Schumann
David Nice
Comparisons might have been odious between three of the world's most cultured players – pianist Jitka Cechová, violinist Jan Talich and cellist Jan Páleníček of the Smetana Trio – and the young, British-based Minerva Piano Trio (Annie Yim, Michal Ćwiżewicz and Richard Birchall).Not a bit of it. Quotients of sheer joy were high in both the Wigmore Hall Sunday morning programme and the launch of a concert series in classy Christ Church Kensington, but if anything even higher in the Minerva’s double bill by virtue of an extraordinary, heart-overflowing masterpiece, Schumann’s Second Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
From a distance, the pianist Christian Blackshaw bears an uncanny resemblance to Franz Liszt, silver hair swept back à la 19th century. At the piano, though, you could scarcely find two more different musicians. There seems not to be a flamboyant bone in Blackshaw’s body. His playing of the Mozart piano sonatas at the Wigmore Hall over the past few years has been matchlessly gorgeous, pure as the driven snow, and in yesterday’s short but intense programme of Mozart and Schubert, the solitary pianist’s performance spoke direct to his locked-down listeners, screen to screen, with playing Read more ...
Graham Rickson
Ole Bull: Stages of Life Annar Follesø (violin), Norwegian Radio Orchestra/Eun Sun Kim, with Wolfgang Plagge (piano) (2L)Schumann thought that the Norwegian violinist and composer Ole Bull (1810-1880) was as accomplished a player as Paganini, A child prodigy, Bull achieved global fame, one of those 19th century musicians who seemingly knew everybody. Berlioz, Grieg and Rossini were fans, and Bull’s ownership of Bergen’s leading theatre gave Ibsen the chance to start his theatrical career. Bull’s belief that Norwegian folk melodies were as worthy as any in mainstream European art music, Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
Like many musicians, Danny Driver had not given a recital since the pandemic took hold in March. His return to the platform took place in the intense spotlight of the Wigmore Hall, broadcast live in BBC Radio 3’s Lunchtime Concert and webcast to the world - for which he chose a programme that was demanding, exposed and imaginative and rose to its ferocious challenges as if butter wouldn’t melt. Driver’s selection focused on the idea of études, which the best composers can make into far more than technical exercises. First, an unusual choice: a sonata by C P E Bach, the ground-breaking Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Loneliness haunts the solo song – not simply all those solitary wanderers and defiant wayfarers of the Lied tradition, but the forsaken lovers and questing pilgrims who fill the folk-song repertoire of many lands. So, amid the general poignancy of the Wigmore Hall’s lockdown concerts for Radio 3, the vocal performances have carried a special frisson. Warmly communicative voices have projected their anguish over, or resignation to, solitude into ranks of seats empty save for one or two engineers and announcers. This week, both soprano Ailish Tynan (accompanied by pianist Iain Burnside, on Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
I'm not sure if it was the beauty of Roderick Williams’s velvety vocals, the poignant delight of seeing a live performance in a concert hall after all this time, or my generally unusual frame of mind during lockdown that caused me to immediately burst into tears at the opening bars of Schubert’s "Gretchen am spinnrade" ("Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel"), but the fact no other audience members were around to witness my impromptu blubbering was certainly one plus point to watching Williams and pianist Joseph Middleton’s Wigmore Hall recital at home on my laptop. Having listened to most of the Read more ...
Richard Bratby
After a devastating drought, even a light shower can feel like something of a miracle. Under normal circumstances, a 60 minute lunchtime piano recital from the Wigmore Hall would represent wholly unremarkable business as usual for BBC Radio 3. As it was – coming (as the presenter Andrew McGregor reminded us) eleven weeks after the Wigmore had last heard live music – this felt like an event of profound significance. Perhaps that’s no bad thing. Perhaps we haven’t always listened to artists as life-affirming as Stephen Hough, and music as great as his opening programme of Bach and Schumann, as Read more ...
Andsnes, Eriksmoen and friends, Bergen International Festival online review - from Mozart to Widmann
David Nice
This is as close as we’re going to come now to the real festival experience. The enviably well-funded Bergen International Festival is serving up on average three or four events a day, livestreamed from atmospheric venues around the city and all available for a month. For those of us lucky to have witnessed the more intimate strand within the international programme curated by great pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, teaming up this year with outstanding soprano Mari Eriksmoen and young players from the (also well-funded) Crescendo mentoring programme, it was close to teleportation. But whereas fiv Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
This concert represented the British leg of the NHK Symphony Orchestra’s European tour. Tokyo’s radio orchestra is Japan’s flagship ensemble, and they are fine advocates for the country’s thriving musical culture, the playing precise and the tone focused. Paavo Järvi is the orchestra’s Chief Conductor and a good fit for the orchestra’s sound. Järvi takes a similarly focused approach, expressive but never extrovert. He has a real feeling for drama as well, often driving climaxes furiously, while always relying on the orchestra’s unshakable unity. Despite his minimal gestures, he has a tendency Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Dichterliebe is a song-cycle full of gaps, silences, absences. Where is the piano at the start of “Ich hab’ im Traum geweinet” when the voice enters first and so startlingly, ungrammatically alone? Where is the voice during the long piano postlude when the vocal line disappears but the singer continues to stand centre-stage? We even seem to join the cycle mid-conversation, unsure what has prompted the diffident, tentative harmonies with which it starts. Biggest of all however, are the gaps left by the four songs that Schumann excised between completing the manuscript version and publishing Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Emanuel Ax here celebrated his 70th birthday with an all-Schumann recital. In fact, it was an all-Schumann marathon, a three-hour concert at Wigmore Hall featuring solo works, Dichterliebe with Simon Keenlyside, and, with the Dover Quartet, the Piano Quartet and the Piano Quintet. Ax has an unassuming stage presence, and blends easily into chamber ensembles. Even so, he remained the centre of attention here, with the other performers softening their tone and applying an extra level of grace in order to match the supple flow of Ax’s Schumann.The Arabeske, op. 18, began the concert, and Read more ...
Graham Rickson
Mahler: Symphony No 7 Budapest Festival Orchestra/Ivan Fischer (Channel Classics)“It is my best work and it has a cheerful character.” So said Mahler about his Symphony No 7, and on the basis of this exuberant, feisty performance, Ivan Fischer agrees with him (“…may this reading contribute to a revalidation!”). Fischer doesn't see the work as problematic, his love for the symphony expressed without a trace of indulgence. There's so much to enjoy here. The first movement's juddering opening is superbly done, the music's slow awakening rivalling the start of Mahler's 3rd. The jump cuts Read more ...