Wigmore Hall
Bernard Hughes
I am proud – if surprised – to continue to be pretty much a lone voice in the wilderness singing the praises of the composer Guillaume Connesson (b.1970), whose substantial new string quartet “Les instants retrouvés” was heard at the Wigmore Hall on Saturday.Probably the most widely programmed French composer of his generation across mainland Europe and the USA, he continues to be almost completely ignored in the UK. And this is where the surprise comes in. Connesson’s music is at once more accessible than a lot of contemporary music – he is unafraid of heart-on-sleeve melodic outpourings – Read more ...
David Nice
Ian Page’s “journey of a lifetime” with his Mozartists, taking the greatest genius year by year, lands us in 1773 with the adolescent Mozart's first durable crowdpleaser, the pretty-brilliant motet for soprano and orchestra Exsultate, jubilate (last night was its 250th anniversary). The boy wonder still needs annual support from his elders, though, and as usual we got more than just a sampler of what else was going on musically in that year.Page’s scholarly but performance-vivid planning gave us a first half which was a kind of Sturm und Drang sandwich – vivid, angular products of that style Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
The adrenalin was in full flow yesterday lunchtime at the Wigmore Hall as the dynamic young Mithras Trio delivered a vigorous, toned performance featuring Beethoven, Bridge and an electrifying new work by Joy Lisney. The trio, who have been together for just over five years, are part of Radio 3’s New Generation Artists scheme and dispatched the repertoire with an intensity and expressive range that was often as beguiling as it was exhilarating.Frank Bridge’s Phantasie Piano Trio in C minor provided a tempestuous start to the concert, with a double forte opening that made it feel as if it Read more ...
David Nice
Quite apart from the stunning range of colours and phrasing, Pavel Kolesnikov’s recitals always give you much more than the programme promises. A golden thread through shorter pieces has been one approach, but here he did something different – sailed for the deep waters only in three chameleonic masterpieces, but suggested the connections by unveiling an unnamed work he asked us to listen to in “metaphorical darkness”.In a short speech at the start of the second half before Kolesnikov began a tintinnabulation at extremes of the piano register with ripple effects in between, he told us how his Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
St Mark’s shadow fell gloriously over the Wigmore Hall last night with a programme of Christmas music performed in, or inspired by, the great basilica of Venice. The Dunedin Consort braided festive works from pioneers who wrote for its grandly sonorous spaces – Gabrieli, Monteverdi, Grandi – with pieces by their German visitor and student Heinrich Schütz, culminating with his Christmas Story (1660).No one knows better than the Dunedins’ director John Butt how risky it is to posit historical “authenticity” for any interpretation of music composed four centuries or more ago (he wrote a Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
William Thomas has fast made an impact as a rapidly rising (or should that be descending?) star of the bass world. Though he has only recently graduated from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, his awards include Winner of the Veronica Dunne International Competition and Winner of the Critics’ Circle Award for Young Talent.For those curious about what the fuss is, it’s clear from the first few notes that he has a tone so full and rich it makes you think of polished mahogany. Together with the acclaimed Scottish accompanist, Malcolm Martineau, he dispatched a programme of 19th and early Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
There is no mistaking Christian Gerhaher. His voice is a light, agile baritone, and it is utterly distinctive. He is a very verbal singer, and is as happy delivering his lines in a toneless parlando as he is full voice. But when he does increase the colour, a burnished, slightly nasal tone appears, rich but still light. Emotions are always controlled, and the passion will often build gradually but steadily.All of which made this Schubert programme ideal, with Gerhaher tracing the emotional journey of each of these short Lied, without ever imposing his own drama, and without a hint of irony. Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
A dream pairing of the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra and early-keyboard wizard Kristian Bezuidenhout marked St Cecilia’s Day at the Wigmore Hall with a programme that celebrated music made not in the Black Forest but beside the Thames.Both halves of their concert matched works by Purcell with the fruits of Handel’s early years in London. The German period-instrument stars, with a gifted group of home-grown singers, were directed from the harpsichord (and Baroque organ) by the South African-born Australian fortepianist. Together, they managed to make a cosmopolitan case for musical continuity in Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Leif Ove Andsnes has a distinctive voice at the piano; clear, controlled and powerful. He sits upright; his body barely moves, and his head sways gently to the melodies. But he never loses himself in the music, he is always in control.Andsnes is a player of considerable power, especially as it all comes from the forearms, and he really engages with the mechanics of the instrument, exploiting all its physical properties, from the richness of quiet bass lines to the fiery fervour of top-register ostinatos. It is a sound that requires rhythm and focus, and the five composers he presented at the Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
The Nash Ensemble’s concerts dedicated to “Beethoven and the Romantics” not only trace the flowering of the Romantic spirit in music from the Vienna of the 1800s through a continent and across the century. They also give a place at the top table for works by once-sidelined helpmeets of the movement’s giants: Fanny Mendelssohn, Clara Schumann, Alma Mahler.On Saturday night at the Wigmore Hall, Roderick Williams sang Lieder by both Mahlers as a fin-de-siècle intermission between two chamber pieces that showcased the cheerfully ebullient side of the Romantic revolution: Beethoven’s E flat Read more ...
David Nice
How do they do it? Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective ticks all the boxes of diversity and reaching out to all ages without needing to draw attention to it all. The answer is quite simple: the repertoire – in Saturday’s morning and afternoon concerts, French chamber music both known and unfamiliar – is beautifully chosen and programmed, the performers all born communicators as well as musicians at the highest level.Among the first and last artists to appear were recent BBC Young Musician finalists, horn-player Annemarie Federle (2020) and percussionist Jordan Ashman (2022; another, Laura van der Read more ...
David Nice
A 150th birthday cornucopia was anticipated: vintage chamber and vocal Vaughan Williams in a big Wigmore Hall three-parter alongside music by other great Brits. It turned out, instead, to be a handsome if overlarge horn sounding several cracked notes.None of those had to do with the performances, which were first-class throughout: could it be otherwise with players from the Nash Ensemble, baritone Roderick Williams and 14 other remarkable British-based singers? Let’s get the moans out of the way first. This was proof that VW’s Five Mystical Songs and Serenade to Music, typical of his taste in Read more ...