This is the second Sunday in a month that I've sat in the Wigmore Hall and been plunged into an evening of ferocious concentration from the very first bars. Mid-January saw violinist Leonidas Kavakos and his phenomenal pianist Enrico Pace carving out the grim memorial that is Prokofiev's First Violin Sonata, ultimately softened by radiant Schubert. Last night Kavakos's peer Thomas Zehetmair accented the lead in late Beethoven, and since only Shostakovich's last quartet followed, this time there was to be no more human gilding of a very alien lily.
classical music reviews
igor.toronyilalic
Word was that four strings had broken in rehearsals. One had snapped only half an hour before the start of last night's Liszt-fest at the Barbican. It meant one of two things: either pianist Evgeny Kissin had finally switched off the safety-first autopilot that some had worried had taken hold of this former child prodigy. Or we had a dodgy piano.
Thankfully, it was the former. The Russian was a transformed pianist in these transformative works. He had flicked the switch from autopilot to shaman.
alexandra.coghlan
Something of a bad boy in the Baroque world, Philip Pickett can generally be relied on to provoke discussion. Whether it’s by teaming up with one of Rolling Stone magazine’s Greatest Guitarists of All Time, or restaging Purcell’s The Fairy Queen with tumblers, jugglers and an excess of hand luggage, there’s always an angle. While collaborators, contexts and repertoire may change, what you can generally set your watch by is the quality of the musicianship – which made last night’s concert all the more of a puzzle.
David Nice
Never envy a relatively new voice in music his or her place in a concert shared with Sibelius. Invariably the economical Finnish master will triumph with his ideas and how he streams them in a forward-moving adventure. You sit staring at all the percussion Sibelius never needs, and wonder whether the newcomer will engage it more imaginatively than most of his peers. Which fortunately turned out to be the case with Detlev Glanert's 15-year-old Music for Violin and Orchestra, fearlessly taken on by one of the BBC Symphony Orchestra's two world-class leaders, Stephen Bryant. But given Principal Guest Conductor David Robertson's urgent, sensuous way with Sibelius, the German's flickering homage to the Orpheus of Rilke's sonnets still hovered in the shadows.
alexandra.coghlan
It was Leonard Bernstein who declared of English music that it was “too much organ voluntary in Lincoln Cathedral, too much Coronation in Westminster Abbey, too much lark ascending, too much clodhopping on the fucking village green”. Fey, whimsical and faintly patterned with chintz – English music doesn’t always get the best press. In the hands of the Britten Sinfonia however, it defies any notion of pastel prettiness, stepping out in only the feistiest and most glorious Technicolor.
alexandra.coghlan
We are spoiled for choral choice in Britain. With the likes of The Sixteen, The King’s Singers, Polyphony and I Fagiolini just the start of the roster of talent, and an amateur choral scene of serious heft, the temptation is to look no further than the Channel for our choral kicks. Such is the growing presence of the Baltic nations however (and particularly Estonia, with its greatest musical champion, Arvo Pärt), that this rival tradition is increasingly making its presence felt. Greatest among a nation of choirs is unquestionably the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, who last night took us on a tour of their musical heritage.
alexandra.coghlan
According to the wit of either Dallapiccola or Stravinsky (history is divided), Vivaldi was responsible for writing not 600 concertos, but the same concerto 600 times. It’s a joke that has lingered stubbornly in the popular imagination. Had the concerto in question been one of the Four Seasons or indeed one from L’Estro Armonico I don’t think anyone would be objecting; it’s the workaday Vivaldi, those throwaway concertos composed with his eyes on his purse and his mind on his dinner that have so diluted his reputation. Doing their best to set the record straight, erstwhile Vivaldi champions La Serenissima last night presented a programme comprised solely of concertos.
igor.toronyilalic
Being a composer of contemporary classical music is a treacherous business. It's about the only art form in which stylistic choices can still force a creator into permanent exile. Two composers who have fallen foul of the British house style in recent decades and have sought musical asylum in America and Europe, Brian Ferneyhough and James Clarke, were receiving an extremely rare London premiere of their new string quartets at the Wigmore Hall last night. And you could see why Britain had shown them the door.
stephen.walsh
Mahler cycles in his centenary year are about as predictable as dead leaves in autumn. But they perhaps belong more in Birmingham than in some other cities. Mahler, after all, was a big factor in making Simon Rattle’s name, and Rattle was a big factor in getting this superb concert-hall built. So the current cycle there, now halfway through, is like a civic statue to the Master: a tribute both ways, honour to the giver and the receiver.
David Nice
As Mahler symphonies rain down from heaven - or flare up from hell, according to your viewpoint - in this second anniversary year, it's wise to choose carefully. But why earmark Jiří Bělohlávek's performance of the Sixth above the likes of Gergiev, Dudamel, Jurowski or Maazel? Because he's been working his way through the cycle with his BBC orchestra at the careful rate of one a year; because he knows what space to give, and what colours to draw; and above all, because he refuses to batter our hearts too fiercely too soon - crucial for the most insistent tragic chapter in Mahler's symphonic chronicle.