fri 01/12/2023

Wigmore Hall

Grosvenor, Park, Ridout, Soltani, Wigmore Hall review - chamber music supergroup in perfect accord

Frank Bridge’s Phantasie Piano Quartet was astutely described by his student Benjamin Britten as “Brahms tempered with Fauré”, so it made a lot of sense to programme it alongside the first piano quartets of those other composers. A “supergroup” of...

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Louise Alder & Friends, Wigmore Hall review - magic carpet rides with soprano, strings and woodwind

Sometimes all the stars align in musical performance. There’s no soprano more alive to the expression of musical joy and rapture than Louise Alder, no composer more levitational in his strange later adventures than Fauré, no instrumentalists strings...

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Schiff, Höbarth, Coin, Wigmore Hall review - Schubert minus transcendence

A full Wigmore Hall always feels special. Formerly we saw a board with the words “HOUSE FULL” on it, in large, bright red capital letters at the entrance. If we had tickets back then, we knew how lucky we were. These days, the 552-seater hall gets...

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Brahms Piano Sonatas, Elisabeth Leonskaja, Wigmore Hall review - when giants meet

To master even one of Brahms’s three early sonatas is a colossal task for any pianist. To play them all with towering authority in a single concert takes a phenomenon. Elisabeth Leonskaja seems just that more than ever in her late 70s; not only is...

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Denk, Danish String Quartet, Wigmore Hall review - metaphysical strings, the piano as chameleon

Few pianists manage stylistic perfection in both Mozart and Ligeti, but to Jeremy Denk it seems to come naturally. We should have heard the riveting contrasts in quick first-half succession, but European air traffic control had wasted much of the...

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Hahn, Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, Wigmore Hall review - Americana old and new

Artist-in-Residence at the Wigmore Hall Hilary Hahn brought her residency to an end with a collaboration with the exciting Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, a notably youthful and ethnically diverse group, who brought with them a notably more...

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Bocheng Wang, Wigmore Hall review - extraordinary agility and technical fluidity

Rachmaninov had his doubts about his Variations on a Theme of Corelli. He confided to Medtner that when he performed them, “I was guided by the coughing of the audience. Whenever the coughing increased, I would skip the next variation. Whenever...

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Borletti-Buitoni Trust 20th Anniversary Weekend, Bold Tendencies, Wigmore Hall review - dazzling past, present and future

Founded two decades ago by Franco Buitoni and his wife Ilaria in league with their good friend Mitsuko Uchida, the Borletti-Buitoni Trust never seems to put a foot wrong in its choices: the present and future are as dazzling as the last 20 years. As...

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Jerusalem Quartet, Wigmore Hall review - singing to make the heart leap

Conversation just before this concert started concerned Verdi’s Il trovatore and the truism that it needs “the four greatest voices in the world”. Whether or not the quartets we heard by Mozart, Prokofiev and Brahms demand the same in string terms,...

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Paul Lewis, Wigmore Hall review - superlative Schubert

Paul Lewis secured his reputation as a leading advocate of the Viennese Classical repertoire with two releases of late Schubert sonatas on Harmonia Mundi. That was 20 years ago, but he returned to Schubert in 2022, with a release of earlier sonatas...

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Castalian String Quartet, Wigmore Hall review - late Britten keeps equally demanding company

Rigorous, hauntingly original and unlike each other, Britten’s three numbered quartets could share a programme and still stake equal claims on our attention. That might be tough on the players, but the Castalians haven’t been easy on themselves in...

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Elsa Dreisig, Jonathan Ware, Wigmore Hall review - a glorious voice unleashed

French-Danish soprano Elsa Dreisig’s operatic schedule is so busy and so successful, it is perhaps not surprising that she – and Texas-born pianist Jonathan Ware – treat the song recital platform as a place of freedom, where, rather than...

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