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In concert – Carolyn Sampson & Joseph Middleton @ Wigmore Hall – Album für die Frau: Eight scenes from the Lieder of Robert and Clara Schumann

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Carolyn Sampson Photo: Marco Borggeve

Carolyn Sampson (soprano, above), Joseph Middleton (piano, below)

Songs and piano music by Robert and Clara Schumann – full list at bottom of review

Wigmore Hall, London
Wednesday 14 February 2024

by Ben Hogwood Photos by Marco Borggreve (Carolyn Sampson) and Sussie Ahlberg (Joseph Middleton)

This was a Valentine’s Day concert with a difference. No orchestra, no Romeo & Juliet – but rather an intimate presentation of a musical marriage, that of composer / pianists Robert and Clara Schumann, whose relationship has been increasingly under the microscope in the past few years.

This is a good thing, for when Robert and Clara married on 12 September 1840 the concept of equality within marriage, let alone classical music, was very different indeed. Robert, in the outpouring of song that he experienced in that year, completed the song cycle Frauenliebe und -leben, to poetry by Adelbert von Chamisso attempting a depiction of marriage from a woman’s perspective. It is certainly not how we recognise the institution of marriage today, which soprano Carolyn Sampson acknowledged in a Guardian article around the release of her Album für die Frau, the title of this concert, in 2021. In that article she put forward a strong case for continuing to sing the cycle, identifying with a good deal of the verse and even more of the music – but with her musical partner, pianist Joseph Middleton, she has recast the cycle.

Now the Schumanns’ marriage is given in four parts – love, marriage, parenthood and death – viewed through the prism of Frauenliebe but balanced through songs by Clara and Robert, or one of the latter’s piano pieces. Each song from the cycle had two accomplices, the context achieved through what must have been a painstaking selection process that, in this concert, bore much fruit. The coherent end piece was bisected by well-chosen text from the couple’s diaries and more.

With sadness inevitably looming towards the end it was a difficult structure for the duo to pitch, but they made it work through selections that made emotional sense and which, crucially, were harmonically linked. Sampson’s clarity of line was the clincher, her ability to carry not just a melody but the words with great diction, while the same could be said of Middleton’s phrasing, which as Sampson said in the introduction ‘could express what words cannot’. The postlude from Frauenliebe was the keenest example, exquisitely played.

The song cycle itself contained a great deal of emotion, especially in Du Ring an meinem Finger (You ring on my finger), where Sampson’s powerful crescendo was all-consuming. Clara’s songs proved the ideal complement, a little more Schubertian in style perhaps but harmonically more daring, often ending in suspension.

The first half included five settings of Rückert and felt slightly giddy in the intoxication of falling in love and wedded bliss, almost too good to be true – and so it proved, with the settings of Heinrich Heine bringing with them furrowed brows and family responsibilities, the music increasingly worrisome. Robert and Clara had eight children in all, and this section gave a glimpse of the weight of responsibility that would surely have left.

The masterstroke of this program, however, was not to finish with the end of the song cycle but to offer Robert’s Requiem, from his 6 Gedichte von N Laneu und Requiem Op.90, as a much-needed consolation, then the piano piece Winterzeit I, from the Album für die Jugend. Finally, as an encore, Clara’s Abendstern, a beautiful postscript with her love taken up to the stars, turned our gaze upwards once more.

It capped an unexpectedly moving account of two lives intertwined, offering a timely reminder of Clara’s torment at her husband’s untimely demise. One of the power couples of 19th century music they must have been, but this was a tender account of two lives entwined and enriched by beautiful song.

You can hear Album für die Frau, as released on BIS, below:

Carolyn Sampson and Joseph Middleton performed the following music:

Robert Schumann Langsam und mit Ausdruck zu spielen from Album für die Jugend Op. 68 (piano, 1848)
Clara Schumann Liebst du um Schönheit Op. 12 No. 2 (1841)
Robert Schumann Seit ich ihn gesehen from Frauenliebe und -leben Op. 42 (1840)
Volksliedchen Op. 51 No. 2 (1840)
Clara Schumann Liebeszauber Op. 13 No. 3 (1840-3)
Robert Schumann Er, der Herrlichste von allen from Frauenliebe und -leben Op. 42
Clara Schumann An einem lichten Morgen from 6 Lieder aus Jucunde Op. 23 (1853)
Warum willst du and’re fragen Op. 12 No. 3 (1841)
Robert Schumann Ich kann’s nicht fassen, nicht glauben from Frauenliebe und -leben Op. 42
Clara Schumann Die stille Lotosblume Op. 13 No. 6 (1840-3)
Robert Schumann Du Ring an meinem Finger from Frauenliebe und -leben Op. 42
From Myrthen Op. 25 (1840): Lied der Braut I • Lied der Braut II
Glückes genug from Kinderszenen Op. 15 (piano, 1838)
Interval
Robert Schumann
Helft mir, ihr Schwestern from Frauenliebe und -leben Op. 42
Die Lotosblume from Myrthen Op. 25
Lust der Sturmnacht from Kerner Lieder Op. 35 (1840)
Süsser Freund, du blickest from Frauenliebe und -leben Op. 42
Hochländisches Wiegenlied from Myrthen Op. 25
Der Sandmann from Lieder-Album für die Jugend Op. 79 (1849)
Kind im Einschlummern from Kinderszenen Op. 15 (piano)
An meinem Herzen, an meiner Brust from Frauenliebe und -leben Op. 42
Ritter vom Steckenpferd from Kinderszenen Op. 15 (piano)
Dein Angesicht Op. 127 No. 2 (1840)
Nun hast du mir den ersten Schmerz getan from Frauenliebe und -leben Op. 42
Requiem from 6 Gedichte von N Lenau und Requiem Op. 90 (1850)
Winterzeit I from Album für die Jugend Op. 68 (piano)
Clara Schumann
Abendstern

Published post no.2,088 – Thursday 15 February 2024

In concert – Quatuor Danel: Shostakovich & Weinberg #2 @ Wigmore Hall

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

Weinberg String Quartet no. 2 in G major Op. 3/145 (1939-40, rev. 1986)
Weinberg String Quartet no. 3 in D minor Op. 14 (1944, rev. 1987)
Shostakovich String Quartet no. 3 in F major Op. 73 (1946)

Wigmore Hall, London
Friday 12 January 2024

by Richard Whitehouse Photo (c) Marco Borggreve

Commenced anew last November, after having been abandoned in the wake of the pandemic, the Quatuor Danel’s cycle of string quartets by Shostakovich and Weinberg at Wigmore Hall continued this evening with formative works from the latter and a masterpiece by the former.

Hopefully it will not be long before Weinberg’s Second String Quartet (1940) has entered the repertoire. Written during his two years in Minsk (after having fled a Poland overrun by Nazi forces), its ‘back to basics’ outlook is evident in the initial Allegro’s textural clarity and easy lyricism, but also a compositional flair asserting itself in the movement’s tensile development and combative coda. Revision saw the Andante become a more complex and imposing entity, its fraught central section intensifying the sombre expression either side, along with an extra movement. This taciturn yet wistfully elegant Intermezzo makes for an admirable foil to the Finale, its rondo format energetically traversed through to a curtly decisive close. The Danel was palpably in command of music which transcends any apprenticeship quality with ease.

Shorter and more concentrated, Weinberg’s Third Quartet exudes an overarching emotional intensity. The Danel was mindful to observe those attacca markings such as give the overall design its unity within diversity – the uninhibited energy of the opening Presto by no means offset with the bittersweet poise of the central Andante, its taciturn unease being continued in a final Allegretto as affords only the most tenuous of closes and one which arguably feels too provisional, even in this insightful a reading. One reason, perhaps, the composer overhauled this piece when recasting it more than three decades later as his Second Chamber Symphony, when a completely new and more ‘conclusive’ finale was substituted for the original. Which is not to deny the fascination of this music from a crucial stage in his mastery of the medium.

A mastery as Shostakovich achieved with his own Third Quartet, its five movements drawing on those formal and expressive possibilities of his wartime Eighth and Ninth Symphonies, so the opening movement unfolds almost as a revisiting of that from the latter piece. The Danel undeniably had the measure of its playful capriciousness and brought out the ominous unease of the intermezzo, then headlong aggression of the scherzo which follow. Shostakovich’s first recourse to a passacaglia in his quartets, the slow movement exuded acute eloquence and this ensemble timed to perfection its cumulative approach to the finale’s searing apex. From here, the gradual dissipation of accumulated tension was palpably conveyed through to the numbed fatalism of a conclusion in which Shostakovich seems intent on bowing before the inevitable.

At this stage in the Danel’s traversal one might have expected either or both of Weinberg’s standalone Aria and Capriccio (written 1942-3) to have been given as encores. Instead, the players opted for repeating the finale from his Second Quartet, which at least provided the necessary uplift after the close of the Shostakovich. Hopefully those two pieces will be heard after the next instalment of this cycle, the Fourth Quartets of both composers being followed with the Fifth Quartet of Shostakovich: truly a ‘concert and a half’ as regards string quartets.

You can hear the music from the concert below, in recordings made by Quatuor Danel:

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.2,057 – Monday 12 January 2024

In concert – Llŷr Williams plays Schumann @ Wigmore Hall

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Llŷr Williams (piano)

Schumann
Papillons Op.2 (1830-1)
Nachtstücke Op.23 (1839-40)
Faschingsschwank aus Wien Op.26 (1839-40)

Wigmore Hall, London
Friday 12 January 2024 (1pm)

by Ben Hogwood

After extensive examinations of the piano output of Beethoven and Schubert, Llŷr Williams has turned his attention to Robert Schumann. This lunchtime concert at the Wigmore Hall celebrated the release of a double album on Signum Classics starting a series devoted to the composer’s piano works. On this evidence there will be some revelations in store.

That Williams loves Schumann’s music was evident from with the languid introductory chords to Papillons. This early work from the 21-year-old composer is a masked ball, a chance not just to enjoy his love of butterflies but to present a closely connected set of miniature portraits for piano. In a good performance they capture the listener’s imagination, and under Williams’ fingers the music took flight. The clarity of his phrasing was immediately notable, revealing the exquisite details of Schumann’s melodic creations and taking time to let them breathe. With the improvisatory seventh piece (marked Semplice) the ink felt barely dry on the page, while the mood ranged from a relatively stern third piece to a playful eleventh, enjoying the brisk fanfares. Best of all was the Finale, where clever use of the sustain pedal left us with a marching band whose bright melodies hung on the air, the drone of the horns left for the listener to savour.

The Nachtstücke are lesser-known pieces, but Williams revealed just why they should be heard more often. He also revealed something of the turbulent period in which they were composed, with Schumann aware of the imminent death of his brother Eduard and travelling to Vienna in an attempt to alleviate his family’s precarious financial position. Because of this, the nocturnal dreams we might expect from other composers is trumped by active and often troubled thoughts, flitting quickly between moods and contrasting emotions. Williams, though, untangled the knots of Schumann’s musical thoughts. The solemn tread of the first piece, a funeral march, had forward purpose, while the second was a flurry of activity, thoughts running almost out of control until checked by a relatively dreamy central section. At all times Williams was in control of his characterisations, so much so that it was easy to forget the technical demands of this music. This was certainly the case in the outpouring of the third piece, before the chorale and related solos of the fourth were beautifully judged and complemented.

Finally we heard Faschingsschwank aus Wien, companion pieces to the Nachtstücke also written during the ultimately unsuccessful visit to the Austrian capital. These present a different side to Schumann, with Williams enjoying the humour of the first piece, with its catchy motif and cheeky reference to La Marseillaise.  This vigorous start contrasted with a heartfelt Romance and a deeper, flowing Intermezzo – between which the Scherzino reasserted the prevailing mischievous mood. So too, did the Finale, where the virtuosity was again beyond question, the helter-skelter figures once again used for poetic purpose rather than display. Williams proved a revelation in Schumann, bringing even his most complex character pieces to life – and maintaining a remarkable clarity of line as he did so. If he keeps this up, there are many treats in store as he journeys further into Schumann’s poetic and deeply personal world.

You can hear Llŷr Williams’ new recording on Spotify below:

Published post no.2,056 – Sunday 14 January 2024

In concert – Janine Jansen and friends play Brahms @ Wigmore Hall

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Janine Jansen (violin), Timothy Ridout (viola), Daniel Blendulf (cello), Denis Kozhukhin (piano)

Brahms
Violin Sonata no.2 in A major Op.100 (1886)
Viola Sonata no.2 in E flat major Op.120/2 (1894)
Piano Quartet no.3 in C minor Op.60 (1855-75)

Wigmore Hall, London
Thursday 21 December 2023

Reviewed by Ben Hogwood. Photos of Janine Jansen & Timothy Ridout (c) Marco Borggreve

After the unfortunate cancellation of a concert in her series the previous week, violinist Janine Jansen and friends returned to health and to a Christmassy Wigmore Hall for another all-Brahms programme.

Jansen (above) and pianist Denis Kozhukhin (below) began with the Violin Sonata no.2, a late substitution for the first sonata but a breath of fresh air on a winter evening. One of Brahms’s best-loved chamber piece, its charming first theme has enough to weaken the hardest heart. So it was here, with Jansen’s affectionate playing. Her creamy tone was complemented by the incisive piano playing of Kozhukhin, who was deceptively relaxed in his body language but very much in tune with Brahms’s intricate rhythms and phrasing. The two excelled in the central section of the second movement, which tripped along with admirable definition of those rhythms, and in the finale, where the two enjoyed a more assertive musical dialogue.

Brahms’s last completed chamber work followed, Kozhukhin joined by violist Timothy Ridout (below) for a performance of the Viola Sonata no.2, arranged by Brahms from the clarinet original. This account exhibited elegance, poise and no little power. Ridout’s burnished tone was ideal for the music, capturing the shadowy outlines of music from a composer in his twilight years, but putting down suitably firm markers in the second movement. Ridout’s high register playing was a treat throughout, his tuning exemplary, and as the two players navigated the theme and five variations of the finale there was an ideal give and take between the part-writing. Particularly memorable was the plaintive stillness of the fourth variation, its mystery dispelled by the affirmative ending.

After the interval we heard the Piano Quartet no.3, competed in 1875 when Brahms was working on the completion of his first symphony. The two works have a good deal in common, beyond sharing the same tonality, for Brahms brings an orchestral dimension to his writing for the four instruments. This grouping needed no invitation to take up the mantle, powering through the first movement with relish, their dramatic account notable for strength of tone and unity of ensemble playing. Jansen and Ridout in particular stood out, their unisons absolutely as one, yet the real hero of the performance was Kozhukhin, elevating the heroic elements of a score closely associated with Goethe’s Werther while keeping the nervousness emanating from Brahms’s syncopated rhythms.

Lest he be forgotten, cellist Daniel Blendulf (above) delivered an understated solo of considerable beauty to begin the Andante, providing respite from the high voltage drama elsewhere but getting to the heart of Brahms’s soulful writing for the instrument. The quartet regrouped for the finale, another show of breathtaking power but with room for reverence in the chorale themes and their development. For all the bravura the air of uneasiness remained as an undercurrent, Brahms never quite at rest even when the quartet reached its emphatic conclusion. This was a truly memorable performance, capping an outstanding evening of music making for which all involved should be immensely proud.

Published post no.2,047 – Friday 22 December 2023

Online Concert: Jean-Guihen Queyras @ Wigmore Hall – Bach, Saygun & Britten

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Jean-Guihen Queyras (cello)

J.S. Bach Cello Suite no.1 in G major BWV1007 (c1720)
Saygun Partita for solo cello Op.31 (1955)
Britten Cello Suite no.1 Op.72 (1964)

Wigmore Hall, Monday 20 November 2023 1pm

by Ben Hogwood

There is now a wide variety of repertoire from which the unaccompanied cellist can choose, yet this was emphatically not the case in the days of Johann Sebastian Bach. His six suites opened the door for the instrument to become a purveyor of melody and emotion, even if those facets were left largely unexplored until the 20th century.

Writing for solo stringed instruments went out of fashion in the Romantic period, until the rediscovery of Bach’s works by Pablo Casals towards the end of the 19th century – from which this highly original music reached its rightful platform. The First Cello Suite of the six is a delightful work, written at a standard rewarding those of an intermediate ability with music that repays decades of listening and practising.

Jean-Guihen Queyras brought to it a freshness bringing the most from the music. His unaffected manner with the Prelude found serenity amid a relatively relaxed sequence of string crossing, the cellist’s careful thought giving the music space. This set a theme maintained by the nicely voiced Allemande, then a bracing and rustic Courante reminding us of the dance origins of these pieces. The elegant Sarabande was particularly beautiful, with tasteful ornamentation applied on the section repeats, before a spirited first Minuet was offset by the brief but contemplative second in the minor key. A lively Gigue concluded an excellent performance. Bach will always be work in progress for cellists, but it was clear just how enjoyable that process is for Queyras.

From the well-known Bach we travelled to Turkey to experience the relatively unheard Partita of Ahmet Adnon Saygun, a composer regarded as the first exponent of Western classical music in the country, and whose orchestral music has travelled relatively well. Queyras removed the fourth movement of five from this performance, which nonetheless made a powerful impact. Starting with a drone in the lower reaches, the Lento first movement climbed melodically to an expressive outpouring, totally secure in the French cellist’s hands. A restless, edgy Vivo followed before emotive inflections were found in the Adagio, the melodic lines alternately probing or softly turning inwards. The Allegro moderato was deceptive to start with, initially meandering in mid-register before crossing the cello with emphatic lines, before the music relented to the drone of the opening once more. On this evidence, the chamber music of Saygun – a composer with a prolific output – is definitely worth exploring in more detail.

Like Bach, Britten also based his first cello suite in G major – the third of his works dedicated to the great cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, after the Cello Sonata and Cello Symphony. With a mixture of contrasting dances and tempi, the work has a recurring Canto section, on which Britten typically writes a number of varied repeats. This performance began in commanding fashion, before Queyras repeated the melody in a plaintive voice, getting closer to the true heart of the suite.

For although there was music of immense power this is essentially nervy night-time music. In this performance the Fuga often retreated to the shadows, offering some furtive if slightly playful harmonics at the end. The Lamento was lost in thought to begin with while the Serenata, played pizzicato throughout, evoked another world. So too did the Marcia, its ghostly evocations of flute and drum cutting to assertive, red-blooded music. The Bordone was troubled, the pitches of its drone creating great tension in this interpretation – before the scurrying finale found sure-footed ground.

This was a technically flawless recital from Queyras, a captivating trio of pieces atmospherically cast in half light on the Wigmore Hall stage. His encore was music from György Kurtág, a master of solo instrument composition. His typically compressed but intense Az Hit, where a diatonic melody developed outwards before drawing back in, finished with a charming two-note signature.

For more livestreamed concerts from the Wigmore Hall, click here