piano
Robert Beale
Manchester Camerata give relatively few old-fashioned concerts these days – I mean the sort that are done in purpose-built concert halls, with a conductor, soloist and conventional orchestra strength – because they’re busy crossing boundaries and attracting new audiences. But when they do return to the traditional path, they do it extremely well, and especially when music director Gábor Takács-Nagy is in charge.This time, at the Royal Northern College of Music, there was the additional distinction of Jean-Efflam Bavouzet as soloist in two Mozart piano concertos. He and they have recorded Nos Read more ...
graham.rickson
Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Op.110 and Op.111, with music by András Szöllösy and Gyula Csapó Gábor Csalog (piano) (BMC)Two Beethoven sonatas coupled with shorter pieces by a pair of contemporary Hungarian composers makes for an engaging mixture. Gabór Csalog’s disc feels very much like a single live performance, though the individual items were taped at separate recitals. Beethoven’s momumental late sonatas draw on many influences, from naïve folksong to baroque counterpoint. András Szöllösy’s Paesaggio con morti also fuses multiple elements, a sober chorale theme restated between music of Read more ...
David Nice
Treasure our young continental European musicians in London while you can. Only last week I learned that so many of the overseas students at London's Guildhall School had stories to tell about being questioned in public (usually "are you Polish?" with the negative ramifications that implied). Certainly that was true for the Estonians, two of whom celebrated their country's 99th birthday as a republic yesterday lunchtime - the big day is on Friday; expect much more in centenary year - with assistance from their London embassy and the City Music Society. Both sponsors must have been very proud Read more ...
Robert Beale
Two young guys called Ben graced the BBC Philharmonic platform at the Bridgewater Hall – looking almost like Ant and Dec if you let your imagination wander. Ben Gernon, 27, had just been announced as the orchestra’s new Principal Guest Conductor (while predecessor John Storgårds now rejoices in the title of Chief Guest Conductor … it almost seems a bout of alternative facts is coming on), and this was his Bridgewater Hall début. Piano concerto soloist was Benjamin Grosvenor, a virtuoso Manchester knows well.Stickless throughout, Gernon began with Beethoven’s Third ("Eroica") Symphony, played Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Mitsuko Uchida specialises in elegant, if uncontroversial, interpretations of core Austro-German repertoire, yet she’s never predictable, and every performance is full of unexpected insights and welcome surprises. Mozart and Schumann stand at the far ends of her repertoire, and between them demonstrate what makes her playing great: In Schumann we hear subtlety of tone, gradually shifting moods and psychological depth, and in Mozart an unbridled joie de vivre, elevated, through her consummate artistry, to the highest of artistic ideals.Mozart’s Piano Sonata in C, K 545, was really just Read more ...
David Nice
Restlessness in a good sense was the keynote of Elisabeth Leonskaja's latest revelatory recital. At 71, the Russian pianist, now an Austrian citizen, has all the supreme mastery it takes to make the volatility work: perfect weight and balance, miraculous rhythmic articulation, the right sense of space and freedom, and the ability to see where a line or a movement is going. Expect only the big, clear sound which is one of her trademarks - all-enveloping in the turbulent Capriccios of Brahms's Op. 116 set - and you can be startled by the kind of bounces and skips which made her Schubert a thing Read more ...
Robert Beale
Colin Matthews’s arrangements for orchestra of the 24 Debussy Préludes (originally commissioned by the Hallé) have been widely admired. The BBC Philharmonic’s concert, conducted by Nicholas Collon, at the Bridgewater Hall on Friday night began with three of Ravel’s five piano Miroirs, two of them orchestrated by Matthews (one a world premiere) and one by the late Steven Stucky.The Matthews approach to Debussy has been compared in places to Ravel’s own orchestral technique (though a direct claim that he transcribed Debussy as Ravel might have done seems over-egging the pudding somewhat). His Read more ...
David Nice
Revelations in the classical year never stop coming. Even the week before Christmas yielded two performances as good as you're going to get: the sheer effervescence and light-flourishing of Lucy Crowe in ecstatic Bach and Mozart with La Nuova Musica, and Sheku Kanneh-Mason in Haydn's C major Cello Concerto. So any sifting of 2016's musical riches needs to put the truly one-off packages at the top of the list.In terms of unrepeatable magic and logistics that actually worked, watch the birdie for Pierre-Laurent Aimard's four Aldeburgh Festival concerts of Messiaen's Catalogue d'Oiseaux from 4. Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Leonard Bernstein once said that his favourite piece of Stravinsky was whatever one he happened to be listening to. I have a similar feeling about Mozart piano concertos: I love them all in their turn, and last night I heard Mitsuko Uchida bring two of the greatest of them to life, as pianist and director, alongside the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.The template is clearly the successful “Beethoven Journey” in which Leif Ove Andsnes spent four years touring the Beethoven piano concertos with the MCO, culminating in three scintillating Proms in the 2015 season. Combining two concertos with a Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Thomas Søndergård stood in for this concert at a day’s notice – Valery Gergiev is apparently recovering from a knee operation and unable to travel. He left behind a curious programme, centred around Prokofiev’s quirky but dour Sixth Symphony. It’s a difficult work to schedule, but Gergiev added two sweeteners, Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet and First Piano Concerto. Søndergård clearly has the measure of all three works, and all came off well, making this concert, his first appearance with the London Symphony, an impressive debut.Dynamism and focus are the key qualities of Søndergård’s Read more ...
David Nice
Has any living pianist had a richer or more charmed life than Idil Biret? As a child prodigy she studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and Alfred Cortot, and both there and in Germany with Wilhelm Kempff. At the age of four she was reproducing Bach Preludes and Fugues on the family piano in Ankara simply from hearing them on the radio. When she was seven the Turkish Parliament passed "Idil's Law", enabling not her but also other gifted children to study abroad.From the testimonies of her great mentors, it's clear she was always a happy child (pictured below with Turkish President İsmet İnönü Read more ...
David Nice
For a BBC Radio 3 lunchtime's hour of music, cellist Steven Isserlis's latest collaboration with that most individual of pianists Olli Mustonen went astonishingly deep. The surprises were equal in its two halves - the first a through-conceived programme of shortish late Schumann pieces plus a Schumann homage composed by Mustonen the composer for Isserlis and poetically embedded in the sequence; the second an interpretation of Prokofiev's late Sonata for Cello and Piano which scotched with high, focused drama the usual claims that this is a light and simple work.Mustonen has a penchant for Read more ...