Salzburg Mozartwoche (6) - Dueñas/VPO/Canellakis: Mendelssohn, Mozart, and Beethoven, 24 January 2026

Grosses Festspielhaus

Mendelssohn: Overture: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, op.21
Mozart: Masonic Funeral Music, KV 471
Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in E minor, op.64
Mozart: Idomeneo, re di Creta, KV 366: Overture
Beethoven: Symphony no.2 in D major, op.36

María Dueñas (violin)

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Karina Canellakis (conductor)

Images: Wolfgang Lienbacher

My final Mozartwoche concert this year presented a frustrating conclusion. The starriest events are far from always the best: as Brahms might have said, any ass can tell you that. This was certainly not to be attributed to any failing on the Vienna Philharmonic’s part: it played and sounded wonderful throughout, alert, warm, and stylish. My problems lay rather with much, though not all, of what we heard from soloist and conductor, though it is only fair to add that the Festspielhaus audience reacted more positively. 

The Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture worked well, as did the other shorter pieces on the programme. It is quite simply a delight to hear elfin strings and forest woodwind play like this. Here at least Karina Canellakis was reluctant to impose herself on the music: the last thing Mendelssohn wants. Moments of exhaustion at the end of the development and at the close of the piece, typical of Mendelssohn’s practice in general but with clear, programmatic meaning in this case, was handled beautifully and seeped into the following magical chords in a way I cannot recall hearing before. Mozart’s Masonic Funeral Music exhibited not dissimilar virtues, though was naturally less driven. It flowed as if a wordless piece of sacred music, which it essentially is, and the VPO wind once again shone. The cantus firmus could be heard meaningfully as the focus of all that was woven around it: music, as Mendelssohn put it more generally of the art, that is not too vague but too precise for words. 

Alas, I found it difficult to get on with María Dueñas in the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, nervy vibrato that sometimes veered into wayward intonation married to a darker sound than either seemed intrinsically appropriate or was offered by the orchestra. Perhaps it was telling that, in a vigorous first movement, the cadenza came off best. Once the orchestra had returned, the soloist sounded increasingly overwrought: again, at odds with general tone and style. That turned to a general unevenness of tone in the long lines of the slow movement, however excellent the orchestral playing. The high spirits of the finale came off best, though Canellakis at times drove too hard. It was in any case all a bit late.

In the second half, the Idomeneo Overture got off to a good start, the VPO sounding wonderfully as of old. It might almost have been the same orchestra as we hear on John Pritchard’s 1983 recording. Direct and involving, it was very much the dramatic curtain-raiser; that is, until Canellakis began to pull it around to its detriment. It was a pity, but unfortunately prophetic of the Beethoven Second Symphony to come. Again, the playing was almost beyond praise, but the first movement introduction was oddly wayward. Rather than straining towards something, it verged on wandering off piste. The exposition and what came after was a mix of the hard-driven and the arbitrary. Above all, this was a Beethoven, like so much of what we hear now, that seemed divested of meaning at a time when we need his message more than ever. The other movements told a similar tale. After slow movement that wandered around until it stopped, with little to show for it, and in which the VPO seemed to have lost interest by the end, the minuet and finale offered more the same. Beautiful woodwind solos notwithstanding, how we had got there and why remained a mystery.

Salzburg Mozartwoche (5) – ‘Mozart & Moderne’, Orquesta Iberacademy Medellín et al.: Mozart and Zech, 24 January 2026

Rittersaal des Residenz, Domquartier

Mozart: Symphony in C major after the Overture to Il re pastore, KV 208, reconstructed by Ulrich Leisinger; Divertimento no.11 in D major for oboe, two horns, two violins, viola, and bass, KV 251, ‘Nannerl Septet’; Il re pastore: ‘Vanne a regnar, ben mio,’ arr. Leisinger
Karim Zech: Concerto for piano four hands and ensemble (world premiere)

Members of the Orquesta Iberacademy Medellín

Krzysztof Wiśniewsiki (violin/director)

Alvaro Rodrigo Juica Paitan (conductor)

Karim Zech and Johann Zhao (piano)

Images: Wolfgang Lienbacher

In March 1767, in the Rittersaal (Knights’ Hall) of the Salzburg Residenz, the eleven-year-old Mozart led the premiere of the first part of his sacred Singspiel Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots. (The second and third parts, for which the music, composed by others, is now lost, were given in two performances later that month.) Eight years later, in April 1775, Mozart returned to conduct the first and, similarly for a long time, only performance of Il re pastore, commissioned to celebrate the visit Archduke Maximilian Francis’s visit to Salzburg. It is a room, then, and not only a palace steeped in history—all the more so for those of us working in one way or another on Mozart.

Given that particular history, it was fitting to hear music from Il re pastore in a concert given by a group of young soloists from the Orquesta Iberacademy Medellín, led by violinist Krzysztof Wiśniewsiki. First was Ulrich Leisinger’s reconstruction and arrangement of the symphony Mozart fashioned from the opera, probably the same year, mindful that it was unlikely to be heard again any time soon in its entirety. The overture became the first movement, the aria ‘Intendo, amico rio’ with a little alteration the slow movement. A new Presto assai movement, traditionally assigned the Köchel number KV 102, was composed as a finale. The music naturally sounds different when heard by an ensemble of soloists rather than a chamber or full orchestra, but it is not a large space and one’s ears readily adjust, not least in a spirited performance such as this. Playing was cultivated and stylish; sensible tempi were chosen, and there was a proper sense of forward propulsion. The transition into pastoral Andantino was well handled, the first but not the last opportunity for oboist Juan David Capote Velásquez to shine. In a characterful reading of the finale, melodic and harmonic surprises registered keenly. In Leisinger’s arrangement of the duet ‘Vanne a regnar, ben mio,’ Elisa and Aminta’s voices assigned to flute (Juan Manel Montoya Flórez) and oboe, there was a lovely sense of dialogue between instruments, the style and occasion of Mozart’s serenata nicely recaptured. 

In between, we heard the so-called Nannerl Septet with ‘Marcia francese’ following but not preceding. Its opening Molto allegro offered well-pointed playing, vigorous yet graceful, with telling yet unexaggerated articulation. The ensuing minuet and trio imparted due sense of the open-air serenade, followed by a lyrical, poised ‘Andantino’ with another gorgeous oboe solo at its heart. The second minuet (with variations) benefited from a strong rhythmic profile, full of incident that did not impede but rather proved the vehicle for the music’s unfolding. If it was a pity that the ‘Rondeau’ lost its way, that sometimes happens and the music restarted without undue fuss. The playing was more than infectious enough to compensate. The closing march was given with a winning lilt. 

Mozart is not the only Salzburg composer, Leisinger reminded us, introducing the final work on the programme, a first performance for today rather than the eighteenth century: that of Karim Zech’s concerto for piano four hands and ensemble. Mozart’s writing for piano four hands and two pianos may in some sense have served (or not) as inspiration, but the twenty-one-year-old Zech proved very much his own person, both as composer and pianist, here joined by regular duet partner Johann Zhao and the excellent young conductor Alvaro Rodrigo Juica Paitan. Zech has spoken, Leisinger told us, of attraction to the impulsive quality in Mozart, as well as his thematic prodigality; he also admired, as did I, the spontaneity of the Medellín players. In four movements, each separated by a cadenza, it offered a splendid calling card, just as Il re pastore had for Mozart, seeking to impress the visiting Archduke as a potential patron. That was not to be, although Max Franz would later, as Archbishop-Elector of Cologne, prove a crucial figure in the early career of Beethoven.

Back to 2026: Zech’s first movement plunged us immediately into a world of distinctive, even arresting musical material. One might, trying broadly to characterise it, say that it was post-Second Viennese School, but any such background, if it existed at all, seemed fully assimilated. Zech’s writing for all instruments, not only piano, was here captivating and coherent, any echoes of other music(s) integrated in a musical labyrinth of its own. Jazz inflections prefigured a more strongly big band element of the fourth movement. Zech’s solo cadenza was the first, perhaps more overtly in the line of Schoenberg, which elicited no complaints from me. The often riotous second movement, a young person’s music and all the better for it, gave the impression of continuing the argument of the first, but in new ways. The musicians evidently relished Zech’s challenges and rose to them. The second cadenza, Zhao’s, was more of a slow, yet far from relaxed interlude, Zech assisting where required inside the piano, as both did for the third movement, piano sounds often engaging in duos and trios with other percussion instruments. The third cadenza, for piano duet, offered both complement and contrast, leading straight into an eclectic yet integrated and directed finale. In the first of two encores, the piano duo offered a paraphrase on Figaro’s aria ‘Non più andrai’, before the ensemble bade a captivating farewell with what I imagine may have been music from Colombia.

 

Mark Berry

 

Salzburg Mozartwoche (4) - Aimard/Camerata Salzburg/Guzzo: Haydn and Mozart, 24 January 2026

Grosser Saal, Mozarteum

Haydn: L’anima del del filosofo, Hob.XXVIII:13: Overture
Mozart: Piano Concerto no.27 in B-flat major, KV 595; Six Minuets, KV 599: nos. 1,2, 5, and 6
Haydn: Symphony no.94 in G major, ‘Surprise’/’mit dem Paukenschlag’

Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)

Camerata Salzburg

Giovanni Guzzo (violin/director)

Images: Wolfgang Lienbacher

And so, to a Mozart Week concert devoted entirely to Mozart’s last year, the partial exception being his final piano concerto, certainly completed and first performed in 1791, but whose origins may date back as far as 1788. In December 1790, Mozart had said goodbye, perhaps farewell, to Haydn as the latter prepared to leave for London with Johann Peter Salomon, also present at their dinner. Accounts in early Haydn biographies differ, Albert Christoph Dies having tears well from the yes of both composers, as Mozart suggested they ‘would probably be saying’ their ‘last farewell in this life,’ Georg August Griesinger telling of a happy meal at which Mozart forecast Haydn would be back soon, ‘because you are no longer young’. At any rate, it was to be the last time they saw each other, Haydn returning only in 1792.

It was during that first of his two visits to London that Haydn wrote his opera L’anima del filosofo, ossia Orfeo ed Euridice for the newly built theatre at the Haymarket (the old one having burnt down in 1789). Several of the composer’s London concerts would take place there too. It was fitting, then, that the Overture should open this excellent concert from Camerata Salzburg, led from the violin by Giovanni Guzzo. A dark hued, richly dramatic introduction both led to and contrasted with a lively ‘Presto’ section: fast, but not too fast, beautifully judged throughout and with evident delight in Haydn’s invention from the whole orchestra, perhaps all the more so for being led by one of their ‘own’. Harmonic, timbral, and other surprises registered with meaning, yet without exaggeration. It proved the perfect (metaphorical) curtain-raiser. 

Pierre-Laurent Aimard joined the orchestra for the piano concerto, which, whenever it is written, is so inextricably connected with our (at least my) ideas of late Mozart, its spareness, fragility, and rare beauty, its glimpse of the beyond, that effort to deromanticise seems almost, if not always, beside the point. That is not, of course, so say that it should sound lachrymose, which it certainly did not here, but simply that Mozart was in many ways as much a Romantic – he was certainly held to be so by ETA Hoffmann et al. – as a Classicist, all the more so by 1791, and that we lose something if reasoned scruples harden into puritanism. Whatever or whoever Mozart may have been, he was certainly no puritan, nor did this performance treat him as such. The first movement offered a tutti balance different from what we might once have expected, wind unquestionably more forward, although there was never ‘one way’: just listen to Klemperer’s Mozart, in other respects very different, but not in this. The crucial thing was the cultivated, detailed, tender playing, smiling through tears as this of all the piano concertos surely must. Moreover, it led inexorably to Aimard’s first solo entry, which also turned inwards – very 1791 – chromaticism implied even when not present, a little like Carl Dahlhaus’s idea of ‘secondary diatonicism’ that incorporates the chromatic exploration of Tristan in the unabashed C major of Die Meistersinger. The turn to the minor was exquisitely, movingly handled, all aware of the crucial role played here by oscillation between major and minor modes. Occasionally, balance between soloist and orchestra seemed a little tilted to the former, but this soon corrected itself. Aimard here and elsewhere offered certain embellishments, all effected with discernment. Mozart’s cadenzas said all that was required.

Warmth and tenderness characterised the slow movement, simplicity underlain by complexity and vice versa: another crucial, perhaps the most crucial, key to understanding late Mozart. Harmony guided the performance: one felt it throughout in deeply moving fashion. The finale’s character was born from equally keen senses of detail and the whole, strength and fragility united in opposition that is part balance, part dialectic. As an encore, Aimard offered an early contribution to Kurtág’s centenary: ravishing, at times well-nigh Debussyan accounts of three of the composer’s Játekók. Mozart remained, in the sense that every note, every touch of the piano counted. 

The second half took us first to Vienna’s Redoutensaal, to music for dancing—and one certainly felt it to be so in four of the KV 599 Six Minutes, my sole regret that it was not all six. At any rate, the four we heard were exquisite in every respect, whether lilt, colour, or otherwise, culminating in the symphonic grandeur (and Haydnesque surprise) of the sixth. Whereas in the first concert of the festival, Ádám Fischer’s occasional turns to solo instruments could sound mannered, here it seemed the most natural thing in the world, as indeed did the performances as a whole.

We then returned, now with the violas absent from Mozart’s band, to Haydn: for the ‘Surprise’ Symphony, or, as it is known in German, emphasising a different, yet related aspect of his writing, ‘mit dem Paukenschlag’. The first movement introduction, echoing the concert opening, was spacious, full of promise, yet miraculously concise, the Vivace assai bursting forth likewise with evident kinship to the opera overture. Spirited delight characterised both detail and the whole, colour, concision, and coherence inextricably connected. It developed, returned, and continued to develop: the essence of sonata form. This was, quite simply, glorious. The Andante offered a surprise of its own, extra percussion jolting us out of our knowledge-born complacency. The working out of form and content was the true delight, though. What a musical mind Haydn’s is, and what a joy it was to be guided by it in so enlightened a performance as this. There followed another wonderful minuet, taken at a more rollicking tempo than Mozart’s, unquestionably one-to-a-bar, but then this was never intended for dancing. In my heart of hearts, I may prefer something statelier, but this worked well on its own terms, and lacked nothing in sparkling of the eye, replete with further ‘purely musical’ surprises. Chamber playing in the trio evinced a similar naturalness to that heard in Mozart. The finale was every inch a ‘Haydn finale’. Tempo, character, lilt, grandeur, edification, and intellectual coherence: this had it all. Bravo!

Salzburg Mozartwoche (3) - Die Zauberflöte, 23 January 2026

 

Haus für Mozart

Images: Werner Kmetitsch

Sarastro – Franz-Josef Selig
Queen of the Night – Kathryn Lewek
Tamino – Magnus Dietrich
Pamina – Emily Pogorelc
Papageno – Theodore Platt
Papagena – Tamara Ivaniš
Three Ladies – Alice Rossi, Štěpánka Pučálkova, Noa Beinert
Monostatos – Paul Schweinester
Speaker, First Priest – Rupert Grössinger
Priests and Armoured Men – Maximilian Müller, Maximilian Anger
Three Boys – Frederick Derwein, David Platzer, Laurenz Oberfichtner
Mozart – Vitus Denifl
Constanze – Victoria D’Agostino
Carl Thomas Mozart – Paul Tanzer

Director – Rolando Villazón
Set designs – Harold Thor
Costumes – Tanja Hofmann
Choreography – Ramses Sigl
Lighting – Stefan Bolliger
Video – Roland Horvath/rocafilm
Dramaturgy – Ulrich Leisinger
Assistant director – Bettina Gayer
Theatre manager – Kirsten Kimmig

Philharmonia Chor Wien (chorus director: Walter Zeh)
Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra
Roberto González-Monjas (conductor)

It has been a while since Salzburg’s Mozartwoche gave a fully staged version of a mature Mozart opera. The choice of The Magic Flute, directed by Intendant Rolando Villazón, was not arbitrary, but rather a centrepiece to the 70^th anniversary festival’s focus on Mozart’s last year. The opera could hardly be more emblematic of 1791; it was the last, barring fragments, to be completed and first performed, although most of the score was composed before La clemenza di Tito. Moreover, Villazón’s staging is set in that year, on the final night of Mozart’s life, presenting on stage the broader concept of his final-year focus and its motto ‘Lux Aeterna’: that on his death, Mozart was for us truly born. 

In that, we saw the production’s most arresting image, shortly after having heard its most arresting, if doubtless controversial, musical surprise. The Queen of the Night and Monostatos (here spelled ‘Manostatos’ after Mozart’s autograph) having threatened to destroy the temple and so on, Mozart finally expires, having been with us all along (on which more anon); the orchestra cuts to the Requiem’s ‘Lacrimosa’. I could have done without a man behind me loudly exclaiming ‘Requiem! Requiem! Requiem!’ (Thank you for your musicological input; we should never have known otherwise.) Nevertheless, the assembled company joining to sing the composer’s final music, beyond the point at which the autograph stops yet not until its close, proved surprisingly moving. The lurch back to Sarastro’s announcement of victory initially jarred, yet such musical difficulties on my part were more or less effaced by the composer’s apotheosis. In a likeable, post-Amadeus portrayal by Vitus Denifl he was transformed into a Kugel-version of Mozart, laughing and somersaulting above. Like the best of those chocolates – hint: buy them only from Fürst – it was an unexpected delight, not least to serious clowning on Denifl’s part and a strong musical account. 

How we got there, scenically, had its moments. The idea of presenting Mozart’s hallucinations from his last days  unable to attend a performance at the Freihaus-Theater an der Wieden, yet imagining it in his head, was a good one, especially in this specific setting, part commemorating and part celebrating Mozart having become ‘Mozart’. It combines two accounts: the first from Stendhal via the 1798 Allgemeine Zeitung (possibly from Constanze herself) following the performances at home, looking at the clock and imagining what must be on stage; the other from an 1840 letter from the composer Ignaz von Seyfried to the theatre director Georg Friedrich Treitschke telling of Mozart on the evening of 4 December 1791 hearing his sister-in-law sing the Queen of the Night’s aria in the theatre. And so, the clock bore a particular role in demarcating certain moments—rather brightly, I could not help but think, although I suppose that was the point. It also offered a place to hide; indeed, Harold Thor’s set designs proved resourceful throughout in use and reuse. 

That, I think, was to be applauded, not least since a notable,  welcome feature of the Mozartwoche as a whole is its grounding in Mozart scholarship: not a Beckmesserish (at best) school of ‘performance practice’, perhaps now at last waning, that loves nothing more than to condemn something as ‘inauthentic’, but rather respect for far broader and more interesting historical grounding that will enable and enrich modern performance of various kinds. Some of that one might like, some one might not, but it enters into dialogue rather than assertion of either fundamentalist domination or lazy solipsism. The problem more was that it did not become much more than a frame for what otherwise was a rather conventional portrayal of the actual dramatic action. Mozart interacted a little with the characters. He also instructed his son a little. More tenuously, Constanze became enraged at the misogyny of the priests, hitting them and her husband, suggesting their remarks were to be taken seriously, Mozart’s own music suggesting otherwise. In terms of a view about what the work ‘itself’ might be, what it might have to offer, and indeed how it might thus have ultimately come to participate in the creation of ‘Mozart’, I struggled to divine anything very much. 

Moreover, further character references seemed to me obscure. Without reading in the programme that Villazón intended the Three Ladies as three female artists – a poet, sculptor, and painter – I am not sure I should have noticed. Even if I had, nothing much was done with the idea. Presenting Tamino as a musician was fair enough; he plays the flute after all. Beyond that, it seemed another missed opportunity, soon more or less forgotten; likewise Monostatos/Manostatos as commercialisation of art, and so on. In encounters between multiple concepts, some fared better than others, though those of Mozart and Emanuel Schikaneder rarely so well.

To return, though, to what made that final scene – and much else – worthwhile, Roberto González-Monjas’s conducting of the Mozarteum Orchestra marked him out as that rarest of things, a musician who could draw from an orchestra a true sense of the breadth and depth of Mozart’s score, without imposing himself on it and subjecting it to strange eccentricities. One will almost always find differences between what one hears in one’s head – watching the clock, like Mozart, or otherwise – but what matters is whether one can make sense of what is put before one, whether it animates the drama, whether it enables the singers and actors to flourish. In all of those respects and more, González-Monjas’s account scored. So too did the warm, sympathetic playing of the orchestra. This ought not to be so rare as it is, but the demands of Mozart and ‘Mozart’ alike are never to be underestimated.

 

There was, moreover, a good sense of a troupe more than the sum of its parts among those singers and actors. Magnus Dietrich’s Tamino and Emily Pogorelc’s an alluring young pair vocally. Their arias touched and ennobled without contrivance. Franz-Josef Selig’s Sarastro is a known quantity to many of us, yet proved no less welcome in reasoned compassion for that. Kathryn Lewek’s Queen of the Night offered accuracy and bite, also reminding us that a flesh-and-blood woman lay behind the costume and coloratura. Hearing more dialogue than often one does – especially outside German lands gave a more proper sense of Papagena, as did a spirited performance by Tamara Ivaniš. Theodore Platt’s Papageno stole the show, as many do, and deservedly so, sheer theatrical presence married to innate musicality, a winning tribute to Schikaneder. Indeed, the thought occurred to me that that might have been an obvious personification for the production. But there will be other Flutes, and this offered magic enough, heightened by the experience of an afternoon visit to an exhibition at the Rupertinum, showing materials from earlier stagings, including that of Oskar Kokoschka, invited by Furtwängler, who alas died before they could collaborate. As Villazón’s concept for the festival as a whole reminds us, birth and death have always stood in a complex relationship, not least in the case of Mozart.

Salzburg Mozartwoche (2) – Apkalna: Mozart, Bach, Vasks, and Pärt, 23 January 2026

Grosser Saal, Mozarteum, Salzburg, 23.1.2025 (MB)

Mozart: Suite in C major, KV 399: ‘Ouverture’
Bach: Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, BWV 582
Peteris Vasks: Viatore
Mozart: Masonic Funeral Music, KV 477, arr. Heribert Brauer
Arvo Pärt: Trivium
Bach: Partita no.2 in D minor for solo violin, BWV 1004: Chaconne, arr. Matthias Keller

Image: Wolfgang Liebacher

Mozart famously named the ‘king of all instruments’ in a letter to his father of 1777, though somewhat oddly one encounters the phrase more often with ‘queen’ in German—as in the title given to this Mozart Week recital by Iveta Apkalna. We are all gender fluid now, I suppose, and it is not as if ‘monarch’ would work any better in German, given the distinction between der Monarch and die Monarchin. Perhaps it was a little surprising not to hear here the works Mozart wrote for mechanical organ, especially given the festival’s focus on Mozart’s last year, but Apkalna came up with an enterprising programme of her own. I cannot share enthusiasm for the ‘holy minimalism’ of Peteris Vasks and Arvo Pärt, though again I tried, but all works on offer received due advocacy on Hermann Eule’s 2010 ‘Propter-Homines-Orgel’. 

The ’Ouverture’ to Mozart’s fragmentary C major Suite is generally encountered on the piano, whether modern or ‘period’, but Apkalna showed us there is no reason it should not be played on the organ. The simple act of listening to it like thus brought home correspondences with those late organ works that might otherwise be missed, but I suspect it was Apalkna’s performance too. The Suite’s other movements are more ingratiating and to my mind successful too, but this shows the devotee of Bach and Handel – Bach particularly in this movement – grappling with their keyboard legacy in well-nigh pastiche form. Certain suspensions and other harmonic touches gave a little more of the game away, though fewer than one might imagine. 

Bach’s great C minor Passacaglia should sweep all before it, and did so here in a performance of laudable inevitability, detail and form conspiring to offer a deeply moving experience. Registration and manual changes clarified structure, but also contributed to a sense of the character of each variation, the final fugue emerging as crowning glory on this crowned head of instruments. In an age in which, as Adorno lamented even in 1950, Bach is so often robbed of emotional and intellectual content, let alone grandeur, it was very good to welcome back the composer who inspired Mozart and so many others.

Vasks’s Viatore opens with a slow, repetitive melody that eventually changes over a long pedal note, which then cedes to a slow-moving line on another manual. Some material seemed strongly to echo the Passacaglia theme, a coincidence that was surely deliberate in programming. There was no gainsaying the commitment of the performance, but the work’s repetitions soon palled; the longer it went on, the less there was to show. Eventually, it stopped. I could not help but think I should have preferred an actual improvisation rather than vague mood music that suggested one. At least it was not aggressively tedious in the manner of Pärt’s Trivium. The composer’s devotees will doubtless tell us that is the point, or one is not listen properly, one is soulless, and so on. Whatever… Inconsequential triads repeated themselves over and over, occasional relief offered by registration changes and relative dissonance. I suppose ‘AI’ would do this sort of thing now, fifty years on. 

A skilful arrangement by Heribert Brauer of Mozart’s Masonic Funeral Music fell in between: an oasis of genuine intellectual and emotional involvement, by a composer who saw only identity between Christian faith and membership of the Craft, famously writing to Leopold, shortly before the latter’s death, that death was the true goal of existence, the best and truest friend of mankind. No one would mistake this arrangement for the original, opening use of the swell pedal making that abundantly clear, but that is not the point; this captured much of its spirit and again served to highlight connections with Mozart’s writing for organ, as well as with Bach. 

It was to Bach we returned for the final piece on the programme, Matthias Keller’s arrangement of the D minor Chaconne. The element of tour de force inherent not only in the original, but also, in very different ways, in the piano transcriptions by Brahms and Busoni, was perhaps not so apparent here, but there is by contrast a case to be made for occasional ‘normalisation’ too, like a less outrageous – much less outrageous – contribution to the school of Stokowski. Again, registration coloured the variations nicely, in a performance that gave a fine account both of piece and instrument. As an encore, we heard another Bach arrangement, this time a grateful, graceful version of the aria known in English as ‘Sheep may safely graze’.

Salzburg Mozartwoche (1) – D'Angelo/Danish CO/Fischer: Mozart, Monteverdi, and Handel, 22 January 2026

Grosser Saal, Mozarteum

Mozart: Lucio Silla, KV 135: Overture
Monteverdi: L’incoronazione di Poppea, SV 308: ‘Disprezzata Regina’
Mozart: Mitridate, re di Ponto, KV 87: Overture
Handel: Ariodante, HWV 33: ‘Scherza infida’, ‘Dopo notte, atra e funesta’
Mozart: La clemenza di Tito, KV 621: Overture and ‘Parto, ma tu ben mio’
Mozart: Symphony no.40 in G minor, KV 550

Emily D’Angelo (mezzo-soprano)

Danish Chamber Orchestra

Ádám Fischer (conductor)

Images: Wolfgang Lienbacher

It is as ever a joy to return, however briefly, to Salzburg for its Mozartwoche. Temperatures at considerably sub-zero throughout the day, let alone the evening, do not dim the spirit, though they may have one grateful to enter the concert hall, in this case the old Mozarteum. Where many arts organisations, even beyond Brexit-Insel, seem through no fault of their own to be in periods of retrenchment, the Stiftung Mozarteum and Intendant Rolando Villazón are having none of that. The programme seems to become, if anything, ever fuller and the varying themes are interesting if necessarily broad. In this, the festival’s seventieth year, the decision has been made to focus on Mozart’s last year, 1791, though it is simply a focus, nothing all-encompassing. 

In his enthusiastic spoken introduction, Villazón explained that he also wished to draw connections with earlier years of his intendancy, such as last year’s presentation of ‘destination Mozart’, with Bach, Handel, and the dawn of opera (more or less) with Monteverdi, hence the presence here of two of those three composers. Ottavia’s aria ‘Disprezzata regina’ from L’incoronazione di Poppea was barely conducted, if at all, Emily d’Angelo and a small continuo group (harpsichord, archlute (I think!) and cello) giving an involving performance to which Ádám Fischer offered occasional, perhaps involuntary encouragement, remaining onstage, as did the rest of the Danish Chamber Orchestra. D’Angelo and her companions communicated in vivid fashion so as not only to create character in a single aria, but to imply dramatic context too. Although so much lies in the libretto, one almost felt her performance was so communicative one barely needed words at all: a paradox that exaggerates no doubt, but no less an impression for that. The same might be said of two arias from Ariodante, in which the DCO and Fischer were equal partners, bassoonist Ignas Mazila offering gorgeous playing on the extraordinary obbligato part in ‘Scherza, infida’. Strings, rightly or wrongly, were low on vibrato, but at least did not eliminate it entirely, such flourishes all the more welcome. The very different context of ‘Dopo notte’ registered immediately, d’Angelo’s stage experience readily transferring to the concert platform in a regal account, coloratura not only brilliant but deeply expressive. Here was a richer, more ‘mezzo-like’ mezzo: quite irresistible.

On either side of Monteverdi lay overtures to two of Mozart’s three operas for Milan. Both likewise fizzed with a sense of theatre, lacking little in tenderness in response. That to Lucio Silla offered not only fitting contrasts but also sensitive gradations, the relationship between the two rightly at the heart of Mozart in performance. Both incorporated (relatively) brief switches to solo string playing, a practice that will be familiar to those acquainted with Fischer’s Haydn recordings. There was none of that – a good decision, I think – in the Clemenza di Tito Overture, though some string articulation struck me as a little exaggerated: all very well despatched, but to my ears not quite right for Mozart. Its grand scale was welcome, though: this was not a Mozart to be condescended to, as far foo often one hears nowadays. A relatively broad approach was adopted for the same opera’s ‘Parto, parto…’. So relished was its reality as duet between voice and clarinet that the outstanding second soloist Jonas Lyskjær Frølund made his way, whilst playing, towards the front of the stage to address Sesto directly. In a trouser (strictly castrato) role, d’Angelo sounded and indeed looked notably more masculine—which certainly did not preclude, but rather offered dramatic foundation for, passages of great tenderness and near-stillness. 

To close, we heard Mozart’s great G minor Symphony. There was much to admire in Fischer’s reading, though ultimately, at least until the fourth movement, I felt a distinct lack of harmonic underpinning. It was not so much lightness in the bass line, though that was certainly, oddly the case to my ears, as that crucial sense for any Classical symphony worth its salt of harmonic grounding. It was not disjointed or arbitrary, after the like of Nikolaus Harnoncourt, far from it; rather, line seemed conceived of more melodically than anything else. The first movement was taken as a proper Molto allegro, urgent, even driven, but not unduly so. It was welcome to re-encounter friends from earlier works, not least in further outstanding bassoon playing (often missed here). Fiery and tender, there was unquestionably a tragic line to the performance. The Andante was taken briskly by historical if not contemporary standards. It was especially welcome for turning tragedy in another direction, rather than merely letting it abate; this was no time for repose. The Minuet was possessed of an almost Beethovenian brusqueness and would surely have sounded still closer to Beethoven had it been more harmonically grounded. There was much to glean, though, in the working through of melody and counterpoint. Its trio relaxed considerably, with an oddly tentative opening that must have been by design, since it sounded much the same the second time around. Horn playing was nothing less than delectable. The finale attained duly tragic proportions, not only through balancing harmony with other elements, but by also bringing such relationships into conflict where necessary. The development’s harmonic shocks registered with great force, heralding implacable wind and string counterpoint. The close burned with all the fire of minor-mode Mozart. All fell into place. As two generous encores, we stayed with the Viennese Mozart, to hear lively, colourful, and directed accounts of the overtures to Der Schauspieldirektor and The Marriage of Figaro.

The concert will be broadcast on 27 January 2026 at 19.30 (CET) on Austrian Radio Ö1.

Kopatchinskaja/Shaham/LSO/Rattle: Bartók and Falla, 18 January 2026

Barbican Hall

Bartók: Violin Concerto no.2, BB 117; Five Hungarian Folksongs, BB 97
Falla: The Three-Cornered Hat

Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin)

Rinat Shaham (mezzo-soprano)

London Symphony Orchestra

Simon Rattle (conductor)

Images: Mark Allan

A busy few days for Simon Rattle and the LSO: first two concert performances of The Makropulos Case, then this concert with Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Rinat Shaham. Both performances proved, moreover, of the highest quality. Bartók’s Second Violin Concerto is a substantial work by any standards; it seemed all the more so in this case. Whether it was actually a spacious performance, I do not know, but it felt like it in a positive sense, on a grand scale—that is, not a euphemism for dragging. Kopatchinskaja’s opening statement was relaxed, almost louche, but certainly not lacking in precision, any more than her highly energetic response. At times, she seemed almost shamanic, but from within, not without, the music. It was a highly personal account, though never without warrant, either in the score or in the more general ‘idea’ of the piece. Rattle has often seemed to me at his very best as an ‘accompanist’. This was no exception: he led the LSO not only in kindred precision, but kindred direction, colour, and atmosphere, always underpinned by harmonic understanding and communication. Kopatchinskaja proved every bit as responsive to the orchestra as vice versa. Her cadenza was spellbinding, an object lesson in line, commitment, and understanding. And throughout, performances sang—and showed, moreover, that they had something to sing, and that there were different ways in which to do so. 

Another such way was on offer at the beginning of the slow movement: fragile yet with undeniable inner strength, a testament of intimacy that could yet turn outwards. The LSO and Rattle wove a gorgeous tapestry of orchestral sound, which, in collaboration with the soloist, often turned towards chamber music. Take, for instance, Bartók’s extraordinary writing for violin, double basses, and timpani; or magical passages of well-nigh suspended animation for harp, celesta, and woodwind. As the path became ever more surprising, even when one ‘knew’, it remained ever secure and coherent, both here and in a finale that combined improvisatory freshness with deep knowledge and understanding. Various balances and relationship were key to this, whether between solo and orchestra, or harmony and rhythm. It was a fantastical, exhilarating performance that achieved that status through command of detail and its integration into a keen sense of musical narrative. The piece felt ultimately like a Mahlerian symphonic ‘world’: in idea, rather than expression, but as an utterance of that stature. Kurtág’s ‘Ruhelos’ from his Kafka-Fragmente said all that might be said as an encore, Webern to Bartók’s Mahler. 

Bartók’s Five Hungarian Folksongs made for an arresting opening to the second half, all the more so in such committed, comprehending performances as we heard when Rinat Shaham joined Rattle and the orchestra. My first and last question was: why on earth do we not hear these songs more often? My fist and last answer were alas identical: the language, of course. It is a great, if understandable pity. I cannot vouch for Shaham’s Hungarian, but I can certainly vouch for her communication, which often seemed so vivid as to transcend mere linguistic understanding. ‘In Prison’, the first song, offered a sense of direct witness from the soloist, to another beautifully woven orchestral accompaniment. From the house of the dead, one might say. As Shaham’s delivery became ever more declamatory, her witness chilled all the more. Every song was sharply characterised by all concerned, the LSO warm and precise in the ‘old Lament’, Shaham colourful, even whimsical, yet with something undoubtedly serious to the core of ‘Yellow Pony, Harness Jingling’. A poignant ‘Complaint’ preceded ‘Virág’s Lamps Are Burning Brightly’, delivered with palpable relish: a fine, spirited finale.

Seated at the back of the orchestra, Shaham crafted two excellent cante jondo interventions, one in the Introduction, one in the second act’s ‘Dance of the Miller’, to Manuel de Falla’s ballet The Three Cornered-Hat. That Introduction and indeed the whole of the first act seemed to need no theatre; theatricality lay in the score and the images its performance evoked. The world of puppetry never seemed far away: whether that of the composer’s puppet-opera El retablo de maese Pedro or, increasingly, Stravinsky’s Petrushka. Diaghilev kinship was certainly strong, though Falla’s score never quite sounded ‘like’ anyone or anything else—which certainly included the Spain of Frenchmen such as Ravel and Debussy. Fast and furious, this account shone a welcome midday sun on a dark and wintry London evening. In the second act, Rattle imparted a fine sense of inevitability, the Miller’s dance seemingly necessitating his arrest, which in turn necessitated his escape. The Beethoven parody was clearly, wittily handled and properly integrated into the narrative whole. The ‘Final Dance’ emerged as if a mini-ballet in itself, eliciting rapturous applause from a capacity Barbican audience.

Horton - Chopin and Ravel, 16 January 2026

Wigmore Hall

Chopin: Nocturne in C minor, op.48 no.1; Nocturne in F-sharp minor, op.48 no.2
Ravel: Valses nobles et sentimentales
Chopin: Scherzo no.1 in B minor; Scherzo no.2 in B-flat minor, op.31; Scherzo no.3 in C-sharp minor, op.39; Scherzo no.4 in E major, op.54

The op.48 Nocturnes, two of Chopin’s greatest, make for an arresting opening to any recital. This, the latest in Tim Horton’s Wigmore Hall series, was no exception. Again, I was struck by the freshly considered nature of the pianist’s interpretations: not so as to be different for the sake of it, but rather with good musical warrant that had me think – and rethink – pieces I thought I knew well. Both outline and detail of the Nocturnes seemed to stem from their ternary (A-B-A) form. The first section of the C minor Nocturne sounded with stronger differentiation than one generally hears between melody and accompaniment, setting up greater contrast both with the beautifully voiced four-part harmony of the middle section and with the newly turbulent accompaniment of the elaborated return, arising from and audibly growing out of both. The F-sharp minor Nocturne offered, naturally, a different relationship between harmony and counterpoint at its opening, again properly contrasted, and with a different, equally convincing synthesis at the close. This may sound simple, indeed dry, in written form, but in performance offered the key to understanding. 

Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales likewise offered ternary form complement and contrast, both in themselves and with respect to Chopin. Rhythmic and harmonic insistence in the first waltz ensured that what followed – not only its immediate successor – could melt and charm, but consequently. Indeed, that sense of the greater whole was a particular strength throughout: these are not pieces to be heard individually, gaining rather from their place in the sequence. Ravel’s emergence from within the spirit and writing of Chopin was clear and meaningful. The tonal interferences to which Jim Samson referred in another excellent programme note – not the least contribution to this series – offered just the right amount of ‘bite’, as we hurtled if not quite to the threshold, then at least in the direction, of La Valse. 

Presenting four Scherzi in a row might be thought of as tempting fate. Would they work better as record than concert programme? Not a bit of it, at least in the right hands, that combination of complement and contrast in (broadly, modified or perhaps better ‘extended’?) ternary form again helping shape their success. Without forcing them into too overt a sense of progression between the four, that sense manifested itself through performance and listening: a quasi-sonata of sorts. Extremity of contrasts in the B minor Scherzo’s opening material set the parameters for what was to come, in a way not so distant from Beethoven. (There are scherzos/scherzi after all, even if without Beethoven’s gruff humour.) Yet for all the Classicism of form, which in any case can readily be exaggerated, there was a parallel, even opposing modernism in the fragmentary nature of certain figures. The trio sang, preparing the way (not unlike the Nocturnes at the beginning) for greater fury in the scherzo’s reprise. A resolute lack of sentimentality – who wants to hear a sentimental scherzo? – carried through into the Second, progressively integrative, again connecting back to the opening Nocturnes, and just a little enigmatic. Generative rhythm – present, even when in abeyance – characterised the Third. Might it have been a little more grandiloquent, in keeping with the Lisztian boldness of its opening? Perhaps, but there is no one ‘right’ way in such music, and this offered its own rewards. The turn from minor keys to E major for the Fourth Scherzo maintained impeccable line that took us in new directions, whilst nicely concluding those preceding. Structural integrity underlay keyboard wizardry and poetic expression alike.

The Makropulos Case, LSO/Rattle, 15 January 2026

 

Barbican Hall

Emilia Marty – Marlis Peterson
Krista – Doubravka Novotná
Albert Gregor – Aleš Briscein
Baron Jaroslav Prus – Svatopluk Sem
Dr Kolenatý, Strojník, Machinist – Jan Martiník
Vítek – Peter Hoare
Count Hauk-Šendorf – Alan Oke
Janek – Vit Nosek
Cleaning lady, chambermaid – Lucie Hilscherová

London Symphony Orchestra
Simon Rattle (conductor)

Images: Mark Allan

 

Simon Rattle’s twin traversal of the Janáček operas in concert in London and onstage in Berlin has now reached The Makropulos Case in the former, Claus Guth’s staging for the Staatsoper Unter den Linden’s having been its first ever. I suspect this may also have been the LSO’s first performance, though shall happily be corrected. At any rate, from the very outset, both Rattle and the LSO sounded entirely ‘inside’ the work, with all the security of a repertory staple, yet with all the freshness and exhilaration of discovery. It is only two months ago that the Royal Ballet and Opera staged the opera, in what was reported to have been Katie Mitchell’s feminist farewell to the genre. If so, Mitchell certainly went out with a bang in one of those rare productions that will prove not only memorable but also to have transformed our understanding of the work forever, expertly conducted by the RBO’s music director Jakub Hrůsá, and with a fine cast headed by Aušrinė Stundyte. That will have been fresh in the memories of many in the Barbican audience, but that did not prevent the hall from apparently selling out for not one but two concert performances; indeed, I suspect it aided that success.

That first-act Prelude constructed a frame for our listening thereafter, strings, timpani, and the rest, offstage brass included, ‘speaking’ in just the right way for opera: musically generative and full of dramatic content and commentary, almost more Wagnerian than Wagner, without ever sounding especially Wagnerian. Czech speech rhythms met the time-honoured craft of something approaching orchestral accompagnato in Rattle’s conducting, so that the composer’s twin poles of cellular radicalism and lyrical expansion proved not only compatible but mutually dependent and generative. At the beginning of each act, there was an unmistakeable sense of where we were, how we (dramatically) had got there, and of anticipation. For the LSO was on outstanding form. It would be invidious to single out any instrument or section, since all, from trombones to xylophone, contributed so eloquently. What struck was a sense of a myriad of lines, orchestral and vocal, combining in ever transformative fashion to a harmonic, contrapuntal, and dramatic whole.

The essence of opera in concert performance is complex: what it is, what it is not, what it might or might not be. Those of us had recently seen Mitchell’s staging will doubtless have come to the performance with different views of the work from those who had not, and so on. What is incontestably the case for everyone is that the orchestra literally takes centre stage, and we both see and hear its music very differently from when it emerges from a sunken pit. Singers must prove at least as verbally and musically communicative, since there is less room for staged expression; Rattle’s latest Janáček troupe certainly impressed in that and indeed in all other respects. It was almost like reading – or having read to one – a sung novella. In a typically livewire performance, Peter Hoare, one of two singers common to the Barbican and Covent Garden, could not but help but act. That early liberation acted as if to inspire the rest of the cast.

Marlis Petersen as Emilia Marty seemed just ‘right’ in all she did: voice, bearing, and unmistakeable sympathy. Doubravka Novotná’s rich-toned, spirited Krista proved the perfect foil—or better, one of them. From Aleš Briscein’s ardent Albert Gregor to Alan Oke’s magnificently vivid cameo (the other role shared from Covent Garden) as Count Hauk-Šendorf, this performance had a true sense of company even without staging. Jan Martiník’s three characters were sharply drawn as individuals, as was Svatopluk Sem’s Jaroslav Prus. Vit Nosek and Lucie Hilscherová likewise made the most of their roles, created through words and music, yet as human as if we had seen them onstage.  Such vivid characterisation drew back even those of us won over by Mitchell’s alternative vision towards the work ‘itself’. Those new to the opera will surely have been enthralled. A roaring reception suggested so.

For it was in the third act, as it must be, that Janáček’s drama palpably touched all as if for the first time. Here was most clearly redrawn in exultant urgency the twin clarity and abandon of E.M. to the increasing irrelevance of the men (and women) surrounding her, reminding us that ultimately, Mitchell’s staging grew out of the work’s essence rather than being imposed upon it (as uncomprehending criticism claimed). Taking a view does not necessarily mean betrayal; it is often fundamental to fidelity. Petersen and the orchestra’s transfiguration sent shivers down the spine in what came to seem, if you can imagine such a thing, almost a female, even feminist, Gerontius. Now there might lie a challenge to staging.

 

Gerstein - Liszt and Brahms, 7 January 2026

 Wigmore Hall

Liszt: Three Petrarch Sonnets, S 158; Années de pèlerinage, Deuxième année: Italie: ‘Après une lecture du Dante’, S 161/7
Brahms: Scherzo in E-flat minor, op.4; Piano Sonata no.3 in F major, op.5

Kirill Gerstein (piano)  

Kirill Gerstein’s visits to the Wigmore Hall are fast becoming – for many, have fast become – highlights of its season. His captivating Busoni series was certainly that. Ringing in a New Year, more or less, with Brahms and Liszt was no less impressive, technically or poetically. Indeed, as with all the best performances of such music, to distinguish between technique and poetry would have been complete to miss the point. 

The first half was Liszt’s: the three Petrarch Sonnets and the ‘Dante’ Sonata. A splendid opening flourish signalled the pianist’s arrival, response coming in held-back, almost laid-back fashion: quasi-improvisatory, as if we were invited to an exclusive salon concert in which the composer-pianist were to treat us to his paraphrases. Fresh yet considered, it sang beautifully, as did the others. They emerged as kindred spirits, yet with very much their own characters and souls. The second was similarly bold and convincing in its rhetoric, with a ravishing core, its climaxes still more exultant. Synthesising and extending qualities from both, the third could be heard almost as another face of the same mountain. Romantic freedom, eloquence, and rapture, but also rigour held the audience in the performer’s – and composer’s – hand. Perhaps the penultimate note was hit a touch too hard for the closing sigh, but really that only showed the performer to be human. 

At the beginning of 2026, most of us have long abandoned all hope, yet still we entered the Dante-Liszt Inferno. Here, the opening was, if anything, still more declamatory: as befits the subject, one might say. Detail, structure, and expressive content were inextricably related in the immediacy of the moment, the narrative as vivid as in any symphonic poem, only here with the added white heat of pianistic virtuosity. Underlying pulse was rock-solid, permitting great freedom in its variation. The story was not only told but felt—and what a story it is. 

Brahms’s E-flat minor Scherzo, op.4, is not his most characteristic work, though it was interesting to hear something akin to his more mature voice coming through, just as it might have done when the composer introduced it to Liszt in 1853, two years after its composition. Gerstein’s performance took its leave, as does Brahms, from Beethoven in propulsion and Schumann in occasional parenthesis, Brahms as ‘Brahms’ emerging from within in muscular energy that yet preserved space for poetic rumination. Here, undoubtedly, was a Classicist in Romantic clothing—though never formulaically so. 

The Third Piano Sonata, itself dating from 1853, underlined Brahms’s difference from Liszt, also coming as a kindred spirit to the Scherzo. If the mature voice were still only intermittent, Gerstein certainly brought it out when he could, in a performance of the first movement that at times seemed already to look forward to the First Piano Concerto. Its contours were traced with fidelity and illumination, as were those of the following Andante espressivo. Its shadow seemed to fall further into the future, although there was plenty of Schumannesque Innigkeit to savour too. The Scherzo, like its solitary predecessor, was both pianistic and straining towards the orchestral, sprung rhythms key to that combination. The Intermezzo united tendencies from both second and third movements, settling with greater simplicity than the second in a darkly compelling reading. Equally compelling was the finale, its relative complexity never eclipsing clarity of trajectory. Gerstein proved a sure guide in what can often prove highly treacherous terrain. That it ended with just a touch of well-judged, Lisztian grandiloquence was both meet and right. Schumann’s Blumenstück tied together various threads as a substantial encore, beautifully voiced, with Chopin’s A-flat major Waltz, op.42, a delightful, generous response.