Hardenberger/MCO/Harding - Haydn, Hummel, and Beethoven, 22 June 2026

Barbican Hall

Haydn: Symphony no.85 in B-flat major, ‘La Reine’
Haydn: Trumpet Concerto in E-flat major, Hob. VIIe/1
Hummel: Trumpet Concerto in E-flat major, S.49
Beethoven: Symphony no.4 in B-flat major, op.60

Håkan Hardenberger (trumpet)
Mahler Chamber Orchestra
Daniel Harding (conductor)

Images: Mark Allan

This felt like an unseasonal Barbican concert: the weather, the time of year, even perhaps the programme. It was a welcome tonic, though, once one had reached the brutalist musical oasis in the City, and confirmed, among other things, the excellent, indeed outstanding musicianship of both Håkan Hardenberger and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, and the wisdom of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in its appointment of Daniel Harding as next Music Director. Great music and music-making are, of course, never out of season—or at least should not be. A sadly small audience found itself well rewarded. 

One can tell much – I am tempted to say almost everything – about a musician with respect to the seriousness with which (s)he approaches Haydn. Without him, as much as without Beethoven, there would straightforwardly be no Austro-German symphonic tradition—or it would be so radically different as to constitute a different tradition entirely. The fourth of his Paris Symphonies, ‘La Reine’, opened darkly: perhaps to my taste a little too so, for I should not have reminded something in the way of string vibrato. But there is not one way in such matters. What must surely lie beyond debate is the crucial role of harmonic rhythm: in the first-movement introduction and beyond, indeed throughout the symphony. And that was present. Harding’s way here was often highly rhetorical, phrases ‘speaking’ in quasi-operatic fashion, but not at the cost of coherence. There was always a keen sense of momentum and, beyond that, of building up and releasing tension at just the right points: harmonic rhythm again. A small orchestra (strings 8.7.5.4.3) showed that it could make an almighty sound, scaling down to a whisper when called upon to do so. If anything, I found the latter a bit much, but again tastes differ. Gorgeous woodwind playing graced this and all that was to come. Haydn says Allegretto for the second movement and that is what we heard, even if it came as a slight shock to ears such as mine. So too did the well-nigh Beethovenian outbursts within: no bad thing at all, though perhaps they edged a little close at times to the traffic-calming school. Again, there is more than one way to play such music; ultimately, it progressed well—and consequently. The minuet was rustic rather than stately: perhaps a little de trop for Marie Antoinette, even in Petit Trianon mode. I was more troubled by a repeated agogic accent, whose purpose remained unclear. Harding’s reading certainly had a point of view, though, and conveyed it well. The trio was not entirely without mannerism, but less so. It had plenty of charm, even grace. The finale was beautifully judged: ever inch a Haydn finale, tempo as much a matter of character as mere speed, helter-skelter without losing control. Its sterner, more Beethovenian moments registered strongly but never too strongly. 

We remained with Haydn for his late Trumpet Concerto, surely still the most celebrated of the genre. Hardenberger has played a central role in expansion of the instrument’s repertoire; he nonetheless played this with all the devotion that would rightly be lavished on a new work. Solo playing was beyond compare and the orchestra shifted effortlessly to ‘accompaniment’, not only in terms of its role but of partnership in a conception that was perhaps more the soloist’s than the conductor’s (not necessarily to impute conflict or even contrast). String playing sounded significantly warmer. Above all, from the outset, it was a joy to be reminded what a supremely well judged piece this is. The lyrical slow movement and another inescapably Haydnesque finale were beautifully characterised. 

A different voice registered immediately for Hummel’s concerto. It has attractive moments and passages, but is not really the most coherent of works. Hardenberger, Harding, and the MCO nonetheless made as good a case as you can imagine being made for it and its kinship – let us be generous – with composers from Mozart to Rossini, as well as the odd, intriguing presentiment of Mendelssohn. Hardenberger’s playing was commanding throughout, the finale dazzling. It was quite a surprise and a welcome one, having noticed Mark-Anthony Turnage in the audience, to be treated to an ‘encore’ performance of his Nocturne: in effect, an additional piece on the programme, atmosphere, precision, and fine command of idiom combining to offer a tone poem in its own right. 

Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony concluded the programme—and in many ways, brought it to new heights. Again, whilst this may have been a small orchestra for Beethoven, there was nothing scaled down about the performance. The first movement’s introduction was full of potentiality, dark-hued and broad. Harding shaped the movement as a whole well without unduly moulding it. If some way from how I think of it – Furtwängler, Klemperer, Barenboim, and others will always loom large – his was the most compelling symphonic Beethoven I have heard for some time. It may have been abrasive at times, but so is Beethoven. This was fresh music-making in the best sense and refreshingly unmannered. Pretty much the only thing about which I could take issue was a strangely throwaway final chord: a point of view, I suppose, but to my ears an odd one. The slow movement flowed with deceptive lyricism, for as soon as one truly listened, it proved as deep as the North Sea in a striking, captivating, utterly convincing post-Eroica reading. Throughout the symphony, all came together and cohered, granted the right amount of space for detail as for line. A gruff yet tigerish scherzo permitted its trio to relax just enough, yet no more. And then a related yet different type of finale, rooted in Haydn, yet very much Beethoven. It was hard-won yet gracious, boasting perhaps the bubbliest woodwind I have yet heard in this music. Here was music-making that seemed to come as much from the orchestral musicians as from the podium, and was all the better for it.

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.