CONCERTS

THIS MONTH’S RECOMMENDED RECORDINGS

Our pick of the new releases

Unmissable Paganini Caprices from Ning Feng 

Marc Coppey: fierce and spectacular Shostakovich 

The Arcadia Quartet offers outstanding and persuasive Weinberg 

New York

The Dover Quartet demonstrates effortless virtuosity

COURTESY DOVER QUARTET

DOVER QUARTET 

PRESENTED BY CAL PERFORMANCES 10 DECEMBER 2020

Haydn’s ‘Fifths’ Quartet op.76 no.2 seems an appropriate choice for these times – sometimes serious, sometimes sunny, but always with an undertone of sobriety. The Dover Quartet performed exquisitely in a series presented by Cal Performances – every note pristine and clear, with an immaculate balance. The harmonies were rich but not dense, never overpowering the first violin, which sometimes floated above, and other times dovetailed among the other instruments. The variations in the Adagio were imaginative and coherent, and the transitions lovely. The punchy, characterful fourth movement brought the work to an energetic close.

Ligeti’s ‘Métamorphoses nocturnes’ Quartet no.1 is aptly named, and the Dover players evinced a masterful understanding of the music. Although the work features writing that can easily sound harsh or burdened at times, the Dover’s clean playing brought out the melodic lines, and the work yielded a sense of tremendous momentum and direction.

The muted section was the most deeply felt portion of the piece, and quite poignant and powerful. The number of techniques needed to play this quartet at all – let alone superbly – are extreme, and yet the Dover’s performance seemed shockingly effortless.

Although Dvořák’s G major String Quartet op.106 is not his sunniest work, the Dover’s interpretation was a little serious for my taste. I loved the intensity of the opening, but wished for more warmth. However, the quartet captured well the exuberance of Dvořák’s characteristic melodies, and the Adagio was played with a profound depth of emotion and gorgeous cello melodies. The sunny Molto vivace gave way to a dramatic ending and the final movement was played with vigour, intensity and imagination. The second theme was quite stunning, and perhaps my favourite musical moment of the concert – although with a performance of such impeccable precision, instrumental mastery and flawless ensemble, it proves difficult to choose just one.

LEAH HOLLINGSWORTH

JACK QUARTET 

NATIONAL SAWDUST 11 DECEMBER 2020

For the New Works Commission – an initiative created by National Sawdust – the fearless Jack Quartet presented a late-afternoon live stream hosted by composer Pamela Z, featuring works by ten young composers. Each work was between three and five minutes long.

Among the striking effects used during the hour were small bells attached to bow tips for Not-In-Between by Jessie Cox, who was inspired by space travel. Glissandos combined with breathy bow strokes triggering the bells, adding discreet tinkling ornaments.

Probing and melancholic, Gate’s Closing by Eddie Codrington used flowing tonal lines as if uttered in a single breath – and seemed over too soon. Golnaz Shariatzadeh’s Zir (below) constructed a ‘narrative around open strings,’ adding squeaky harmonics, sul ponticello bowing, unfettered arpeggios and lower strings exploited for their gravelly deliciousness.

Violinist Austin Wulliman mentored Nicholas Tran, whose Innocent Water combined high harmonics, sometimes muted, before a series of lunging chords appeared, as showy as peacocks. In Rurimi rwaAmai ‘The Mother’s Tongue’ Tanyaradzwa Tawengwa found poetry from his mother’s comments via WhatsApp over the past twelve years. Her pre-recorded voice led the way to a Haydnesque, fugal simplicity.

Perhaps understandably, some of the artists focused on politics. Nina Shekhar wrote Above the Fray as a reaction to the classical music industry cluelessly suggesting ‘just play Bach’. The result was richly slow-moving, as if watching a globe gently rotate, with each musician ascending and descending in different tempi until the flickering ending. And in Surface Tensions, Rajna Swaminathan explored ‘uncertainties, vulnerabilities, and queer politics’ during the pandemic. Searching, questioning lines wanted to resolve, but were interrupted.

But I’m still haunted by At any rate – II. ‘what remains’. Inspired by conspiracy theories, Daniel Sabzghabaei deployed microtonally inflected Persian lines, bits of vocalising, and a turntable with a record emitting scratchy white noise. At the end, in a theatrical sequence, each member quietly stopped and exited, eventually leaving cellist Jay Campbell to turn off the record and walk offstage.

BRUCE HODGES

GIL SHAHAM 

PEOPLE’S SYMPHONY CONCERTS 13 DECEMBER 2020

The People’s Symphony presented Gil Shaham in its online series last December, and the broadcast included a wonderful Q&A with Shaham about the programme before the performance, as well as a discussion afterwards. Shaham opened with Bach’s G minor Solo Sonata, and he performed cleanly, often choosing faster tempos that showcased his technical ability to maintain a clear sense of direction and musical phrase, despite difficult double-stops. The final presto was shimmering and brilliant.

Next was Isolation Rag by Massachusetts-based composer Scott Wheeler – a piece premiered during the pandemic. Shaham accurately described it as ‘capturing the feeling of a violinist playing cheerfully at home but with the undertones of missing his or her colleagues on stage’, and indeed the piece was quite joyful with jazzy dotted rhythms, sultry slides, spunky double-stops and a playful pizzicato section, but there was a certain underpinning of solemnity. Chicago Symphony violist Max Raimi’s Anger Management followed, its theme a natural consequence of being a musician living with the pandemic. This short work is reminiscent of Ysaÿe in the double-stops and feel, and Shaham played with technical mastery, almost too cleanly to sound angry.

Hafiz’s poem When the violin is a must-read, and was the inspiration for Reena Esmail’s short piece for solo violin of the same name. Shaham’s interpretation was haunting and utterly beautiful, the many false harmonics and glissandos shimmering into the air. Frequent use of a drone gave the work a distinctly Eastern feel and Shaham played with tremendous depth of emotion. Bach’s E major Partita brought the programme to a joyful close – when all is said and done, there is still the music. Even playing to an empty hall, Shaham smiled at the end.

LEAH HOLLINGSWORTH

New music from the Jack Quartet

COURTESY NATIONAL SAWDUST

BRENTANO QUARTET 

ADVENT LUTHERAN CHURCH 15 DECEMBER 2020

Under the auspices of Music Mondays, held in the fine acoustics of Advent Lutheran Church in upper Manhattan, the Brentano Quartet offered an hour-long programme of Schumann and Brahms. The opening of the Schumann (op.41 no.3 in A major) was a subtle, syncopated delight, followed by a wave of mellifluousness. The sighing start to the second movement quickly segued into scurrying lines with just the right amount of grit. But the placid mood returned – with some exceptions – until the peaceful end.

In the third movement, reverence reigned, emphasising the work’s introspective filaments. Special kudos to Misha Amory, whose viola tone seemed to burrow straight into the soul, with his colleagues aligned in ascent to a climax that eventually ebbed away. The final movement was a buzzing delight, rife with dotted rhythms and packed with puckish charm. And a Covid-era bonus offered simple spiritual refreshment: an audience on the premises, warmly applauding.

Brahms’s Quartet in A minor op.51 no.2 emerged almost modern, juxtaposed with the end of the Schumann. Its quizzical first movement brought whimsy combined with sobriety. In the second movement, the luxurious interplay and flowing phrases were briefly banished now and then, in favour of more explosive interventions. As the players’ lines converged, a sense of peace reigned.

That calm continued in the third ‘Quasi minuetto’ with a fairy-tale delicacy, while occasionally leaping off the stage with high spirits. In slower, drone-like moments, the group’s intonation was a pleasure.

BRUCE HODGES

London

The 12 Ensemble spans 400 years of music at Wigmore Hall

COURTESY WIGMORE HALL

ELIAS QUARTET, ROBERT PLANE (CLARINET) 

WIGMORE HALL 23 NOVEMBER 2020

Travel problems, presumably virus-related, meant only two members of the Elias Quartet were in this lunchtime concert, complemented by players from the Doric Quartet past and present. They opened with Beethoven’s C minor Trio op.9 no.3, in which they deftly combined occasional heft – muscular chords resounded mightily in the empty hall – with a lightness of touch which left Beethoven clear to speak with fluency and charm. There was more weight in parts of the Adagio, with cellist Marie Bitlloch to the fore and fleet demisemiquavers from the first violinist (deputy) Jonathan Stone. After the Scherzo, with its lilting Trio, the Finale was an energetic mix of dance and drama.

Arthur Bliss’s 1931 Clarinet Quintet should certainly be better known. In the opening Moderato, flowing melodic counterpoint, nicely elucidated, was punctuated by more sombre moments. The Allegro molto covers a lot of ground, full of rhythmic energy, with broad melodies, and a lively pizzicato passage, played with verve and textural clarity. Gentle melancholy suffused the Adagietto espressivo, moving into bleak elegy, and the final Allegro energetico was mostly full of gaiety, although here again some shadows fell. The quintet explores a complex emotional landscape, which the players traversed with expressive depth and eloquence.

TIM HOMFRAY

12 ENSEMBLE 

WIGMORE HALL 24 NOVEMBER 2020

Amid the yo-yoing UK lockdowns, one of the most venerable of British institutions has also proved to be the most agile and creative. Wigmore Hall’s rich palette of autumn and spring concerts included the venue debut of the conductorless 12 Ensemble.

They gently squeezed the first of Dowland’s Lachrymae Antiquae for all its aching sighs and doleful dissonances, but the performance also oozed pulse-calming warmth and spaciousness. Though composed over 400 years later, Caroline Shaw’s 2011 Entr’acte evokes sound worlds old and new. Its three-part minuet-and-trio structure embraces writing that is often homophonic and harmonically familiar but includes 21st-century playing techniques. The ensemble allied the piece’s swelling, sighing figures to those of Dowland’s and found contrast between its airiness and intensity.

The old/new theme continued in Bartók’s Divertimento (1939), which plays on the concerto grosso device of contrasting instrumental groupings. The ensemble presented a beefy tonal core in the opening movement and a gliding amorphousness in the Molto adagio middle movement, before an Allegro assai of spitting vigour. Thomas Adès’s ‘O Albion’ from Arcadiana (1994) again drew together past and present in a performance laced with balm.

EDWARD BHESANIA

HEATH QUARTET 

WIGMORE HALL 30 NOVEMBER 2020

Another of Wigmore Hall’s streamed winter concerts saw the Heath Quartet perform a neat trio of 20th-century British works, presented offstage by broadcaster and pianist Iain Burnside. With the players standing, save for cellist Christopher Murray, they opened with James MacMillan’s 1994 Memento, a short lament with clear Gaelic influences. They beautifully shaped the piece’s ethereal, intertwining lines – an effect rendered more poignant by having no immediate audience on which to fall.

Next came Thomas Adès’s Arcadiana (also 1994), whose seven movements explore evocations of transitory idylls. The kaleidoscopic range of style and expression were boldly explored, with ‘Venezia notturna’ bringing a viola ostinato of lapping waves as well as a touch of Ravelian suaveness. The players squared up to the demanding intricacy of ‘Das klinget so herrlich, das klinget so schön’ (whose title references Papageno’s magic bells in The Magic Flute) and its cheeky parting quote from the Queen of the Night’s second aria. Elsewhere there was searing violence in the fourth movement (subtitled ‘Tango mortale’) and glassy delicacy in the Watteau-inspired minuet-and-trio fifth movement, ‘L’embarquement’.

Britten’s String Quartet no.2 in C major closed the concert: a performance with lyrical eloquence and dynamic drama which returned the piece to the stage on which it was premiered 75 years earlier.

EDWARD BHESANIA

MONIKA RITTERSHAUS

JACK LIEBECK (VIOLIN) KATYA APEKISHEVA (PIANO) WIGMORE HALL 14 DECEMBER 2020

There was a live audience at this concert, that strange luxury of present times, to whom Jack Liebeck and Katya Apekisheva revealed a gripping musical story in Schumann’s A minor Sonata op.105. It was a tale that moved quickly from quiet unease to passion, fluent, urgent and restless, expressed in great singing arcs. The second-movement Allegretto had the charm and expression of a salon piece, interspersed with good-humoured sparkle in the neat spiccato episodes. In the finale – with a lot more spiccato – Liebeck was clean, clear and almost playful.

Schumann in A minor was followed by Mozart in A major, his K526 Sonata. Liebeck shaped Mozart’s lines with eloquent plasticity formed from constant subtle gradations of dynamics and variation of vibrato, matched by Apekisheva’s expressive fluency. The Andante was steady and sombre, with wonderful hushed playing. There was a stillness to the movement, a period of reverie before the gaiety of the finale, light-footed and animated.

The musicians then turned to lighter things. They performed Kreisler’s Caprice viennois with a sweetness and warmth which were welcome on this cold winter’s day, like musical Glühwein, and followed it with his Syncopation, punchy and suave.

Liebeck dashed off Kreisler’s arrangement of Falla’s Danse Espagnole with virtuoso panache, and finished with his Miniature Viennese March, a farewell bon-bon.

TIM HOMFRAY

The Venus Ensemble Berlin plays intense Beethoven

Berlin

BERLIN PHILHARMONIC QUARTETS 

PHILHARMONIE 14 DECEMBER 2020

To say happy birthday to Ludwig van Beethoven, the BPO came up with more than a neat concept: its Digital Concert Hall hosted a cycle of quartets arranged into three studio concerts of early, middle and late works, played by both established and ad hoc ensembles within the orchestra.

Introductions by the violinist Philipp Bohnen set the tone for much considered but lively music making. He explored the apparently innocuous opening bars of no.1 and the fragile tension holding together its intimations of equality. The performance struck a cultivated poise between subversion and gravity, whereas similar virtues sold the more radically disruptive gestures of no.4 a little short in the heavier hands of the Leo Borchard Quartet.

The old guard of the Athenaeum Quartet belied their years in no.5 with hair-trigger articulation of the first-movement’s major–minor combat, while leaving an expression of the BPO’s famed sostenuto intensity to the all-female members of the Venus Ensemble Berlin in no.2, and the Gartemann sisters Cornelia (first violin) and Julia (viola) in a notably bold and searching account of no.3.

Perhaps the best was saved for last, with another happy meeting of minds. Some acute dynamic control and telling use of silence couched the sunshine-to-moonlight narrative of no.6 in the tones of a narrator who knows that the next chapter brings the deeper pathos of the first ‘Rasumovsky’ while coloured by a sense that op.18 passes through its own life cycle. Many hands, indeed, made light work.

PETER QUANTRILL