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Beautiful Janáček from Camerata Zürich PAGE 88

Doric Quartet: Magnificent Mendelssohn PAGE 89

Supple Saint- Saëns from Jinjoo Cho PAGE 90

Live stream

A humorous, bittersweet evening, courtesy of the Spektral Quartet

YOUSIF ALZAYED

SPEKTRAL QUARTET

CONSTELLATION, CHICAGO, IL, US, 21 NOVEMBER 2021

In the weeks prior to this concert, the Spektral Quartet announced that the 2021–22 season would be its last. Given the ensemble’s contributions to the field, the repertoire and to general, all-round joy, this comes as sad news.

As part of its final hurrah, this humorous, bittersweet evening – live-streamed from Constellation in Chicago – demonstrated why the foursome will be much missed on the current vast string quartet scene. If nothing else, an entertaining opening auction – with violist Doyle Armbrust tossing squibs of the group’s spunkiness – made a non-traditional start. Listeners should investigate the group’s 2017 recording, Serious Business, nominated for a Grammy Award, and with one of the cleverest cover photographs in recent memory.

The subject at hand was Dutilleux’s Ainsi la nuit, the composer’s sole string quartet, and a gorgeous example of his meticulous style. Written for the Juilliard Quartet, it is well worth an evening’s focus, and the players had clearly spent untold hours rehearsing the often-subtle effects.

The quartet began with the first half of the piece, followed by illuminating comments from Kendall Briggs of the Juilliard School. But perhaps most moving of all was a filmed glimpse of the composer himself at the piano, grappling with his own sequences and joking about their difficulty.

After this extended exploration of the score and its history, the group plunged into a complete reading of the work, drawing out every last breath of its grisaille palette. The Spektral players magnificently demonstrated that – like many string quartets written over the past two centuries – it is worth the journey.

BRUCE HODGES

New York

LEONIDAS KAVAKOS (VIOLIN) YUJA WANG (PIANO)

CARNEGIE HALL 4 NOVEMBER 2021

Some years ago, the rapport between Leonidas Kavakos and Yuja Wang blossomed into intense and memorable music making. This unexpectedly introspective concert was no exception.

Bach’s Violin Sonata in E major BWV1016 was crystalline in its joy, with the two artists intertwining in quiet synchronisation. Kavakos dampened his vibrato – still present, but unobtrusive. And Wang, though known for her virtuosity in the most challenging repertoire on the planet, made an elegant collaborator. The rarity of the evening was Busoni’s Second Violin Sonata (1901), a fascinating half-hour filled with muted shadows. Following the sombre piano introduction, the violinist’s broad strokes evoked an old film score. Near the end of the high-energy Presto, an unexpected pause prompted the audience to erupt in premature applause – and a goodnatured finger-wagging from Kavakos. In the final movement, when a slightly demonic march appeared before some bravura passagework, the violinist’s bow was in perfect vertical alignment.

To close the programme proper came Shostakovich’s Violin Sonata (1968), with both artists underlining the mournful ambiguity that makes much of the composer’s work so compelling. Most notable was the striking sequence of pizzicatos near the end, pinging off the Carnegie Hall walls.

As an encore, the fifth-movement ‘Dithyrambe’ from Stravinsky’s 1932 Duo Concertant continued the languid mood. As was the case all evening, the duo continued to eschew outright fireworks in favour of more subdued emotions and, ultimately, more profound messages.

BRUCE HODGES

SHEKU KANNEH-MASON (CELLO) NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC/SIMONE YOUNG

ALICE TULLY HALL 11 NOVEMBER 2021

Appearing in his New York Philharmonic debut, cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason played Dvořák’s Cello Concerto with joy and effusive emotion. His soulful approach and deep confidence were complemented by seamless shifting, effortless spiccato and lovely pitch – only hindered slightly by his somewhat distracting facial expressions. The serenity of the second theme in the Allegro was stunning, and yet the energy with which he played runs and scalar passages carried the audience along with him as if racing up a mountainside, triumphantly and together. The opening of the Adagio was breathtaking; one of his clearest strengths is his deep emotional connection to the music and ability to communicate this tangibly to his audience. His tender moments were intimate and carefully constructed, captivating his listeners, while the remainder was exuberant and played with abandon. The audience rose to its feet in appreciation and celebration after his rousing Finale.

For an encore, he performed the 3-Minute Cello Concerto, written by eleven-year-old Larissa Lakner as a part of the Philharmonic’s Very Young Composers programme. The piece was filled with extremely clever writing for the orchestra and appropriately virtuosic lines for the cello, which Kanneh-Mason performed with enthusiasm.

Principal string solos were especially lovely in the concert’s opener, Webern’s arrangement of the Ricercata from Bach’s A Musical Offering. Brahms’s epic Symphony no.1 followed the interval, and had terrific string playing and stunning wind solos throughout. The work was brilliantly paced, with artful phrasing that was engaging to the last note.

LEAH HOLLINGSWORTH

Joy and effusive emotion from Sheku Kanneh-Mason

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London

NING FENG (VIOLIN) ROYAL PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA/VASILY PETRENKO

ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL 3 NOVEMBER 2021

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Vasily Petrenko, fresh from the élan of Walton’s Johannesburg Festival Overture and the intricacies of Stravinsky’s Petrushka in the first half of this concert, were thoroughly warmed up and in noble mood for Elgar’s Violin Concerto after the break. It was a little surprising to see the soloist Ning Feng had the music with him, but he didn’t seem to need it much. In the exposition of the Allegro he was meditative, but followed up with some impressive fireworks and tremendous playing on the G string. At the start of the development he was flexible, almost as if improvising, from which he built to a thrilling conclusion, with great power and body in his double-stops.

At the start of the Andante he was eloquent and beautiful, and not inclined to dally. He fell to musing, before producing great sweeping phrases and more superb playing on the G string. The movement had shape and purpose, encompassing intimate soliloquy as well as grandeur.

In the finale, Feng was flamboyant, fluent and at times capricious, playing with technical wizardry and a profound command of the fingerboard.

TIM HOMFRAY

SACCONI QUARTET

WIGMORE HALL 20 NOVEMBER 2021

Jonathan Dove has written more than once for the Sacconi Quartet, and it seemed fitting that the premiere of his On the Streets and in the Sky should form the centrepiece of the ensemble’s 20thanniversary concert. This lockdown-composed and -inspired piece may nonetheless come as a surprise to listeners familiar with the meditative stillness of Dove’s choral music as well as the off-kilter, melodic minimalism of chamber pieces such as Out of Time.

What draws the ear in to On the Streets (the notes as well as the title seem to nod in the direction of Janáček’s piano sonata of 1905) is an even stronger sense of harmonies cast off from their tonal moorings, evoking the uncanny stillness but also anxiety felt by many of us during the first lockdown. The form, too, is more subtly novel than its tripartite outline would suggest. A robin’s song written into the ‘Lively’ second movement serves only to cast a light of wan and passing cheer over the first movement’s fitful progress and the muted elegy of the finale.

A spirit of quiet innovation pervaded the entire, beautifully constructed programme. It opened with Mozart’s E flat major Quartet K428, boldest and most Haydnesque of the set dedicated to his friend notwithstanding the more obvious claims of the ‘Dissonance’. So it seemed here, at any rate, in an account of satisfying inner proportions which nudged rather than leaned on Mozart’s audacious modulations, painting an otherworldly tonal landscape in pastel rather than oils. The Sacconis did well, too, not to over-stress the Beethovenian debts of Mendelssohn’s A minor Quartet op.13, but rather to explore the expressive connection with both preceding quartets as pieces written out of their time and never fully at peace with themselves.

PETER QUANTRILL

JOHAN DALENE (VIOLIN) NICOLA EIMER (PIANO)

WIGMORE HALL 22 NOVEMBER 2021

Johan Dalene opened this lunchtime concert with Ravel’s Second Violin Sonata, his playing marked by elegant, legato bowing, and his tone enriched by a small, fast vibrato. He floated and swooped through the first movement, with pianist Nicola Eimer in gentle partnership, his elegiac tone occasionally giving way to snarling phrases on the G string. The central Blues movement was limpid with just a hint of swing, and Ravel’s louche slides had an appropriate touch of decadence. In the streaming semiquavers of the final Perpetuum mobile Dalene was brilliant and effortless, light and full of energy.

Vilde Frang and Sakari Oramo shared a lively rapport

MARK ALLAN/BARBICAN

In Rautavaara’s Notturno e danza, written for a children’s chamber music competition, Dalene played the long, legato phrases of the first movement with a floating, luminous tone, before skimming through the flickering Danza. In Prokofiev’s Second Violin Sonata, Dalene and Eimer caught both the seeming naivety of the first movement, with its dreaming, easy-going opening, and the febrile, grotesque elements that follow. He skipped through the quavers of the scherzo but was biting as well, attacking the upward scales with venom before gently caressing the central poco più mosso with tenderness.

After the gentle meanderings of the Andante, the finale flickered with staccato dance, lyrical expression and earthy energy, all in perfect balance and performed with unassuming virtuosity.

TIM HOMFRAY

VILDE FRANG (VIOLIN) BBC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA/SAKARI ORAMO

BARBICAN 26 NOVEMBER 2021

The undoubted event of this concert was a rare outing for the Symphony of Dora Pejačević: the first known Croatian symphony of modern times no less. Composed in 1917, this fiery and remarkably individual 50-minute work was given here in a performance of burning conviction which should help to throw light on the remarkable figure of Pejačević, who died at the age of 37 with a small but impressive catalogue of works to her name, including a rapturous E minor Cello Sonata and intensely wrought String Quartet.

It says something for the strength of Vilde Frang’s artistic personality that her account of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto was by no means overshadowed. From the swift and well-shaded opening quartet of drum-taps, the reading had her name all over it. Oramo’s second-string talent as a violinist came to the fore in his lively rapport with the soloist, and in their shaping of the first movement together as a properly symphonic entity, by no means as placid or featurelessly grand as some celebrated recordings would have us believe.

Frang herself was on magnificently uninhibited form, ideally capturing the Concerto’s sound world on the cusp of Romanticism while paying due respect to the 18th-century contours of the solo part, notably in bowing and phrasing which infused runs and passagework with new life. She phrased the Larghetto as a rhapsody rather than a hymn, establishing a sonata-like intimacy with the BBCSO winds, which served her well for the balletically sprung finale. Outstanding.

PETER QUANTRILL

Passion and panache from Ibragimova, Roskams, Klouda and Qian

JAY LAWRENCE

ALINA IBRAGIMOVA, NATALIE KLOUDA, ALEXANDRA RAIKHLINA (VIOLINS), BENJAMIN ROSKAMS, ALEXANDROS KOUSTAS (VIOLAS) ROBERT COHEN, ASHOK KLOUDA (CELLOS) WU QIAN (PIANO)

ST ANNE’S CHURCH HIGHGATE, 4 DECEMBER 2021

It would have been hard for a programme to have felt more of its time than this one, delivered one cold December afternoon, courtesy of the Highgate International Chamber Music Festival, almost two years into a global pandemic characterised by separation and loss. It opened with Shostakovich’s String Quartet no.11. From its initial violin line, spun by Natalie Klouda as the frailest thread, it cast an atmosphere of utter, bleak despair, the foursome (with Alexandra Raikhlina, Alexandros Koustas and Robert Cohen) largely eschewing vibrato – so when an instrument did rise up to sing out, it created maximum impact, meaning Raikhlina’s richly toned, elegiac song in the Elegy: Adagio really hit its mark.

Eleanor Alberga’s single-movement Remember in memory of her mother, based on the old Jamaica folk song Come Back Liza, gave loss a more yearning, romantic voice, now with Benjamin Roskams and Ashok Klouda – before recalling the Shostakovich by similarly fading away.

Then came Dvořák’s Piano Quartet in E flat major. Ashok Klouda and Roskams remained, now joined by Wu Qian and Alina Ibragimova. While their stormy outburst in the Lento was a devastating one, the equal passion and sheer panache they brought to the work’s warm, dancing exuberance earned instinctive applause after the first movement and grateful cheers at the Finale’s close, the buoyed-up audience perhaps hoping that life would mirror this concert’s art.

CHARLOTTE GARDNER