francesco Celata (clarinet), (a) Robert Johnson (horn), (af) Ole Böhn (violin), (d) Geoffrey Gartner (cello), (g): Rowan Phemister (harp), David Kim-Boyle (siren), Alison Pratt, Daryl Pratt, Joshua Hill (percussion), Daniel Herscovitch (piano)

Toccata Classics TOCC0591 [81’34″]

Producer David Kim-Boyle Engineer David Kinney

Recorded (cdf) 21 September (ag) 24 September and (be) 5 November 2020 at Recital Hall West, Conservatorium of Music, Sydney

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Toccata Classics provides a strong case for the greater recognition of Don Banks (1923-80) with this release of a representative cross-section of vocal and chamber works, performed by Australian and Australia-based musicians who are never less than empathetic with his music.

What’s the music like?

Wholly neglected following his untimely death, Banks was a senior figure in the generation of Australian composers – featuring such as Malcolm Williamson, David Lumsdaine and Nigel Butterley – who posited a decisive if hardly uniform course for the country’s music during the post-war era. Based in London for two decades, he made a living through teaching (notably at Goldsmith’s College) or writing music for horror films (notably Hammer productions), while evolving an increasingly personal language which can be heard in those works included here.

Earliest is the Piano Sonatina whose three movements – an agile Allegro, pensive Largo that nimbly amalgamates elements of fugue and chorale, then an impulsive Risoluto – constitute no mean statement of intent. It was the Violin Sonata which Banks considered his Op. 1, its pithy if contrasted ideas drawn into intensive development that effortlessly sustains a single movement whose 15 minutes seem never less than eventful. More unexpected is his identity with traditional sources in Five North Country Folk Songs (written for Sophie Wyss no less), whose piano accompaniments enhance the sentiment of each text with deadpan humour and audible affection. Reflecting his time spent with Dallapiccola (and, by extension, Webern), Three Studies for cello and piano applies its serial thinking both deftly and resourcefully.

By the 1960s, Banks had fashioned an idiom that was demonstrably but never slavishly of its time. One of the finest instances is the Horn Trio that, for all its inherent abstraction, pursues a tangible emotional trajectory from its forceful opening Allegro, via an Adagio of no mean eloquence, to a final Moderato in which the work’s arresting slow introduction is transformed through hunt-like gestures. Conversely, Prologue, Night Piece and Blues for Two underlines his love for jazz and its deployment within a ‘third stream’ context; here, the music’s restraint affords a sultriness alluring and ominous. Tirade could hardly be more different – its setting of Peter Porter’s impassioned poem on the increasing commercialization of Australian culture notable for a virtuoso vocal part and its imaginative writing for a sizable array of percussion.

Does it all work?

Almost always. Banks took a compositional path that assuredly takes no prisoners, yet which is rarely less than engrossing and, on occasion, affecting. Almost all these pieces would stand up well in recital today, not least for the opportunities they provide to enterprising performers. Other than the concertos for horn and violin (Lyrita), few of his major works are available in modern accounts, and if Toccata could undertake or even licence recordings of his orchestral Divisions or such cross-genre conceptions as Nexus and Meeting Place, so much the better.

Is it recommended?

Very much so. These performances, rarely less than authoritative, are heard to advantage in a spacious but never diffuse ambience. Daniel Herscovitch contributes detailed and informative annotations, and this release hopefully marks a first stage in the rediscovery of a major figure.

Listen & Buy

For buying options, and to listen to clips from the album, visit the Toccata Classics website. For more information on Don Banks, click here