Schumann
David Nice
"Britten or Poulenc?" The question may seem a fatuous one, geared to the 100th anniversary of the Englishman's birth and 50 years since the Frenchman's death. Yet it certainly livens up what would otherwise be the usual dreary artists' biographies, presented with typical elan in this year's Cheltenham Music Festival programme book. "Has anyone said Poulenc in response to this?" asks pianist James Rhodes. Well, yes - no less than 13 of the performers, including doyenne of both composers Felicity Lott, as against 21 for Britten, with six "I couldn't possibly chooses" in the middle.Festival Read more ...
Graham Rickson
Schumann and his Daughters Florian Uhlig (piano) (Hänssler Classic)Hearing this fifth volume in the young German pianist Florian Uhlig’s ongoing Schumann series made me want to investigate the earlier issues. Rather than plough through the music chronologically, each CD is arranged thematically, this one being devoted to works written for the composer’s three daughters. Parents of children learning to play the piano will know how hard it is to find easy pieces which are both musically and technically satisfying. Schumann felt the same back in the 1840s, resolving to produce his own Read more ...
edward.seckerson
The magic usually descends quickly in a Mitsuko Uchida recital but the opening Bach of this rescheduled Festival Hall concert - a pair of Preludes and Fugues from Book 2 of The Well-Tempered Klavier - took a while to draw attention from the farthest reaches of this unfriendly recital space. Could it be that the Prelude of the C major Prelude and Fugue was too assertive, strident even (not a word one normally ever associates with Uchida), or that the, to my mind, inappropriate rubato somehow disturbed the perfect equilibrium of the music? The opening of the F sharp minor Prelude settled the Read more ...
David Nice
In many ways the most well-tempered of conductors, Wolfgang Sawallisch (1923-2013) brought a peerless orchestral transparency and beauty of line to the great German classics. Even the most overloaded Richard Strauss scores under his watchful eye and ear could sound, as the composer once said his opera Elektra should, “like fairy music by Mendelssohn”. A modest and affable old-school gent, Sawallisch prided himself on these qualities and on the longevity of his devotion to one company especially: he was music director of the Bavarian State Opera for over 21 years, from 1971 to 1992.Courtesy of Read more ...
David Nice
Now the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s second Conductor Laureate, Jiří Bělohlávek was always going to deserve a hero’s welcome for taking his players to the finishing line of their six-year cycle through Mahler’s symphonies. As more superficially brilliant Mahler series like Gergiev’s, squeezed into a single anniversary season, seem a distant memory, many of Bělohlávek’s slow burn, deep vein interpretations live on in the mind and soul. Last night’s Second Symphony, following an equally well prepared Schumann Piano Concerto with the scrupulous Francesco Piemontesi, shared many of those qualities. Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Sting, Debbie Harry, the Pet Shop Boys, Brahms, Mozart, Schumann. This is the kind of thing an average year throws up for the Gateshead-based Northern Sinfonia. Their visits to London are mostly to provide a backing track for the top pop acts. Which is not only perverse but verging on the criminal. Because, as so many have noticed before, the Northern Sinfonia aren't simply another middle-of-the-road band of freelancers, they may well be the finest chamber ensemble working in the country today. That's certainly the conclusion I came to at their opening concert of the season Read more ...
Graham Rickson
Hans Gál: Symphony No 4, Schumann: Symphony No 2 Orchestra of the Swan/Kenneth Woods (Avie)Hans Gál’s four symphonies are being slowly rehabilitated, thanks in part to Avie’s ongoing series. An Austrian Jew who eventually settled in Edinburgh and achieved fame as an academic, Gál’s early renown came through composition. His final symphony was completed in 1974 but - intensely personal, elegiac, nostalgic music, and completely out of step with the times - it could have been written 80 years previously. Gál saw himself as part of the Austro-German tradition, and his last symphony achieves Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Just as the most impeccably aristocratic families have the shabbiest homes, so the oldest and most prestigious orchestras frequently deliver the most scrappy performances. Trying too hard is so arriviste. King of this insouciant shabby chic are the Vienna Philharmonic. It's almost as if at some point the orchestra got bored of playing well. One hundred and sixty years at the top delivering the world's warmest, plushest, most sophisticated sound must get repetitive. That's not to say that we didn't get some glorious Viennese cream. We did. But we also got a deliberate untidiness that Read more ...
Ismene Brown
What an era for pianists it was in the four decades from 1800 to 1840, the era covered by Murray Perahia’s recital last night. Beethoven, Schumann, Schubert and Chopin all in full verdant flight, selected for a programme of much fantasy and dancing rhythms, in which the translucent, crystalline playing of the American found and told multiple stories.Perahia’s narrative imagination constantly strikes me - it’s the way that he can play a pair of phrases with utmost simplicity, and yet unearth within them a sense of rich thoughts or feelings following each other, mirroring the imagination itself Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
You couldn't imagine a less likely acrobat than avuncular American Richard Goode. But when it comes to the piano, there's no mistaking it. A nippy little tumbler he undoubtedly is. Today we saw his fingers bounce about the keyboard like a troupe of prepubescent Romanian gymnasts. The sleepy Sunday concert that many had clearly hoped for was not going to be the narrative of this kinetic performance.The first work on the programme might have lulled some into a false sense of security. Schumann's Kinderszenen called mostly on Goode's avuncularism. He responded with some tender pianistic sketches Read more ...
Graham Rickson
Schumann: Geistervariationen András Schiff (ECM)Hungarian pianist András Schiff has been revisiting some of the core repertoire with which he first made his name. This ECM two-disc set offers a revelatory Schumann recital – this label’s typically dour cover art giving little hint of the vibrancy and colour of Schiff’s playing. Papillons and the Kinderszenen are both performed with unshowy sincerity – Schiff’s lightness of touch in the miniatures which make up Papillons is a delight, and Kinderszenen never sounds clichéd – this is the sweetest, sincerest Träumerai I’ve heard. Schiff also gives Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
We're living through a golden age of Bruckner conducting. A revolutionary age. Young sparks like Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Ilan Volkov are doing extraordinary things with the Austrian's music, experimenting with speeds and phrasing, reshaping him in a more extraterrestrial, more lithe and modern mould. All of which means that trying to get yourself noticed conducting Bruckner in the 2010s is a bit like trying to get yourself noticed as a footballer in 1970s Brazil. Good luck.But before we got a chance to assess whether the living legend Claudio Abbado made the grade in his Read more ...