Reviews

THIS MONTH’S RECOMMENDED RECORDINGS

A tribute to Paris from Hilary Hahn PAGE 85

JONAS POWELL

Rachel Podger plays intriguing Mozart completions PAGE 89

Patricia Kopatchinskaja is stunning in Pierrot lunaire PAGE 90

CONCERTS

USA – Live streams

A colourful reunion for ECCO

EAST COAST CHAMBER ORCHESTRA (ECCO) ADVENT LUTHERAN CHURCH 1 MARCH 2021

Playing together in person for the first time since February 2020, the ECCO players began exultantly with Jessie Montgomery’s rapturous Starburst (2012). Abetted by the resonance of Advent Lutheran Church, the ensemble’s tone was a joy.

That same joy infused Where Springs Not Fail (2015) by Hanna Benn, based on a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, a reminder that tonality hasn’t quite left the building just yet.

From 1996, Golijov’s Last Round was inspired by a Julio Cortázar short story about – of all things – boxing, and is a tribute to Astor Piazzolla. Scored for two ‘competing’ string quartets with a bass as middleman (or maybe referee), it bristled in ECCO’s hands – the ferocious first movement picking up speed with ultra-precise glissandos and an increasingly frantic mood. The second movement is a sorrowful ode. In the elegant, slow tango rhythms, the nine musicians found empathy, grief – and strength.

It’s always intrigued me that Barber’s evergreen Adagio for Strings (1936) uses one of the most difficult keys for those forces, B flat minor. Also required: extreme attention to tuning and phrasing. But neither of these was likely on listeners’ minds as the musicians revelled in the waves of blissful suspensions. It can be difficult to hear this familiar piece anew, but here any doubts faded away. To close came another chestnut, Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings, overflowing with Mozartian elegance. Though the composer preferred a large ensemble, somehow these eleven players made its transparency even more evident. And the contrapuntal brilliance of the finale had me smiling with glee.

BRUCE HODGES

JAMES EHNES (VIOLIN) MINNESOTA ORCHESTRA/JURAJ VALČUHA ORCHESTRA HALL, MINNEAPOLIS 5 MARCH 2021

In an evening focusing on the Minnesota Orchestra’s strings, violinist James Ehnes was the headliner in Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto no.2, with conductor Juraj Valčuha. Like many ensembles, the orchestra has cautiously resumed events in its own hall, live streamed and archived for later viewing.

To browse through more than a decade of The Strad ’s recording reviews, visit www.thestrad.com/reviews

Masked, along with everyone else on stage, Ehnes roamed through the composer’s moody ruminations with naturalness and obvious affection. The mercurial first movement alternated between sweetness and fury, both of which the violinist navigated with calm precision. The lyrical moments, in particular, glowed with the ardour of a musician who knows that Prokofiev is much more than a spiky iconoclast. At the interval, video footage of Ehnes practising alone (presumably in his elegant home studio), somehow underlined the isolation of the past year.

Before that came two addictive works by composer and violinist Jessie Montgomery. Voodoo Dolls (2008) is furiously rhythmic, based on West African drumming patterns. Of the composer’s arrangements (see the PubliQuartet review below), Minnesota featured a quintet, opening with percussive tapping on the wood of all five instruments. In contrast, Source Code for string quartet (2013) was influenced by dirges. The work begins with broad unison strokes (in this case, a beautiful intonation barometer), which the four Minnesota players executed with calm ease. The bluesy, mournful glissandos eventually reunite in a unison phrase that mirrors the opening.

The evening closed with Mendelssohn’s ‘Italian’ Symphony, with Valčuha eliciting a bracing reading, continuing the evening’s previous string glories.

BRUCE HODGES

XAVIER FOLEY (DOUBLE BASS) KELLY YU-CHIEH LIN (PIANO)

SHRIVER HALL CONCERT SERIES (DISCOVERY SERIES) 6 MARCH 2021

An entire recital by a double bassist is a rare gem, and Shriver Hall’s presentation of the young virtuoso Xavier Foley was a delight. Vivaldi’s Sonata no.3 in A minor for cello and continuo opened the programme, and Foley’s superb articulation, clear sense of line and impressive palette of colours brought the piece to life.

The music of Iranian composer Ruhollah Khaleghi (1906–65) played a vital role in the relatively recent revival of Persian music; Foley said that he arranged Tasnif Khooshe Chin for double bass because of the lack of acceptance of Iranian culture in the US. He played it with zeal and commitment and added a virtuosic flair to the rhapsodic ballad. In a fantastic programmatic decision, the Khaleghi was followed by another new work – Irish Fantasy for solo double bass – by Foley himself, and the pictures these two pieces painted of the cultures they reflected were evocative and vivid. The Irish Fantasy was filled with ornamentation and double-stops and was performed exuberantly. Bach’s D minor Suite for Solo Cello followed, a welcome antidote to the two modern works. Foley’s sense of style and phrasing were exquisite – he chose tempos on the faster side for each of the first three movements but allowed them to breathe so organically that his sometimes extreme rubatos felt lovely (although some may argue that they were too much as they disrupted the overall sense of pulse). He ornamented the Allemande quite beautifully and the Sarabande was breathtaking.

Bottesini’s Elegy no.1 in D major for double bass and piano followed the Bach, and with its lush melodies and textures, it was another programmatic winner. Foley played expressively with a not-toowide but abundant vibrato. His approach to Saint-Saëns’s Allegro appassionato for solo cello op.43 was one of playfulness and his performance was high-spirited and joyful, with elegant phrasing and clear direction. The recital finished with another of Foley’s own compositions, Always on the Move for double bass and piano, a characterful work structured in three movements but clearly influenced by jazz as well as popular music. The heartfelt Andante was particularly captivating and the Allegro was bright and catchy, making a fantastic end to a phenomenal and expertly played programme.

LEAH HOLLINGSWORTH

PUBLIQUARTET 

ATTERBURY HOUSE 13 MARCH 2021

In this latest episode of Lara St John’s superb series The Atterbury House Sessions, PubliQuartet appeared in the Atterbury mansion, bolstered by clean sound and unobtrusive camerawork, against a backdrop of dark wood shelves with candles and flowers.

Elena Urioste soars with the Lark

NICK RUTTER

Jessie Montgomery wrote Voodoo Dolls (2008) for the Jump! Dance Company of Rhode Island, and its frenzied rhythms, combined with slapping the instruments’ wood, make a heady mix. Coming scarcely a week after a quintet version from the Minnesota Orchestra (see 5 March review above), the quartet offered its own unique sizzling take.

In Jessica Meyer’s ebullient Get into the Now (2018), percussive accents also reign supreme, but here anchoring wiry timbres and an aggressive cello underpinning. Given the composer’s status as a violist, an idyllic viola solo appears, like smoke gently rising. But that didn’t last long, as the musicians plunged into a furious array of hyperventilated runs, fingerboard slaps, and bow and finger taps on strings, before a short vocal outburst ended it all.

In addition to a small but enthusiastic, socially distanced audience, composer John Corigliano was on the premises (wearing a lizard-patterned shirt as a tribute to St John’s pet iguana). Inspired by his father (former concertmaster for the New York Philharmonic) Snapshot, circa 1909 (2003) opens with graceful pizzicatos, when a violin melody materialises, evoking the sepia-washed era of his father’s youth.

A bluesy version of Nina Simone’s Blackbird showed the quartet at its most soulful, and made a fine companion to the group’s 2017 What Is American?, inspired by Dvořák’s Twelfth Quartet. Effortlessly gliding between gospel, jazz, blues and hip-hop, the work includes rhythmic, vocal exhalations, along with bits of the Dvořák floating by, as if America were being glimpsed from the deck of a passing cruise ship.

BRUCE HODGES

UK: Live streams

ELENA URIOSTE (VIOLIN) SALLY PRYCE (HARP) MEMBERS OF AURORA ORCHESTRA KINGS PLACE 26 FEBRUARY 2021

To mark the centenary of Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending, the Aurora Orchestra performed it in the first of its new season of concerts at Kings Place. To be more accurate, given the current circumstances, a cut-down Aurora (with seven strings, flute, clarinet and harp) played a cut-down version, specially commissioned from Iain Farrington, with soloist Elena Urioste. And very effective it was, with the harp adding body and a passable imitation of a triangle. This was an intimate, collegiate affair, as much musing as soaring, beautifully played by Urioste. As she disappeared into the stratosphere, for once it was apt that there was no applause.

Violist Ruth Gibson opened the concert with a short new solo work by Thea Musgrave, Light at the End of the Tunnel, simply and affectingly played. In Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro harpist Sally Pryce was exquisite, and the strings sultry and languorous. There were more birds in Anna Meredith’s Music for Ravens for string quartet, angrily squeaking at each other. Finally came a joyful performance of Mendelssohn’s String Octet, which had the best qualities of a chamber group in its textural clarity and of a string ensemble in its thrilling power.

TIM HOMFRAY

ZOFFANY ENSEMBLE CONWAY HALL 7 MARCH 2021

There’s nowhere I’d rather be early on a Sunday evening than the Conway Hall, and the sight of its wood-panelled stage brought a pang of nostalgia even before the Zoffany Ensemble took to the stage. Sound and camerawork on the hall’s channel were rather homespun compared to rival London venues, though if anything they heightened the sense of music made among and for friends.

The programme was one that might have delighted a London audience at any time in the last two centuries, opening with a beautifully sprung account of Boccherini’s C major Quintet. The microphones didn’t flatter violinist Manon Derome and violist Lydia Lowndes-Northcott in Beethoven’s Serenade, where flautist Karen Jones led the line with graceful early-Classical phrasing.

A few details were also scrambled in Haydn’s String Trio op.53 no.2 but the resiny tone of the ensemble was held together by the incisive, quietly stylish contributions of Anthony Pleeth (scion of a great cello dynasty).

Mozart’s Oboe Quartet of 1781 brought Alison Alty to the fore, and confirmed the Zoffany’s unapologetically full-blooded approach to this repertoire, never anachronistically projected but inflected with lightly worn legato; the pulse of the slow movements was led by the speaking tone of Pleeth’s cello, and repeats always brought a reason to hear the music twice. Returning to the ensemble’s full contingent with the D major Quintet op.11 no.6 composed just five years earlier by J.C. Bach, the Zoffany’s performance caught the contingent nature of a chamber-music aesthetic at a crossroads between self-contained and developing forms: music in search of an audience to entertain. It found one here.

LONDON CHAMBER ENSEMBLE/ MADELEINE MITCHELL (VIOLIN)

ST JOHN’S SMITH SQUARE 8 MARCH 2021

Violinist and director of the London Chamber Ensemble Madeleine Mitchell put together an eclectic range of works written over the past 100 years by British female composers. The concert was designed to celebrate International Women’s Day on 8 March, although I find these works stand on their own merit without needing a banner of justification. It is an enormous help when the performances are as honed as these – which in the Covid situation is nothing short of miraculous.

The concert, live streamed from St John’s Smith Square, began with the fluid and romantic language of Rebecca Clarke’s Piano Trio – eloquent but perhaps a little old-fashioned for 1921. The differing characters in the music were well defined, and the balance impressive. Cellist Joseph Spooner and Madeleine Mitchell were both particularly expressive in the Andante, Sophia Rahman bringing much nuance to the piano writing. Other highlights of the concert included the world premiere of Errollyn Wallen’s Sojourner Truth for violin and piano expressly written for Mitchell (see Premiere of the Month, March 2021). Warren’s inspiration is drawn from the abolitionist of the same name and refers to the sentiment of defiance and freedom in some slave songs. There is an unmistakable hint of folk violin in the music, which Mitchell expressed with alert rhythmic dynamism.

Judith Weir’s Atlantic Drift for two violins equally had the nuance of folk music invention with perhaps the influence of Bartók hovering around the first movement. Once again, Mitchell and Gordon Mackay delivered a vibrant rendition, a similar fervour imbuing Weir’s The Bagpiper’s String Trio in which David Aspin brought definition to the viola line.

Jennifer Pike and Petr Limonov focus on beautiful sound

PETER QUANTRILL COURTESY WIGMORE HALL

Joseph Spooner provided a more austere expression in Cheryl Frances-Hoad’s Invocation, the hue of Shostakovich adorning its haunting melodies. This enormously varied concert was a marvellously rich celebration of these creative talents who assuredly deserve to be programmed far more widely.

JOANNE TALBOT

JENNIFER PIKE (VIOLIN) PETR LIMONOV (PIANO) WIGMORE HALL 15 MARCH 2021

With almost 20 years of performing under her belt since winning the BBC Young Musician competition in 2002, Jennifer Pike has little to prove and plenty to show. Mostly relatively undemonstrative in physical gesture, she keeps her focus on the sound, not the look.

And it’s a sound that was rich and vibrant from the start, in Bacewicz’s unaccompanied Polish Caprice, in which Pike’s full-toned opening lament gave way to a fast and flashy folk tune.

Mozart’s two-movement Violin Sonata in E minor K304, was the only item not to reflect the violinist’s Polish roots on her mother’s side. Her judicious use of non-vibrato set a mysterious tone in the first movement. The Minuet shone with poise and clarity, its major-key Trio emerging with both brightness and warmth.

After pianist Petr Limonov went solo for Chopin’s three op.63 Mazurkas, Pike returned with the Violin Sonata by Poldowski, the Belgian-born daughter of Polish violinist Wieniawski. Again her sound was true, and she was alert to the sonata’s passion and poignancy, as well as its ripe chromaticism. The tempestuous finale was taut with an undercurrent of nervous energy. Pike’s finale was Poldowski’s Tango, suffused by the composer with a Spanish flavour at the start, and by Pike throughout with soaring melody and suave pitch-bending.

EDWARD BHESANIA