New York

The Da Capo Chamber Players in deliciously celebratory mood

MERKIN HALL OF KAUFMAN MUSIC CENTER

The Ehnes Quartet ends Beethoven with a flourish PAGE 107

Jean-Guihen Queyras scintillates in Romantic sonatas PAGE 109

Lisa Batiashvili on dazzling form PAGE 111

MARIA WŁOSZCZOWSKA (VIOLIN) JEREMY DENK (PIANO) 92Y 8 JUNE 2022

Maria Włoszczowska made a stunning New York debut with all six of Bach’s Sonatas for violin and keyboard BWV1014–19. Playing with a period bow and a modern violin set-up, she achieved a sustained and deep sound that could hold its own against the Steinway grand, using varied bow speeds to good effect. Her vibrato was sparingly applied, allowing the sound to blossom at key moments.

The opening B minor Adagio was not too slow, with a warmth to the sound. The fast movements of this First Sonata had elegance and clear articulation, tripping along daintily but never feeling rushed. The Andante of the D major had some effective colour contrasts, while its final Allegro was suitably sprightly.

While Włoszczowska often produced a bright, almost edgy sound with occasional ‘noise’ on the attacks in the faster movements, her energy more than made up for any lack of cleanliness. Bach’s Third Sonata in A major was a highlight, given imaginative ornamentation in the Adagio and a brilliantly dispatched Presto. The E flat major Adagio of the Fourth Sonata was daringly spacious, especially as it followed an adrenaline-filled C minor Allegro.

Jeremy Denk’s contribution throughout was superb.

The final sonata, in G major, had a jubilant opening movement played with joy and energy.

Denk’s playing in the mostly solo Allegro middle movement was wonderfully stylish and the closing Allegro drew from both musicians tremendous energy and brilliant articulation; the entire audience gave a well-deserved standing ovation, to which the duo responded with a reprise of the C minor Largo from the Fourth Sonata.

LEAH HOLLINGSWORTH

DA CAPO CHAMBER PLAYERS, JAMES BAKER (PERCUSSION) MERKIN CONCERT HALL 9 JUNE 2022

The Da Capo Chamber Players, an ensemble that celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, ended the season with works especially written for it. Its line-up of flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano is inspired by Schoenberg’s instrumentation for Pierrot lunaire, and the group’s celebrated musicians include two string players with Juilliard pedigrees: violinist Curtis Macomber and cellist Christopher Gross.

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In Shen Yiwen’s Guo Shang: Hymn to the Fallen and Li Hun: Recessional (2008), the string duo echoed the piano’s thumping lower registers with their own grinding textures, as Macomber floated a melodic line fashioned from traditional Chinese scales. Li Hun began with a flurry of string pizzicatos, joined by flute (Patricia Spencer) and clarinet (Marianne Gythfeldt) in a playful mood.

Since wind players can’t play and vocalise simultaneously, the strings, piano (Steve Beck), and guest percussionist James Baker added syllabic chants to Sid Richardson’s florid, declamatory Astrolabe (2014, rev. 2022). Omitting the piano for Sonata a quattro (1982), George Perle created a luminous essay, alternating piquancy and romance. Macomber’s tone and phrasing were alert and endearing, and Gross revelled in the cello’s sweeter moments.

Composer Bruce Adolphe introduced the world premiere of Portraits (2021), inspired by musicians he admires. Macomber and Gross were especially engaging in the jazz-inflected tribute to Milton Babbitt.

A founding member of the group, Joan Tower, wrote Looking Back (2018) in honour of André Emilianoff, the group’s cellist from 1976 to 2011. Amid Tower’s savage rhythms, Gross was particularly luminous in the stirring cello writing near the end.

BRUCE HODGES

Philadelphia

KAI FREEMAN, DAVID KIM (VIOLINS) PHILADELPHIA YOUNG ARTISTS ORCHESTRA/ROSALIND ERWIN PHILADELPHIA YOUTH ORCHESTRA/LOUIS SCAGLIONE KIMMEL CENTER 5 JUNE 2022

Scores of proud parents were among the audience members for this double-bill, the final concerts of the season from two ensembles sponsored by the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra Music Institute.

Though the two events had much in common – mostly optimism about young people and the future of classical music – the linking thread was Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto.

In the first concert (at the Perelman Theater, the smaller of the two Kimmel Center venues), the Philadelphia Young Artists Orchestra (aged 13–18) proved enthusiastic collaborators, directed by Rosalind Erwin. In the solo role, concertmaster Kai Freeman delivered the first movement – from memory – with a presence beyond his 14 years. But there was more: Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade is laced with sensuous violin solos and, if anything, Freeman seemed even more comfortable with these lyrical interludes. Between his impressively accurate intonation and adept phrasing, Freeman may be surprised at what the future holds.

In the second concert – this time at the larger Verizon Hall – conductor Louis Scaglione and the slightly older musicians of the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra (ages 15–22) welcomed David Kim, concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra, to perform the complete Mendelssohn concerto.

Among many virtues, Kim demonstrated that some expert team players can switch gears and morph into expert soloists and, even in the midst of passages of lyricism and fire, he found time for appreciative nods at his young colleagues – and vice versa.

Other award winners during the night included concertmaster Lea Wang, violinist Sophia Delong and violist Dillon Scott who at the time of writing are studying at, respectively, Harvard University, Oberlin Conservatory and the Curtis Institute.

For those repeating the often-questionable mantra that classical music is dead, a few thousand people on a summer Sunday would beg to disagree.

BRUCE HODGES

Baltimore

PACIFICA QUARTET, KAREN SLACK (SOPRANO) SHRIVER HALL, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 19 JUNE 2022

The Pacifica Quartet opened its concert with Prokofiev’s String Quartet no.2 op.92, giving a bracing, colourful account that displayed the range of moods of this 1941 work, composed after Prokofiev had been relocated to Kabarda in the North Caucasus.

There, the composer was encouraged to write a work that made use of Kabardinian melodies and rhythms, which he duly accomplished within a traditional three-movement structure. The strongly rhythmic outer ones are balanced by the lyrical Adagio, whose yearning folk song contrasts with a brief scherzando section. Prokofiev’s borrowing of traditional melodies results in music tinged with local colour but far more serious in its purpose and virtuosic in its effect. The virtuoso writing in Beethoven’s Third ‘Rasumovsky’ Quartet op.59 no.3 was negotiated with equal panache and brought the programme to a rousing conclusion.

Great commitment from Karen Slack and the Pacifica Quartet in A Double Standard

CAITLIN OLDHAM/ARTS LAUREATE

Dynamic nuance and physically expressive playing from Tai Murray

In between, soprano Karen Slack joined the Pacifica players for the world premiere of A Double Standard by James Lee III (b.1975), which sets poems drawn from a collection of the same name by the African-American poet, abolitionist and teacher, Frances Watkins Harper, a Baltimore native. The texts are almost unrelievedly angry, and the settings had insufficient contrast, with little compelling lyricism. The work may have topical interest, but the likelihood of it turning up on a programme a decade hence is doubtful. The performers, however, showed their commitment in every bar.

DENNIS ROONEY

London

TAI MURRAY (VIOLIN) MARTIN ROSCOE (PIANO) MILTON COURT 31 MAY 2022

Tai Murray and Martin Roscoe opened their concert with Clara Schumann’s Three Romances. There was fluid forward movement in the first Romance; the central G major section of the second was cheerful and witty, with Murray bouncing off the acciaccaturas, and the third had due lyrical breadth and majesty. In the first movement of John Adams’s Road Movies, ‘Relaxed groove’, Murray punched out the pithy phrases at the bridge. She is a physically expressive player: at one point she seemed to be keeping the bow still and moving the violin up and down. There were gentle ululations in the second-movement ‘Meditative’, and the third, ‘40% Swing’, was a terrific, high-octane hoedown.

In Arvo Pärt’s Passacaglia Murray moved from a steady tread to a ferocity using the entire bow, sacrificing a whole clutch of bow hair in the process.

The final work on the relatively short programme was Schubert’s A major Grand Duo D574. Here, Murray was light and lyrical in the first movement, with much dynamic nuance; more bow hairs flew in a cloud of rosin dust in the propulsive Scherzo, and there was drama within the seeming simplicity of the Andantino, with elegant duetting in the central A flat major section. In the final Allegro vivace Murray displayed a penchant for up-bow staccato and the two players brought the work to a jubilant close.

TIM HOMFRAY

NATALIE CLEIN (CELLO) CÉDRIC PESCIA (PIANO) WIGMORE HALL 13 JUNE 2022

Natalie Clein’s (right) first post-pandemic Wigmore Hall programme was centred around Brian Elias’s single-movement L’innominata (‘The Unnamed’) of 2018 for cello and piano, which opened the second half; and Clein’s throbbing vibrato and vocal-sounding phrasing brought such a human quality to its slow, intense outer sections and urgently racing central outburst that it proved the perfect companion for the Bloch Méditation hébraïque with which she opened the recital, in which you could have heard a pin drop as her dying phrase floated away.

No less powerful were the Nine Bagatelles by Elias’s teacher Elisabeth Lutyens, written in 1942 amid the joint battle of mothering young children and seeking recognition in a male-dominated profession. Clein and Pescia exquisitely articulated these clever contrapuntal conversations and snatched lyrical phrases, each transition simultaneously appearing seamless while resetting the emotional temperature. No.9, ending as though severed mid-flow, was suffused with a sense of weary fight. The programming of Schubert’s Arpeggione Sonata after this was inspired, the semi-despairing lyricism of its opening seeming to continue Lutyens’s thought process. Contrast came in Brahms’s Second Cello Sonata, which rose to an extrovert and optimistic climax, while the pizzicato in the Adagio affettuoso for once sounded properly cantabile rather than percussive. Bloch’s Prayer as encore set the seal on a special evening.

CHARLOTTE GARDNER

MURRAY PHOTO GABY MERZ. CLEIN PHOTO NEDA NAVAEE

Ambitious programming from the Agate Quartet

AGATE PHOTO KAUPO KIKKAS. SOLTANI PHOTO JUVENTINO MATEO

AGATE QUARTET WIGMORE HALL 19 JUNE 2022

This was a mighty programme for a one-hour concert; not surprisingly, it overran by 15 minutes.

First came Haydn’s C major Quartet op.20 no.2, with passages of quiet mystery in the outer sections of the first movement and a splendidly passionate eruption in the development. Cellist Simon Iachemet and then first violinist Adrien Jurkovic were gently musing amongst the severe octave unisons of the second movement. After its floating opening, they brought out Haydn’s quirky humour in the Menuetto and Trio, and displayed commendable clarity in the dense counterpoint of the fugal finale.

Beethoven’s B flat Quartet op.130 followed, with the Grosse Fuge to finish. The players were variously fleet and weighty in the first movement, maintaining a firm narrative line through its many contrasts.

Jurkovic skipped splendidly through the Presto, and the third-movement Andante was played with genteel 18th-century elegance, making for striking contrast in the music’s sudden loud interruptions.

After the graceful Alla danza tedesca, in which the players went easy on the hairpins, the Cavatina was a profound, flowing meditation, with much expressive use of white notes. Jurkovic presented the fugue subject of the Grosse Fuge like a topic for discussion, which the remaining members of the Agate took up with the contrapuntal skills they had shown in the Haydn. The Meno mosso section flowed calmly, while the Allegro molto had a driving momentum.

TIM HOMFRAY

KIAN SOLTANI (CELLO) AARON PILSAN (PIANO) WIGMORE HALL 21 JUNE 2022

Kian Soltani (right) opened his eclectic programme with Schumann’s Adagio and Allegro in A flat major, with rhythmic élan in the Allegro and conversational exchanges between the instruments. He followed it with the Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov’s Postludium, a calm, other-worldly meditation, which segued directly into Schnittke’s First Cello Sonata. In the first movement Soltani was questioning, quiet and fluent. In the manic moto perpetuo Presto, Pilsan’s loud interjections (as directed) all but drowned out Soltani’s sotto voce scurrying, in a reading of relentless emotional intensity. Soltani was keening, gently probing in the Largo finale, before rising to a fierce cry sounded with fast vibrato and falling back to long, beautifully controlled harmonics.

Pilsan opened after the interval with Enescu’s Romanian Rhapsody no.1, an energetic virtuoso romp in which he was clearly enjoying himself, after which Soltani returned for a set of seven Persian folk songs arranged by Reza Vali for the two of them.

They were variously simple, eloquent and plaintive, often flecked with arabesques. An up-tempo dance, ‘Love Drunk (“Mastom-mastom”)’, was earthy and decidedly tipsy, and the final ‘Folk Song from Khorasan’ was a muscular affair, with Pilsan at one point plucking the piano strings. Piazzolla’s Le grand tango was noble, rhythmically agile and by the end filled with infectious energy.

TIM HOMFRAY