Schubert
Gavin Dixon
Florian Boesch is a big man. He’s tall, stocky, and with his bald head and stubble could seem more like a gangster than a Lieder singer. His voice is beautiful, but it matches his appearance – big, weighty and imposing. He has subtlety too, though it is sometimes hard-won, and his affinity with the core Romantic repertoire is always apparent, so this programme, of Schubert, Wolf and Schumann was well chosen to showcase his strengths.Schubert’s nature-inspired songs are an ideal platform for the more turbulent and dramatic side of Boesch’s temperament. His voice is strongest in the low Read more ...
David Nice
Such introspective subtlety might be mistaken for reticence. But from the rare instances when the Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes lets rip - and they're never forced - you know he's wielding his palette with both skill and intuition, waiting for the big moment to make its proper mark. Flyaway passages in Chopin which in other hands bubble like pure champagne flow like pure spring water; the source is everything. And such is the concentration that the wider spaces of the Royal Festival Hall melted away and a sizeable audience was drawn, intensely silent, into the spell.The only aspects of Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
What has 12 hands, 18 legs, 176 keys and two page-turners? Party night at the London Piano Festival, of course. The six-pianist, two-piano marathon on Saturday evening was a high point of this delectable four-day event – though far from the only one.Now in its second year, the London Piano Festival is the brainchild of the well-established piano duo Charles Owen and Katya Apekisheva. It’s a welcome addition to the London scene. We’re all used to piano recitals, but don’t always delve so deeply into the instrument’s galaxy of repertoire and the range of personalities among those who play it. Read more ...
David Nice
They say that Wigmore Hall audiences know their Lieder singers, but last night's far from packed house dispelled that illusion; the hall has been full for much lesser artists than German soprano Anne Schwanewilms. No matter; she gave her usual masterclass, ineffably poised between tone-colour, phrasing and word-pointing. Having hit the heights in Strauss, Schumann and Wolf in previous recitals, she found a deep centre this time in serious, almost operatic Schubert. Regular song-partner Charles Spencer's space and orchestral sonorities helped conjure vast landscapes and epic human emotions in Read more ...
Graham Rickson
Morag Tinto’s documentary is a profile of composer Alma Deutscher, who hit the headlines at the end of last year when her opera based on the Cinderella story premiered in Vienna. What’s unusual about that, you might ask? Apart from being female, Alma was 11 years old when she finished writing it. Eleven. Think about it. I can’t recall much about my own talents at that age, apart from being able to tie my own shoelaces and build passable models out of Lego.Alma is the real deal; frighteningly talented but disarmingly likeable. We see her at the family home in Surrey, the footage intercut with Read more ...
Graham Rickson
Mompou: Fêtes Lointaines Steffen Schleiermacher (piano) (MDG)“I am not a composer and don't want to be regarded as one… somehow, I always have the feeling that it comes to me from outside.” There is indeed something otherworldly about Federico Mompou’s spare, understated music, and it’s interesting that several pianists who excel in this repertoire also specialise in performing works by other fringe minimalists. Steffen Schleiermacher is one, having previously recorded discs of Feldman and Cage. Not that Mompou’s output is as outré as theirs: you’d place him close to Satie and Poulenc on the Read more ...
David Nice
Elisabeth Leonskaja, Schubert's greatest living interpreter, was always going to be Queen of Scotland's East Neuk for three summer days; her performances of four piano works and the "Trout" Quintet with outstanding string players were transcendental. But this festival is exceptional in keeping several pertinent strands flowing, from year to year and within the annual span. So there were rival events to match the classical peak: guitarist Sean Shibe and clarinettist Julian Bliss solo and multiplied in a small hall by the sea, 60 brass players of all ages memorialising the former Fife mining Read more ...
David Nice
The time is out of joint for Turkey at the moment, but it’s still a country equally split between those looking to the west for the culture of ideas and the more conservative element which at least needs its voice respected. They co-exist peacefully in a great cosmopolitan city like Istanbul, which recently joined Ankara and Izmir in rejecting increased powers for its leader. Facing difficult challenges and late cancellations, the vivacious Yeşim Gurer, director of the 45th Istanbul Music Festival, held a fine balance between the urban intelligentsia's hunger for fine western ensembles and Read more ...
David Nice
"Generally speaking," writes Evgeny Kissin in one of the many generous tributes to those whose artistry he most admires, "the mastery of [Carlo Maria] Giulini is exactly what is dearest of all to me in art: simplicity, depth and spirituality". The same is true of the personality revealed in this slim but by no means undernourishing volume from one of our time's most fascinating pianists.The reflections on music and literature in the second half are more revelatory than the memoir of his precociously gifted childhood and youth, where Kissin's refusal to be hard on anyone or waspish gives a Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
Liam Scarlett must be worked off his feet. Just at the Royal Ballet, he made a full-length work, Frankenstein, last year and is currently working on a new Swan Lake; and now last night he has premiered a new abstract work, Symphonic Dances at the Royal Opera House. A one-acter, but at 45 minutes a substantial one, set to the work of the same name by Rachmaninov, this premiere was an important moment for Scarlett, whose last two new works for the company, Frankenstein and Age of Anxiety, received at best mixed reviews. Symphonic Dances is not a masterpiece, but it's the best Scarlett I've seen Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
The Hagen Quartet has been playing together for decades, and it shows. The group, which includes three siblings, performs with a deep and intuitive sense of unity: of timbre, technique, articulation and intent. Where most quartets are clearly led by the first violin, the Hagens move as one, the motivation coming simultaneously from each player. They put this finely honed ensemble to the service of emotive performances, but also retain a sense of intimacy and proportion. The result is an approach that is close to ideal for both Schubert and Beethoven, composers whose string quartet music is Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
As a scan through the 17-year list of Rosenblatt Recitals quickly reveals, sopranos and tenors come and (often as not) go. Much rarer is the opportunity to enjoy the gifts of a mezzo-soprano near the start of what should, all things being equal, be a long and illustrious career.Nine years a company member at the Bavarian State Opera, Tara Erraught deserves better from English audiences than to be remembered for the stir she caused (and for the wrong reasons) in her Glyndebourne debut as Octavian. It was the mark of a generous, thoughtful singer to share the stage in the first half with the Read more ...