While we are far from lacking in top early music ensembles in the UK, there’s no denying that the French have a special affinity for this repertoire. While The Academy of Ancient Music and The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment are virtuosic champions of the genre, if we were all stuck in a sinking hot air balloon I’d lose both before sacrificing Les Musiciens du Louvre, Les Talens Lyriques, Le Concert d'Astrée or Les Arts Florissants. So it was with anticipation that I made my way to the Barbican last night to hear the UK debut of Le Cercle de l’Harmonie, the newest French orchestra on the block.
classical music reviews
David Nice
Profound experience of 2010? For me, unquestionably, portions of the great Russian pianist Elisabeth Leonskaja's first-time journey through all the Schubert sonatas at the Verbier Festival. I was lucky to catch three out of nine recitals, and to talk to her about Schubert. I'd have been happy to listen again to any of those extraordinary works - all 19 are loveably idiosyncratic - in London. But this was a strand of unusual radiance I hadn't caught at Verbier embracing, as ever, Schubert's deepest sorrow in a late piece served up as prelude, the meltingly beautiful A-major Sonata D664 and that Olympus of Schubertian difficulty, the Wanderer Fantasy.
There's a parallel, of course, between the way Schubert can subject a simple-seeming phrase to endless, discreetly emotional harmonic tweaks and Leonskaja's unfussy evasion of simple repetition when faced with the same idea. And we do hear both Schubert's variations on the opening unison theme of the D915 Allegretto in C minor and their reiteration an awful lot. A delicious lot, to be precise: Leonskaja follows the great source of so much of her inspiration, her mentor and duo partner Sviatoslav Richter, in observing all repeats (his response to a student who didn't, which she quoted expressively to me in the interview, "You don't love Schubert?", seems as good a response as any to false economy). And quite apart from the expressive differences she makes in the repeats, there are always long-term gains.
Take the glowing A-major song of the D664 Sonata's first movement (that Schubert composed it in his early twenties is a miracle in itself). You may even begin to feel it's creeping back once too often - though you will never lose concentration as a listener when Leonskaja plays - but then comes the benediction in the coda, stilling and sublime: the Lied's arpeggiating accompaniment becomes a chordal blessing. Without that longer span, it wouldn't have half the impact. Nor would the shorter, unrepeated but never emotionally lightweight Andante, shifting subtly into unexpected regions. And Leonskaja's epic-lyric balance then sends the Allegro finale soaring, swooping and waltzing into relatively clear blue skies.
All this held the listeners captive, with barely a shuffle, for the first 40 minutes. There was the same connection between intermezzo and sonata, and between the movements of the sonata, with the audience held rapt by Leonskaja's effortlessly profound musicianship, as we'd witnessed, spellbound, in the Chopin recital of 2009 that first made me realise this was one of the few great pianists left after Richter.
Quite a different cradling of life's sadness comes in the day and night of the Wanderer Fantasy. It's a daunting challenge in any programme, and it did mean a jolt from the more private Schubert which Leonskaja seems to understand better than any living pianist. But she is also a comprehensive stylist, with the weighty orchestral pianism of the Russian school keeping bass lines dauntingly clear among the welter of notes. Not that she hits every single one of them; nor did Schnabel, Cortot, Richter, Gilels or many of the other piano titans. But like them she keeps a magisterial sense of where we're going, and the forceful fugue really did crown the work.
Apt, too, that after this Leonskaja should have chosen to end with a composer impressed by the flashier side of Schubert's early Romanticism - birthday boy Franz Liszt, and a typically eloquent song without words, his "Petrarch Sonnet No 104". But I have to say my heart was still with Schubert in tenderest A-major mode.
Overleaf: Leonskaja plays the finale of Beethoven's "Tempest" Sonata as a concert encore
igor.toronyilalic
Yesterday afternoon's final concert at the Aldeburgh Festival saw an astonishing world premiere. A major new double concerto from a 102-year-old Elliott Carter. Imagine Schubert premiering a song cycle in 1900, or Van Gogh unveiling a self-portrait in 1956. Gob-smacking stuff.
So what sort of music does a man born before Benjamin Britten have to offer 2011? Music of an amazingly energetic bent, it transpires. Conversations for piano and percussion reveals a composer who, at least in musical thought, hasn't slowed down one bit.
Ismene Brown
The two-course evening out is made possible by the Wigmore Hall’s late Friday-night concerts, so if you get out of a central-London show - or dinner - by, say, 9.30, you can add a second layer of entertainment at 10. In my case, a ferociously poor hour spent at contemporary dance in Sadler’s Wells was offset by an hour with Joanna MacGregor in a stimulating splicing of Bach and Shostakovich piano music that at least offered something to think about, if not ultimate satisfaction. Evening not entirely wasted, then.
David Nice
If Eric Coates’s Knightsbridge March is good enough for Gergiev, who conducted it as a saving-grace encore of a very messy World Orchestra for Peace Prom in 2005 (17 orchestral leaders in the first violins, not a happy gambit), then it’s certainly worth the time of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and one of its biggest sound-shapers. Bright spark John Wilson unhesitatingly claims Coates as his favourite light-music composer. But this concert served up more than just bubbles in the champagne of the Southbank’s Festival of Britain 60th anniversary celebrations; there was some decent semi-serious stuff on parade, too.
graham.rickson
This week we’ve a grandiose choral work inspired by a composer’s love for the beautiful game, along with two noisily enjoyable attempts to portray physical movement in musical terms. A frighteningly young Russian soprano’s debut recital is released - a selection of flamboyant Rossini arias accompanied by a famous period instrument specialist. And there's the first recording of a new opera based on a terribly, terribly English story, composed by an American musician fondly regarded in the UK.
stephen.walsh
The Cardiff Singer of the World may or may not be (as several of this year’s competitors seemed to think) the most important voice competition in the universe, but it must surely be the nicest. The Welsh really do believe, perhaps rightly, that they invented singing; and to hear the whole St David’s Hall uplifted in “Land of My Fathers” at the end of Sunday’s final was a heartwarming experience – almost as much as to see the four losing finalists applauding the winner, the Moldovan soprano Valentina Naforniţă, as if they were honestly pleased she’d won, though at least two of them must have been bitterly disappointed.
David Nice
Everyone in the BBCSO is a potential soloist. I know this because the course I run at the City Literary Institute linked to the orchestra has welcomed principals, duos, two string quartets and three viola foursomes (proving that department the most individual, not the dense deserving butt of many a joke). I adore these players, but I love Erwin Stein's chamber arrangement of Mahler's Fourth Symphony even more, so this was bound to be a gem. Spitalfields' UK premiere of a recent song cycle by favoured Dutch composer Michel van der Aa could only come as an enterprising bonus.
graham.rickson
This week we’ve a brilliant, budget-priced box of Beethoven symphonies played on authentic instruments. It’ll remind you of how much fun there is to be had with this most iconic of composers. A historical recording of a famous cellist reappears, but the best reason to listen to the disc is to hear a famous Czech conductor achieving miracles. And there’s an entertaining, educative DVD featuring a conductor who’s in his element when addressing an audience.
igor.toronyilalic
"I used to be able to run down these," whispered a wobbly 77-year-old Harrison Birtwistle to friends as he stumbled down the stairs to the Queen Elizabeth Hall stage to take his bow at last night's London Sinfonietta concert (for some inexplicable reason part of Ray Davies's Meltdown series at the Southbank). Birtwistle and his former partner-in-crime Peter Maxwell Davies - and their feral musical creations - used also to be very good at running foul of the musical establishment. For some reason, Sirs, Harrison Birtwistle, CH, and Peter Maxwell Davies, CBE, Master of the Queen's Music, don't do much of that these days.