CONCERTS

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

THIS MONTH’S RECOMMENDED RECORDINGS

Our pick of the new releases

The Sarastro Quartet: revelatory Busch premieres PAGE 87

Capuçon and Argerich: master musicians live from Aix PAGE 86

Clarissa Bevilacqua enchants in Augusta Read Thomas PAGE 90

New York

Bold performances of Beethoven and Widmann from the Juilliard Quartet

CLAUDIO PAPAPIETRO

JUILLIARD QUARTET ALICE TULLY HALL 30 NOVEMBER 2022

The Juilliard Quartet presented a ‘deep dive’ into Beethoven’s op.130 String Quartet at Alice Tully Hall, performing it alongside two commissions by Jörg Widmann based on op.130 and concluding with the Grosse Fuge, the original finale to op.130. Ronald Copes gave a warm introduction to the concert amid fervent cheering (it was a shame the audience wasn’t larger, but it was certainly enthusiastic) and shared the history of and inspiration for the Widmann pieces. Despite a plethora of personnel changes in recent years, the Juilliard performed Beethoven’s op.130 Quartet with immaculate ensemble and impressively synchronous character changes throughout. First violinist Areta Zhulla led the group well, with her mixture of emotive and precise playing, and while I occasionally wished for a richer sound from cellist Astrid Schween, at other times I was thankful for her sensitivity. The sense of gesture in the Scherzo movements was strong, but a bit more articulation would have been a nice complement. Violist Molly Carr’s eloquent tone and playful approach to the opening of the third movement was delightful and the Cavatina was exceedingly passionate and tender from all four players. They brought to the finale a sense of joy, with moments of humour despite its gravity.

The two Widmann quartets, nos.8 and 10, were imaginative and bold, incorporating many extended techniques as well as quotations from the Beethoven throughout. No.10 – receiving its New York premiere – was a study on the Cavatina, featuring highly intense moments and concluding with an unforgettably intimate practice-muted section. It was followed immediately by the Grosse Fuge, and the attacca approach was extremely effective. This was played with vigour and intensity, passion and beauty, led again by Zhulla, whose colourful approach was captivating.

LEAH HOLLINGSWORTH

Stylish Haydn from Sheku Kanneh-Mason

JEFF FUSCOA

NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC ENSEMBLES MERKIN HALL 4 DECEMBER 2022

Cellist Patrick Jee introduced the first piece on the programme of New York Philharmonic Ensembles this month – his own arrangement of Bach’s famous Chaconne from the D minor Violin Partita – for five cellos. They played with sensitivity, strength and passion – and while the arrangement took away some of the intimacy of the work, it did allow for some delicate moments and overall I found the depth of sound from the five cellos simply glorious.

Schumann’s Second String Quartet followed and did beg the question: in a city such as New York, filled with wonderful chamber music, what is the goal of a chamber music programme presented by Philharmonic players? While the concert was quite well-attended, the ensemble for the Schumann was not especially well matched. The variations in the Andante were nicely characterful and the tricky rhythms in the Allegro molto vivace had accuracy and vigour, but much of the spiccato work in the Scherzo was a bit messy.

Dvořák’s String Quintet no.2 concluded the concert and was brilliantly introduced with wit and intelligence by bassist Max Zeugner. The first movement featured elegant playing from violist Leah Ferguson, while empathetic interplay between second violinist Alina Kobialka and cellist Alexei Yupanqui Gonzales added depth and richness. The Bohemian dance melodies of the Scherzo could have been a bit more raucous but were sensitively done and the work concluded with energetic, vibrant playing – soaring lyrical melodies and a constant sense of elegance even in the boisterous ending. The Dvořák came across much more cohesively than the Schumann, making for an extremely enjoyable performance.

LEAH HOLLINGSWORTH

Philadelphia

SHEKU KANNEH-MASON (CELLO) PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA/ YANNICK NÉZET-SÉGUIN VERIZON HALL 10 DECEMBER 2022

Revelling in Haydn’s D major Cello Concerto, Sheku Kanneh-Mason coaxed maximum melodious timbre from his Gofriller instrument from 1700 – tonally sumptuous, with a sweet yet light sound. If only that sound had been slightly more forceful, to register more strongly in Philadelphia’s celloshaped hall. But other pleasures were bountiful in the artist’s attacks, bowing expertise and effortless flights of double-stopping.

A rare mishap occurred in the final movement: a violinist’s instrument suffered a broken tailpiece, signalled by an alarmingly loud snap. Nézet-Séguin halted the proceedings as the musician exited, and turned sympathetically to the audience, ‘I couldn’t just let him sit there’. After the violin section realigned to fill the empty chair, Kanneh-Mason (right) again plunged into the movement. (No-one seemed unhappy to hear it again.) Acknowledging the cheering crowd, the cellist handed his bow to the conductor, who sat on the podium and watched a mellow, all-pizzicato arrangement of Burt Bacharach’s ‘I Say a Little Prayer’.

Earlier in the evening came the world premiere of Ensō by Dallas-based composer Xi Wang, who included a striking rhythmic sequence for massed strings, accented by low brass and brake drum. Mahler’s Fourth Symphony closed the programme, with soprano Pretty Yende in the finale. But readers of this magazine may well have been most interested in concertmaster David Kim in the secondmovement Scherzo, who deftly swapped his regular violin for a retuned instrument that Mahler requires. His playing in the piquant alter ego strains was only part of the ensemble pleasure.

BRUCE HODGES

RANDALL GOOSBY (VIOLIN) ZHU WANG (PIANO) PERELMAN THEATER 14 DECEMBER 2022

‘I think we’re warmed up now!’ grinned violinist Randall Goosby, after he and pianist Zhu Wang dispatched Ravel’s Violin Sonata no.2 with such finesse that many in the audience were brought to their feet – only 20 minutes into the evening. The ‘Blues’ movement was particularly suave, and surely no-one could resist the rocketing arpeggios in the finale.

Goosby and Wang continued with William Grant Still’s Suite for violin and piano (1943), inspired by three 1930s Harlem Renaissance sculptures. Conjuring up emotions ranging from intense and fiery to heart-breaking, the duo’s energy caused even more people to stand and applaud, and all before the interval.

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

Randall Goosby bringing the house down

The first half began with Lili Boulanger’s Deux Morceaux (1911–14). Among many scintillating effects was Goosby’s unusually warm, dusky muted tone, used to good effect in the final bars of the first Nocturne. As a friend remarked later, many violinists play Beethoven’s ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata with the goal of showing mastery. But in this case, Goosby brought down the house by playing as if no one in the audience had ever heard it before, or as another enthusiastic friend put it, ‘Drive it like you stole it!’ Almost as entertaining was Goosby’s introductory commentary, noting that the original dedicatee (Kreutzer) was not the violinist who ultimately gave the premiere. Instead, violinist George Bridgetower got the nod, but his name was dropped by the composer after they fell out soon afterwards.

In any case, it was a reading to remember, with both artists intertwining in virtuosity. As an elegant encore, the pair offered Heifetz’s much-loved arrangement of Ponce’s Estrellita.

BRUCE HODGES

London

JENNIFER PIKE (VIOLIN) BBC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA/CLEMENS SCHULDT BARBICAN HALL 9 DECEMBER 2022

This was my fourth live Lark Ascending in as many months, and much the most traditional in the degree to which Jennifer Pike warmed the solo line with vibrato and phrased it as a rhapsody first conceived in 1911, and not improvised last Tuesday by a Celtic folk band. Her portamento belonged naturally to an Edwardian age, and so did the expansive warmth of the BBC SO’s accompaniment.

Deborah Pritchard’s Calandra, begun during the first weeks of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, takes its name from a species of lark found in Eastern Europe, and its rhapsodic 15-minute form makes it an effective travelling companion for the Vaughan Williams. At this assured premiere, Pike quickly established a sense of the new work’s individuality with a broader tone palette while retaining the core of her own sound and its distinctive, intonational purity: Pritchard’s lark darts up and down the register much more impulsively than her forebear.

Jennifer Pike soared in Larks old and new

GOOSBY PHOTO MATT GEDERS. PIKE PHOTO MARK ALLAN

The harmonies of Calandra cloud over and darken, but the central point brings an evocation of dawn and a momentary motivic gesture in the direction of the familiar Lark, magically done by Pike and the BBC SO section leaders. The piece disappears almost too soon in a mist of bariolage, and invites a second and third listening, unlike the business-like account of Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration that followed it.

PETER QUANTRILL

CHIAROSCURO QUARTET WIGMORE HALL 11 DECEMBER 2022

The Chiaroscuro Quartet’s gift is to make often familiar works sound new and different without ever resorting to artifice. In this concert the musicians played Haydn and Beethoven and both had about them a sense of revelation. Haydn’s G major Quartet op.77 no.1 was agile and light in the first movement, with moments of dramatic contrast. Leader Alina Ibragimova produced free-flowing semiquaver runs in the Adagio, which abounded in expressive rubato and dynamic flexibility. At times her playing was wondrous and vanishingly soft. The Menuetto skipped along, free-flowing, and the Trio was strong and vibrant. In the sparkling finale, light and full of energy, with some terrific dovetailing between the players, there were many witty moments, little teasing pauses asking what might come next.

After the mysterious, pregnant opening of Beethoven’s Third ‘Rasumovsky’ Quartet, Ibragimova was light in her little soliloquies, playing with just the upper third of the bow. In the second-movement Andante con moto quasi allegretto cellist Claire Thirion led from below with her eloquent pizzicatos; at a tempo nearer allegretto than andante this had a quiet, understated beauty. The Menuetto was suitably caressing, contrasting with a finale that seemed to sprint along, although it was not too fast, and amid the general lightness there was muscular playing to be found in the rising and falling solo passages.

TIM HOMFRAY

CHRISTIAN TETZLAFF, FLORIAN DONDERER (VIOLINS) TIMOTHY RIDOUT (VIOLA) TANJA TETZLAFF (CELLO) KIVELI DÖRKEN (PIANO) WIGMORE HALL 13 DECEMBER 2022

In this Czech programme featuring siblings Christian and Tanja Tetzlaff, it was Tanja who opened. She may have been a touch hesitant at the very start of Dvořák’s Silent Woods, but this soon bloomed into a poised and intimate performance. At the piano, Kiveli Dörken preserved a natural tread and pointed up the moments of drama.

Dvořák’s Terzetto for two violins and viola (Tetzlaff frère, Donderer and Ridout) offered a sweeter lyricism and nicely defined counterpoint in its first movement. The Scherzo was tightly sprung, drawing a glassy contrast in the sul ponticello phrases, while the Trio section boasted a suave darkness. The finale’s theme is a fairly uninspiring one in terms of bearing variations, but the musicians found plenty of interest in the quasi recitative variation, with its vigorous underlying tremolos, and in the risoluto variation before the rush to the finish.

The concert’s second half opened with four pieces from Suk’s solo piano collection Things Lived and Dreamt and concluded with the full complement of musicians performing Suk’s Piano Quintet. If the almost overwhelming body of sound in the first movement suggested an army of generals it was at least one with sophisticated co-ordination. The intensity of the second-movement Adagio religioso was well pitched even if the magical opening string chorale could have been more ethereal. Overall, this was an evening of passionate, engaged playing, with intent listening between the players.

EDWARD BHESANIA

RACHEL PODGER (VIOLIN) MILTON COURT CONCERT HALL 15 DECEMBER 2022

If solo violin recitals are not exactly commonplace, those centred on Baroque repertoire yet avoiding Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas are even rarer. Another original feature of Rachel Podger’s recital – apart from its two-and-a-half-hour length – was the charm and humour she injected into her spoken introductions.

The six partitas of the Artificiosus concentus pro camera is the only music from the Austrian violinist Johann Joseph Vilsmayr that survives. In the Partita no.1, Podger’s free expression and lightness of touch were admirable, and she gleefully turned away from the audience in the echo phrases of the Gigue.

A selection of movements drawn from two sources – Pedro Lopes Nogueira’s three-volume Nogueira Manuscript of around 1720 and a collection from around 40 years earlier found in a Carinthian convent – reflected Podger’s fascination with the intersection between musicology and performance.

Alongside pieces by Nicola Matteis Jr. and Johann Paul von Westhoff came the Italian influence of Tartini and a new Phantasia by Chad Kelly. The programme was framed with familiar Bach, but with a twist: opening with the famous D minor Toccata and Fugue for organ, arranged for violin, and closing with another arrangement, of the D major Cello Suite.

Johan Dalene, Julia Hagen and Igor Levit: a true meeting of minds

RICHARD CANNON

This recital was almost as demanding of the audience as of Podger herself, but her sense of adventure, technical wizardry and improvisatory spirit were thoroughly invigorating.

EDWARD BHESANIA

JOHAN DALENE (VIOLIN) JULIA HAGEN (CELLO) IGOR LEVIT (PIANO) WIGMORE HALL 16 DECEMBER 2022

The fine young violinist Johan Dalene and pianist Igor Levit had the first half to themselves in Brahms’s Violin Sonata in D minor op.108. Dalene produced fierce, bravura playing in the opening of the first-movement Allegro, which contrasted well with bariolage that was gentle and beguiling in a performance full of fire and poetry. The opening of the second-movement Adagio, all on the G string, was emotionally raw and vivid, and later Dalene was both captivating and prayerful. Igor Levit was an empathetic partner in the third-movement Un poco presto e con sentimento, and the two of them were in torrid, fast-flowing accord in the finale, with Dalene producing rapidly shifting expressive states, mellifluous at one moment and bow-rasping the next.

For Schubert’s B flat major Piano Trio they were joined by cellist Julia Hagen. The opening was warmblooded, before Hagen took the heat from it with her elegant playing of the second subject. In the second movement they neatly negotiated Schubert’s changes of gear, and the third-movement Scherzo was pert and bucolic. The players fully realised the contrasts within the finale, relishing its moments of delight.

TIM HOMFRAY