Liszt
Robert Beale
Mariam Batsashvili, the young virtuosa pianist from Georgia, is a star. No doubt about that. Trained at the Liszt Academy in Weimar and winner of the International Franz Liszt Competition for Young Pianists in that city in 2015, she should know something about how to play Liszt’s music.Her performance of his Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Hallé and Kahchun Wong – and her solo encore after it – proved that she does. It’s not just that she can play all the notes, all in the right order, and at times with phenomenal speed: it’s her portrayal of the music’s essential characteristics in its Read more ...
graham.rickson
Trio Mediæval: Yule (2L)Pick of my Christmas discs is this sublime collection from Trio Mediæval on the Norwegian audiophile label 2L, reflecting yuletide’s origins in Northern European pagan culture. Imaginative and idiomatic-sounding arrangements, using, variously, kantele, hardanger fiddle, violin, trumpet, organ, bass and percussion invariably suit the material, and the engineering is stunning: sample the organ sound and drum thwacks in ”Lussinati Lange”, or the kantele in “Josefines Julesame” The group have been performing and recording since 1997, and there’s something unearthly Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Out of emergencies may come revelations. Sir András Schiff has broken his leg, and we wish him a super-speedy recovery. At the Proms, his promised Art of Fugue will have to wait. Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho, a past winner of the Chopin Prize, stepped in yesterday with a late-night recital programme that at first glance could hardly have looked more alien to the austere grandeur of Bach’s contrapuntal epic.Cho followed three pieces from Ravel’s Miroirs with the second book, “Italie”, of Liszt’s rhapsodic musical scrapbook of his travels of the 1840s, Années de Pèlerinage. The first revelation Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
The summer festival circuit in Central Europe can be a bit of a merry-go-round. Notices in festival towns promise world-class orchestras and soloists, but they are usually the same performers, making festival appearances as part of broader touring schedules.But a festival needs to be distinctive, it needs to be unique. Any hint of routine is fatal to its spirit of occasion. The setting usually helps, and the festivals in Lucerne and Gstaad both take place amid breathtaking scenery and in towns of real charm and character. Add to that a homegrown ensemble – typically a festival orchestra – and Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
For a small nation, with a population not quite comparable to Scotland’s, Georgia has for long packed a mighty musical punch. Any visitor will know the soul-wrenching power of its choral polyphony, but a post-Soviet generation of classical soloists now walks proudly across the world stage. Pianist Mariam Batsashvili, only just 30, won the Franz Liszt international competition in 2014 and has since been a BBC New Generation artist. Last night’s Wigmore Hall recital (not her first) put Liszt’s music at the heart of a programme that revealed the almost-symphonic textures and colours that a Read more ...
Simon Thompson
The Edinburgh International Festival’s Queen’s Hall series ended with two very impressive debuts. Thursday morning brought the Isidore Quartet, who winningly, if slightly naively, told us that Edinburgh had a similar energy to their native New York.These four young men – the oldest member is 24 – were charm personified in the second of Haydn’s “Sun” Quartets, combining easy grace with carefree beauty, and using vibrato only discreetly to colour the sound carefully. Similarly, their take on the third of Mendelssohn’s Op 44 Quartets combined delicacy with warmth and terrific clarity of Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Conductor and pianist came at Liszt from opposite directions last night. Michael Tilson Thomas is a venerable presence at the podium and has been Laureate Conductor of the London Symphony for decades. Their relationship speaks of deep empathy and close communication. In the Liszt First Piano Concerto, MTT dug deep into the rich string tone of the LSO for round, warm sonorities, and always with plenty of bass. Lukáš Vondráček (pictured below) is a generation or two younger than MTT, and is the leading Czech pianist of his generation. He’s not a complete stranger to the LSO; they played Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
“O wise young judge”, says Shylock to Portia in The Merchant of Venice.It seemed just such a figure who made her way to the piano at the Wigmore Hall last night. Besuited, bespectacled, with a poised upright posture that frees her arms, plus the serious demeanour that I sometimes term “Heifetz face”, the youthful Georgian pianist Mariam Batsashvili eschews any fashionable emoting, arm-flinging or face-pulling. Instead, her energy is entirely focused upon the instrument and the music. (The significance of “Heifetz face” is the calm, even severe visual frontage of that legendary violinist’ Read more ...
Joseph Moog
It can be found in any contract. Both artists, as well as promoters, are aware of it, but it used to be an exception so rare that only a few have ever experienced it: the clause of "force majeure". Now it is sadly commonplace in the world of the performing arts.Who could have ever imagined a scenario as serious and drastic as the one we are currently experiencing? When I first read about this mysterious new virus in early January 2020, I thought back to similar headlines surrounding the swine influenza or SARS outbreaks in recent years. The feeling was similar and the potential threat was Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bizet: Carmen Suite No. 1, Symphony No. 1 in C, Gounod: Petite Symphonie Scottish Chamber Orchestra/François Leleux (Linn)Initial impressions are disconcerting, the bass thwacks at the start of the first suite extracted from Bizet’s Carmen by Ernest Giraud almost too polite, but the ears adjust quickly; what we get is what you’d hear in an orchestra pit. I’d forgotten how good this music is in its original form, having spent too much time recently marvelling at Rodion Shchedrin’s offbeat string transcription. François Leleux’s Scottish Chamber Orchestra are superb, flautist Silvia Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Visiting conductor Mark Wigglesworth is a good match for the Royal Philharmonic. The orchestra’s repertoire is usually at the popular end of the spectrum, so they know how to make the most of a good tune. Wigglesworth gives the players the space to phrase and shape the music, but his approach is more about drama and discipline. That’s a great musical virtue, but it’s hardly glamorous. Fortunately, pianist Khatia Buniatishvili was on hand to provide charisma and pizzazz in an electric performance of the Liszt Second Piano Concerto.To begin, Walton’s Portsmouth Point Overture. It’s a great Read more ...
David Nice
If only Liszt had started at the end of his Byron-inspired opera Sardanapalo. The mass immolation of Assyrian concubines might have been something to compare with the end of Wagner's Götterdämmerung. Instead he only sketched out the first act, complete until nearly the end, and the inevitable comparisons with the Wagner of the late 1840s are not unfavourable by any means. This is no for-the-hell-of-it resurrection, but a unique, high-octane fusion of Italian opera – the forms of cavatina and cabaletta still traceable – with the through-composed dream of Wagner's music-of-the-future, from the Read more ...