Schubert
David Nice
From the epic-lyric heaven storming of Beethoven's last three piano sonatas to the lyric-epic dances on the volcano of Schubert's two late piano trios isn't so big a leap, especially when you have the clairvoyant poise between colossal and intimate of the great Elisabeth Leonskaja. After her late-night solo turn at the Wigmore three Sundays ago, she was joined last night by two other superb instrumentalists who seem to have a direct and unshowy line to genius, violinist Liza Ferschtman and cellist István Várdai.It isn't clear which of the two trios was composed first, though both appeared on Read more ...
graham.rickson
Isabelle Aboulker: Mélodies/Songs en français and in English Julia Kogan (soprano), Isabelle Aboulker (piano) (First Hand Records)Never heard of Isabelle Aboulker? Now in her 80th year, she's worked as a choral director and a singing teacher. She's written music for French films and television, concentrating on vocal music and opera since the 1980s. This smartly conceived double album allows us to sample what non-francophones have been missing. Soprano Julia Kogan’s winning advocacy of Aboulker’s music stems from a chance meeting with the composer in a Pyrenean village. Kogan is Read more ...
graham.rickson
Brahms: Symphony No 4, Dvořák: Symphony No 9 Bamberg Symphony Orchestra/Jakub Hrůša (Tudor)Brahms became a close friend and mentor to Dvořák, the two men first meeting in 1877 after Brahms had helped the younger composer win a scholarship. Dvořák was described as “a talented individual”, who was pleased to take on Brahms's advice in replacing “the many bad notes“ in his D minor string quartet with better ones. Brahms soon came to value his friend as an equal, admiring his melodic invention, while his own “high degree of skill” was envied by Dvořák. Coupling Brahms's 4th with Dvořák’s Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
As Wigmore Hall audiences really ought to know, silence can be golden. Especially at the close of Schubert’s Winterreise, as the uncanny drone-like fifths of the hurdy-gurdy in “Der Leiermann” fade away into – well, whatever state of mind the singer and pianist have together managed to communicate over the preceding 24 songs. So much remains ambiguous – and open to plausible re-interpretation – in this cycle that the traditional pause for reflection as it ends makes good sense. Last night, however, the star (even, perhaps, cult) status of the German Lieder virtuoso Christian Gerhaher Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Mitsuko Uchida continues her world tour of Schubert sonatas with two concerts for the home crowd, this the second of her appearances at the Festival Hall. The tour coincides with Uchida’s 70th birthday, but the years have done little to diminish her technique. And Schubert is an excellent choice, arguably her strongest suit – perhaps a joint first with Mozart – though her many recordings and performances in the past are little preparation for her always unpredictable approach.Schubert’s piano sonatas make demands on the pianist, both in technique and interpretation, and every player Read more ...
David Nice
Earth stood hard as iron in parts of this awe-inspiring recital from a true song partnership, but theirs was an autumnal odyssey, not a winter journey. For all their preoccupation with death and occasionally desolation, neither Schubert at 31, in the last utterances gathered together as Schwanengesang ("Swansong"), nor Brahms, completing the Four Serious Songs on his 63rd birthday, was ready to leave this earth. You could argue that there's smiling spring in some of Schubert's inspirations, but not the way Gerald Finley or Julius Drake saw them, tellingly placing Brahms's monumental tetralogy Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Winterreise brings out the best from Ian Bostridge, and the worst. His dedication to understanding and communicating its complex and harrowing text is everywhere apparent, and this was an emotionally draining evening. But his style of delivery has always been controversial – some say distinctive, others eccentric – and all of those characteristics were heightened here, inspired (or provoked) by Schubert’s psychological drama. Much of this performance was enjoyable, but it was punctuated by moments so exaggerated and ghoulish as to overwhelm the many moments of elegance and beauty.Bostridge Read more ...
David Nice
If only Liszt had started at the end of his Byron-inspired opera Sardanapalo. The mass immolation of Assyrian concubines might have been something to compare with the end of Wagner's Götterdämmerung. Instead he only sketched out the first act, complete until nearly the end, and the inevitable comparisons with the Wagner of the late 1840s are not unfavourable by any means. This is no for-the-hell-of-it resurrection, but a unique, high-octane fusion of Italian opera – the forms of cavatina and cabaletta still traceable – with the through-composed dream of Wagner's music-of-the-future, from the Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Hegel, Kant, David Hume, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Leibniz are all adduced, referred to, and paraphrased, and that’s just for starters. Add Rameau, Schubert, Beethoven, Benjamin Britten and the contemporary composer David Matthews (who is also a friend) into the mix for Professor Sir Roger Scruton’s odd and uncategorisable series of essays on music and – especially – listening to music. Underneath it all is a kind of call to arms about how to listen. Scruton is a self-declared conservative, scholar, philosopher, polemicist, prolific writer, teacher and musician – both player and composer – as Read more ...
graham.rickson
Berio: Rendering, Schubert: Symphony No 9 Soloistes Européens, Luxembourg/Christoph König (Rubicon)Schubert's unfinished Symphony No 10 has been completed by various hands. I took part in a performance of Brian Newbould’s realisation several decades ago and had totally forgotten about the piece: how its chirpy first subject sounds like a G&S overture, and how modern-sounding the trombone passage near the close of the first movement is. This is vintage, exploratory Schubert. Luciano Berio's Rendering takes a different tack, treating Schubert's sketches as a three-movement fresco to Read more ...
David Nice
When you have 21 women to present in song, but only a couple among the 14 poets and none to represent them out of the 15 composers idolising or giving them a voice, you need two strong defenders of their sex at the helm. Lucy Crowe and Anna Tilbrook are no shrinking violets – the soprano no longer a light lyric, the pianist supportive only in the best sense, full of flexible power and forceful middle-to-lower-range sonorities for the voice to coast above.Certainly there were colour and variety enough from both to create worlds in miniature throughout a well-proportioned programme with quite a Read more ...
Christopher Glynn
The idea for a new translation of Schubert's Winterreise came from an old recording. Harry Plunket Greene was nearly 70 (and nearly voiceless) when he entered the studio in 1934 and sang "Der Leiermann," the final song of the cycle, in English (as "The Hurdy-Gurdy Man") into a closely-placed microphone. But the result is unforgettable - a haunting performance of the most mysterious soliloquy in all music, given by an old singer nearing the end of his own road. Like all great performances of Lieder, it relies less on vocal perfection and more on a leap of imagination, inhabiting the world of Read more ...