Quatuor Diotima 30th anniversary concert - Mason and Beethoven, 7 June 2026

Théâtre des Champs-Élysées

Christian Mason: Towards a not yet remembered past (French premiere)
Beethoven: String Quartet no.15 in A minor, op.132

Yunpeng Zhao, Léo Marillier (violins)

Franck Chevalier (viola)

Alexis Descharmes (cello)

Founded at the Paris Conservatoire in 1996, the Quatuor Diotima celebrated its thirtieth anniversary at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in typically forward-looking fashion: nowhere more so than when looking back, whether in Christian Mason’s Towards a not yet remembered past, which they premiered six weeks ago, or to Beethoven’s A minor Quartet, op.132. The quartet is more readily associated with twentieth- and twenty-first century music, but it has always performed earlier music too, bringing that distinctive standpoint to Beethoven, Schubert, and others. Having recently recorded and released a set of Beethoven’s late quartets – now, as then, the absolute summit of the repertoire – the Diotima offered programming and performance that were typically revealing, refreshing, and rejuvenating. 

Responding to earlier works for string quartet, both the 2020 The present moment used to be the unimaginable future and transcriptions and recompositions in his Tuvan (2016) and Sardinian (2018) Songbooks, the seven movements of Towards a not yet remembered past alternates application of the latter approach to the ars subtilor of the Chantilly Codex by (Jean?) Solage, Jacob Senleches, Guillaume de Machaut, and Baude Cordier, with ‘original’ composition, although how meaningful the distinction might be is, if not the point, then at least a point. In listening to recordings of the late-fourteenth-century works, Mason says he was struck by the extent to which the scores are not fixed, but rather offer the seeds of possibility for different development, depending on the manner in which they are cultivated, hoping also that the same might be true of the ‘original’ movements in his work. 

Solage – perhaps better, ‘Solage’ – emerged slow, yet febrile, gradually developing in the way one fancied (misremembered?) an ‘old’ quartet introduction doing. When ‘new’, one sensed something ‘old’, yet never fixed, behind. Which art is the more playful, the more complex? The question seemed almost, yet not quite, beside the point—as in any interpretation, or layers thereof. Sudden violent eruption, pizzicato intimacy, and more: were they sides of the same coin, necessary responses, or a handful of possibilities among many? The second movement began, it seemed, not entirely dissimilarly, though developed quite differently, its lyrical vein suggesting if not exactly the Classical procedure of a slow movement, not exactly not that either (even when it sped up). Senleches seemed – though this may have been my ears adjusting – more clearly of the past, though certainly not without contemporaneity with its impression of modern as well as earlier modality.

If the second movement were not entirely unlike a slow movement, the fourth was not entirely unlike a scherzo, at least in initial bearings (mine, perhaps, rather than anyone else’s). Like those of Chopin and Brahms, though not Beethoven, there was nothing joking about it, but tension and rhythmic propulsion were clear in work and performance. Was there something of a particular sense of witness here? I fancied so, even if I could not necessarily explain what I mean by that. Listening, historical and contemporary, can be like that—as can performance and indeed composition. Muted Machaut, upper strings chattering against a cello melody – at least in ‘our’ terms – drew a ‘modern’ response whose intensity grew and subsided in a way one could imagine Beethoven might have recognised and admired. The Cordier movement was very much a finale: ‘old’ joy to be had in dancing, but also in quasi-Classical function as a movement. This was, then, a fascinating musical tour and progress, which I hope to make again.      

Without a great break – not attacca or anything like that, but no interval – Beethoven began, similarly almost as if a response to what we had heard previously: Mason and the fourteenth century, although soon going very much its own way. (Again, this may have been more my ears than anything intrinsic to the work, or even the performance—but perhaps not.) The first movement received, at any rate, an intensely dramatic, modern(ist) reading: not imposing anything from without on the work, but rather taking nothing for granted. I thought of Michael Gielen’s symphonic Beethoven: highly recommended to those who do not know it. Form emerged from the material, just as it should. In the shadows, there was sadness, perhaps even tragedy, but resistance inevitably grew too. Beethoven is nothing if not dialectical—and again, we had this prefigured in Mason. Beethoven is also nothing without his human spirit—and this was unquestionably present. 

There are no easy answers in this music; nor was there here, the minuet quizzical, Beethoven too at play with music of the past, albeit a more recent past. The trio undoubtedly recalled Haydn, as much from the Diotima’s standpoint as Beethoven’s. But there was something darker hinted at too, the tightrope between disturbing delirium and delightfully tipsy skilfully navigated. The ‘Heiliger Dankegsang’ reimagined the Lydian mode, again recalling Mason’s play, albeit with an overriding effort at reconciliation through the fissures which was very much of Beethoven and his time. The Diotima did not take this as holy ground in the sense of something not even to be questioned, but rather as music of such stature that all must be summoned in approaching a fragile peace in dialogue between the two periods. If the joy that emerged was hard-won, so should it be. This was music of kinship with the Missa solemnis, in which nothing can or should come without a struggle, but above all without integrity. Moving through the fourth-movement transition to the finale, we likewise knew that the journey was far from complete. Indeed, the latter’s progress, even when one ‘knew’, constantly surprised. Beethoven – late Beethoven in particular – is always like that, or should be.   

Following a series of filmed tributes in multiple languages from composers with whom the Diotima has worked, ranging from a joint appearance from Rebecca Saunders and Enno Poppe, through Georges Aperghis to (spoken and written, but not seen) Helmut Lachenmann, the players launched into a Happy Birthday encore which, wonderfully in keeping both with the programme and the ensemble’s broader identity and activity, took us on a whistle-stop variation tour through musical history and styles. Key figures in the history and pre-history of the string quartet were present, Beethoven still the core, Shostakovich an insistent guest. There was a tango, a waltz, and – my favourite – a surprise ‘guest appearance’ from Wagner, courtesy of the Siegfried-Idyll. If ever you had wondered how that song might be transformed into that tone poem, this would have been your moment. And likewise, if ever you had wondered what the Wagner ‘Starnberg’ Quartet might have sounded like, if it had ever been more than a hopeful misunderstanding, this would too. Above all, though, it was a moment of celebration for a fine, enterprising quartet it is difficult to believe has been together for thirty years—but which bids fair to be so for at least thirty more.

Komsi/Fauchère/EIC/Bleuse - Illès, Mundry, Feierabend, and Kurtág, 5 June 2026

Salle des concerts, Cité de la musique, 

Márton Illés: Four SkEtches (French premiere)
Isabel Mundry: The I’s (French premiere)
Tobias Feierabend: Précipitations (world premiere)
Kurtág: Messages de feu Demoiselle R.V. Troussova

Anu Komsi (soprano)

Hélène Fauchère (mezzo-soprano)

Emmanuelle Ophèle (flute)

Carlo Laurenzi, Augustin Müller (IRCAM electronics)

Sylvain Cadars (IRCAM sound diffusion),
Ensemble intercontemporain

Pierre Bleuse (conductor)

György Kurtág’s centenary celebrations continue to delight and enrich the musical world, paying tribute only to his undeniable artistry, but also of course to the extraordinary rarity of a working composer still being around to experience them for him- or herself. Has anyone else been present at his second opera, premiered in his second century? It is conceivable that Betsy Jolas, 100 later this year, might beat that, having exceeded Kurtág’s operatic tally already; we shall see. At any rate, it would always have been a rare treat, centenary or no centenary, to hear live his Messages de feu Demoiselle R.V. Troussova, all the more so from the Ensemble intercontemporain, for whom it was written between 1976 and 1980, premiered the following year, and itself celebrating its 50^th anniversary this year, as part of the now-49-year-old IRCAM’s ManiFeste 2026 feast of contemporary music. Needless to say, the friendly ghost of Pierre Boulez, now also in his second century, haunted proceedings, not least given the Cité de la musique venue, and his 1983 recording of Troussova, made in Kurtág’s presence at IRCAM.

My first live experience of the work that truly introduced Kurtág to the French public, did not disappoint. Quite the contrary: it confirmed its status as an unqualified masterpiece, a non-operatic monodrama that seems with every hearing to rank alongside defining works such as Pierrot lunaire and Le Marteau sans maître. The EIC, conducted by Pierre Bleuse, conjured up a world before our ears even before Anu Komsi’s entry, somehow announcing, though neither we nor they could know for certain, that every number would play it allotted place in the span of an almost Mahlerian-symphonic whole. With Komsi we had a soloist, to be sure: a soloist who offered detail, character, and line in equal, expressive, virtuosic measure. We had in equal measure, though, an instrumentalist, a member of the ensemble, whose instrument’s counterpoint with others was the stuff of a chamber music that took its leave from Schoenberg and Webern, without ever sounding ‘like’ them. Stravinsky (The Soldier’s Tale in particular) and the songs of Bartók were other ghosts at the feast, perhaps even on occasion the Berg of Lulu. (Is it a coincidence that the three-act version came into being during the work’s composition?) But if any earlier composer shone more brightly than others, it as Kurtág’s beloved Bach. We were led through a vocal and instrumental laboratory that seemed to bring the myriad expression of the cantatas, perhaps even their expressionism, once again to life, possessing and in turn possessed by the fire of Rimma Dalos’s verse (even though mediated, as for me it must, via French surtitles). Beguiling, mesmerising, and terrifying, this non-operatic, Beckettian monodrama reminded us why, for all its visceral thrills, it took Kurtág so long to come to opera. He had no need to—until he did. 

It was preceded by Emmanuelle Ophèle’s world premiere of Précipitations for solo flute by Tobias Feierabend, a performance so assured one might have thought it a   piece. Indeed, I can imagine it may well one day become one, such were the similar assurance and rewards of the writing. In four short movements, it showed an almost Classical sense of structure, converted into form with a hint of theatre—not so much in the sense of music theatre, the soloist’s move across the stage notwithstanding, but something intangibly, perhaps imaginarily ‘dramatic’ rather than narrative. Arabesques connected to, yet not of, the past announced the first movement, itself followed by almost traditionally contrasting slower, often haunting music. There was grace in both writing and performance, with the final music, for bass flute, offering both synthesis and conclusion. 

The first ‘half’, significantly longer, presented two works new to France, both IRCAM commissions, by Márton Illés and Isabel Mundry. Initially bemused, I realised at a certain point the announced order must have been reversed, and was relieved to find that confirmed by Illés receiving applause at the end of the first. It was an interesting test and experience, though, initially to be approaching the work as if it were by Mundry, especially since I had not yet read the programme note for either. Illés’s Four SkEtches for ensemble and live electronics, premiered in Vienna this April, has roots in an earlier work for violin and electronics, though not having heard the latter I cannot say more. What we heard was bold and ambitious, painted on a large, three-dimensional canvas, at times in near-surround sound that evoked an almost sci-fi, monstrous ‘beyond’ – whether friendly, hostile, ambivalent, or plain indifferent remained ambiguous – but growing and shrinking before our ears. A quizzical opening of multifarious voices proliferated polyphonically, as instruments extended themselves electronically in almost biological fashion. Out of an electronic world of possibility and of shadows, there could emerge an acoustic sound – a xylophone arabesque, a piano flourish, or a flute breath – as if newly minted. Both sounded as if sides to the same coin, clash and combination in similar measure. 

Mundry’s The I’s embeds a vocal setting of words by M’barek Bouhchichi from his series The Silent Mirror. Hélène Fauchère’s rich-voiced performance had me think a little of 1950s Boulez: the thread of Pli selon pli, with the tone of Le Marteau. But this world was very much our own, urban too, in which instruments seemed to ‘speak’ almost operatically in contradistinction to a menacing, electronic, yet live collectivity. It was a sense of theatre, of an invisible stage, that immediately struck me even before the first vocal entry. In a highly accomplished, beautifully ‘finished’ work, the voice’s slow, often melismatic progress, whether sung or tilting towards the spoken, created and evoked, as did each of the works heard this evening, another world that was bound in strong, if complex, ways to our own.

Così fan tutte, Opera Holland Park, 2 June 2026

Fiordiligi – Madeline Braham
Ferrando – Osian Wyn Bowen
Dorabella – Shakira Tsindos
Guglielmo – Paul Grant
Don Alfonso – Paul Carey-Jones
Despina – Elizabeth Karani

Director – Cecila Stinton
Designs – Neil Irish
Lighting – Robert Price

Opera Holland Park Chorus (chorus master: Lindsay Bramley)
City of London Sinfonia
Charlotte Corderoy (conductor)

 

Così fan tutte may be my favourite opera; it is certainly one of those about which I am touchiest. To have me come away from a performance not verging upon spitting blood is rarer than it should be: doubtless a reflection on me as well as much contemporary Mozart staging and conducting. At any rate, there was no such problem here at Holland Park: no need for a transfusion of any kind, and an intelligent, enjoyable production and performance of a Neapolitan warmth to belie London’s torrential downpour, plunging temperatures, and transport misery. 

Doubtless we romanticise the past. Societies often have, though equally often they have trashed it—and continue to. The idiocies that abound in contemporary liberal discourse on the Enlightenment are frustrating, not least given their flattening effect on a movement far more varied, diffuse, and interesting than the Guardian letters page to which it is too often reduced. Their defamation is nonetheless less grievous than those served up then and now concerning the Middle Ages. Da Ponte and Mozart’s Naples shows more things in heaven, earth, and indeed somewhere warmer still than any ahistorical philosophies might dream of, Its strikingly ‘modern’ laboratory treatment, musically as much as verbally dramatic, and a key to understanding its nineteenth-century rejection is balanced and/or contested by the quackery of Mesmerism; sadly, the theological heart beating at its core remains ripe for rejection or straightforward incomprehension by bears of insufficient historical imagination. 

What of more recent ages? Like any period, the 1960s will suggest different things to different people, indeed different things to the same people at different times. In Cecilia Stinton’s production, however, there was a degree of postwar glamour and prosperity evoked through intercontinental tourism, in this case by a pair of US American women, both to be deceived by and yet also assert a degree of vengeance upon their soldier lovers and their hosts and hostesses. Titles help further establish the new world, knowingly distant in a world of ‘Yanks’ and the like from Da Ponte’s Italian. Despina and Don Alfonso navigate the show from the airport onwards, taking us to the fatally named Hotel Caligula to a Pompeii that has more than a little of the overseas Italian restaurant to it. One sees what one expects rather, necessarily, than what is there: surely a considerable part of the point. A romanticised view of a Roman antiquity that never was, yet which governed much of our self-understanding, both as individuals and societies, in the eighteenth century as now, comes to life through disguise, games, and commercial and other forms of exploitation. Statues come to life or turn to death, but will anyone notice? Perhaps they are mere plaster-casts anyway, if indeed that matters. It is necessary to complete at least an initial course from the (summer) school for lovers even to be aware that one has taken it. 

And all is accomplished with a greater sense of humour than I have seen for some time. If my view of the work is darker, Stinton’s conception convinces and, yes, entertains, as well as turning the tables, without ever neglecting – as so many do – the difficult, necessary lessons of which travel, tourism, and ‘heritage’ are mere vehicles of passion and, ultimately, Passion. There is proper bleakness at the end, as Mozart’s chillingly perfunctory, automaton-like close shows up the surface meaning of Da Ponte’s ‘moral’ for what it is. Mock-heroic gestures and acts have throughout performed a similar role, bringing Mozart’s horrifying parodies to scenic life for those who might otherwise take them at face value—or not even notice. It is a difficult work for many, precisely because of its musical suppositions. A helping hand here does no harm at all, especially when the titles veer in another, less literal direction. If we are all Romantics as well as romantics now, that only renders our need to learn from those who were not, or who were less straightforwardly so, all the greater. 

Mozart’s ambiguity is absolutely fundamental to the drama, nowhere more so than in his orchestral writing and long-term harmonic plan. Few have understood and communicated this so well as Sir Colin Davis, and no one in my theatrical experience. But again, whether we romanticise the past or not, we cannot live in it. Charlotte Corderoy’s conducting of the City of London Sinfonia was warm and broadly sympathetic, supportive of the singers yet leading them as necessary. Tempi were often, though not always fast without being harried. Ensembles are numerous in Così, presenting musical as well as dramatic challenges; there were, as is often the case, a few instances of disjuncture between pit and stage, but nothing grievous and swiftly, decisively remedied. Balance, moreover, was generally impeccable. There was, moreover, a palpable sense of staging and musical interpretation having been conceived and proceeding as one, not least in emphatic, if far from exclusive, tilting of the scales towards comedy. 

Such collaborative, collegial work was also a hallmark of the vocal performances. Madeline Braham was a wonderful Fiordiligi, finely supported by both director and conductor, yet with a fresh and thoughtful artistry very much her own. Shakira Tsindos’s Dorabella proved a proper foil: both contrast and complement in musical and dramatic terms. We felt as well as observed a growing division as well as distinction between them, as also between Osian Wyn Bowen’s Ferrando and Paul Grant’s Guglielmo. These lively, human portrayals were well framed and complemented by Paul Carey-Jones’s Don Alfonso and Elizabeth Karani’s Despina: both hugely charismatic performances, often in tandem with the excellent chorus—and Despina’s own troupe of adoring ragazzi (shades of Zerbinetta).  Coloratura held no fear for anyone, all of whom knew how to put it to excellent dramatic as well as musical use. And in this, arguably the ensemble opera par excellence, the whole was quite properly more than the sum of its estimable parts.

La fanciulla del West, Opera Holland Park, 26 May 2026

Minnie – Amanda Echalaz
Jack Rance – Robert Hayward
Dick Johnson – José de Eça
Nick – Zwakele Tshabalala
Ashby – Alaric Green
Sonora – Aidan Edwards
Trin – Jamie Formoy
Sid – Joe Ashmore
Bello – Michael Temporal Darell
Harry – Dominick Felix
Joe – Hugh Beckwith
Happy – Matthew Duncan
Jim Larkens – Samuel Snowden
Billy Jackrabbit – Freddie Tong
Wowkle – Kezia Bienek
Jake Wallace – Blaise Malaba
José Castro – Ronald Nairne
Pony Express Rider – Robert Jenkins

Director – Martin Lloyd-Evans
Designs – Anna Reid
Lighting – Jamie Platt
Choreography – Róisín Whelan
Fight director – Haruka Kuroda

Opera Holland Park Chorus (chorus master: Dominic Ellis-Peckham)

City of London Sinfonia

Matthew Kofi Waldren (conductor)

Images: Craig Fuller

This year, Opera Holland Park celebrates its thirtieth anniversary. Now a fixture in London’s operatic calendar, it continues to put many allegedly starrier stages to shame, not only through the quality of its productions and a wise stewardship that continues to build on its particular artistic strengths, but also through the genuine warmth of its welcome to newcomers and seasoned operagoers alike, and to its commitment to community and sustainability. Puccini has always stood at the heart of its offerings, so opening the 2026 season with a new production of La fanciulla del West, directed by Martin Lloyd-Evans and conducted by Matthew Kofi Waldren, was fitting and welcome. It turned out to show the company at its best: an interesting, intelligent staging, with excellent musical values, including a City of London Sinfonia one would never have guessed from the sound included only five first violins and a well assembled team of seasoned and newer vocal artists.

When talking about how differently an opera – or any other performing artwork – has struck one on different occasions, it is always difficult to know how much to attribute to the performance, broadly conceived including production, and how much to oneself. It will often be a combination of both; the important thing to remind oneself is that one may be more or less receptive at different times. I suspect, as an astute critic said to me during the interval, that Fanciulla may be a work that speaks more readily to those of a certain age. Its themes become more apparent, as well as more meaningful. (That may also be in part a reflection of coming to know it better.) But I am pretty sure it was only that; much in Lloyd-Evans’s production skilfully drew out the work’s dramatic concerns without overt interventionism, tracing a careful and involving path between its tricky combination of realism and redemption, neither of which it seems desirable, even possible, to underplay, let alone jettison. 

First among these themes is surely loneliness; at least, it felt so here. I do not doubt a more overt, even contemporary thematization could work too, but a hallmark of this production was to draw it out of what we could imagine the work ‘itself’ to be. Related to that and with similar contemporary resonance, period setting notwithstanding, is the theme of migration. For these are people who have come to California from across the world, not only the continent. In that lie their hopes, their fears, their sadness, and their possibilities to build something new—such as love. The dramatic, emotional point of the first scene, of men meeting at the Polka saloon, unsure of how they can and should relate to one another, whether missing their ‘homes’ elsewhere or otherwise, comes across strongly. Minnie and Dick Johnson are not so different, though they step out from that generality. And, as Minnie reminds us, none of them, her included, has clean hands: this could readily tilt into a Brecht-Weill Mahagonny, although ultimately its direction could hardly stand more strongly opposed. 

That is all in the work, one might say, and in many ways that is so, but one is led to understand and feel that with greater clarity and indeed emotional depth than I can previously recall. Dancing with another, faute de mieux, is touching in its heterosexual wariness but also its brief joy, though the ‘real thing’ lies between the central couple—and between them alone. We follow its origins, its rekindling, its blooming, its crisis, and its victory, through detailed, yet never fussy direction that supports every character onstage to trace a plausible path. There are set-piece moments, as there are in the work. They make reference, or at least conform, to our ideas of the Western, brought further to life in Anna Reid's resourceful designs and Jamie Platt's lighting. But they are never mere clichés: they have a function, narrative and emotional, and effect that function well.  

Waldren’s direction of the CLS and its playing were first-class. If you would have me down as a sceptic for chamber orchestra Puccini, even in so skilful a reduction as that by Ettore Panizza, you would be right. Not only, though, was I convinced from the outset; the question never arose in the first place. Here was a sound that was throughout just right, a gorgeous string sheen the icing on a cake of many ingredients, often dissolving in strikingly modernist fashion before our ears, whilst never forgetting its ‘Italian’ – forgive the essentialism – heart. Flexible yet directed, warm yet variegated, here was a Fanciulla that evoked the Puccini of his past and future, whilst reminding us how close much of it stands to Tristan und Isolde, to Debussy, and to the operas and film scores of Korngold and company. If I had a slight doubt, I wondered whether it might move on a little faster at times, but such matters come down to taste more than judgement. Passages of suspended time had their own dramatic motivation, palpably received throughout a packed audience.

 

Amanda Echalaz’s Minnie was similarly world-class: a far more complex character than I have seen and heard before and all the better for it. There were goodness and wisdom there, to be sure, but also pride and even resentment: as was very much her right. Her alchemy of words and music was shared by the charismatic José de Eça, at least as lovelorn and with all the greater need for a redemptive arc. One could not but root for them, much as one feared (even when one ‘knew’) darker forces would win out. Robert Hayward’s Jack Rance married a Scarpia of the West with something deeper, doubtless drawing on his experience in Wagner up to and including Wotan. No one sentimentalised, crucial in this of all composers, and the drama was all the richer for it. Cast from depth, a community was brought to life by singers such as Zwakele Tshabalala’s Nick, Alaric Green’s Ashby, Aidan Edwards’s Sonora, and many others, not least Kezia Bienek’s loyal Wowkle. This, though, was very much a company effort, with an outstanding chorus trained by Dominic Ellis-Peckham at its beating heart. All contributed to something greater than the sum of its considerable parts.

 

For the ending not to seem trite, even silly, it needs broader, redemptive resonance: not an easy task for our age. It is arguably here that the work needs a little help, and the question is raised as to what sort of work it really is. Clearly it is not a tragedy, though it has seemed to be leading that way. Nor is it a comedy, save in the sense that it is not a tragedy. It is easier, I think, to take Turandot as a perverted, even repellent version of the latter. It might be easier to take Fanciulla as such, if it had a greater mythological element to it, as Wagner does even in Die Meistersinger. Tristan is a tragedy that, in the older or at least George Steiner sense, turns aside too. Whilst one might draw a comparison here, perhaps the problem is that it does not feel appropriate, for various reasons, of which realism is only one. The point is not, of course, classification, Aristotelian or otherwise, for its own sake. It is perfectly fine for a work simply to be itself; ultimately it must be. But when doubts linger concerning the happy ending, such questions more or less inevitably arise. A potential future carved out for the lovers is hard-won in its way, It is difficult to argue with Minnie’s admonitions and persuasion: she deserves it. But do we believe in it? In Così fan tutte, of course we do not: that is the point. If I am still not entirely clear what the point is here, first the problem may well be mine, and second this came far closer to convincing me than any performance previously, the dress rehearsal I was fortunate enough to attend included. So there was an emotional truth to what we saw and heard in committed performance, as in staging, as in work. The three came together in just the way opera of most kinds should.

Happy thirtieth anniversary, then, Opera Holland Park. It has been a pleasure to share a good few of those years with you, and I hope to share many more of them.

Quatuor Ébène - Beethoven, 14 May 2026

Wigmore Hall

String Quartet no.5 in A major, op.18 no.5
String Quartet no.4 in C minor, op.18 no.4
String Quartet no.12 in E-flat major, op.127

Pierre Colombet, Gabriel Le Magadure (violins)
Marie Chilemme (viola)
Yuya Okamoto (cello)

I have never been disappointed by a Quatuor Ébène concert, whether at the Wigmore Hall or elsewhere. This all-Beethoven programme offered no exception. Almost my only reservation I shall get out of the way immediately: some surprising intonational difficulties, which should not be exaggerated yet nevertheless were to be heard, in parts of the two quartets from the op.18 set. They seemed related to a similarly surprising withdrawal of vibrato from time to time in the violins: not that this is unusual in itself nowadays, but rather that it is not something I at least associated with this ensemble. Trying new things in performance is generally to be applauded, but that aspect seemed to me something of a work-in-progress. 

Otherwise, the first movement of the A major Quartet, op.18 no.5, benefited from a finely judged balance between Beethoven’s twin inheritances from Haydn and Mozart. It was always given space to breathe, without ever sagging, in a performance of balance, variegation, and intensity. There was an appealing Janus-faced quality to the Menuetto, both harking back to Beethoven’s forebears but also forward to the second part of the recital. Its counterpoint told, whilst greater warmth and rusticity in the trio formed a winning contrast. Haydn would surely have nodded and approved. In the third movement, the theme was touching enough, but it was in the variations that Beethoven’s character truly manifested itself, movingly so whether in slower or more rumbunctious music. Variation form was always special to him; here it felt so. After that, a post-Haydn finale, with just the right degree of properly Beethovenian vehemence, was very much the ticket. It constantly confounded, just as it should. 

In its C minor predecessor (in the set, rather than this programme), Beethoven the Romantic more fully manifested himself: not only in tonality, but in coiled-spring concision. The players relaxed slightly for the second subject in the opening Allegro ma non tanto, but not only slightly, and this was more a matter of the composer’s writing than performing intervention. The exposition repeat, notably, was no mere repeat but was music transformed by its first playing (and hearing), leading to a development section of great intensity. Here was Beethoven’s C minor daemon—likewise in a further-transformed recapitulation and second development unleashed in its coda. A somewhat stern scherzo opened out a little as it progressed. If it occasionally lost a degree of ension – this is a difficult movement to bring off – there was no such problem in an absorbing Menuetto that was nonetheless anything but an easy listen. The finale again proved full of surprises in the best sense. 

I was immediately struck by the richness of sound in the Maestoso introduction to the first movement of the op.127 Quartet. It is, again, partly a matter of the writing, but only partly. Not that what we heard was unvaried, far from it, but the first movement’s ‘base line’ was different. So too, for that matter was the bass line, vividly brought to life by cellist Yuya Okamoto. There was concision here too, again strikingly so, but of a very different kind—and so it felt. Here was music that offered that sense and an apparently contrary sense of expansiveness, as two sides of the same coin. Wagnerian ‘unendliche Melodie’ characterised the Adagio ma non troppo. This was rare ground, albeit inhabited without preciosity. It is difficult not to describe such music and such music-making as sublime, and frankly why should one try? Beethoven’s interventions registered with a due sense of shock, yet always made sense in retrospect, all within a single, miraculous breath. A quizzical yet deeply felt scherzo seemed to extend its human reach still further in the radicalism of its trio material. The finale’s perfect sense of character and function was fully realised in practice: uncompromising, without ‘effects’ or astringency. There is truly no music ‘like’ this. Its ultimate eruption felt all the more joyous for being so hard-won.

The Rape of Lucretia, Royal Academy of Music, 13 May 2025

Susie Sainsbury Theatre

Tarquinius (Oliver Heuzenroeder), Collatinus (Pavel Basov), Junius (Harrison Robb)
Images: Craig Fuller

Director – Paul Carr
Costumes – Michelle Bradbury
Lighting – Jake Wiltshire

Female Chorus – Madeleine Perring
Male Chorus – Yihui Wang
Lucretia – Ella Orehek-Whitford
Tarquinius – Oliver Heuzenroeder
Collatinus – Pavel Basov
Junius – Harrison Robb
Bianca – Viktoria Melkonian
Lucia – Ellie Donald

Royal Academy Sinfonia

Lada Valešová (conductor)

Male Chorus (Yihui Wang)

Hot on the heels of HGO’s Rape of Lucretia has come another excellent young-artist production, this time from Royal Academy Opera. (English Touring Opera also gave performances, here in London and elsewhere, in November.) It is for me one of Britten’s stronger works, the sometimes excessive wordiness of Ronald Duncan’s libretto notwithstanding; this opportunity to see it again so soon, not so much to compare as to experience it from another, related standpoint, was readily taken.

Paul Carr’s production puzzled me at first, probably because I had come with overly realist expectations to something that unfolded with a more abstract aesthetic, indeed aestheticism. What seemed to be a punk-meets-S&M look for the beginning of the first act, soldiers meeting on an edgy, even dangerous street, turned out not to be a setting as such, but rather a look, contrasted with a more Roman sense, achieved more through lighting than costumes, for the domestic sphere of Lucretia’s villa. Not that there was anything much here as a set: this focused on the characters, their deeds, and their interactions, all viewed through a prism of black, white, and red, a long red rope both prophetic and eventually summative. In the masculine sphere, Tarquinius was a ‘panther’ indeed, not only ‘agile’ and ‘virile’ but also in thrall to his pleasures and desires—and not necessarily restricted to women. Mad, bad, and definitely dangerous to know, then, in a memorable stage animal portrayal by Oliver Heuzenroeder. 

Lucia (Ellie Donald), Lucretia (Ella Orehek-Coddington), Bianca (Viktoria Melkonian)

Ella Orehek-Whitford’s Lucretia contrasted vividly with his Tarquinius: good, honourable, and with undeniable inner strength, though how could that ever be enough? Her way with words, music, and their combination enabled her fully to inhabit her role. Pavel Basov’s Collatinus was multi-dimensional, to begin with barely distinguishable from the other men, thrust by direst fate into his role as Tarquinius’s antagonist. Harrison Robb’s Junius was, more clearly than usual, the real manipulator, through vocal and stage means alike. (Both characters pointed us to the Roman republican future.) Viktoria Melkonian’s Bianca and Ellie Donald’s Lucia were nicely contrasted in voice, more to the point intelligently sung and acted throughout; likewise Madeleine Perring’s Female Chorus, very much part of the action. For me, though, it was Yihui Wang’s Male Chorus who emerged as first among a team of fine equals, his diction and musical line quite superlative, all a means to a properly ambiguous dramatic end. The production asked much of this cast and received all it asked.

Madeleine Perring (Female Chorus)

The musicians of the Royal Academy Sinfonia proved just as impressive in the pit, incisively led by Lada Valešová. An ensemble of steel that could melt before our ears and the morning Roman sun, it drove and structured the action, ensuring that Britten’s opera for the most part overcame the limitations of its libretto and even hinting that there might be some post-Bachian truth in that problematical claim of redemption at the close. For if Duncan’s work has its problems, it also bears genuine dramatic fruit, especially though not solely in combination with the score—all the more so in so compelling a performance as this.

Lugansky - Schumann and Chopin, 12 May 2026

Wigmore Hall

Schumann: Kinderszenen, op.15; Humoreske in B-flat major, op.20
Chopin: Preludes, op.28

Nikolai Lugansky (piano)

The first movement from Kinderszenen announced, if a little stiffly, an absorbing recital of Schumann and Chopin from Nikolai Lugansky. We can all, to be fair, take a little time to get going. Thereafter, I had few, if any, reservations concerning playing that combined musical integrity and superlative playing to great effect. Indeed, recalling my previous most recent visit to the same hall, Lugansky’s performance was, if not necessarily superior to, certainly less wilful than Pavel Kolesnikov’s markedly different conception and execution last month. The relationship between pieces penetrated to the heart of opposing forces in Schumann’s music. Dazzling fingerwork in ‘Hasche-Mann’ seemed to enable, even to necessitate, yielding in ‘Bittendes Kind’, which in turn led to greater freedom in ‘Glückes genug’. ‘Träumerei’ dreamed, yet carried on, finely shaped without sounding unduly moulded, instigating an infectious response in ‘Am Kamin, that yet at the outset seemed possessed of an almost Mozartian sadness beneath the surface, albeit soon dispelled. For contrasting characteristics were certainly present within pieces too, as in ‘Ritter vom Steckenpfered’, indeed there almost disturbingly so. Changes of mood and complexity led us seemingly inexorably to ‘Der Dichter spricht’, blessed by touching nobility and considerable poetic depth. 

Humoreske furthered that kaleidoscope of moods, unfurled both within and between movements. The ambiguity of the first, for instance, suggested very much a knife-edge, which could go either way. Ultimately, it was Schumann’s poetic idea, once more, that held things together—an idea, of course, brought into being in performance by Lugansky. That Schumann was a Romantic and Romanticism was above all a literary movement that came to influence and shape other art forms may seem obvious points to make, but they can readily be forgotten; certainly not here, as a parade of characters and narrators made their presence felt. Voicing of lines unlocked many a door, to exultation as well as quandary. The work’s undeniable formal complexity was shown, ultimately, to rest above all upon questions – perhaps answers too – of feeling. 

Chopin’s Preludes followed, again very much a cumulative sequence, the C major opening succinct, laconic, Webern-like in essence if hardly language, a brief-curtain raiser to a further parade of characters, emotions, and more. Lugansky’s A minor Prelude captured beautifully both tension and ultimately marriage between hands: a technical problem (and opportunity) brought to étude-like musical life. Bright, gymnastic, liberated by the keyboard, its G major successor in turn necessitated both sadness and inner strength in its E minor counterpart. We heard and felt Schumannesque flickering in volatility, engrossing tumult, Bachian homage in harmony and counterpoint, and jet-black malevolence (as in the E-flat minor and F minor preludes). There was also plenty of time and space for reflection, the D-flat Prelude – ironically, given its ‘Raindrop’ nickname – clearing the skies magically, only for them to darken again in its ominous middle section, the close nicely ambiguous as to which had won out. If, in the end, blistering, tragic vehemence won out (G minor as well as the final D minor) then memories of much else, as in the Schumann works, persisted. There was no either/or. 

Nor, indeed, was there in three finely contrasted encores, at least taken as a whole. The A-flat ‘Duetto’ Song Without Words brought Mendelssohn closer still to Schumann, Chopin’s Fantaisie-Impromptu no less magical, yet more overtly thrilling. I am not sure I have ever heard the latter better played. Likewise Rachmaninov’s C minor Prelude, op.23 no.7, sounding as the composer’s piano music always should: music for the Steinway.

Das Rheingold, Opéra de Marseille, 10 May 2026

Opéra Municipal de Marseille

Images: Camille Rovera

Fricka – Marion Lebègue
Freia – Élodie Hache
Erda – Amandine Ammirati
Wellgunde – Marie Kalinine
Flosshilde – Lucie Roche
Wotan – Alexandre Duhamel
Alberich – Zoltán Nagy
Mime – Marius Brenciu
Donner – Yoann Dubruque
Froh – Éric Huchet
Loge – Samy Camps
Fasolt – Patrick Bolleire
Fafner – Louis Morvan

Director – Charles Roubaud
Assistant director – Jean-Christophe Mast
Costumes – Katia Duflot
Set designs – Emmanuelle Favre
Lighting – Jacques Rouveyrollis
Video – Julien Soulier

Orchestra de l’Opéra de Marseille

Michele Spotti (conductor)

Thirty years since Das Rheingold – or L’Or du Rhin, as it was dually advertised – was last staged in Marseille, it returns as part of what I assume to be a new Ring, directed by Charles Roubaud and conducted by the Marseille Opera’s music director (also incoming Principal Guest Conductor of Berlin’s Deutsche Oper), the energetic and highly talented Michele Spotti. Marseille’s handsome art deco opera house is celebrating the occasion in some style, including an outing on the staircase for Erda’s stylish costume of thirty years ago (director also Charles Roubaud, designer Katia Duflot). 

This too is stylishly conceived, evoking a time when the house was new: round about 1930, I should guess. The opening scene takes place, as in a sense it should, beneath the bank of the Rhine, albeit in the guise of a ‘Rheinbank’ vault. As the Prelude progresses and the curtain rises, a cleaner goes about his business, dreams of ‘higher’ things on his mind as his theatrical sweeping, in time with the music’s close, suggests. This is Alberich, soon to be teased by glamorous employees indeed, Rhinemaidens with keys to the safe and its gold bars. So, if Wagner dramatises primal conversion of value-free gold into capital, here we see a redramatisation such as happens every day, indeed every second, in our accursed age of capital. There never was a golden age: on that Wagner is clear. As we did with Patrice Chéreau at Bayreuth and have done many times since, we witness a specific case of Alberich’s ‘theft’ – in essence, he simply offers the asking price, though that is already to argue in the language of private property and capital – in a world created by the gods and yet already shaped by his forerunners.   

The second scene introduces us, as one might expect, to older ‘money’ and power. Here, is a gilded age, redolent in particular of the United States, the age of Gatsby – they were careless people, Wotan and Fricka – with art deco to boot. It does not portray the house or its origins directly, but one might be led, as one is with the North American trappings, to reflect in kind. A nice touch is an ornamental, visibly protected tree in the corner, the light of Freia’s apples extinguished following her abduction. Another is that an Empire-State-Building like Valhalla can be partially seen, through the mists: yes, as Wagner intended, albeit for the age of King Kong. Video projection enables us to witness Alberich’s transformations in Nibelheim, whilst we hear him when invisible via totalitarian tannoy. Such points of detail are welcome, not because everything necessarily has to be done in this way, but because they anchor the drama with stage action that has been thought through. The beginning of the final scene I found a little disappointing: empty, without much to look at or have one think, but perhaps that was the point, prior to entry into the new tower via gilded lift (ring any bells, Donner(ld)?) 

Spotti’s musical direction was resourceful, given the relatively small orchestra at his disposal. Wind naturally came more to the fore than they might usually do, but that opportunity was seized to have us hear a good deal of that detail. Not that the Marseille strings were underwhelming, far from it; at their best, they played with an appropriately golden sheen. Some musicians were heard from beyond the pit, a pair of harpists in a box above included. The latter certainly worked hard for their gold. If there were a few awkward corners – this is far from an easy score for any orchestra – Spotti marshalled his forces with flair and assurance. It was a relatively broad reading - just over two-and-a-half hours, I think – but only occasionally, above all during the beginning of the final scene, did tension sag. I have heard many performances considerably more lacking in starrier houses. 

Zoltán Nagy’s Alberich would have graced any house, conceived and brought to life with a theatricality that did not preclude but rather gave birth to musical excellence. His way with Wagner’s words was similarly captivating. Much the same could – and should – be said of Samy Camps’s Loge, a definite star turn. Alexandre Duhamel’s Wotan was more mixed: initially sounding somewhat parted and unusually vibrato-laden, though it improved. Marion Lebègue made the most of Fricka, bringing words and music vividly off-page on-stage. Gangster giants – dead ringers, as it were, for Babylon Berlin’s Ringverein – were presented by Patrick Bolleire and Louis Morvan, the dark brutality of the latter’s Fafner properly chilling. A fine trio of Rhinemaidens and, in general, a cast with excellent ensemble contributed to the important lesson, familiar to many of us in London from Regents Opera’s ringside events, that Wagner should not, should not be left solely to our metropolitan theatres. Emphasis, in both cases, on story-telling and character definition, not eschewing conceptual apparatus yet also not being overwhelmed by it, forms a crucial part both of our operatic ecology and of a continuing tradition of Wagner as nineteenth-century theatrical drama that can yet speak to us today.

RPO/Petrenko - Messiaen, 23 April 2026

Royal Festival Hall

Turangalîla-Symphonie

Steven Osborne (piano)

Cécile Lartigau (ondes Martenot)

1927 Studios (animation)

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Vasily Petrenko (conductor)

Images: Andy Paradise

Messiaen was never one to do things by halves. We might think his Turangalîla-Symphonie offered enough in sensory overload without adding further to it; we might have good reason for doing so. Yet, for one night only, in the particular setting of the Southbank Centre’s Multitudes ‘multi-arts festival powered by orchestral music’, it gained – doing things by doubles rather than halves, one might say – a silent film and narrative from 1927 Studios. Their work may be familiar from a Magic Flute and Petrushka/L’Enfant et les sortilèges double-bill for Berlin’s Komische Oper during its Barrie Kosky years; it is inventive, witty, and absorbing. Here, a film engaging with some varieties of ‘love’ – ‘whatever that means’, as once upon a time a prince might have said – accompanied or, perhaps, was accompanied by a performance of Messiaen’s irresistible, outrageous exploration of still more of those varieties, from the human physical to that of the universe itself (in whatever sense you can imagine). 

As the film, beautifully, intricately put together and acted, starring Jake Cecil as a dashing Tristan-ish knight and Esme Appleton as his tragic, Isolde-like bride, unfolded, so did its soundtrack ‘live’. Of course, that has problems from a purely musical perspective. I began to feel guilty about the lack of attention, or perhaps better the divided attention, I was according the performance ‘itself’. But would I feel that if it were an opera? (There is an LPO Wozzeck to come this weekend, though I shall not be attending.) Does it matter? The two did not merely mirror or follow one another, but for the most part they complemented. And when I decided to focus my visual gaze on the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Vasily Petrenko, I could still do so and hear what was a fine, tautly conceived and executed Festival Hall performance. 

Petrenko, moreover, gave a well-judged, engaging spoken introduction to the event, as well as making a knowing, winking cameo as the wedding’s music director on film. Messiaen in any case, was still very much there, in all his multicoloured, synaesthetic, infectious craziness. No one will have failed to feel the motor rhythms, the repetitions and variations of figures, the confrontations between different conceptions of time, nor have been seduced by the array and interaction of harmonic and timbral colour—whether from the RPO, Steven Osborne’s titanic, all-encompassing interpretation (this was no mere execution) of the piano part, or the soaring presence of Cécile Lartigau’s ondes mardenot. There were passages of extraordinary magic, the cool blue and hue lingering glances at sleeping bodies in the ‘Jardin du sommeil d’amour’ finding music and animation in perfect complement. The crazy flower-(power)-love of the preceding ‘Joie du sang des étoiles’ may never quite be the same again, though whenever is it? No artwork stands still in a world of performance; nor should it. This was a journey to the cosmic such as one could imagine Stockhausen dreaming, albeit with a little – just a little – more self-control. 

Messiaen doubled, then, or halved? Both are a little extreme as perspectives. Having seen and heard Turangalîla like that, I should probably rather do so on its own, ‘neat’, next time. (Or perhaps, I should rather have done that first, ‘progressing’ to the ‘augmented reality’ of this evening’s show.) No one, however, is claiming that I should do otherwise. This was, by its nature, a one-off, even if it finds itself repeated elsewhere—as I suspect it will be (and probably should). I loved the Stravinsky-Ravel double-bill nine years ago, whilst feeling circumspect about the Magic Flute than many. Nothing will be for everyone; more to the point, works will always survive and usually grow from such encounters. So, we should hope, will audiences. This was not simply an outreach exercise, but a fascinating experiment in its own right; if it has worked as the former too, we shall all be the better for it.

The Rape of Lucretia, HGO, 22 April 2026

Jacksons Lane Theatre

Female Chorus – Olivia Rise Tringham
Male Chorus – Daniel Gray Bell
Lucretia – Emma Roberts
Tarquinius – Stephen Whitford
Collatinus – Oleksii Zasiadko
Junius – Maximilian Catalano
Bianca – Mia Serracino
Lucia – Nikki Martin

Directors – Eleanor Burke, Alex Gotch
Designs – Jennifer Gregory
Lighting – Cheng Keng

HGO Orchestra

Oliver Cope (conductor)

Images: © 2026 LaurentCompagnon

The Rape of Lucretia remains considerably less popular than its predecessor Peter Grimes, but it is to my mind the more interesting work (in Britten’s operatic œuvre second only to The Turn of the Screw). It is, to be sure, more problematical, whether straightforwardly in subject matter or in the ever-disconcerting – to many, downright offensive – Christian moralising of the close, but its musicodramatic construction is more sophisticated, if at times a touch overdetermined in its apparent determination—not only musically to illustrate as many aspects of the libretto as possible but also to treat them as motivically and even harmonically generative. Even that, though, ends up a fruitful part in questions of relationships between words, music, and staging. 

At any rate, this marks another triumph for HGO: excellent in every respect. Perhaps first and foremost, given the nature of the enterprise, every member of the cast shone vocally and dramatically, whether individually or as part of an ensemble both tightknit and protean. Months of hard work have once again paid off handsomely, in an evening all who attended, let alone participated more actively in, will remember for some time. As Lucretia, Emma Roberts had far from the easiest role (not that there necessarily is such a thing). Unsullied virtue may come across as a little bit dull, however admirable. Her dramatic trajectory was planned and projected with great skill, engaging sympathy as well as admiration early on, and grasping the final moments of her life with an uncommon terror and horror that registered all the more powerfully for their lack of exaggeration, all securely rooted in text (of opera and production alike). Stephen Whitford’s Tarquinius trod with similarly uncommon security the tightrope between engaging just enough sympathy to portray the prince as a character at all, and ensuring the horror of his deed and his steps toward it engaged and repelled as they should. He was ‘panther agile and panther virile’, but also crucially a person who was far from sure about what he would do, and who could well have backed out of that: doubtless credit to Eleanor Burke and Alex Gotch’s production too. 

Olivia Rise Tringham and Daniel Gray Bell complemented one another intelligently, dramatically, and movingly as male and female Chorus, their interaction with characters emphatically onstage a welcome addition of human and dramatic complexity. Their way with words – and there are many of them – was irreproachable, both in themselves and in their relationship to music in their vocal lines. Oleksii Zasiadko offered a dark-hued, compassionate Collatinus, nicely supported by Maximilian Catalano’s alert, developing conception of Junius. Mia Serracino as Bianca and Nikki Martin as Lucia distinguished themselves, both in performance and from one another in Lucretia’s household, anchoring the events in a world that might well have remained as it was yet could not, ensemble singing here as elsewhere key to that transformation. All of these young singers showed themselves to possess equal aptitude for and commitment to the dramatic stage. I imagine we shall have good opportunity to see and hear all of them in this context as well as in the concert hall in the years to come. 

I should be similarly surprised if we do not conductor Oliver Cope and the excellent instrumentalists of the HGO Orchestra. There was no need, of course, for any orchestral reduction, however sensitive, in this case. Rather, Britten’s chamber opera could extend itself in visceral claustrophobia – I think such a thing is just about possible – throughout the Jacksons Lane auditorium. The creepiness and atmosphere were well captured, as were moments both of horror and of wonder: the false dawn of Roman sunrise, for instance. Above all, here was the dramatic engine of the entire work, in detail as well as throttle, as well as uncomfortable, even unbearable reference, that fatal late passage with cor anglais solo allusive to and evocative of a Bach Passion or cantata and its theological hinterland in the way direct quotation could not be. Quite what Britten could do, long before Death in Venice, with percussion alone was brought home with equal power. All ensemble members were crucial dramatic participants, as if in a piece of incipient music theatre, Cope’s direction fatal yet human. If I have a cavil – it is really more of a suggestion – it lies with the lack of titles. I can well understand the desire for immediacy, but in such an acoustic, it is not always possible, excellent diction notwithstanding, to discern every word unless one knows it already. It might be worth considering, even for opera in English, as much to help the singers as the audience. 

The production navigated a fruitful, productive balancing act between ritual and realism. Set, I think, at more or less the time of composition, in the wake of the Second World War and its horrendous violence, that was present, as was every possibility to draw connections with the horrors of our own age, without making it the point in itself. This was still very much a human tragedy, perpetrated and endured by human beings, in some cases at least making choices of their own. A simple set sufficed in both starkness and versatility. Tarquinius’s attempt to wash himself before departing, violently to scrub his bare skin of the ‘desire’ that lay within him was horrible yet crucial to watch. His night-time pacing within a small maze had one feel there was a real prospect of another outcome, though of course ultimately there was not. The extinction of Lucretia’s orchids, lit and preserved in boxes throughout until sending her message to Collatinus, proved a moment unanswered and unanswerable. 

A programme link to Solace Women’s Aid is well worth reproducing here, for any who might need the services of or wish to contribute to London’s largest domestic abuse and sexual violence charity.  

Kolesnikov - Schumann, Feldman, and Schubert, 16 April 2026

Wigmore Hall

Schumann: Kinderszenen, op.15

Feldman: Palais de Mari
Schubert: Piano Sonata no.18 in G major, D 894

Pavel Kolesnikov (piano)  

Pavel Kolesnikov is an uncommonly, very particularly interesting pianist and musician. His performances are never ‘standard’ or run-of-the-mill, yet I have no recollection either of finding them perverse or self-regarding. They seem always to take their leave from programming, often remarkable in itself, but as much to the point suggesting a work (sometimes a single piece of movement) might have been performed very differently in a different programme. This recital, with Schumann and Schubert sandwiching Morton Feldman’s final piano work, Palais de Mari, might appear relatively conventional on paper—though how many opportunities do we have to hear that or any Feldman piano music? Schumann and Feldman in particular seemed to inform one another in performances pointing to unsuspected kinship. Yet, whether it were that way around, or more that Kolesnikov’s conception of the three works had prompted the programming in the first place – presumably, some measure of both – artistry and commitment were such, one almost wondered no one had thought of doing this before, whilst the nature of this programming and performing alchemy retained an element of mystery in precisely how and why they complemented one another so well.

Schumann’s Kinderszenen received a captivating performance: rapt, poetic, its contrasts seemingly emanating from the work ‘itself’ rather than imposed upon it from without. Each movement possessed, was even possessed by, its own character, also taking its place in the necessary sequence. Like that of all the best Schumann pianists, Kolesnikov’s voicing was exquisite, yet never for its own sake, telling rather of the wayward, flickering, brilliant subjectivity at work in the score. He built it to a veritable black pearl of a ‘Träumerei’, taken very slowly (presaging Feldman), maintaining line without so much as a stretch mark. It was a case of suspended animation: a canto sospeso even, and indeed he invited us to listen with all the concentration we must lavish on a work by Nono. (It would be wonderful, I suspect, to hear him in such music.) Kinship with Chopin was particularly evident; it was, though, kinship rather than identity, earlier common roots, for instance in Bach, apparent, though again without didactic underlining. This was a truly Romantic, even Jean Paul-like performance to savour.

But then, before the poet spoke, another intervened, perhaps a painter. Feldman’s Palais de Mari takes its leave from an image he saw at the Louvre of a ruined Babylonian palace. Kolesnikov drew us in to a work that is never quite static, though it certainly takes its time. Does one often not, when something strikes one in a museum or gallery? Here, it sounded as if Schumann’s neo-Bachian inner voices attempted with every chord to progress, to develop, yet each time could not: a different, yet mysteriously related form of suspension. A certain similarity, perhaps superficial but perhaps not, to the last of Schoenberg’s op.19 Piano Pieces emerged, albeit on a canvas that owed more to Rothko than to Schoenberg’s very different, highly personal form of expressionism. Minimalist? Yes, in a proper sense, though it does not seem to me to have anything in common with most of the music that has taken that name. I was transfixed, as most of the audience also seemed to be. After which, der Dichter sprach: again, in highly measured, almost prophetic terms. It could hardly have been better judged. 

Highly effective use, unless my ears had deceived me, of the una corda pedal, especially in the Feldman, effected a bridge into the similarly pedalled opening of Schubert’s G major Sonata, D 894. When the full complement of strings was finally heard in the first movement, the suggestion was of an act of Creation: ‘and there was Light’. I also thought of Edgar Reitz’s use of colour in his Heimat series; for me, at least, there was a sense of that haunting by memory, a reminiscence perhaps of Die schöne Müllerin, a staging post even to Winterreise. As so often with Schubert, Dylan Thomas’s ‘Rage, rage against the dying of the light’ seemed to haunt pages and performances. It felt slow, though not Richter-like glacial. That might have been an obvious choice post-Feldman, but here there was a sense of self-collection in the wake of the first half, furthered in the final three movements. Kolesnikov’s dynamic range was considerable and always considered; his exquisite tone never hardened, though it certainly impressed, at times in almost Lisztian fashion. Often the performance dealt in opposites, but it mediated too, as does Schubert. This music had lilt too; it danced. Line, lyricism, and proportion were all impeccably judged, again appat emerging from the material itself. Above all, though there was sadness, this was never lachrymose; there was resolve, even strength, to be heard and personally felt.

‘L’Egyptienne’ from Rameau’s G major/minor suite in the Nouvelles Suites de Pièces de Clavecin made for a refreshing, bracing, indeed vigorous encore: as much a reaction as a complement, fashioned in a highly particular burst of enthusiasm one imagined might well have been very different in other circumstances.