Wigmore Hall
Bernard Hughes
In a week when my colleague Jessica Duchen was delighted by the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, last night’s concert, also at Wigmore Hall, by Michael Collins and London Winds showed that chamber music with winds need not be the poor relation of that with strings. Rather the concerts make a persuasive case that wind instruments can be as engaging, virtuosic and poetic, and the repertoire – if less voluminous – as varied and versatile.London Winds have been together with an unchanged core line-up for 32 years and, not surprisingly, have developed an almost supernatural musical understanding. Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
Nobody could deny that this was a weekend when we needed cheering up. The place for that was the Wigmore Hall, which played host to a recently formed “shape-shifting” ensemble of superb young soloists. The Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective was launched in 2017 by the violinist Elena Urioste and pianist Tom Poster (incidentally, they got married last summer). For their Wigmore Hall residency they gathered a starry team of clarinettist Mark Simpson, bassoonist Amy Harman, cellist Laura van der Hejden, horn player Alec Frank-Gemmill, violist Jean-Miguel Hernandez and double bassist Joseph Conyers. Read more ...
David Nice
Not even the unengaged or terminally weary could have dozed through this. Pianists have often commented how the Wigmore Steinway is too big for the hall, and most adjust accordingly. Not 27-year-old Italian Beatrice Rana, but not in the bad way of interpreters who simply bash (there was a young Ukrainian here recently who did just that). If she needs to convey sonority at full pitch, she won't compromise; and her soft playing is equally compelling. The certainty of means to ends is unwavering, the calm upright posture at the keyboard somehow at odds with the massiveness she can convey.Her Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Wigmore Hall audiences don’t usually roar. But when a star soprano who has already made her mark at the world’s major opera houses pays a visit, they do. This was the Albanian-born and now New York-based soprano Ermonela Jaho’s debut at the hall, an event which also marked the opening of the 50th anniversary year of Opera Rara, with whom Jaho has an extremely fruitful collaboration. The concert had been fitted into the Wigmore Hall’s programme at relatively short notice and sold out quickly.The moments that brought on the most vociferous baying from the packed house were opera extracts, Read more ...
David Nice
"What is it about Mozart?" asked Sviatoslav Richter in 1982. "Is there a pianist alive who really manages to play him well?...Haydn is infinitely less difficult to play (he's almost easy, in fact). So what is Mozart's secret?" Just over a decade later, he went a long way towards unlocking that secret in a Moscow recital, playing three sonatas and the C minor Fantasia in Grieg's two-piano adaptations with Elisabeth Leonskaja, the younger colleague whose playing he so inspired. And I'm sure that if he were alive today, he would have given the ultimate accolade to his one-time protégée's recital Read more ...
David Nice
Assuming the world holds together that long, there will be something we can rely on annually all the way to 2041, the 250th anniversary of Mozart's death: among the celebrations each year, a Wigmore Hall concert like this one, placing Amadeus among the other composers of his time, great and small(er). For very occasion we'll trust the brilliant Ian Page to assemble a crack team of players and to introduce us to new voices of outstanding quality.Last night it was the turn of soprano Samantha Clarke, not long graduated from the Guildhall School, taking its 2019 gold medal, and flagged up here Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Benjamin Britten died on 4 December 1976. Last night’s Wigmore Hall concert, on the 43rd anniversary of his passing, proved that his real legacy lies not in inert acts of homage but a living engagement both with his work, and the unruly energies that drove it. Although we heard some high-quality Britten performances, from Ailish Tynan, Allan Clayton, Robert Murray and the Aurora Orchestra strings conducted by Brett Dean, the most hopeful pointers to a Brittenesque future came in the world première of Josephine Stephenson’s song cycle Une Saison en Enfer.The young Franco-British composer’s Read more ...
David Nice
Fine-tuning piano sound to Wigmore acoustics can elude even the greatest. Add a second Steinway and a wide range of percussion instruments, and the risks would seem to be hugely increased. So it was amazing to witness what seemed like sonic perfection throughout yesterday's Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert from the back of the hall. Not only that, but a refined imagination from all four players that came as close to perfection as you could ask for. Pavel Kolesnikov, who so often seems to be associated with London’s most original concert programmes, joined up again with partner Samson Tsoy, a Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Mieczysław Weinberg – where to begin? The composer died in obscurity in 1996, but his music has enjoyed a huge surge in popularity over the last ten years, culminating in this year’s global celebrations for the centenary of his birth. His music is lyrical and deeply expressive, but audiences can be forgiven for not knowing quite what to make of him. He was immensely prolific, and his works are diverse, yet a distinctive voice runs throughout them.Weinberg was a Polish Jew who spent most of his life in Moscow, and, depending where we look, we find Polish, Jewish and Russian influences. He was Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
This recital finds Angela Hewitt nearing the end of her “Bach Odyssey”, a project to perform all of Bach’s keyboard works, in five cities around the world, between 2016 and 2020. That’s an impressive feat, especially as she performs from memory. Here she presented the English Suites Nos. 4-6, plus an early Sonata, BWV 963.At first glance, none of these works have immediate audience appeal. The English Suites, although mostly based on dance forms, are elaborate contrapuntal constructions, long and with little melodic character. But they proved an ideal vehicle for Hewitt’s pianism, the Read more ...
David Nice
There are now two septuagenarians playing Schubert at a level no other living pianist can touch. Imogen Cooper celebrated her 70th birthday on 28 August, and marked it at the Wigmore Hall last night with a two-interval epic, poised but full of inner fire and deepest pathos, not long after 74-year-old Elisabeth Leonskaja had touched the heavens playing Beethoven's last three sonatas in a late-night concert and joined with Liza Ferschtman and István Várdai in Schubert's two late piano trios.Leonskaja has also programmed the Schubert triptych of the composer's last year in a single concert, and 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 ...