Beethoven
Peter Quantrill
Where to begin with the most appropriated musician in history? The Barbican’s Beethoven 250 celebrations got off to an auspicious start with a weekend of events, styled like a pop festival, which nonetheless put the composer back where he belonged – in Vienna, at the turn of the 18th century – and set fire to some tenacious myths.Struggle, transcendence and humour – music that laughs, often through gritted teeth – are the hallmarks of Beethoven’s work. Forget the Ninth’s appropriation as a crutch to prop up manifestos of every stripe: young and not-so-young listeners were entranced at the Read more ...
David Nice
In Beethoven anniversary year, there will probably be many more "Moonlight"s, meaning the Sonata, than the real thing (though we've been lucky to see the crescent in close conjunction with Venus these past two nights). Not many pianists would dare to place it at the beginning of a programme. Denis Kozhukhin's paradoxically no-nonsense poetry meant that a constant sense of motion culminated in the whirlwind of the finale, a steady move towards implosion mirrored in the piano transcription of Ravel's La Valse at the end of the programme. In between came perfection in the form of pure song from Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
#Beethoven250 is in full swing at the Barbican. Like most venues, they are keen to show a different side to the composer in his jubilee year. And the oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives ticks all sorts of anniversary boxes. The work is utterly obscure - not a single one of the musicians this evening had performed it before - but it’s large-scale and ambitious, with plenty of opportunities to shine, especially for the chorus and soloists. It was paired with Berg’s Violin Concerto, played by Lisa Batiashvili, an equally virtuosic performance, though of a more subdued work. An ideal balance. Read more ...
graham.rickson
Beethoven: Symphonies 1-9 Danish Chamber Orchestra/Ádám Fischer (Naxos)“I need to play the notes in such a way that we can recreate the feelings of the listeners which Beethoven would have wanted to invoke in his audience, rather than playing it exactly how we wanted it to sound.” Ádám Fischer's pragmatic, humane approach to performing and recording Beethoven’s nine symphonies makes this one of the most entertaining modern cycles out there. We should be grateful that this covetable box set exists at all. Six of the symphonies were recorded in 2014 with the DR Chamber Orchestra, before Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
There are encores and encores – most a friendly, minimal farewell gesture from the soloist; some a jolly, festive unwind after a particularly taxing piece. And then there’s the luxury free gift that Sir András Schiff bestowed on us during the second of two Barbican concerts with Iván Fischer and his Budapest Festival Orchestra. Jaws quietly dropped as we realised that Schiff intended to follow up Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto (both gigs formed part of the Barbican’s Beethoven 250 season) with the Allegro con brio first movement of the Waldstein sonata.Surely, this was munificence beyond the Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
"Revelatory": it’s one of those words which is now completely devalued through having been carelessly dropped into a thousand press releases. And yet it perfectly describes the results Miklós Perényi achieved in a pair of superb concerts of Beethoven’s works for cello and piano at Wigmore Hall, which were also live-streamed.The Hungarian cellist has an unshakable sense of mission. He stays as literal and as close as he can to Beethoven’s musical intentions, and the trust which he places in the works always seems to find a perfect justification. Now aged 71, Perényi has lived with these Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
Second performances are even more valuable than premieres, composers say, when it comes to launching a piece into the world. Spare a thought, then, for Jan Ladislav Dussek, who has had to wait over two centuries for this prize to be awarded to his Mass in G – really, a Missa solemnis – of a scale to rival Beethoven’s example. It was revived last night for the first time since its premiere in 1811 with exemplary spirit and dedication by Academy of Ancient Music forces under Richard Egarr.Like Beethoven, Dussek was a composer primarily for and at the piano. He flourished as a touring virtuoso Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
While the Proms were ringing out the old season, the Wigmore Hall ushered in the big celebration of 2020: the 250th anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven’s birth. The venue’s year-long festival (actually longer – the actual birthday is December ‘20) kicked off with a Beethoven weekend with more than just Beethoven in it. What stood out was how astoundingly good Beethoven sounds compared to almost anybody else. I went to the first three concerts of the first day.To begin, the cellist Steven Isserlis and the fortepianist Robert Levin did give pure Beethoven such a run in the park that we could Read more ...
David Nice
Any festival would be proud and honoured to end with the great Elisabeth Leonskaja playing the last three Beethoven piano sonatas. Here the Everest was swiftly scaled as the tenth concert of a packed Wigmore Hall weekend. How I wish I could have heard more than the final two on Sunday evening, all-Beethoven unlike some of the predecessors reviewed above by Jessica Duchen, but they served up the perfect contrasts: breathtaking sheen in the lighter earlier Beethoven from young players alongside the best in their middle years followed by poleaxing profundity. There can be no pianist alive who Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Cellist Raphael Wallfisch thinks outside of the box. His concert repertoire spans the popular concerto choices – the Elgar, the Dvořák – but he doesn’t stop there, and makes a point of seeking out the lesser-known and the little-heard. He has a particular taste for English cello concertos of the 20th century, and his advocacy has revived the fortunes of cello works by Bliss, Bax, Moeran, and particularly Gerald Finzi, his performance of the Finzi Cello Concerto a surprise hit of the 2001 Proms.His recording projects are equally adventurous. By the end of this year, Wallfisch will have Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Among the greatest violin concertos in the repertoire, the Elgar is far too rarely performed. One of the reasons is its huge dramatic scale and almost hour-long duration – Sakari Oramo wisely programmed it here with Dvořák’s relatively modest Seventh Symphony, but this was still a long concert. Another reason is the superhuman demands it makes on the soloist, of virtuosity, but also of subtle structural thinking, and ultimately, of sheer stamina.So we owe Nicola Benedetti a debt of thanks for her advocacy here of (arguably) Elgar’s greatest work. Her reading was bold and forthright, but Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Great conductors, like efficient auto engines, apply a lot of torque – they can use a little energy to achieve great surges of movement. Now aged 91, the American-born Swedish maestro Herbert Blomstedt sometimes hardly seems to raise his baton-free hands. His feet, meanwhile, remain more or less immobile. Yet, like some highly-geared sports car, last night the Philharmonia zoomed, boomed or swerved at the merest distant kiss of his fingertips.Quietly but completely in command for the second of his Royal Festival Hall Concerts with the orchestra, Blomstedt shares with his fellow- Read more ...