Reviews

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

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

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Daniel Hope delights in J.S. Bach PAGE 86

Yo-Yo Ma reunited with John Williams PAGE 91

Expressive solo works from Joo Yeon Sir PAGE 92

USA – New York

A scene-stealing performance from James Ehnes

DOMINICK MASTRANGELO

JAMES EHNES (VIOLIN) NATIONAL ARTS CENTRE ORCHESTRA/ALEXANDER SHELLEY

CARNEGIE HALL 5 APRIL 2022

Wearing a blue and yellow lapel ribbon in support of Ukraine, James Ehnes made a virtually ideal interpreter of Korngold’s cinematically infused Violin Concerto, a work that draws on four of the composer’s film scores. The violinist’s collaborators, Alexander Shelley and Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra (making its first Carnegie Hall appearance in more than 30 years), brought enthusiasm and precision to the orchestral role. But it was Canadian-born Ehnes who was the star, soaring through the composer’s effusive clouds with pristine technique.

The first movement glistened, with its combination of the violinist’s luscious tone and the ensemble’s luxurious upholstery. Near the end of the second movement, a lovely muted section gave reminders of Korngold’s movie roots, including a violin melody from Anthony Adverse, which won him an Oscar. In the finale, with quotations from The Prince and the Pauper, Ehnes underlined the rugged dance rhythms, combining sweetness and fine articulation.

Ehnes starred in the encore, too: We Do Exist, which Ukrainian composer Yuri Shevchenko arranged for violin and string orchestra, based on the Ukrainian national anthem. In his introduction, Shelley reported that the composer died a few days prior to this concert, in a basement, due to pneumonia – abackdrop of overwhelming sadness.

The remainder of the evening featured works by Shostakovich and the Canadian composer Nicole Lizée, as well as the US premiere of Philip Glass’s latest symphony; it showed the orchestra’s strings at their most versatile, and the conductor at his most elegant.

BRUCE HODGES

GENEVA LEWIS (VIOLIN)

ZHANBO ZHENG (VIOLA) JULIA YANG (CELLO)

JONATHAN BISS (PIANO)

WASHINGTON IRVING HIGH SCHOOL AUDITORIUM 23 APRIL 2022

Jonathan Biss (an artistic co-director of the Marlboro Music Festival with Mitsuko Uchida) was joined by three slightly younger colleagues for a programme of piano quartets. The genre achieved some popularity in the 19th century, with famous examples from Schumann and Fauré, as well as Mendelssohn, Dvořák and Brahms. Yet these works are performed far less often than those same composers’ piano quintets, probably due to a greater interest in the latter by string quartets.

Biss and partners chose less familiar examples by Dvořák and Brahms. The former’s Piano Quartet no.1 in D major, written in 1875 but not premiered until 1880, has three movements (an Allegro moderato based on two closely related themes; a theme with five variations and coda; and an Allegro scherzando finale). All are predominantly lyrical, with dance rhythms underlying much of them. After a too-leisurely start, the foursome gradually produced an overall sympathetic performance, with a superb balance between piano and strings. Cellist Julia Yang adorned her part with subtle portamento.

The cello is also a crucial voice in Brahms’s Piano Quartet no.3 in C minor. It was begun in the 1850s but put away until 1875, when the composer made extensive revisions, particularly in the first two movements, as well as providing a wholly new finale. Only the original Andante, for accompanied cello, remained unchanged. The anguish and seething drama of the first two movements, the lush lyricism of the slow movement, and a finale utterly unlike its companions, make the work unusually difficult to bring off, but Biss and his colleagues shaped the performance with strength and intensity.

DENNIS ROONEY

TETZLAFF QUARTET

ZANKEL HALL, CARNEGIE HALL 27 APRIL 2022

The Tetzlaff Quartet shines under its inspirational leader

RICHARD TERMINE

Haydn’s dazzling F minor String Quartet op.20 no.5 is a delightful piece, and the Tetzlaff Quartet performed it with great energy and clarity. First violinist Christian Tetzlaff played with enviable warmth in the opening Moderato and tossed off the filigree runs in the Adagio with apparent effortlessness. The final fugue had both zeal and delicacy. Although it felt a bit jarring after the Haydn, Alban Berg’s String Quartet op.3 was performed next with convincing passion and great dedication. The second movement was well paced, with a clear sense of narrative.

Webern’s Five Movements op.5 followed the interval and the quartet’s hushed dynamics were so quiet as to be almost inaudible. The Sehr langsam was ethereal and heart-rending in its longing and beauty. Some bothersome ensemble issues that were noticeable in the Haydn – phrases that didn’t end quite together and note lengths and articulations that didn’t match – dissipated in Brahms’s A minor String Quartet op.51 no.2, which closed the programme. I enjoyed the quartet’s restrained approach to vibrato throughout and their beefy spiccato in the third movement. The unmistakable talent and charisma of Christian Tetzlaff shone through the entire piece, which finished with a sparkling Allegro non assai.

LEAH HOLLINGSWORTH

USA – Baltimore

DANISH QUARTET

SHRIVER HALL CONCERT SERIES 19 APRIL 2022

The Danish Quartet never disappoints, and this concert featured a provocative and eloquently performed take on the concept of the traditional dance suite. The Danish created its own – dubbed ‘An Alleged Suite, A Curated Suite of Dances’ – with seven movements in a range of styles. Despite the warning from violist Asbjørn Nørgaard that some of the movements were impossible to dance to, the suite was filled with character and beauty. The opening Prelude by Charpentier was warm and played without much vibrato; the Allemande, Gavotte and Gigue II featured music by John Adams, performed with appropriate rhythmic clarity and bite – but still in the style of the Charpentier. The Courante was an earthy traditional Swedish polka, contrasting with Felix Blumenfeld’s beautiful Sarabande. If the Charpentier choice for Gigue I was a bit slow for a true ‘gigue’ and the transition to the final Adams Gigue II was somewhat abrupt tonally, the suite nevertheless ended with all due energy.

Schumann’s String Quartet no.3 in A major opened the programme, and the players brought to its first movement a lilting warmth, and a clarity to the fugal second. The Adagio was well paced and deeply felt, especially from the violist, whose lush sound on the C string added depth and gravitas. The finale was given with due vigour. Schubert’s ‘Death and the Maiden’ closed the programme and complemented the Schumann in the way the dotted rhythms in the final movement harked back to the finale of that work. The four musicians also brought wonderful character to the first movement and were alive to the changing moods of the variation-form second.

To end, a wonderful encore: a folk tune from the group’s latest album featuring fast fingers from the first violinist and long lines underneath that built to a powerful close.

LEAH HOLLINGSWORTH

Berlin

ANTOINE TAMESTIT (VIOLA)

AKADEMIE FÜR ALTE MUSIK BERLIN

KONZERTHAUS 28 APRIL 2022

Antoine Tamestit: stealing the limelight in a feast of Baroquery

ARCHIV AKAMUS

Handel’s Concerto Grosso op.6 no.8, with its prominent unaccompanied, questioning phrases for the violas, seemed like a preview of an evening that was unequivocally focused on the string family’s alto member. Telemann’s Viola Concerto, the earliest of its kind, received an exhilarating reading, its sprightly allegros beautifully shaped by Antoine Tamestit with bouncing spiccato strokes. The Andante third movement was given an unexpected but wholly convincing polonaise-like lilt. Bach’s E flat major Concerto is an attempt at reconstructing the original version of music later recycled in several cantatas and in the Harpsichord Concerto BWV1053. As published in the New Bach Edition, most of the solo viola part is placed low in the instrument’s register. Even with the carefully considered partnership of the Akademie für Alte Musik, Tamestit’s ‘Mahler’ Stradivari didn’t always come through as clearly as one might have wished. This controversial concerto’s highlight was its pathos-laden middle movement, which reworks a touching aria from Bach’s Cantata BWV169.

Although Tamestit was given top billing, a good share of the limelight deservedly went to Romanianborn, London-based fellow violist Sascha Bota, who matched Tamestit blow by blow in the imitative writing of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto no.6 and an arrangement – by Peter Williams and John Hsu – of the Sonata for viola da gamba BWV1029. The little trills and frills with which the two soloists embellished their lines had presumably been agreed upon in advance, but they sounded completely spontaneous. Telemann’s Concerto for two violas has the soloists locked in 3rds for the duration, and here the two instruments’ nicely contrasting colours paid particularly handsome dividends. Indeed, the rougher-hewn sound of Bota’s early 18th-century German viola consistently made its mark alongside the honeyed timbre of Tamestit’s Strad.

CARLOS MARÍA SOLARE

London

JULIA FISCHER (VIOLIN)

LONDON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA/ VLADIMIR JUROWSKI

ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL 13 APRIL 2022

Playing of depth from Julia Fischer

FISCHER PHOTO MARQUEE TV. SCHUMANN QUARTET PHOTO HARALD HOFFMANN

There were just two big works on this programme, one well known, the other considerably less so. Elgar’s Violin Concerto came first. After the declamatory grandeur of the opening, Julia Fischer played with an intensity of sound which took her to the edge of a rasp. She and Vladimir Jurowski pressed ahead purposefully towards the second subject, wistful and vulnerable, before a fierce build-up to the great tutti. In the development Fischer’s playing was variously capricious, languid and dancing, marked by constant dynamic flexibility and underlying propulsion. In the slow movement the richness and intensity that had appeared earlier returned, with Fischer seeming to quarry sound out of the violin, playing with great expressive vibrato, balanced by gossamer lightness and delicacy. The finale, for all its passages of mercurial dance and limpid melody, had an underlying seriousness of purpose. With the great cadenza Fischer entered a different world, fluid, eloquent and intimate. For an encore she, with Jurowski at the piano, played Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov’s Lullaby from Cycle III of his Melodies of the Moments, with gentle, poised lyricism.

After the interval came Enescu’s Second Symphony, a terrific, complex work in which the orchestra acquitted itself honourably, albeit with some looks of relief at the end.

TIM HOMFRAY

JEAN-GUIHEN QUEYRAS (CELLO)

ALEXANDER MELNIKOV (PIANO)

WIGMORE HALL 14 APRIL 2022

There was a disconcerting start to this concert, with no chair for the page turner, and apparently no page turner either. Once that was sorted out Queyras and Melnikov set off with Debussy’s Cello Sonata, flowing through the halting utterances of the Prologue and its joyful central melody. In the Sérénade and Finale, played with judicious rubato, there was a fine narrative line, with moments of grotesque comedy. The opening movement of Chopin’s Sonata had constant shifts of character as the two players admirably negotiated the tricky balance through the forest of notes. Queyras was light and velvety in the Scherzo and produced rapt playing in the Largo before the robust and jaunty finale, full of vibrant lyricism.

After the interval came Webern’s Three Little Pieces, barely a couple of minutes long, a study in intense concentration that segued straight into Rachmaninoff’s Cello Sonata. Here Queyras gave full rein to his lyrical abilities, in a complex mix of passion, drama and beauty. The opening of the Scherzo was fiercely rhythmic and rasping, before ceding to beguiling melody, sensitively shaped. Throughout the sonata there was a strong sense of narrative, of vivid stories being told, even in the delicate and captivating Andante. The finale was a rush of energy and eloquence.

TIM HOMFRAY

Impressive but emotionally cool playing from the Schumann Quartet

SCHUMANN QUARTET

WIGMORE HALL 28 APRIL 2022

In programming terms alone, April’s Wigmore Hall performance from the Schumann Quartet was exactly what today’s concert world needs but doesn’t always get. First was Haydn’s 1781 String Quartet in C major op.33 no.3, nicknamed ‘The Bird’ in reference to its many avian imitations. Then violinist-composer Helena Winkelman’s chirpy 2016 response, Papa Haydn’s Parrot, echoing the contours of the Haydn via a zinging harmonic, textural and timbral fireworks show featuring everything from glissandos, harmonics and microtones to a big-band-esque finale. Finally, Mozart’s String Quartet K458 ‘The Hunt’, also inspired by the Haydn piece. Talk about how to link musical past and present with vim-filled meaning and beauty.

Equally delectable was the quartet’s brightly ringing, luminous and finely finessed sound. Yet what was missing at times was a vital emotional dimension. The Haydn’s concluding Presto was folky and nimbly energetic, but harder to define in terms of mood. Winkelman’s brilliant ‘Rondo in Presence of Fleas’ – pinging pizzicato, ponticello and glissando effects – amused largely thanks to her colourful writing. The Mozart yielded the strongest emotional response, including a first-movement theme of a genuinely smiling warmth, and a Romantic-spirited Adagio led by first violinist Erik Schumann. Overall, though, it was an evening that didn’t quite hit the spot.

CHARLOTTE GARDNER