piano
David Nice
Living-museum recitals on a variety of historic instruments pose logistical problems. Telling The Arts Desk about his award-nominated CD of mostly 19th-century works for horns and pianos, Alec Frank-Gemmill remarked on the near-impossibility of reproducing the experiment in the concert-hall: playing on four period horns would need several intervals, and colleague Alasdair Beatson would hardly be likely to have the four pianos in the same room. Last October came a breakthrough, for me at any rate: Roman Rabinovich playing on three pianos in the Cobbe Collection at Hatchlands, Surrey. Yesterday Read more ...
Robert Beale
Edward Gardner was back on familiar ground when he conducted in Manchester last night – his high-profile career began when he was appointed as the Hallé’s first-ever assistant conductor, early in Sir Mark Elder’s era – and his rapport with young audiences and ability to command his players has certainly not diminished.His five-item programme (part of the BBC Philharmonic’s “Journey Through Music”, designed to relate to younger listeners) blew the cobwebs away if any were remaining from the winter break. It was brisk, brash and exciting – a style of music-making the Philharmonic is not always Read more ...
graham.rickson
Brahms: Clarinet Sonatas, Janáček: Sonata (arr. Brill) Shirley Brill, Jonathan Aner (piano) (Hänssler Classic)Brahms's pair of clarinet sonatas are the epitome of autumnosity, were such a word to exist. Pipe-and-slippers music, which isn't meant to sound disparaging. If you’ve endured a long and tiring day, few chamber works possess such consolatory clout. Clarinettist Shirley Brill knows exactly when to tone things down: the F minor sonata’s opening a beguiling study in introspection, the soft, woody tone balm to the ears. But she's alive to Brahms's occasional sunnier moments, the Read more ...
Helen Wallace
Joseph Houston’s recital gave us the piano exposed, sent up, psychoanalysed; in short, piano as theatre. And whether silently depressing keys or creating chords with an elbow, the young Berlin-based pianist brought formidable focus and unshowy mastery.He also revealed a rare talent for curation, creating a narrative that began with a walk around the piano and ended with Christian Mason’s numinous Remembered Resonance, grappling in between with that "curved, tensed, gridded institution of an instrument", in the words of composer Louis d’Heudieres. Houston gave tremendous direction and Read more ...
David Nice
Power and intelligence combined make Sarajevo-born British pianist Ivana Gavrić stand out from the crowd. Bass lines are clear and strong; right-hand melodies move in keenly articulated song. The first half of her recital progressed with well-earthed, dancing energy to a strong clincher in Chopin's B flat minor Scherzo. What a pity, then, that the transcendence we hoped for didn't emerge in Schumann's Kreisleriana.It may well be that Schumann's eight pieces, strongly connected here, reveal both the troubled, manic side of the composer's personality and a poised inwardness. But they do, Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Sonata no 1 – Sonata no 2 – Sonata no 3 – that’s barely a recital programme, it’s just a list. Fortunately, violinist Christian Tetzlaff and pianist Lars Vogt (pictured below by Neda Navae) have good musical reasons for presenting the Brahms violin sonatas in chronological order. The three works are similar in style, but the mood changes subtly from one to the next, and this performance at Wigmore Hall felt like a journey, from the nebulous but lyrical world of the First Sonata through to the more dynamic and dramatic Third.Tetzlaff and Vogt have a long acquaintance with the Brahms sonatas. Read more ...
David Nice
When you've found your living ideal for Schubert's sonatas - Elisabeth Leonskaja, surely - it can be a challenge to stay open-minded and welcome another take on the profundities. Mitsuko Uchida didn't make it easy for herself or us at the start by plunging into the technical challenges of the fierce C minor Sonata, first in the miraculous final trilogy; nor did she hint more than fleetingly at the sublime to come. But come it did, in a journey to the plains of heaven intensively walked in the hypnotic G major masterpiece, D894, with Uchida's unique personality defining the route.She doesn't Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
The Aurora Orchestra at Kings Place last night showcased both the best and worst things about attending live concerts, with the pros outweighing the cons. Early on, extraneous noise made me long for the pure listening experience of a good pair of headphones, but elsewhere the immediacy and physicality of the live experience was genuinely exciting.This latest edition of Aurora’s multi-season survey of Mozart piano concertos featured the Labèque sisters, Katia and Marielle, who have been taking duet and two-piano repertoire around the world for over 30 years, in the concerto for two pianos, K. Read more ...
graham.rickson
Chaconne - Sofya Gulyak (piano) (Champs Hill Records)Traditionally, a chaconne is an instrumental piece in triple time with a continually repeating bass line. Sofya Gulyak, winner of the 2009 Leeds Piano Competition, gives us seven. Best known is Busoni’s extraordinary Chaconne in D minor, a bold reinvention of a famous Bach number for solo violin. Gulyak is terrific, her performance combining craggy grandeur and warm intimacy. The final major chord has rarely sounded so well-earned. An early Chaconne in G major by Handel is a friendlier affair, Gulyak making the work shine. The rapid Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
Before the age of photography, people and places were recorded in ink or paint or sound. The process of recording was not instant, could not be rushed, and produced by its nature an experience of layers. On the last leg of a brief UK tour, the Basel Chamber Orchestra brought to Cadogan Hall two landscapes and two portraits, in performances notably true to life and unified as harmoniously as a Rothko quartet by the ensemble’s own cultivated tonal palette.Timbres were applied neat and raw to Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture, and Heinz Holliger had left the canvas unprimed: the effect was not a Read more ...
David Nice
Only connect. As the Southbank Centre's International Chamber Music Series at St John's showcased supreme eloquence in two searing but perfectly-proportioned meditations from the Second World War, over the road at Smith Square Europe House was hosting a tribute to a name that may not resonate as much as Messiaen or Shostakovich, Hubert Butler. Nevertheless just before the Frenchman composed visions for himself and three fellow musicians in a German prisoner-of-war camp camp and the Russian did what he could to mark the horrors of the Holocaust, the Irishman had been in Vienna on his own Read more ...
Robert Beale
Intellectual rigour and emotional honesty are the rewarding qualities in András Schiff’s Bach playing. Virtuosity comes as standard, too. And you get value for your money – his programme all but filled two-and-a-half hours, and he was as completely in command at the end as he had been at the beginning.More so, if anything. If Schiff is not entirely satisfied with the way something comes out, he’ll play the whole section of the music again, just to show what it really can be like.It was the three big pieces (all published or labelled as "Keyboard Practice" by their tongue-in-cheek creator) Read more ...