chamber music
David Nice
Born in exigency at the end of the First World War and soon kiboshed by the Spanish flu, The Soldier’s Tale as originally conceived is a tricky hybrid to bring off. Not so the suite – Stravinsky’s mostly incidental-music numbers are unique and vivid from the off – but the whole story, based on a Russian folk tale about a simple man’s tricky dealings with Old Nick, is awkward, made impossibly complicated and preachy by the Swiss writer Charles Ferdinand Ramuz. Huge kudos, then, to a vibrant translation (uncredited, alas) delivered by the Scottish actor Matthew McVarish, spreading himself Read more ...
David Nice
For the performers and the venue there can be nothing but praise. To be back in Kings Place’s Hall One after so long was to realise afresh that no other London venue gives such air to soaring strings – and these ones truly did soar and gleam. For the programme, not quite so much. When you begin in the heights – as the first of the evening’s concerts, the one I was lucky enough to attend, did – with Ravel’s Duo for violin and cello, two bouts of romantic rodomontade can quickly pall, however committed the performances.A confession: I signed up for “Kanneh-Masons and friends” without looking at Read more ...
David Nice
How strange to experience Saffron Walden’s amazingly high-standard new(ish) concert hall without the usual auditorium – in other words no tiered rows other than in the balcony, but seats around tables, on a level with the musicians (pictured below, the scene before the performance). And what a world-class concert this was, not the sort of thing you’d usually expect at the end of a misty afternoon’s ramble in the Essex countryside.It was a topsy-turvy programme, to be sure, with meditations bright (Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll) and dark (Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder) followed by an anything but tea- Read more ...
David Nice
How many musicians can you fit in the main space of the Fidelio Orchestra Café? The answer is 23 string players in masks, for the recording of Strauss’s Metamorphosen of which I was a solitary witness in the summer. With diners accommodated, probably four is the limit. It's being tested this week with the first emergence of a piano quartet I’ve witnessed since March, violinist Benjamin Baker, viola player Timothy Ridout, cellist Bartholomew LaFollette and pianist Louis Schwizgebel sparing nothing in the storm and stress of teenage Mahler’s solitary movement and the much more chameleonic Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
You could imagine that normality had returned watching the live webcasts from the Wigmore Hall. The Hall has bucked the trend, and managed to present a full autumn season, to a carefully separated but still substantial audience. Yesterday evening’s concert was to be given by Quatuor Ébène, but they pulled out at the last minute—problems with travelling from France perhaps the reason. But the Wigmore Hall had another ensemble, the Elias Quartet, lined up and ready to give a similar programme. Given the unpredictable situation, the management has presumably organised last-minute stand-ins for Read more ...
David Nice
A muse of fire descended on the top floor of a former warehouse in the East End, unextinguished by the rain which fell almost continuously outside during the four stupendous concerts – three advertised, one a generous bonus – of the Ragged Music Festival. Once turned into an educational refuge for the East End poor by the heroic Dr Barnardo, surviving the Blitz unlike just about every other building in the vicinity, this unlikely and allegedly haunted venue – the Paranormal Society is due to have a sleepover here soon – the Ragged School Museum has been commandeered by pianists and partners, Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
Salzburg, Verbier and other high-end festivals have scraped together reduced, still impressive programmes over the summer for consumption online. Not so starrily cast but hardly less engaging in situ is the adapted offering from Istanbul, mixing local and international artists, chamber and orchestral concerts with a flair that belies its reputation on the fringe of the major music festivals. In a series of pre-recorded concerts, streamed daily and mostly made available for a month thereafter (until mid-October), the organisers have taken the opportunity to range even further than their usual Read more ...
David Nice
Songs of the beyond versus the profundity of the here and now struck very different depths in the Castalians’ evening concert at the Wigmore Hall and Elizabeth Llewellyn’s recital with equal partner Simon Lepper the following lunchtime. It was good to have the very human anchoring of Haydn’s “Emperor” Quartet, Op. 76 No. 3, before the awfully big adventure of Beethoven’s Op. 132: none of us who’d adapted to the al fresco mix of sophistication and take-it-as-it-comes in the four quartet recitals in Battersea Park Bandstand would willingly swap it for a more lugubrious Temple of Art, but the Read more ...
David Nice
Even bigger things have happened to Sheku Kanneh-Mason since I last saw him performing alongside his contemporaries in the Fantasia Orchestra – That Royal Wedding, for instance, and a Decca contract. Yet it looks like he will always have the wisdom to hurry slowly. He played Saint-Saëns’ First Cello Concerto with two orchestras on film recently – the Philharmonia pre-recorded event infinitely superior in sound and vision to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s centenary celebration, though the cellist was equally good in both – because he only had three in his repertoire (the others Read more ...
David Nice
An early hero of lockdown, livestreaming from his Berlin home in terrible sound at first, Igor Levit is a supreme example of how adaptable musicians can survive in times like these. True, he has the advantage of being the go-to pianist of the moment, but who else would take Satie’s 18-hour Vexations into a recording studio for more live broadcasting, or master the complete Beethoven sonatas more thoroughly for the most exciting of live experiences at the Salzburg Festival (in full) and now the Wigmore Hall (a telling selection)?There is focused brilliance in the playing as well as deep Read more ...
David Nice
Music going back to nature, or rather the managed nature of a London park, can make you think and feel quite differently about great composers’ responses to the world around them. To hear Dvořák’s blissful “American” Quartet the Friday before last in the tender hands of the Maggini Quartet was to realise something of the circumstances around its swift (16-day) composition on a summer holiday in the Czech community of Spillville, Iowa, and to go back to the essence of rustic music-making as well, of course, as the essence of folk music which links the composer’s native Bohemia with Afro- Read more ...
John Gilhooly
It is hard to believe that it’s really happening! Despite a few bumps along the way, Christian Gerhaher and Gerold Huber, one of the greatest Lieder duos of our time, will open the 20/21 Wigmore Hall Season tomorrow night in a programme of Schubert and Berg. This is the first of 100 concerts between now and Christmas.It has taken a huge amount of work to get to this point and undoubtedly there will be many more challenges ahead as we navigate our way through the winter months. We have reached this point because of our generous audiences and their support over so many years. The only way that Read more ...