Tag Archives: Ludwig van Beethoven

Arcana at the BBC Proms – Augustin Hadelich, Berliner Philharmoniker / Kirill Petrenko: Beethoven & Scriabin

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Augustin Hadelich (violin), Berliner Philharmoniker / Kirill Petrenko

Beethoven Violin Concerto in D major Op.61 (1806)
Scriabin Symphony no.3 in C minor, Op.43 ‘Le poème divin’ (1902-04)

Royal Albert Hall, London
Thursday 3 September 2026

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Photos (c) BBC / Chris Christodoulou

Their second appearance this season saw Kirill Petrenko and the Berliner Philharmoniker tackling pieces that, written almost a century apart, could hardly have offered greater contrast in terms of their aesthetic and which made the cohesion of tonight’s programme the more impressive.

His fifth visit to the Proms in just a decade found Augustin Hadelich giving a performance of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto full of interest if on occasion neglecting the wood for the trees. Not that, other than momentarily in its development, the opening Allegro hung fire but this most spacious such movement in Beethoven’s output lacked an underlying impetus without which it all too easily loses focus. The (unexpected) highlight was a Kreisler cadenza which renewed respect for its motivic ingenuity then segued into the coda with acute seamlessness.

There was little to fault thereafter. The Larghetto duly emerged as the most eloquent of those variational slow movements that Beethoven favoured at this time, with orchestral playing of fastidious poise then an ideal transition into the final Rondo – the incisiveness of whose main theme threw into relief its genial secondary idea then the plaintiveness of its central episode. It rounded off what was a never less than perceptive reading, and Hadelich returned with his own arrangement of Träumerei from Schumann‘s Kinderszenen as a raptly affecting encore.

Some 98 years after Beethoven’s most intrinsically abstract symphonic work found Scriabin flexing his extra-musical muscles in the last if most ambitious of his numbered symphonies. Given its UK premiere at these concerts by Sir Henry Wood in 1918 and repeated three years later, The Divine Poem had to wait nine decades for its Proms revival but has now secured its place in the repertoire. Certainly there was no element of ‘special pleading’ in an account as underlined that structural integration between its three (continuous) movements as across the work overall. However overreaching Scriabin’s theosophical aspirations may have been, his musical instinct was such that nothing is left to chance in a design as surveys the ‘tragedy to triumph’ trajectory beloved of late-Romanticism from an arresting and productive vantage.

The defining motto drawn unerringly into its evolution, the opening Luttes made a virtue of its discursive unfolding with a sure balance between its agitated and ethereal themes; building to a resplendent if short-lived climax in its development then methodically retracing its steps. There was no lack of sensuousness in the central Voluptés, offset by an ominous undertow resolved in the final Jeu divin with its capricious trumpet idea and its pointed revisiting of earlier material as made the eventual apotheosis not just inevitable but necessary as a formal and expressive QED. Felicities of phrasing and of texture abounded in an interpretation that demonstrated the rapport of conductor and orchestra, now at the start of their eighth season together, at its most tangible with music on the cusp between Romanticism and Modernism.

As on their earlier visits, there was no encore with Petrenko’s blowing a kiss to the audience his most overt acknowledgement of what seemed a genuine enthusiasm for the piece as heard in this performance. Their next Proms appearance (in 2028?) can only be eagerly anticipated.

You can listen to this Proms concert on BBC Sounds until the end of September 2026.

Published post no.3.007 – Friday 4 September 2026

In appreciation: Jean-Bernard Pommier

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by Ben Hogwood

This week we learned the sad news of the passing of pianist and conductor Jean-Bernard Pommier, at the age of 81. As well as being a highly regarded solo pianist, Pommier held a post with the Northern Sinfonia – as you can read from this tribute on the Cultured North East website

Pommier made several highly regarded recordings, including cycles of the Mozart and Beethoven piano sonatas – and the Tidal playlist Arcana have compiled recognises this, as well as recordings of the Brahms Violin Sonatas, in partnership with Jaime Laredo, and the Mozart piano concertos with Sinfonia Varsovia. You can access the playlist here

Published post no.2,873 – Thursday 30 April 2026

On this day in 1800 – the first performance of Beethoven’s First Symphony

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by Ben Hogwood Image of Ludwig van Beethoven in 1801, courtesy of Wikipedia

On this day in 1800 the premiere of Beethoven‘s game-changing Symphony no.1 took place, in Vienna’s Burgtheater.

You can read all about the work as part of Arcana’s ongoing Beethoven odyssey, and listen to a performance of the symphony given by the London Symphony Orchestra and Bernard Haitink here:

Published post no.2,845 – Thursday 2 April 2026

In Concert: London Chamber Music Society – Ariel Lanyi, London Firebird Orchestra / George Jackson @ St. John’s Waterloo: Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Puccini & Haydn

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Ariel Lanyi (piano, below), London Firebird Orchestra / George Jackson (above)

Mendelssohn Overture: A Midsummer Night’s Dream Op.21 (1826)
Beethoven Piano Concerto no.4 in G major Op.58 (1805-06)
Puccini Crisantemi (1890)
Haydn Symphony no.96 in D major ‘The Miracle’ (1791)

St John’s Church, Waterloo, London
Sunday 8 March 2026 [6pm]

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Picture of George Jackson (c) Short Eared Dog Photography; Picture of Ariel Lanyi (c) Kaupo Kikkas

Having appeared at London Chamber Music Society on four previous occasions, the London Firebird Orchestra tonight made its debut at the organization’s new home, St John’s Waterloo, with a programme largely focussing on music from the late Classical and early Romantic eras.

Mendelssohn’s overture A Midsummer Night’s Dream seldom disappoints as a concert-opener, and conductor George Jackson duly ensured a characterful reading at its best in those passages when the composer allows his imaginative response to Shakespeare’s drama free rein – which is not to suggest a lack of animation or impetus elsewhere. Incidentally the prominent part for ophicleide was taken by bass trombone, though the programme listed both instruments while, with the piano lid already raised, it was by no means easy to tell which one was being played.

That piano came to the fore during Beethoven’s Fourth Concerto, and a work clearly playing to the strengths of Israeli pianist (currently residing in London) Ariel Lanyi. Speculative and often capricious in its solo writing, the opening movement had expressive breadth if without losing focus during its intricate development, and Lanyi made a persuasive case for the less often heard of the composer’s own cadenzas – the granitic power of its culmination making the orchestra’s re-entry more poetic. Soloist and orchestra drew the requisite contrasts from the Andante, before such opposition was resolved in a coda of melting pathos, then the final Rondo exuded boisterous good humour without neglecting those more graceful elements as increasingly come to the fore and hence make its hectic closing bars the more exhilarating.

Lanyi acknowledged the (rightly) enthusiastic reception with an unexpected yet appealing encore of a Notturno (fourth from a set of six pieces) that Respighi wrote around 1904. Its raptness made an admirable foil to the more conventional while affecting elegy Crisantemi that Puccini wrote in memory of Amadeo I, his brief tenure as Spanish king pre-dating his final years in Turin where he befriended the Italian composer. Conceived for string quartet, its never cloying sentiment felt even more in evidence heard with a larger group of strings.

The nicknames appended to many Haydn symphonies are often approximate and none more so than with No. 96, the ‘miracle’ of the falling chandelier which caused no injuries almost certainly taking place during the premiere of No. 102. The earlier work is not quite its equal, but Jackson made the most of its attractions with a winning take on a first movement whose imposing Adagio prepares for an agile Allegro in almost constant development. The Andante has a cadenza-like lead in to its coda – leader Calyssa Davidson and violinist Victoria Marsh relishing the spotlight as audibly as did oboist Polly Bartlett her winsome contribution in the Menuetto. The final Vivace finds Haydn at his most laconic, as he nimbly alternates its main themes on route to a coda which brings the whole symphony to a suitably effervescent close.

It also brought to an end a well-planned and thoroughly enjoyable concert that played to the strengths of both orchestra and conductor. LCMS continues on March 22nd with the Sacconi Quartet in what looks to be a no less enticing programme of Haydn, Boccherini and Dvořák.

Click on the highlighted names to read more on the London Chamber Music Society season for 2025-26, the London Firebird Orchestra, conductor George Jackson and pianist Ariel Lanyi

Published post no.2,826 – Wednesday 11 March 2026

In Concert – Sir Stephen Hough, Soloists, CBSO Chorus, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Omer Meir Wellber: Beethoven & Haydn

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Sir Stephen Hough (piano, below), Lauren Urquhart (soprano), Georgia Mae Ellis (mezzo-soprano), Luis Gomes (tenor), Alexander Grassauer (bass), CBSO Chorus (above), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Omer Meir Wellber (conductor & harpsichord/director)

Beethoven (/Hough) Piano Concerto no.3 in C minor Op.37 (1800, rev. 1803)
Haydn Missa in Angustiis, Hob.XXII/11 (‘Nelson Mass’) (1798)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Thursday 19 February 2026

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

That tonight’s concert from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra featured music by Beethoven and Haydn might have been indicative of a straight-ahead or mainstream concert but, as things turned out, neither programme nor music-making could be deemed predictable.

Sir Stephen Hough has no doubt played Beethoven’s Third Concerto many times with, moreover, his take on the outer movements not far removed from his much-praised Hyperion recording. The initial Allegro was lithe and impetuous if at times a touch hectoring (and Matthew Hardy was uncharacteristically reticent in that spellbinding passage after the cadenza), with the final Rondo treading a fine line between humour and irony at its most distinctive in the modulatory transition to the main theme, or that improvisatory solo flourish prior to the nonchalant coda.

Interest naturally centred on the slow movement – a Largo designated Con gran espressione in its ‘re-imagining’ by Hough (above). Itself part of a project instigated by this evening’s conductor, Omer Meir Wellber, to re-examine works in the core repertoire, this duly retains Beethoven’s instrumentation but renders the main theme, introduced by the soloist, as a hushed chorale for strings which pervades what follows. All well and good had that chorale become more than a static backdrop, against which Hough’s welter of skittish figuration sounded overly confined to the upper register. Neither was the climactic return of the first movement’s principal theme other than an affectation, nor the upsurge leading directly into the finale without contrivance. One respected Hough’s following of his muse, even if the outcome felt less than convincing.

Having not unreasonably given Hough the benefit of any doubt, the audience was nonplussed with his encore – the last of Schoenberg’s Six Little Pieces that, written after Mahler’s funeral on 17th June 1911, yields a rapt eloquence even at less than the ‘very slow’ tempo prescribed.

As searching products of his late maturity, the six ‘name day’ Masses that Haydn wrote around the turn of the 19th century remain too little heard at orchestral concerts; save for the ‘Nelson Mass’ whose actual title, Mass in Troubled Times, makes explicit the cultural turmoil from of which it arose. This must also have occasioned its unyielding orchestration with trumpets and timpani but no woodwind, plus a dextrous continuo part allotted here to harpsichord and from which Wellber directed with a sure sense of where this most combative of masses was headed.

Vocally the solo writing favours soprano and bass, with Alexander Grassauer making the most of his mellifluous contributions and those of Lauren Urquhart impassioned yet tonally uneven in more animated passages. Georgia Mae Ellis and Luis Gomes handled their secondary roles with real finesse, while chorus-master David Young drew a laudable response from the CBSO Chorus (arrayed on stage with what might be felt the choral equivalent of ‘free bowing’). Taut and incisive, the epithet ‘symphonic’ as applied to this work can rarely have been so apposite.

The performance certainly set the seal on a concert which rightly encouraged a reassessment of both works and, by so doing, underlined Wellber’s own interpretative convictions. Having last appeared with the CBSO almost six years before, his return should be so long in coming.

To read more about the CBSO’s 2025/26 season, visit the CBSO website. Click on the names for more on conductor Omar Meir Wellber, pianist Sir Stephen Hough and soloists Lauren Urquhart, Georgia Mae Ellis, Luis Gomes and Alexander Grassauer.

Published post no.2,804 – Friday 20 February 2026