Wigmore Hall
Gavin Dixon
Handel’s Brockes-Passion is a curious piece - sacred but not liturgical, and with a strong influence from opera, though it is a concert work. Solo voices predominate, and the singers assembled at Wigmore Hall were mostly fine. Jonathan Cohen and his Baroque ensemble, Arcangelo, provided imaginative and sensitive accompaniment, the playing relaxed and accommodating. This isn’t music of the scale or emotional depth of the Bach passions, so the light touch from the performers seemed appropriate. And if Handel’s score sometimes underwhelmed, the quality of the singing usually compensated.Several Read more ...
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 ...
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 ...
Sebastian Scotney
"Genius" is a word to be used sparingly, but Django Bates surely is one. “A musical polymath and prodigiously gifted composer” went the citation for his Ivor Award a few weeks ago. “Joyful, insouciant and insanely clever,” wrote Evan Parker in a sleeve-note describing his re-workings of Charlie Parker in Confirmation (2011), the second album with his Belovèd Trio.Last night Django Bates with the regular members of that trio, bassist Petter Eldh and drummer Peter Bruun presented a concert billed as “A double celebration: Evan Parker’s 75th birthday and a look ahead to next year’s 100th Read more ...
'A product not only of his era but also of his travels': Ian Page on Mozart's cosmopolitan education
Ian Page
When Mozart was an established composer living in Vienna during the final years of his short life, a young student seemingly came to him to seek his advice. The would-be young composer said that he was planning to write a symphony, and asked Mozart what advice he could give to him. Mozart replied that a symphony was a complex undertaking, and suggested that the youngster should first write a few keyboard sonatas and string quartets before undertaking an orchestral work. The student, however, was indignant. “But, Herr Mozart,” he allegedly retorted, “you were writing symphonies when you were Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Emanuel Ax here celebrated his 70th birthday with an all-Schumann recital. In fact, it was an all-Schumann marathon, a three-hour concert at Wigmore Hall featuring solo works, Dichterliebe with Simon Keenlyside, and, with the Dover Quartet, the Piano Quartet and the Piano Quintet. Ax has an unassuming stage presence, and blends easily into chamber ensembles. Even so, he remained the centre of attention here, with the other performers softening their tone and applying an extra level of grace in order to match the supple flow of Ax’s Schumann.The Arabeske, op. 18, began the concert, and Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
You seldom hear a Champions League-level roar of approval at the Wigmore Hall. Last night, though, Igor Levit drew a throaty collective bark of appreciation from the audience after (for once) an awed hush had followed the final dying cadences of the aria’s return in Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Had he earned it? Absolutely. This recital was first of three devoted to the idea of Variations. Friday will see Levit play Beethoven’s Diabelli set, and Frederic Rzewski’s mighty deconstruction of the revolutionary anthem “The People United Will Never Be Defeated”. On 27 May, the Russian-born Berlin Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
When critics praise a first-rank string quartet, convention demands they claim that the whole adds up to more than the sum of its parts. True enough, maybe, but with the Takács Quartet, each separate element really does blaze with a soloistic, virtuosic flame. From the first bars of last night’s opener at the Wigmore Hall, as Haydn plays pass-the-parcel with an apparently straightforward tune at the start of his G major quartet Op.76 no. 1, the sheer class and distinctive voice of each instrumental contribution grabbed the ear.Remarkably, this group – first mustered in Budapest in 1975 but Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
There can be no questioning trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger’s extraordinary mastery: his big, unforced sound, mellifluous legato, athletic virtuosity and utterly controlled high notes. But his well-attested commitment to the avant-garde led the Wigmore audience to stay away in droves from his recital last night, leaving the hall insultingly empty for such a star performer.But the programme didn’t just look intimidating on paper, it turned out to be somewhat hard work in practice, not only for those Wigmore patrons who prefer Beethoven and Schubert, but even for those of us with an enthusiasm for Read more ...
Clara Mouriz, Roderick Williams, Joseph Middleton, Wigmore Hall review - the song recital as mixtape
Sebastian Scotney
It’s the age of the mixtape. And of the Only Connect sequences round. Last night’s Wigmore Hall song recital, under the curious strap-line “Basque Blood and the Folksong” was centred around Ravel songs – the Wigmore Hall has a focus on them this season – but was also in the habit of departing from Ravel and taking in a fair few whistle-stops en route: Britten, de Falla, Fauré, Jesús Guridi, Alessandro Scarlatti, Schumann and Trad. (Scots).The Ravel songs were focused on those with more exotic and folk-ish inspiration. They included some rarities, such as his setting of “Ye Banks and Braes”, Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
At Wigmore Hall the JACK Quartet presented the complete Elliott Carter string quartets in a single day – an astonishing feat given the scale and complexity of the music. One of Carter’s many achievements here is the self-sufficiency of each of his five quartets, the subtle issues of concept and form that each poses always comprehensively addressed. But the five quartets also work as a cycle, for the similar approaches the composer takes. The JACK Quartet crafted two satisfying programmes from the five works, presenting the Fifth and First in a lunchtime recital, and then in the evening Read more ...