London

DANISH QUARTET, JEREMY DENK (PIANO)

WIGMORE HALL 15 SEPTEMBER 2023

A delayed flight threatened to hamper this concert, but while the Danish Quartet gathered itself, Jeremy Denk sportingly opened with his six Ligeti Études – a performance showing off not only his way with complex scores but also his ability to draw profound beauty from the piano. The Danish Quartet then appeared, to relief all round, after the early interval, even if cellist Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin played initially in casuals, his luggage having been further delayed.

If the hiatus impacted on their playing, it was only to embolden it, with Mozart’s Piano Quartet no.2 opening with bristling energy. Denk steered the lyricism in the second movement and the finale bristled with good humour and a light touch.

Britten’s Three Divertimenti brought a different edge, with the quartet (Sjölin now in concert gear!) revelling in its textural variety, not least in the pizzicato-laden presto Burlesque.

This turned to brilliance and exuberance in Schumann’s Piano Quintet, the first movement contrasting viscerally powerful tuttis with a development of drama and urgency. Perhaps the slow, dotted-rhythm tread of the second-movement march didn’t quite settle in its step, but the Scherzo practically achieved lift-off. The quartet exudes Scandi-cool while Denk tends towards cerebral intensity, but there’s no question of the chemistry in this partnership.

EDWARD BHESANIA

CHOUCHANE SIRANOSSIAN (VIOLIN) LEONARDO GARCÍA ALARCÓN (HARPSICHORD) BALÁZS MÁTÉ (CELLO)

WIGMORE HALL 18 SEPTEMBER 2023

Chouchane Siranossian gave a wide-ranging survey of the Baroque violin in this hour-long concert, from the profound via the flashy to the entirely secular. Bach’s Sonata in G major BWV1021 came first. Siranossian was poised and graceful in the opening Adagio, subtly embellishing the repeats, and followed it with a light, skipping account of the Vivace over Balázs Máté’s vigorous cello. She played the Largo as a delicate meditation, an introspection cast aside in the final exuberant Presto. Bach returned later (or possibly not) with the Adagio of his dubiously attributed Violin Sonata in C minor, given an emotionally intense performance, with Siranossian (below) leaning into the chromaticisms, before she launched into his Fugue in G minor BWV1026 with personality and intent, relishing the double-stops and carrying off the quaver passagework with panache.

In between the Bach works came Farina’s Sonata quinta detta ‘La farina’, a thoughtful piece constantly interrupted by virtuosic outbursts, played with rhythmic verve. Later came three works segued together: Johann Jakob Walther’s Passacaglia from his Seventh Sonata and Locatelli’s Sonata in D minor, with its unabashed virtuosic showmanship, both dashed off in style, and between them an intimate improvisation on the hymn Havun Havun by the tenth-century Armenian monk Krikor Naregatsi. Finally came a piece of pure theatre, Schmelzer’s Sonata ‘Victori der Christen’, in which the three players graphically defeated the Turks at the battle of Vienna.

TIM HOMFRAY

The poised and graceful Chouchane Siranossian

TASHKO TASHEFF

PATRICIA KOPATCHINSKAJA (VIOLIN) RETO BIERI (CLARINET) POLINA LESCHENKO (PIANO)

QUEEN ELIZABETH HALL 24 SEPTEMBER 2023

PatKop and partners in crime: pianist Polina Leschenko and clarinettist Reto Bieri

It’s almost a cliché now to describe Patricia Kopatchinskaja as a musical wild child, an untamed free spirit, but these qualities were front and centre here, and present in equal measure from her two accomplices.

Folk music, jazz and a whiff of music theatre infused the programme, which opened with Kopatchinskaja (barefoot as usual) rhapsodic and mercurial in the opening piece of Enescu’s Impressions d’enfance. Enescu’s Violin Sonata no.3 was the substantial highlight: dark, mysterious and exotic in the first movement, but even more effective in the second, with its fluttering, colouristic tones and its clangy, rattling cimbalom impressions on the piano. Both artists showed imagination unrestricted by the confines of their instruments.

Excerpts from Poulenc’s music for Jean Anouilh’s play L’invitation au château similarly drew in Swiss clarinettist Reto Bieri. Here, and in three of the gnomic pieces Ghiribizzi (‘Whims’) written by Kopatchinskaja, violinist and clarinettist combined elements of pantomime and cabaret, to the audience’s delight. In Bartók’s Contrasts Bieri’s effortlessness reminded us of the work’s co-dedicatee Benny Goodman. ‘Jeu’ from Milhaud’s Suite united dual folk and Anouilh connections. Paul Schoenfeld’s 1990 Trio, laden with references to Hasidic music, demanded the utmost virtuosity from the players, which it duly received – to thrilling effect.

EDWARD BHESANIA