Reviews

Your monthly critical round-up of performances, recordings and publications

London

Jonny Greenwood with members of the 12 Ensemble

12 ENSEMBLE, ANNA MEREDITH (ELECTRONICS) JONNY GREENWOOD (TANPURA)

BARBICAN 19 JUNE 2021

The main work here was Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony which, the programme failed to mention, is an arrangement of his Eighth String Quartet (no mention of the arranger either – presumably Rudolf Barshai). Before it the 12 Ensemble, conductorless and safely spaced, was joined by a group of wind, percussion and electronics for two new works: Anna Meredith’s Moon and Jonny Greenwood’s Water.

Meredith’s work was quite an event, with five movements based on Native American names for the full moon, accompanied by her sister Eleanor’s live illustrations and lit by globes that kept changing colour. There were a lot of ostinatos, with some stately melodic playing and later fast rasping tremolos, descending scales and syncopations.Greenwood joined them for Water, sitting at the front playing a tanpura. Here were more ostinatos, as well as ethereal harmonies, with slow-moving lines, interrupted by an outbreak of spirited pizzicato. It featured an extended violin solo played with crystalline purity of tone by Eloisa-Fleur Thom.

She played beautifully in the Chamber Symphony as well, emerging from the tutti of the first movement in a solo of rhythmic freedom and keening expression. The second movement had symphonic power and ferocity. There were a few ragged moments in the third, understandable under the circumstances; the massive chords had granitic weight, and the final Largo was bleak indeed.

TIM HOMFRAY

LAWRENCE POWER (VIOLA/VIOLIN) HÉLOÏSE WERNER (SOPRANO) SIMON CRAWFORD-PHILLIPS (PIANO)

WIGMORE HALL 22 JUNE 2021

This concert, entitled ‘A Night in Paris’, was a curious affair, with much to-ing and fro-ing. Here was Power in all his guises, as violist, violinist and even reciter, and very fine he was in the first two;I doubt his recitation of Lorca’s poem Debussy could be heard at the back.

MARK ALLEN/BARBICAN

The first work, Gabriel Willaume’s La noce bretonne, a set of little dances with an open-string drone, was played entirely offstage, and sounded initially as if he were tuning up, except it kept getting louder before going away again. Power’s first proper appearance was for Garth Knox’s 2020 work Quartet for One, in which he moved about between four stands. He was joined by Héloïse Werner, who sang Machaut’s Douce Dame Jolie and then the premiere of her own work Mixed Phrases, with many a stuttered consonant as Power moved between viola and violin, with some fine arpeggiated harmonics.

There were 14 works altogether, the most substantial being Poulenc’s Violin Sonata, with impassioned flights, suave lyricism and a hint of decadence. Towards the end he played his arrangement of Berlioz’s Tristia, plaintive and with an oddly pinched tone, followed by the ‘Blues’ movement from Ravel’s Violin Sonata no.2, which teetered on the edge of jazz parody. The evening finished with a vigorous account of Stravinsky’s Danse Russe.

TIM HOMFRAY

SHEKU KANNEH-MASON (CELLO) ISATA KANNEH-MASON (PIANO)

BARBICAN 4 JULY 2021

Frank Bridge and Benjamin Britten were the main composers here, with a sonata each and some shorter works besides. The Allegro ben moderato first movement of Bridge’s D minor Sonata moves quickly from mellowness to high passion, particularly in the hands of Sheku Kanneh-Mason, playing with great tonal power, fierce vibrato and closed eyes. There were several more such impassioned peaks in this movement which he scaled with increasing emotional intensity, all folded into a wonderful exploration of Bridge’s wide-ranging melodic lines.There was tonal variety and responsiveness to the complex lyricism of the Adagio, and a triumphant D major finish to the final colourful Allegro.

There are many more and different colours in Britten’s Sonata, with technical challenges to match. He plucked away splendidly in the secondmovement Scherzo-pizzicato, produced great glissando swoops in the busy Marcia, and crisp ricochet bowing in the final Moto perpetuo. Here too the Kanneh-Masons showed what a fine sibling team they make, passing scalic fragments back and forth in the opening Dialogo and building to another ecstatic climax in the third-movement Elegia.

Elsewhere, Sheku Kanneh- Mason brought gritty attack to the astringent double-stops of Britten’s Tema Sacher, fervid intensity to a couple of Rachmaninoff songs, and geniality to a set of Bridge miniatures.

TIM HOMFRAY

New York

CHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER

RESTART STAGES, DAMROSCH PARK 26 JUNE 2021

As New York City emerged from pandemic life, the joy of hearing real, physically present live music again was only tempered by the frustration of imperfect amplification. This all-Brahms programme was performed by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center at an outdoor stage built for a series of summer concerts. But due to the microphone placement and mix, the left hand of the piano and the clarity in the lower register of the cello were both lost in Brahms’s F major Cello Sonata. Despite these limitations, Paul Watkins (cello) and Michael Brown (piano) played with beautiful nuance and perfectly timed rubato, especially gently taking their time at the climax of phrases. I appreciated Watkins’s varied and judicious use of vibrato in the second movement. The duo played the Allegro passionato with a quick tempo, a nice sense of drive and a tender second theme. The final movement began with elegance and lilt and was a joy, although I longed to hear the music either indoors or with a different mix of amplification, as while the upper registers of the cello sounded lovely, I wanted richer colours and a greater depth from the C and G strings.

Brahms’s G minor Piano Quartet followed, and Gilles Vonsattel’s masterful piano opening was riveting. Violinist Ida Kavafian’s intense and passionate playing led the ensemble in a dramatic interpretation that swept the listener along. Here, the individual miking of the instruments was more successful and allowed for the violist to be heard even in unison passages – Matthew Lipman playing with fierce articulation and passion. Throughout the work the ensemble’s compelling transitions and thoughtful harmonic changes captivated the ear. The opening to the second movement was mysterious but not too dark, especially in Kavafian’s playing – and the rich textures in the Andante gave way to an exuberant C major section. The final Rondo was exquisitely played. Despite the occasional siren in the distance and the frustration of the amplification, it was indeed wonderful to hear great music performed live by great performers once again.

Sibling teamwork from Isata and Sheku Kanneh-Mason

TOM HOWARD/BARBICAN

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Nicola Benedetti and Lawrence Power in Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante

LEAH HOLLINGSWORTH

Live streams

NICOLA BENEDETTI (VIOLIN) LAWRENCE POWER (VIOLA) OXFORD PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA

SHELDONIAN THEATRE, OXFORD, UK, 23 MAY 2021

Initial impressions of the ‘Turkish’ Violin Concerto K219 – socially distanced and ill-coordinated ensemble, an occluded acoustic and a hastily applied coat of Mozartian style, as it comes over on the orchestra’s YouTube channel – were swept aside by the soloist’s first entry, which had all the poise and sweetness lacking from the opening tutti. Some entries are still rather grabbed and phrase-ends rushed – this was very obviously a one-off, not a buffed and polished studio product – but then Benedetti is a creature of the moment, extrovert and at her strongest in what sounded like her own cadenza for the first movement, gingered up with Paganinian anachronisms but projecting an authentic mode of soul-bearing soliloquy in public like Fiordiligi in Così or the Countess in Figaro.

Some exaggerated swells and stresses muddied the palette of her tone colours in the slow movement; her folk-like pure tone in the finale’s alla turca episodes would have made an even more effective contrast with the lilting grace of the main theme if the orchestra had followed her lead. There was immediately a livelier sense of dialogue – and well-used rehearsal time – in the Sinfonia concertante K364, where the expressive lead was discreetly taken by Lawrence Power, both in his duets with orchestral winds and with Benedetti’s much brighter violin. The nature of the partnership – the nervous tension of her phrasing answered by his more assuaging evenness of tone – lent affecting immediacy to the slow movement as another scena without words rather than an extended meditation, rising to a cadenza of mountaintop space and silence that not even the down-to-earth finale could spoil.

PETER QUANTRILL

TESLA QUARTET: A BARTÓK JOURNEY

VARIOUS LOCATIONS 1, 4, 5, 9, 11, 12 JUNE 2021

One of the most welcome distractions of 2021 has been the Tesla Quartet’s exploration of Bartók’s magnificent contributions to the genre. Filmed over a period of months, the group included rehearsals for each of the six quartets, plus separate discussions with experts such as Dániel Péter Biró (composer and professor), Dániel Hamar (founder of Muzsikás), and violinists Nicholas Kitchen and Mark Steinberg.

Live performances followed at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York (Quartets 1, 2, and 3), with the final three at the Brooklyn Melodies Music Center. At the time of going to press, recordings of all 18 sessions were on YouTube (bit.ly/36BVUqI).

In comments about the Fifth, Károly Schranz – founding second violinist of the Takács Quartet – mentioned going to Banff in 1981. There he studied Bartók with Zoltán Székely, violinist of the Hungarian Quartet, whose bragging rights included working directly with the composer. As a preface to the Sixth, composer Gabriela Lena Frank discussed Bartók’s influence on her work. She spoke about the relationship between his music and indigenous works from Latin America. His compositional choices inspired her: ‘Seemingly impossible, unidiomatic things on the piano became idiomatic.’

The Tesla Quartet explores Bartók’s musical landscape

BENEDETTI PHOTO NICK RUTTER/APPLE AND BISCUIT. TESLA PHOTO TITILAYOANDCO.COM

For both quartets, open rehearsals – at the Flatbush apartment of violinist Michelle Lie – proved to be insightful glimpses into a process that many listeners rarely experience. Another point clearly made: the spirit of collaboration, as each of the four players jumped in with suggestions. Among dozens of issues, conversation covered use of tone and when to diverge into four unique components – and when to unify as one. Other comments centred on melodic emphasis and its relationship to rhythm. Even seemingly mundane concerns, such as whether or not to use a metronome, made their way into the mix. I can’t imagine that other musicians exploring this repertoire would not find these rehearsal hours enlightening, and a way of ultimately approaching these complex works with more confidence.

When performance times arrived (at the Brooklyn Melodies Music School), the group adroitly captured the Fifth’s acerbic contrasts. From the pulsating energy of the first movement, to the lazy trills that end the second, to the sinuous, increasingly torrid lines of the third – the ensemble had clearly given the work untold hours of study. In the shifting moods of the Andante, the group seemed most confident – but then came the scurrying force of the finale.

Violinist Ross Snyder offered an engaging introduction to the Sixth, before Edwin Kaplan’s soulful viola set the mood in the initial Mesto, with its predominant melancholy. His colleagues swooped in with artful filigree and a bit of sass, but ultimately the composer’s desolation held sway. Cellist Serafim Smigelskiy opened the second movement with appropriate gravitas, until the insouciant march that follows tried (unsuccessfully) to disrupt the haze. For the third movement, Snyder set the pace that led to the vinegary Burletta. And then came the final sombre Mesto, delivered with appropriate reverence, perhaps implying questions that cannot possibly be answered.

BRUCE HODGES

TABEA ZIMMERMANN (VIOLA) CHRISTOPH SIETZEN (PERCUSSION) ENSEMBLE RESONANZ/EMILIO POMÀRICO

PRINZREGENTENTHEATER MUNICH 15 JUNE 2021

The Ernst von Siemens Music Prize has been awarded annually since 1974 to recognise ‘distinguished contributions to the world of music’. Its 2020 recipient was violist, Tabea Zimmermann, who after several postponements due to Covid restrictions, received it in an online-only ceremony, framed by several interviews and a touching eulogy from Norbert Lammert, former President of the German Parliament. The musical side was a typically thoughtful piece of programming, including compositions by previous prizewinners Benjamin Britten (the very first one in 1974) and Luciano Berio (1989), as well as a premiere from the 2021 awardee, Georges Aperghis.

A prize recital from Tabea Zimmermann

STEFANIE LOOS/ERNST VON SIEMENS FOUNDATION

Aided by some sensitive camerawork, the various musical layers of Berio’s Naturale were lovingly laid out before the listener. Ideally balanced with the pre-recorded folk songs, Zimmermann’s accompanying ad libs were perfectly timed in between the sung phrases. She made the arabesques typical of Sicilian folklore sound absolutely spontaneous. Just as the singer on the tape went back and forth between song and speech, Zimmermann’s tone ran the gamut between lyrical effusion and percussive effects that blended uncannily with Christoph Sietzen’s assorted drums and other paraphernalia.

Aperghis’s Aria for viola, strings and percussion is a rather intimidating affair, requiring an unusually high component of noise in the strings’ sound at both ends of the dynamic spectrum. Under Emilio Pomàrico’s dedicated guidance, Zimmermann and the musicians of Ensemble Resonanz – where she was artist-in-residence some seasons back – convincingly broke a lance for this most personal, unconventional music.

The evening concluded with a cohesive reading of Britten’s Lachrymae, begun by Zimmermann with a subdued accompaniment to Dowland’s melody in the bass. She subsequently characterised the various variations – such as a deliciously decadent waltz – with an unerring sense of style. After some eerie double harmonics, she didn’t shy away from ‘ugly’ ponticello sound, thus heightening the contrast to the classical beauty of the closing Dowland quotations.

CARLOS MARÍA SOLARE