Wigmore Hall
alexandra.coghlan
La Follia was, as every programme note inevitably reminds us, a pop song of its day. A strutting Spanish dance, it featured in the work of over 150 composers, so catchy was its signature chord progression. Still a classic of Baroque concert programmes, it’s a great way to take the temperature of any given performance. At its best, it can have even a sedate audience stamping and swaying, thrilled by those grinding syncopations and that heartbeat pulse. Last night at the Wigmore Hall, Christophe Rousset and a trio of musicians from Les Talens Lyriques got a polite round of applause.Perhaps it Read more ...
David Nice
In the Wigmore's Lieder prayer meetings, baritone Christian Gerhaher is the high priest. There are good reasons for this, but given that the innermost circle of Wigmore Friends pack out his concerts, you do feel that the slightest criticism might merit lynching by the ecstatic communicants. His Schubert is never less than fascinating, but 2011's Winterreise kept its distance, while last night there were more question marks hovering over a Schubertiade of mostly semi-precious stones and only the odd jewel.Where is the unbroken line most of us first heard in his Wolfram at the Royal Opera Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
All three Grieg violin sonatas in a single recital may seem like too much of a good thing. The similarities between them outweigh the differences, which are more of quality than intent. But, when heard in chronological order, they provide a fascinating précis of Grieg’s artistic development, from the youthful and cheerfully unsophisticated First, through the terser and more tightly argued Second, to the Third, the composer’s undisputed masterpiece in the genre.Norwegian violinist Henning Kraggerud (main picture) is clearly a native speaker when it comes to Grieg. Folk music plays different Read more ...
graham.rickson
Debussy: Starry Night – Préludes Book 1 and Other Works Michael Lewin (piano) (Sono Luminus)Michael Lewin's earlier Debussy anthology was excellent, and this second volume also hits the spot. In the first set of Préludes, Lewin gets just about everything right, each piece flawlessly characterised. Take “Des pas sur la neige”, its halting footsteps just desolate enough, followed by a truly furious “Ce qu'a vu le vent d'ouest”. “La fille aux cheveux de lin” is coolly understated, and all the more beautiful for it. “La danse de Puck” and “Minstrels” glitter. Colin Matthews' clever orchestral Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
Some chamber ensembles flourish through creative conflict, contrast and tension. Others streamline their approach, not so much relinquishing individuality as allowing the best of each to blend into more than the sum of their parts. The Trio Shaham Erez Wallfisch has grown, in its five-year existence, to be one of the latter.Partly the secret of its success could be that the three musicians – British cellist Raphael Wallfisch with two Israeli colleagues, pianist Arnon Erez and violinist Hagai Shaham – are not only old friends, but long-experienced chamber music players, each with a wealth of Read more ...
David Nice
Unlike Schubert, Mendelssohn and Shostakovich, Mozart composed nothing astoundingly individual before the age of 20. That leaves any odyssey through his oeuvre, year by year – this one will finish in 2041, by which time I’ll be nearly 80 if I live that long – with a problem effectively solved by Ian Page and his Classical Opera in placing works by contemporaries of various ages alongside young Amadeus’s efforts. For the music of the nevertheless precocious nine/ten-year-old of the year 1766, directness of communication was everything, not a problem given Page’s players and two bright Read more ...
David Nice
Prokofiev milestones stood proudly at the ends of the New Year’s first three major UK concert programmes. The Second Piano Sonata raged as the zenith of the composer’s generous enfant terrible period in Christian Ihle Hadland’s journey through two centuries of piano masterpieces; the Fifth Symphony rocketed skywards in the hands of enthusiastic but also technically brilliant teenagers in Leeds, according to theartsdesk's Graham Rickson, and presumably in London too; and the late Cello Sonata celebrated outward simplicity alongside inner ambivalence in the electrifying duo performance of Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
L'Arpeggiata seem to revel in being L'Anachronista. The baroque-jazz group led by the Graz-born theorbo player Christina Pluhar has been proudly and brazenly flouting the dictates of those who set the rules of Historically Informed Performance (HIP) for all 15 years of their existence.The printed programme, for example, mentioned “Francesco Turrisi – harpsichord”, and described in detail the delicious and lengthy agonies of tuning which his 1624 Ruckers copy harpsichord would have gone through prior to the concert; but what it didn't mention was that Turrisi would be spending roughly Read more ...
Thomas Rees
Contemporary jazz is a world full of magpies – artists who flit between genres and build glittering nests of disparate musical influences. Rock up to a so-called jazz night today and the repertoire can come from anywhere, you’re as likely to hear Jimi Hendrix or J. Dilla as Jerome Kern, and pianist Brad Mehldau has played a role in making that happen.Over the course of the past twenty years, Mehldau has established himself as one of the most distinctive and influential pianists of his generation, a musician with a healthy lack of respect for musical boundaries. Cast an eye over the tracklist Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Last night’s Wigmore Hall recital by countertenor Iestyn Davies and tenor Allan Clayton, accompanied by James Baillieu, was an all-round triumph: brilliantly programmed, superbly sung and very thought-provoking. Mixing solo items with duos, the programme encompassed Purcell, Britten, Adès, Barber and the young American composer Nico Muhly. If it had been a competition – which it wasn’t – Britten would have been the champion. But he was also responsible for the most troubling of the pieces.Britten’s Canticle II of 1952 sets the story of Abraham and Isaac, as told in the medieval mystery plays Read more ...
geoff brown
There are 12 of them, standing in a semi-circle. No conductor in sight. Instead they start singing by striking some invisible match. Immediately the hall is blazing with heat, light, and the ecstatic sounds of Tudor polyphony. Now celebrating its tenth concert season, the British unaccompanied choral group Stile Antico have been singing this repertoire since they first came together; and this Wigmore Hall shindig, exuberantly received by a packed house, marked the anniversary by revisiting the music sung on their very first CD, Music for Compline, in 2007.Have they got bored with this Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Christian Gerhaher is a classy recitalist. His stage manner is debonair, his tailoring immaculate (although his hair can be unruly). His artistry focuses on key vocal virtues: directness of expression and beauty of tone. In this evening’s recital, an adventurous programme that switched between the Classical era and the Modern, that proved as valuable a combination in Schoenberg as it did in Beethoven.There is a husky quality to Gerhaher’s voice, an attractive burr that appears around mezzo-forte and defines all of the louder music that he sings. It is less apparent in quiet music, but even Read more ...