Schumann
Jessica Duchen
Nelson Goerner has settled rather gloriously into being a musicians’ musician. An artist of this calibre should be selling out the Wigmore Hall – but it wasn’t his fault that yesterday was Monday, and the pianophiles who turned out to hear him were rewarded with a rich and satisfying programme.Sitting low at the keyboard, arms extended without a hint of tension in the touch, the diminutive Argentinian pianist launched into a selection of music that sometimes thrilled with its sheer positivity as well as deft musical instinct and full, bright and beautiful sound. He opened not with Bach, but Read more ...
David Nice
If you were one of the world’s most famous pianists, you’d surely want to explore the masterpieces among Lieder with the great singers. Having chosen less than wisely for Schubert, as some of us thought, Mitsuko Uchida has now found a powerful voice for Schumann, that of German soprano Dorothea Röschmann: opulent, many-hued, maybe a size too big for the fickle Wigmore Hall acoustics but always impressive.It just depends on what you want in this repertoire. Last year in the same hall the slimmer-voiced Anne Schwanewilms gave a riveting interpretation with Roger Vignoles of Schumann’s Op. Read more ...
David Nice
A journey into dreams through songs from Dowland to The Kinks; a Swiss director who, Covent Garden’s Director of Opera Kasper Holten assures us, is “one of the most important European theatre artists”; a Norwegian chanteuse who, I assure you, is a performer of real originality. All that should add up to something just a little bit extraordinary, shouldn’t it? Sadly not. What I saw last night was the kind of thing I’d shrug off having chosen at random from offerings at the Edinburgh Fringe.Perhaps anticipation was misguided: buy into Christoph Marthaler’s reputation as “radical and renowned”, Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Who knew that the wisdom of crowds could be quite so fickle or so fallible? This superb recital by the American violinist Leila Josefowicz and pianist John Novacek was played in front of a Wigmore Hall only about a quarter-full. Josefowicz, returning to the Wigmore after five years, wasn't ruffled in the slightest. After all, a bigger date awaits her in just one week's time: next Thursday she is to give the world premiere of a new work by John Adams with the New York Philharmonic, for which Avery Fisher Hall is already close to sell-out.The duo carried off this London recital with huge Read more ...
edward.seckerson
The brothers Erik, Ken, and Mark Schumann founded the Schumann Quartet in 2007 and it might well have been an all-family affair had the cellist’s twin sister chosen to switch from violin to viola and join them. The Schumann brothers are of German-Japanese heritage – an interesting mix of temperaments – and perhaps because of their sister they were drawn to a female becoming the fourth among equals. The Estonian violist Liisa Randalu did so in 2012 and in this audio podcast she is spokesperson for the group – only fitting since she is at the centre of the sound – and talks about the quartet’s Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Sir Simon Rattle wants you to hear Das Paradies und die Peri. He is convinced that Schumann’s oratorio is one of the great undiscovered masterpieces of the Romantic era. To that end, he has led performances with the Berlin Philharmonic and an all-star cast, and has now brought that cast to London to convert the Brits.He’s right. It is magnificent, and last night it received as good a performance as could be imagined. Every strength of Schumann’s art is showcased. The solo vocal writing is emotive and imaginative. The chorus is used prominently, and to excellent effect. The orchestration Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
This year’s Palme d’Or winner at Cannes, Turkish master Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Winter Sleep (Kiş Uykusu), is a monumental film. Not merely in its scale – though at 196 minutes, it certainly clocks in on that front – but in its emotional heft.It’s like one of the great Russian novels, and in his seventh feature Ceylan shows the influence of that country’s culture more strongly than ever (remember the direct references to Andrei Tarkovsky in the wintry Istanbul of Uzak, his first prize-winner at Cannes back in 2003?).This time his script, as acknowledged in the film’s closing titles, is a loose Read more ...
graham.rickson
Copland: Appalachian Spring, Eight Poems of Emily Dickinson Emma Matthews (soprano), Melbourne Symphony Orchestra/Benjamin Northey (ABC Classics)If you or I were to sit at a piano keyboard and play, simultaneously, chords of E and A major, it would probably sound awful. Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring gets away with it by spacing the chords out widely. Dissonance has rarely sounded so sweet. This euphonious ballet score (its title actually inspired by lines from a Hart Crane poem referring to a water spring, not a season) pulls off the rare trick of seeming superficially simple, folk Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s Edinburgh Festival debut was the most telling example yet of the 2014 festival’s disregard for conventional concert programming. A programme that began with Strauss’ Don Juan and Four Last Songs could easily have settled into a comfortable evening of large scale late romantics, but instead turned on its heel to dip into Schumann’s Cello Concerto before concluding with Percy Grainger’s riotous The Warriors. More enterprising than their Proms outing, this was a high octane collision of styles and soloists across continents and centuries that could well have Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Temple Music's enterprising song series, directed by pianist Julius Drake, brought a welcome rarity to Middle Temple Hall last night. Schumann's Myrthen, the garland of twenty-six songs dedicated to his intended bride Clara Wieck, are seldom heard in a complete performance. Even with an interval in the middle, they serve as a reminder of the power and sheer emotional range of Schumann's music. These songs were almost certainly the catalyst which set in motion the composer's miraculous 'Liederjahr' of 1840, in which he wrote virtually 140 solo songs and duets with piano.At the heart of Read more ...
Kimon Daltas
In the year of his 85th birthday, and his 60th season as a conductor, Bernard Haitink is hardly taking it easy, with concerts with various orchestras around Europe and the US including an appearance at the Proms. In this visit to London with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe he may not have been bounding up the steps to the stage, but his powers with the baton remain undimmed.His is a stately and commanding presence at the podium, almost still apart from the arms and the occasional emphatic step forwards. This proved plenty with which to wring out the tragic drama from the two works in the Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
"Finally,” said Sir Simon Rattle, “I get a chance to say thank you. We have had forty years working together without an argument." The Royal Philharmonic Society was awarding an Honorary Membership to Martin Campbell-White, Rattle's agent. Campbell-White, who has been a guiding influence on the conductor's career since the 1970's made a rare appearance on stage, as he became the first artist manager ever to win this award in the RPS's 201-year history. There was a sense of occasion about this concert, which was also Rattle's first appearance with the LSO since the Olympics opening Read more ...