Reviews

THIS MONTH’S RECOMMENDED RECORDINGS

Our pick of the new releases

A major new account of the Brahms sextets PAGE 87

Profundity and playfulness from the Pražák Quartet PAGE 88

John Wilson’s Sinfonia of London on incandescent form PAGE 90

CONCERTS

New York

The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center on impressive form in an enterprising programme of octets

CHERYLYNN TSUSHIMA

CHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER ALICE TULLY HALL, LINCOLN CENTER 6 MARCH 2022

In this trio of octets, eight of today’s most distinguished artists found warmth and humanity – which provided a welcome balm during a time of worldwide unease.

Starting with Enescu’s C major Octet op.7, the players swept through the opening Très modéré with drive and passion. The work’s shifting moods continued in the blazing second movement, with its extravagant peacock flourishes, sometimes with a tinge of gruffness. The central Lento, meanwhile, felt like a prayer. Overall, the work benefited from symphonic scope and a broad expressive range, and following the final unison bars, the eager audience showered the artists with applause.

Shostakovich wrote his Two Pieces op.11 when not yet 20, and they are filled with the vivacity of youth. The Prelude flickered with life, the middle section presaging some of the unbridled pulsation that would come later. But it was in the Scherzo that the young composer was at his most nosethumbingly brilliant, and the players revealed its slithery high jinks to perfection.

The musicians perhaps saved the best for last: Mendelssohn’s classic Octet, written at just 16. It’s hard to overstate the players’ sense of fun, which burst through in every bar, and the polite New York audience couldn’t resist, breaking into spontaneous applause after the first movement, which seemed entirely appropriate. The eight musicians mined every minute for maximum propulsion and drama.

BRUCE HODGES

AVI AVITAL (MANDOLIN) BROOKLYN RIDER

KAUFMANN AUDITORIUM, 92ND STREET Y 15 MARCH 2022

Brooklyn Rider is the unconventional name for a string quartet established 15 years ago with a focus on crossing musical genres. This Kaufmann Concert Hall programme featured six new works and one old one, all unfamiliar. Mandolinist Avi Avital joined the group for the opener, Boccherini’s evocative moonlit journey for string quintet, La musica notturna delle strade di Madrid. Avital’s mandolin lent some new colours and the players obviously enjoyed themselves. Avital then played Prelude by the Italian cellist and composer Giovanni Sollima(b.1962) which, though originally for solo cello, sounded thoroughly idiomatic on the mandolin.Entr’acte for string quartet by Caroline Shaw (b.1982) dates from 2011 and was inspired by a performance of a Haydn quartet; the result is an imaginative study in sonority, using techniques such as homophony, pizzicato and ostinato. Avital returned for Time and Again, a recent work by Brooklyn Rider’s co-founder and leader, Colin Jacobsen (b.1978) in which three musical ideas are elaborated in an extended sonata form, but the character of the work is a freewheeling mélange of Balkan, Greek and Turkish styles interspersed with more freely atonal writing.

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

The Afro-Brazilian religion Umbanda inspired Obrigado (2011) by Brazilian composer Clarice Assad (b.1978), an eleven-movement suite that depicts a succession of deities and their particular qualities. Chant melodies, set against varied rhythms, and some complex but often popular dances produced an attractive vehicle for an engaging performance. The premiere of Arum der Fayer (‘Around the Fire’) by Osvaldo Golijov (b.1960) followed, in which a Yiddish song was treated sequentially; this prompted from the players a vigorously virtuosic performance, as did the piece by Lev Zhurbin (b.1978), which concluded the programme. The players returned for Little Birdie, arranged by Pete Seeger, as a brief encore.

DENNIS ROONEY

CHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER

ALICE TULLY HALL 18 MARCH 2022

Boccherini’s whimsical Quintet, La musica notturna delle strade di Madrid, was clearly flavour of the month, having also been programmed in an arrangement for mandolin and quartet and enthusiastically reviewed by my colleague Dennis Rooney (above). Here it was driven by violinist Yura Lee, a dynamic and powerful artist with clear vision and style, while her fellow players palpably enjoyed the imaginative textures and colours of Boccherini’s writing.

Schubert’s beautiful Notturno for piano trio D897 featured delicate, sensitive playing from the group, including impressively precise rubato and a memorable sweetness to Lee’s violin playing. The rhythmic clarity in Britten’s Phantasy Quartet brought out its Stravinskian qualities, which, coupled with the captivating sound of James Austin Smith’s brilliant oboe playing, made for striking listening.

After the interval, pianist Michael Brown presented to the audience two pieces of solo Debussy, breathtaking in their sensitivity and phrasing.

Schoenberg’s groundbreaking Verklärte nacht anchored the evening, and inspired from the musicians an astoundingly powerful account of the sextet, balancing taut ensemble and high emotion. The shifts of dynamics and tempo were very well managed, and particularly noteworthy were Lee’s ability to play with tremendous passion in one phrase and delicate sweetness in another, while the cellist Sihao He also stood out. But more importantly, though every musician on the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center roster is superb, the sum of the parts is even greater, making for a potent evening of first-class music making.

LEAH HOLLINGSWORTH

ÉBÈNE QUARTET

Delicacy and panache in abundance from Yura Lee, Michael Brown and Sihao He

TRISTAN COOK

ZANKEL HALL 30 MARCH 2022

The Ébène Quartet launched into Mozart’s String Quartet in G major K387 with a mix of soft elegance, joie de vivre and exquisite tuning – as gorgeous as any ensemble in recent memory. But that loveliness dovetailed with thoughtful phrasing and precisely engineered pauses, which somehow evoked a vintage photograph given a 21st-century makeover. In the finale, the leisurely opening gave no hint of the immaculately articulated exuberance to come. Two curtain calls finished the rest of the story.

Shostakovich’s Quartet no.8 – surely his best-known and written in a mere three days – carries the weight of countless interpretations over the years. Its inclusion took on added meaning, given the current situation in Ukraine, with cellist Raphaël Merlin noting: ‘We have never played any Shostakovich before, and we would like to dedicate this to all the refugees.’

The first movement, with its insistent repetition of the ‘DSCH’ motif, spoke of hesitance and sorrow, followed by the propulsive energy of the second, laced with trills and demented waltz rhythms. The fourth-movement Largo, despite its aggressive emotional bursts and gruffness, added solitude to the palette, while the finale subsided into ambiguous quietude.

The final work in the programme was Schumann’s F major Quartet op.41 no.2, given with the same warmth and luxurious attention to detail that had characterised the evening. The finale, with its brilliant plumage, made a particularly indelible impression.

BRUCE HODGES

Berlin

MICHAEL BARENBOIM (VIOLIN, VIOLA)NATHALIA MILSTEIN (PIANO)

BOULEZSAAL 31 MARCH 2022

Michael Barenboim first came to wider notice as concertmaster of the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra, but in recent years he has been gravitating towards the viola (in 2020 he succeeded Nobuko Imai as violist of the Michelangelo Quartet). For this recital he paired Vieuxtemps’s Viola Sonata with Franck’s evergreen one for violin. In both, he revealed an intimate knowledge of the Romantic virtuoso’s stock-in-trade, with idiomatic fingerings that highlighted portamento, often changing fingers between repeated notes as suggested in early printed editions but seldom heard today. Barenboim evinced a fine ear for colour, generously employing natural harmonics and an attractive vibrato that tended to be on the slow side – somewhat to the detriment of the Franck Sonata’s more brilliant passages. Nathalia Milstein was on the same musical wavelength, unassumingly taking the lead when appropriate and providing her partner with trustworthy support throughout. Before the Franck, she contributed

Michael Barenboim: equally adept on violin and viola a beautifully shaped ‘Hommage à Rameau’ from Debussy’s Images.

MARCUS HOHN

Barenboim began his programme unaccompanied, with Philippe Manoury’s Quasi una ciacona from 2017. He followed the composer’s detailed instructions with uncanny exactitude, at certain points changing back and forth between regular tone production, ponticello and col legno at almost every note, while always keeping an eye on the long-term structure of the variations that make up the piece. Benjamin Attahir dedicated his Bayn Athnyn (‘Between Two’) to Michael and Daniel Barenboim and this represented its public premiere.

This attractively melodious piece requires the former to switch between his two instruments: a central section, exploiting the viola’s low register, is bookended by explorations of high-pitched violin harmonics, and the work ends on a sustained low note on the G string. The concert ended with a charming rendition of Debussy’s Prélude, ‘La fille aux cheveux de lin’.

CARLOS MARÍA SOLARE

London

VERONIKA EBERLE (VIOLIN) LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA/SIMON RATTLE

LSO ST LUKE’S 12 MARCH 2022

Before the Beethoven anniversary of 2020, which of us could say they knew Beethoven wrote two violin concertos? Or at least intended to – he apparently abandoned aC major first movement in mid-air around the time of writing the Second Piano Concerto. Cushioned by a slimline but still rich LSO string tone, expanding to fill LSO St Luke’s, the eight-minute fragment flowed with practised Mozartian ease except for certain giveaway Beethovenian harmonic thumbprints.

Veronika Eberle brings a spotlessly pure and serene tone to her Beethoven playing, as I recall from a memorably spacious account of the D major Concerto which she gave with Rattle six years ago.

This reprise was longer still, not on account of their tempos – which have tightened up slightly while still projecting remarkable breadth and calm – but through the bold and exploratory new cadenzas commissioned from Jörg Widmann.

The mood of the vast cadenza for the Allegro begins by taking its cue from the G minor episode where Beethoven not only introduces a sublime element but also derails the unruffled D major progress of the movement. Then Widmann introduces not only the timpani that Beethoven had smuggled into his own cadenza for his piano-concerto transcription of the concerto, but also a double bass.The cadenza quotes not only from the first movement but also the finale, contriving to sound fully like both Beethoven and Widmann, as do similarly wideranging insertions in the other movements.

Veronika Eberle effortlessly blending Beethoven and Widmann

COURTESY ASKONAS HOLT

Still hand in glove in their approach, Eberle and Rattle brought a numbed stillness to the Largo, into which Widmann’s uncanny, ethereal cadenza dovetailed quite naturally, developing into a dialogue with the LSO’s leader. The finale brought more war-music as well as tavern-band humour in the return of the double bass. When the LSO Live album of the concert appears, it should make for essential listening.

PETER QUANTRILL

ALBAN GERHARDT (CELLO) STEVEN OSBORNE (PIANO)

WIGMORE HALL 15 MARCH 2022

Alban Gerhardt and Steven Osborne brought some heavyweight repertoire to this Wigmore Hall concert, beginning with a magisterial performance of Shostakovich’s sonata. The opening of the first movement was lustrous and lyrical, and there was nobility in the second subject, aided by a wide, fast vibrato. The Largo final section was seamlessly played, sotto voce and legato. After the gruff, vigorous second movement, the Largo was a study in bow control, with up-bows which seemed to go on forever, while the staccato playing of the finale was bone dry, before a final jubilant, and startling, fortissimo sign-off.

The gnomic utterances in the first movement of Britten’s Cello Sonata, ‘Dialogo’, were nervy and occasionally aggressive. The following pizzicato Scherzo was taken at a great lick, with terrific dialogue between the players. The largamente climax of thecentral ‘Elegia’ was incandescent and emotionally raw, while the sul ponticello effects in the ‘Marcia’ were strikingly done, and the final ‘Moto perpetuo’ flew along, culminating in ferocious octaves.

After a fluent and eloquent account of Dutilleux’s Trois strophes sur le nom de Sacher from Gerhardt, Osborne rejoined him for Brahms’s First Sonata. Among the turmoil of the first movement, with Gerhardt’s ecstatic vibrato much in evidence, there were moments of gentle meditation. The central Allegretto had Mendelssohnian lightness and an understated lyricism, and the severity of the counterpoint in the last movement was leavened by easy, fluid playing.

TIM HOMFRAY

ALINA IBRAGIMOVA (VIOLIN) CÉDRIC TIBERGHIEN (PIANO) DORIC QUARTET

WIGMORE HALL 30 MARCH 2022

That the hall was not packed out on this occasion can surely only be put down to the programming, for what unfolded was a rich aural feast.

All the music centred on the legendary Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe. The Violin Sonata by his countryman Guillaume Lekeu doesn’t get out that much, but, with a performance as persuasive as the one from Ibragimova and Tiberghien – by turns dramatic and sensuous – it surely should, and would make a refreshing change from Franck’s concert-hall stalwart. Lekeu’s tragic death a day after his 24th birthday in 1894 deprived the musical world of a figure who had already absorbed the diverse influences of Beethoven and Wagner and made them his own.

The Doric Quartet was on cracking form in Debussy’s String Quartet (written for the Ysaÿe Quartet in 1893), emphasising its revolutionary qualities and enjoying textures such as the prominent pizzicato in the scherzo. But it was in the slow movement that the performance reached an artistic peak, searingly conveying its awestruck, wandering unease. From here the cello led into a finale that was very subtly moulded, gradually finding its nervous energy to headlong effect.

The main event, however, was Chausson’s Concert (1889–91), bringing together the six musicians, with Ibragimova fearlessly taking on a solo part written for Ysaÿe, and Tiberghien matching her in the piano’s dauntingly virtuoso writing.

Through its 40 minutes there was a true intensity of expression, leavened by lighter moments, such as the Fauréan Siciliano and the folk-like elements within the finale.

HARRIET SMITH