Reviews

Kathleen Parlow: a historic great remembered

PAGE 86

Hugely characterful playing from Frank Peter Zimmermann

PAGE 87

Gidon Kremer: keeping it personal

PAGE 90

Philadelphia

A feast of an evening from the Formosa Quartet

SAM ZAUSCHER

FORMOSA QUARTET, HSIN-YUN HUANG (VIOLA) PETER WILEY (CELLO)

AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 3 DECEMBER 2023

The language of food often shows up in writing about music, because some concerts are absolutely delicious, such as this one with the Formosa Quartet, presented by the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. But the main-course finale, Dvořák’s String Sextet, was almost eclipsed by a first half of tasty appetisers.

Introducing five startling pop and jazz morsels, violinist Wayne Lee pointed out a wad of aluminium foil attached to the bridge of Deborah Pae’s cello bridge, which created an appealing rattle for Stéphane Grappelli’s Star Eyes (1943). From composer Dana Wilson came The night of H’s (2008), a ball of nervous energy using a poem by violinist Jasmine Lin. And the quartet conjured the smokiest of jazz lounges with a Taiwanese folk song Rain Night Flower, arranged in 2016 by Wei-Chieh Lin and Lin’s catchy arrangement of Minor Swing (1937) by Grappelli and Django Reinhardt.

Perhaps most striking was Plakala (2018), a song from the Ukrainian singer Kazka, arranged by Clancy Newman, a cellist who produced a recent album for the quartet. With Pae and her colleagues gathered around her – Lin focusing on the pegs, violist Matthew Cohen wearing gloves for pizzicatos and Lee crouched on the floor with an extra bow – the result pulsated like a happy, amoebic life form.

As an opener came Haydn’s ‘Fifths’ Quartet op.76 no.2 – sprightly, with rhythmic verve. And in the Dvořák, violist Hsin-Yun Huang and cellist Peter Wiley helped create a surprisingly meaty timbre. The finale, accelerating gleefully to the end, brought the house down.

BRUCE HODGES

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MUSICIANS FROM MARLBORO

AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 6 DECEMBER 2023

For the second of this Musicians from Marlboro series (the first was reviewed last month), the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society presented six more artists with ties to the venerable Vermont festival.

The pearl of the evening turned out to be Brahms’s Second Piano Quartet op.26, with Itamar Zorman (violin), Haesue Lee (viola), Brannon Cho (cello) and Filippo Gorini (piano). In the stormy first movement, Zorman set the pace, with his three collaborators showing the kind of teamwork that makes great chamber music the most satisfying intellectual and emotional journey. The second movement basked in a keen attention to phrasing – gentle swells rather than the opening movement’s climaxes – giving it an epic feel. In the thirdmovement Scherzo, more passion rained down, with broad bow strokes countered with Gorini’s forceful keyboard accents, and the final chord was delivered with impressive resonance which seemed to hang in the air of the venerable hall. The foursome reserved maximum drama for the final movement, which was electrically charged with vigour. Punchy rhythms alternated with sweeping phrases and some carefully judged lulls in the storminess. But, after briefly subsiding, it only resumed with apocalyptic fervour.

Opening the programme were Vaughan Williams’s Ten Blake Songs (1957), passionately done by tenor Patrick Bessenbacher and oboist Mary Lynch VanderKolk. She and pianist Gorini followed with three songs by Florence Price (arranged by the oboist) with the duo vying with each other for poignancy honours. A phrase from the first Blake song could apply to the entire concert: ‘Sweet joy befall thee’. In these times, we could all use a bit more sweet joy like this.

BRUCE HODGES

Glorious Brahms from the Marlboro musicians

MARLBORO PHOTO PETE CHECCHIA. WEITHAAS PHOTO MARCO BORGGREVE

Berlin

ANTJE WEITHAAS (VIOLIN) ENRICO PACE (PIANO)

PIERRE BOULEZ SAAL 12 DECEMBER 2023

Any thoughts that Antje Weithaas’s debut recital in Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Saal might be jeopardised by a last-minute substitution – Enrico Pace replacing an ailing Dénes Várjon at the piano – were laid to rest within a few bars. Beethoven’s A minor Violin Sonata op.23 made for a powerful opening, Pace making his mark with a forceful contribution to this piece ‘for piano and violin’. With both halves repeated, the first movement was given uncommon expressive weight, its final reprise achieving an uplifting sense of homecoming. The second movement’s two contrasting sections were all of a piece, its opening theme – an almost Schumannesque intermezzo – discreetly embellished. It led attacca into the final rondo which featured a shining C major central episode. Subsequently, Clara Schumann’s Three Romances op.22 effectively showcased the juicily songful lower register of Weithaas’s Stefan-Peter Greiner violin.

Clara’s first Romance references the main motif of Robert’s A minor Sonata op.105, which followed on the programme, its edgily nervous atmosphere well caught by the duo. Weithaas’s heart-stopping phrasing in the slow movement contrasted most effectively with the finale’s insistent spiccato. Three movements from Kurtág’s Signs, Games and Messages were given a concentrated, Classically shaped reading by Weithaas, showcasing a huge dynamic and chromatic palette that reached from disembodied molto sul tasto to screeching ponticello sounds. In the concluding ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata, Weithaas and Pace took the piece’s subtitle – ‘like a concerto’ – at face value, with no holds barred in a reading that successfully took every risk with outgoing virtuosity at hell-bent tempos in the outer movements and some theatrically characterised variations in the middle one. After the breathless final Presto, the lilting Scherzo from Beethoven’s op.30 no.2 made for a delightful envoi.

CARLOS MARÍA SOLARE

Antje Weithaas: an impressive Berlin debut

London

TOBIAS FELDMANN (VIOLIN) BORIS KUSNEZOW (PIANO)

WIGMORE HALL 10 DECEMBER 2023

Tobias Feldmann opened this Sunday morning concert with Mozart’s G minor Sonata K301, playing as if in duple time, his phrasing elegant and colourful. In the second-movement Allegro he made constant dynamic changes, switching in an instant from punchy staccato phrases to something light and airy. He produced a muscular, meaty start to Poulenc’s Sonata before a long-breathed account of the second theme, and moved on again to ferocity, playing with a big sound and rhythmic certainty, technically impressive through the composer’s musical kaleidoscope. The central Intermezzo was floating and tender before emerging into more emotional territory, always intimate and urbane. Energy gave way to tragedy at the end of the third movement, Feldmann’s tone heated, and he held his poise at the end as the piano chord lingered on.

At the beginning of Schubert’s Fantasy in C D934 he demonstrated exemplary legato bow control above Boris Kusnezow’s fine piano playing. In the Allegretto he was crisp, light and dancing, and there was simple, lyrical beauty in the Andantino followed by agile passagework in the variations. To the C major Allegro he brought grandeur and jubilation, before finishing with tremendous brio in the final Presto.

TIM HOMFRAY

Tobias Feldmann and Boris Kusnezow: elegant and colourful

Impressive focus from the Gildas Quartet

GILDAS PHOTO MATTHEW JOHNSON. FELDMANN PHOTO WIGMORE HALL TRUST 2023

GILDAS QUARTET

KINGS PLACE 10 DECEMBER 2023

This Surround Sound Session by the Gildas Quartet – part of Kings Place’s Sound Unwrapped series – may not have featured the hall’s d&b Soundscape speaker array, but the principle is the same, with the audience placed in some way at the centre of the experience.

Britten’s String Quartet no.3 was the focus of the hour-long performance, following the Three Idylls by Britten’s teacher Frank Bridge and the Waltz from Britten’s Three Divertimenti. The Gildas played the quartet from memory, the players rotating positions between movements around the four corners of the audience’s square seating formation. The players also explored the dimensions outside, just inside and at the focal centre of the square. Dimmed lighting and pre-show audio of the bells from St Mark’s Venice (referencing the bell-like passacaglia of the final movement, titled ‘La Serenissima’) added to the atmosphere.

Spoken introductions are always a welcome barrier-breaker but here, even with each of the players taking turns, this felt a little stilted and conventional: perhaps it needed a more dramatic treatment.

The spatialisation helped tease apart the strands of the quartet’s first movement (‘Duets’) and intensified the isolation of the third (‘Solo’), whose fragile, bleak beauty was amply conveyed by fearless first violinist Tom Aldren. And performing the work from memory entrenched its poignancy and intensity.

EDWARD BHESANIA

JANINE JANSEN (VIOLIN) TIMOTHY RIDOUT (VIOLA) DANIEL BLENDULF (CELLO) DENIS KOZHUKHIN (PIANO)

WIGMORE HALL 21 DECEMBER 2023

Powerful Brahms led by Janine Jansen

PHOTOS WIGMORE HALLTRUST 2023

Janine Jansen opened this all-Brahms programme with his Second Violin Sonata in A op.100, her tone lush and generous with a big vibrato, before becoming more severe in the development section, with sudden changes of dynamic and passages of hushed intimacy and relaxation which gave way to fierce outbursts of martial dotted rhythms. The central section of the second-movement Andante was punchy and eloquently phrased, and there was passion in the finale, with moments of high drama.

Timothy Ridout followed her with the E flat Viola Sonata op.120 no.2, genial and flowing at the outset with some fruity C-string playing to follow, and fine dialogues with pianist Denis Kozhukhin. The second movement was impetuous and fullbodied. Ridout brought a questioning quality to the final Andante con moto; its third variation floating, almost a meditation, before the muscular outburst of the fourth and the jubilant finish.

The three of them were joined by cellist Daniel Blendulf for Brahms’s C minor Piano Quartet op.60, full of drama and theatrical tragedy with some serious power playing from the two upper strings. They were variously spectral and vehement in the first movement and ended the second with near-symphonic weight. There was finely balanced contrapuntal shaping in the Andante, and the Finale was full of contrasts, with alluring charm followed by mighty tonal power.

TIM HOMFRAY

LEONORE PIANO TRIO

WIGMORE HALL 31 DECEMBER 2023

Playing Haydn, said pianist Tim Horton after the Leonore Piano Trio had opened this Sunday Morning Concert with the composer’s Piano Trio in A major, Hob.XV/18, ‘is the best thing in the world’. He was clearly speaking for all three players, whose performance was underpinned by elegance, playfulness, sparkle, a range of articulation and mock comic-opera drama. More than being simply lively, the playing was boldly alive, and not only in the quicker music: the musicians struck a perfectly paced Andante in the slow movement, which in some hands might have seemed audaciously slow, but that allowed the music to breathe spaciously.

The players imbued Tchaikovsky’s Piano Trio with an aptly monumental scale, bringing alive its bold Romantic passion and distinctively Russian inflection. Far from sprawling, the first movement sounded unusually concentrated and cast a mesmerising hush over the audience at its close. The huge theme-and-variation second movement opened with a theme of simple, folk-like innocence. The scherzo-like Variation 3, super-pearlescent, was followed by a richly dark and unmistakably Slavic Variation 4 and, later, by an elegant quick waltz in Variation 6. Horton brought magically rippling arpeggios to Variation 9, as well as crisp capriciousness to the ensuing mazurka variation. It was a hugely committed, triumphant performance from all concerned.

EDWARD BHESANIA

A New Year’s Eve treat from the Leonore