Tag Archives: Georg Muffat

Online Concert: Chouchane Siranossian, Leonardo Garcia Alarcón, Balázs Máté @ Wigmore Hall – Bach, Schmelzer, Farina & Walther

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Chouchane Siranossian (violin), Leonardo Garcia Alarcón (harpsichord), Balázs Máté (cello)

J.S. Bach Violin Sonata in G minor BWV1021 (1732-5)
Farina Sonata quinta detta ‘La Farina’ (pub. 1626)
J.S. Bach Violin Sonata in C minor BWV1024: Adagio; Fugue in G minor BWV1026 (before 1712)
Walther Passacaglia from Sonata no.7 (pub. 1688)
Krikor Naregatsi Improvisation on Havun Havun
Locatelli Sonata in D minor for solo violin Op.6/12 (pub. 1737)
Schmelzer Violin Sonata ‘Victori der Christen’ (c1683-4)

Wigmore Hall, Monday 5 June 2023 1pm

by Ben Hogwood

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

September is a prominent line in the sand in the course of the classical music year. The Proms ends, everyone else gears up for the start of an Autumn season, and a fresh wave of creativity begins.

The resumption of the BBC Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert on Mondays at the Wigmore Hall is always a prominent part of the changing of the guard, and the choice to begin the new season with violinist Chouchane Siranossian, harpsichordist Leonardo Garcia Alarcón (both above) and cellist Balázs Máté was an inspired one.

The trio gave a recital based on their Bach Before Bach album of November 2021, bringing forward some of the master’s work for violin and harpsichord but putting it in the context of contemporaries Walther and Schmelzer, as well as some inspired earlier choices.

Bach himself began the programme, the Violin Sonata in G major BWV1021 featuring some effortlessly stylish playing. Siranossian has a particularly beautiful tone and a sense of ornamentation that fits this music instinctively. The same can be said for the fluent harpsichordist Alarcón, an expressive player of exceptional balance, complemented by the burnished tones of cellist Máté. A songful Adagio gave way to an enormously enjoyable, quickfire Vivace, which itself led to a tasteful, florid Largo, led by legato harpsichord. An attractive Presto finished an uplifting account.

We then had a rare opportunity to hear the music of Carlo Farina, whose work is not often heard in concert. With performances like these he deserves much better, for the Sonata quinta detta featured lively passagework and darker colours, the music glinting at the edges as the violin became prone to passionate outbursts over rich harmonies. Siranossian selected a shorter bow for this music, playing to the snappy, playful interjections.

Two Bach movements followed, cleverly linked – a deeply profound Adagio, given great depth and character by the violinist, then a virtuosic Fugue, a very tricky proposition given Bach’s writing but brilliantly played. Walther’s Passacaglia, meanwhile, was a fiery complement, setting out the main theme in relatively polite tones but then liable to explosive outbursts of virtuosity.

After all this activity came the brilliantly timed Improvisation on Havun, Havun, from 10th century Armenian monk Krikor Naregatsi. This introduced a remarkable stillness to the concert, time standing still as the violin turned ornamental phrases over a drone from the cello’s open A and D strings. Siranossian segued straight into the Locatelli, a solo sonata with daring feats of virtuosity here but retaining some of the bird-like qualities found in the Naregatsi. Her impeccable intonation and bow control were striking, but the music reached a truly exalted level in the fifth movement Capriccio ‘prova dell’intonazione’, the sky truly the limit for the violin’s highest register!

There was also a bold opening to Schmelzer‘s pictorial sonata Victori der Christen, with multiple stopping and very descriptive writing, especially in the slow and sorrowful sections. To complement the drama of the Schmelzer, Siranossian introduced the first movement of the Sonata in D major from Georg Muffat. This was another excerpt from the trio’s disc, but one whose sunny countenance was the perfect foil – and which put the seal on a remarkable concert with playing of an exceptional standard.

You can listen to Bach Before Bach via Spotify below:

For more livestreamed concerts from the Wigmore Hall, click here

Tomasz Lis at Leighton House – Tchaikovsky and Chopin

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Tomasz Lis

Richard Whitehouse on an intriguing recital from the Music at Unique Venues series
Leighton House, London Tuesday 10 November

Tchaikovsky: The Seasons, Op. 37b (1875-6)

Chopin: Preludes, Op. 24 – selection (1835-9)

Tomasz Lis (piano)

This evening’s recital formed part of the series Music at Unique Venues, aiming to combine the appeal of music and art by holding recitals at places not normally associated with live performance or, moreover, that are not often open to the general public. Although Leighton House has been accessible over much of the past century, not least for live music-making, a lengthy period of renovation had effectively taken it out of circulation; making performances such as that given tonight by the Polish pianist Tomasz Lis a much-needed act of redress.

Each half began with Lis placing the music in the context of fine-art from the same period. Thus he prefaced his account of Tchaikovsky’s The Seasons with consideration of those paintings A Rye Field and Winter by Ivan Shishkin (1832-98), whose deftly achieved realism found its complement in the understated and folk-inflected ethos of Tchaikovsky’s cycle; played with a winning combination of grace and eloquence by Lis, who pointed out it might have been titled ‘The Months’ were it not for the commercial acumen of its publisher.

The second half duly opened with Lis considering the paintings Souvenir de Mortefontaine by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875) and Fire at Sea by JMW. Turner (1775-1851); their powerful synthesis of feeling with depiction finding direct equivalent in the 24 Preludes of Chopin, 16 of which (Nos. 1-11 and 13-17) were heard here. Two-thirds of such a closely integrated cycle might have been in error, but Lis ensured this selection unfolded with a cohesion such that the A flat prelude rounded-off the sequence with requisite poise.

Add to this visual and musical feast the opportunity to enjoy the surroundings of the house made famous by Frederic, Lord Leighton (1830-96) out of opening hours, and the result was an evening as instructive as it was pleasurable. Tomasz Lis has recently released his debut album – featuring impromptus by Schubert, Chopin and Fauré – via Rondeau Productions (Klanglogo KL1511), which is well recommended. The Music at Unique Venues continues next February at Armourers Hall in the City of London and then in May at the Saville Club.

You can read more about the Music at Unique Venues series here

Meanwhile the website of Tomasz Lis is here

Igor Levit at the Wigmore Hall

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Igor Levit

Richard Whitehouse on another enterprising program from the Wigmore Hall
Wigmore Hall, London Thursday 5 November

Muffat: Passacaglia in G minor (pub 1690)

Shostakovich: Piano Sonata no.2 in B minor (1943)

Beethoven: Diabelli Variations (1819-23)

Igor Levit (piano)

Make no mistake, Igor Levit is among the most questing and (executively speaking) creative of younger pianists and it was an astute move by Wigmore Hall to make him a featured artist this coming season – Igor Levit Perspectives taking in a range of solo and chamber projects.

Levit’s latest recording comprises no less than three variation cycles by Bach, Beethoven and Rzewski (about which you can learn more by watching the video below). Avoiding any temptation to programme them as a single ‘marathon’ recital, tonight’s recital placed the Beethoven within a stimulating context. This opened with the Passacaglia from Georg Muffat’s Apparatus musico-organisticus, whose five variations on a deceptively functional theme were a blueprint for increasingly elaborate such sequences over the next two centuries. Levit’s account did not want for expressive depth or technical finesse.

A conceptual link between this piece and the finale of Shostakovich’s Piano Sonata no.2 was not hard to discern. Despite advocacy from such pianists as Emil Gilels, this latter work remains neglected compared to the composer’s orchestral and chamber music; its essentially introspective manner evident in an initial Allegretto whose respectively furtive and sardonic themes were delineated with simmering volatility. Nor was the central Largo lacking in that anguished restraint which Shostakovich was to mine extensively in his later string quartets; the (11) variations of the final Moderato unfolding with a cumulative intensity capped by the penultimate one in which Levit’s daringly slow tempo was justified by the desolation thereby conveyed, its successor then bringing this work full-circle to a decisive yet fatalistic degree.

After the interval, Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations and a performance that underlined the breathtaking imagination of a piece whose overall cohesion is afforded precisely through its sheer unpredictability. Not that Levit shied away from such disjunctiveness – witness the frequent and often lengthy pauses between groups of variations (which, interestingly enough, were by no means the customary or expected ones) – yet there was rarely, if ever, any feeling that this follow-through was governed other than by deep-seated formal logic and expressive conviction. Qualities equally true of the 10 additional variations that Beethoven inserted late in the work’s gestation, and which between them further point up the audacity of the overall concept as one in which Diabelli’s jejune theme is respected for all its intensive dismantling.

The biggest change came (as most often) with the modulation into C minor for variations 29-31, and a sequence that occupies a similar emotional domain to that of the ‘Arietta’ from the final piano sonata – though here the outcome is not transfiguration but the careering velocity of a double fugue in E flat; its progress finely articulated by Levit, who was nonetheless at pains to ensure its apex came with that credential interlude into the final variation – a minuet whose lucid poise brings with it a measure of calm then, at the close, bestows a benediction.

A pity the audience betrayed frequent signs of restlessness as the performance unfolded, but. Levit made no concessions to his listeners; any more than does Beethoven to his exponents – between them confirming a level of artistic integrity that should never be taken for granted.