Reviews

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The creative and devoted Takács Quartet

AMANDA TIPTON

TAKÁCS QUARTET, JEREMY DENK (PIANO)

ALICE TULLY HALL 5 AUGUST 2019

The rich, characterful playing of the Takács Quartet delighted listeners in this concert, part of the annual Mostly Mozart Festival. Even after 25 years together, violinist Edward Dusinberre and cellist András Fejér remain as creative and devoted as ever, their playing both emboldened and refined by time. Mozart’s K575 featured elegant ends of phrases in the Allegretto and sensitive playing from Dusinberre in the sweet Andante, although at times I found the richness of the supporting lines (often intensified by vibrato) distracting. The Mozart was followed by Beethoven’s op.135 (and that by Dohnányi’s Piano Quintet no.1, performed with Jeremy Denk), and while some might criticise such a ‘traditional’ programme, what’s not to love about glorious pieces, performed gloriously?

The Quartet did not shy away from the complexities of the first movement of the Beethoven, but instead brought out every interesting harmony or surprisingly placed accent, and even the sunniest melodies were tinged with a hint of shadow. The Vivace demonstrated some of the longest spiccato I’ve ever witnessed, but it was surprisingly clear and added a memorable depth and richness to the sound. The Lento captured a sombre mood and darkness difficult to articulate with words, and featured some exquisite playing from Dusinberre.

The Dohnányi proved a perfect ending to a programme that was all about balance: dark and light, complexity and simplicity, depth and tenderness, spacious phrases followed by intimate moments. I loved Denk’s sense of timing and leading, and the soaring melodies of the opening Allegro were marvellously played. The Scherzo was performed with fervour and, as in the first movement, the transitions were quite extraordinary.

Fejér’s deep sound and soulful playing kicked off an emotive Adagio. The Finale was jubilant but not simple, and the return to the first movement material was wonderfully nostalgic, setting up a remarkable ending to a fantastic evening.

LEAH HOLLINGSWORTH

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BROOKLYN RIDER KAPLAN PENTHOUSE AT LINCOLN CENTER 7 AUGUST 2019

In its inaugural appearance at Mostly Mozart festival, the slightly renegade string quartet Brooklyn Rider drew an enthusiastic crowd to the glittering Kaplan Penthouse. Violinist Johnny Gandelsman – joking – said that three of the musicians had lived in this very building when they were at Juilliard.

The Eighth Quartet (from 2018) made an engrossing opener, acknowledging the group’s long affection for Philip Glass. With the first movement speedy and sprightly, bowed with more articulation than one might associate with the composer, the foursome easily navigated the three movements’ tricky tempos and texture changes.

Cellist Michael Nicolas was the centrepiece of Reena Esmail’s Zeher (2018), with sweetly disciplined portamento evoking the swirls of classical Indian melismas, as his colleagues framed them with contrasting angularity. The final harmonics chord was magical.

When he composed Sheriff’s Leid, Sheriff’s Freud (2011), violinist Colin Jacobsen drew on the influences of Irish fiddler Martin Hayes, whose wisdom included the value of using scarcely six centimetres of bow. The result, combined with American bluegrass – and surprise, Dvořák – was infectious and drew whoops from the audience. (The other surprise: that Jacobsen and Nicolas can sing.) Two encores sent the audience home even happier. The mournful curlicues of ‘Golestan’ from Jacobsen’s A Mirror for a Prince, and his own arrangement of ‘Little Birdie,’ popularised by Pete Seeger.

BRUCE HODGES

TESSA LARK (VIOLIN) MICHAEL THURBER (BASS) DAVID RUBENSTEIN ATRIUM AT LINCOLN CENTER 8 AUGUST 2019

What do Bach, bebop and bluegrass have in common? The answer, according to Tessa Lark and Michael Thurber, is more than one might think. With exhilarating teamwork, humour and educational instincts, the two musicians charmed an eager crowd in their first appearance at the Mostly Mozart festival. The hour-long recital paralleled their latest recording, inspired by Bach’s two-part inventions, which translate remarkably well to violin and bass (granted, as Lark sympathetically pointed out, her left hand is mostly in the first position, while to match her, Thurber has to vault up and down the fingerboard).

But other treats were scattered in between. Originally from Kentucky, Lark (right) wrote Appalachian Fantasy (2016, deploying a second violin, cross-tuned with ‘dead man’s tuning’ (D-D-A-D, rather than G-D-A-E), to create an ingratiating solo from regional folk tunes. For the rest of the evening, her 1600 Maggini violin made an irresistible partner. Thurber had his solo moment with Paul McCartney’s Blackbird (1968), and when he sang, showed that his agile fingerwork is only one of his multiple talents.

BRUCE HODGES

London

BBC PROMS 2019

PROM 2: JOSHUA BELL (VIOLIN) BAMBERG

SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA/JAKUB HRŮŠA

ROYAL ALBERT HALL 20 JULY 2019

PROM 17: GIL SHAHAM (VIOLIN)

BAVARIAN RADIO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA/

YANNICK NEZET-SEGUIN

ROYAL ALBERT HALL 31 JULY 2019

PROM 46: SHEKU KANNEH-MASON (CELLO)

CITY OF BIRMINGHAM SYMPHONY

ORCHESTRA/MIRGA GRAŽINYTĖ-TYLA

ROYAL ALBERT HALL 22 AUGUST 2019 In the second BBC Prom on 20 July, with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jakub Hrůša, Joshua Bell opened an all-Bohemian programme with Dvořák’s Violin Concerto in a reflective, recitative way, as if trying out the theme, and stopping en passant to relish a top G sharp.

There was more luxuriance to come, in a performance where Romantic style stayed just the right side of indulgence. Rubato was constant, and there was many a portamento in the sweeping melodies. There was incisive rhythmic vigour as well, propelled by accents, only some of which are marked by the composer. Joshua Bell, as is his way, provided a visual analogue to the music, bending his knees and throwing back his head. His warmth of tone, with its expressive vibrato, turned the slow movement into song. Here too was some beautiful, elfin playing, with delicate arpeggios. In the finale Bell was both clipped and sinuous at the same time.

The central D minor section was strongly contrasted, dark and passionate, and Bell drove through to the finish with an irrepressible joie de vivre. After the interval, the ensemble gave a powerful performance of Smetana’s Má vlast, fitting for an orchestra founded by Czech refugees.

For the 17th Prom on 31 July, Lisa Batiashvili was due to play Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto, with Mariss Jansons conducting the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. In the event, for various reasons, Gil Shaham was the violinist, with Yannick Nézet-Séguin directing. No-one in the hall could have been disappointed by the substitutions.

Shaham showed from the opening that this would be a performance full of tenderness and lyrical finesse to match Prokofiev’s motor rhythms and melodic spikes. Even when rattling off spiccato semiquavers he brought shape and phrasing. The arching melody of the second movement was beautifully contoured, with a beguiling simplicity in its opening statement, and passion at its later appearance. The long skeins of high, fast notes were gossamer-light. After the austere double-stopped opening of the finale, with its grotesque humour, he played the little G string melody with a kind of quirky swing, animated with little accents. This was a vivid, eccentric dance, rounded off with a deviltake- the-hindmost coda duetting with the bass drum. As an encore, Shaham gave a crisp account of Bach’s Gavotte and Rondo from the Third Partita. The Royal Albert Hall was packed for Prom 46, for a double star billing: Elgar’s Cello Concerto and Sheku Kanneh-Mason playing it. Kanneh-Mason gave a great performance, mingling strength and tenderness. After the majesty of the opening he scurried through the Allegro molto – dry, urgent and light on his feet (although not always in tune). He played the Adagio, to put it simply, with love, with rich expressive vibrato; he lingered as long as he dared on the tenuto notes. In the finale he showed himself master of many colours, forthright, fleet of foot and joyful.

TIM HOMFRAY

PROM 20: PEKKO KUUSISTO (VIOLIN) BBC SCOTTISH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA/ THOMAS DAUSGAARD

ROYAL ALBERT HALL 3 AUGUST 2019 PROM 25: SOL GABETTA (CELLO) BBC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA /DALIA STASEVSKA ROYAL ALBERT HALL 6 AUGUST 2019 PROM 61: LEONIDAS KAVAKOS (VIOLIN) VIENNA PHILHARMONIC/ANDRÉS OROZCO-ESTRADA ROYAL ALBERT HALL 4 SEPTEMBER 2019

A trio of concerto performances at this year’s BBC Proms all made valuable acts of reclamation, and periodically revelation. There was the London premiere of the Cello Concerto completed in 1956 by Mieczysław Weinberg, who is being accorded a belated place in the sun on the centenary of his birth. Rather a weak and wintry sun it is, to be sure – if, unlike his mentor Shostakovich, Weinberg was ever able to write a piece without mortality snapping at its heels, I have yet to hear it – but one that burns with fierce conviction.

Or was that Sol Gabetta’s performance? Projecting so successfully to the back of the stalls that I could not help but speculate about the assistance of some discreet amplification, she nevertheless resisted the temptation to sear the opening monologue into our consciousness – Weinberg wrote it for Rostropovich, after all – but rather let the rocking central motif sway the four-movement concerto into weary wakefulness.

The Moderato, which would usually count as the lyrical heart of the concerto, arrives too early for reassurance, and Gabetta again held something in reserve as she duetted with a hollowed-out wind section (no bassoons or oboes), so that the klezmerlike central section, and the Scherzo’s abrupt pivot into sardonic violence, led with compelling inevitability towards the concluding passacaglia. The last two movements set the soloist stiff challenges of velocity and volume which Gabetta took in her stride without exaggerating their insistence and introspection on a symphonic scale; she plays the piece as a Russian counterpart to the Elgar, and perhaps one day we will hear it so.

Not yet, I fancy, whereas Sibelius’s Concerto is done so often that every now and again it is refreshing to hear the piece taken back to first principles, which Pekka Kuusisto achieved with startling immediacy in the context of a Prom otherwise promising much in the way of ‘original’ Sibelius but delivering little. The concerto’s magical opening brought cooling balm to the ear immediately after some sticky, tendentiously harmonised folk melodies – some of them songs, apparently with a bearing on the concerto, though without printed texts, how were we to know? Rather it was Kuusisto’s own playing that decontextualised and dislodged the work from its usual, secure place in the firmament of soul-bearing, vibrato-heavy confessionals

Sheku Kanneh-Mason found strength and tenderness in Elgar

CHRIS CHRISTODOULOU

Rhythmically free and yet dynamically scrupulous, Kuusisto tied the solo writing back to an older definition of ‘Romantic’ expression – Schumann came often to mind – which would have fallen flat without Thomas Dausgaard’s close moulding of the accompaniment. His encore of the Fourth Humoresque was both apt and original, throwing light back on to his treatment of the concerto’s slow movement as a tender romance, warmed with the most delicate shades of vibrato.

Similar restraint from playing to the gallery – the Royal Albert Hall’s capricious acoustic is much kinder to violinists than cellists – worked wonders for Leonidas Kavakos in the Violin Concerto by Korngold, much maligned for the tear-jerking schmaltz of the movies for which its main themes were first devised.

I stand guilty as charged, but Kavakos talked beforehand about the influence of Strauss and Mahler on the score but, with the gossamer-fine support of the Vienna Philharmonic on top form behind him, Brahms in particular was a positive presence, lending unhackneyed charm as well as the impression of formal rigour to the concerto’s first two movements. The big swooping intervals of the solo part were as much a key signature of the man who settled in Vienna as the prodigy who left it for Hollywood, and Kavakos pitched each one to perfection. His tone was lean compared with the likes of Shaham and Benedetti, but Korngold has written all the calories into the part – it needs no sugar-dusting – and the chaste radiance of Kavakos’s performance issued a welcome reminder of Korngold’s serious flirtation with Expressionism in works of the 1920s, such as the Symphonic Serenade, before the lure of Hollywood proved impossible to resist.

PETER QUANTRILL

BBC PROMS AT CADOGAN HALL

4: ARIS QUARTET

12 AUGUST 2019

BBC PROMS AT CADOGAN HALL

6: AMATIS PIANO TRIO

26 AUGUST 2019

The ensembles – both of which are BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists – championed women composers in their programmes. The Aris Quartet showcased a work by Maddalena Laura Sirmen (1745–1818). An early Classical composer, her F minor String Quartet was published in 1769, and its four movements are conceived on a larger scale than her other works.

The Aris Quartet gave an intelligent and well-voiced performance, and was particularly eloquent in the Largo. The unison passages in the faster movements were perhaps not quite so exacting in their delivery, but the players had an intuitive feel for the harmonic language. The rest of their recital offered better-known fare in the shape of Schubert’s First String Quartet and Haydn’s ‘Sunrise’ Quartet. The Aris certainly brought solidity to its performances of these works, and there was much attention to detail in its interpretations. But, of course, that’s not enough. The quartet’s earnest preparation needs a far wider dynamic range, but more importantly a broader concept of characterisation and emotion. Equally, particularly in the Schubert, the players could have afforded to breathe more in the phrasing.

The Amatis Trio elected to highlight the music of Clara Schumann in its programme. Better known for her prowess as a concert pianist, and as wife to Robert Schumann, Clara nevertheless was a highly talented composer in her own right. But to start this lunchtime recital, cellist Samuel Shepherd gave a masterful performance of Robert Schumann’s Adagio and Allegro op.70. His bow control in the Adagio was quite stunning, while the Allegro was unbuttoned at full voltage, storm and passion to the fore, Mengjie Han partnering on the piano with real flair. Given the fact that Clara gave birth to eight children, it seems all the more remarkable that she managed to retain and hone her individuality and skills as a creative artist. The Amatis Trio were missionary in their zeal to reveal her qualities as a composer, giving a highly expressive performance of her Piano Trio in G minor op.17.

The players’ subtle phrasing, sharp characterisation and scrupulous ear for colour and nuance brought the invention into sharp relief. Clara had in fact been studying counterpoint quite intensely at the time, which is particularly reflected in the first movement, where brief glints of Bach adorn the writing. Elsewhere, the warm lyricism redolent of Robert Schumann percolates her melodic writing. Perhaps even more evocative are the Three Romances op.22 for violin and piano. These are subtle and captivating cameo pieces, very much in the romantic tradition, were performed here with spellbinding sensitivity by Lea Hausmann.

JOANNE TALBOT