Kolesnikov - 'In Memory of Marcel Proust': Schubert, Louis Couperin, Hahn, Fauré, and Franck, 3 February 2022

Wigmore Hall

Schubert: Piano Sonata in G major, D 894: 1st movt
Louis Couperin: Unmeasured Prelude in G minor
Reynaldo Hahn: Le rossignol érpedu: ‘Les deux écharpes’
Schubert: Atzenbrugger Tanz in A major, D 365/30
Hahn: Premières valses: ‘Ninette’, ‘Valse noble’
Schubert: Waltz in B minor, D 145/6
Hahn: Premières valses: ‘La Feuille’
Schubert: Atzenbrugger Tanz in A major, D 365/30
Hahn: Le rossignol érpedu:’Narghilé’
Fauré: Nocturne no.12 in E minor, op.107
Louis Couperin: Sarabande in A minor
Franck: Prélude, choral et fugue
Hahn: Le rossignol érpedu: ‘Ouranos’
Schubert: Piano Sonata in G major, D 894: 2nd, 3rd, and 4th movts

Pavel Kolesnikov (piano)


Pavel Kolesnikov has never shied away from imaginative programming, connecting small pieces and movements from larger works so as to provoke fascinating encounters and transitions. In this case, he wished explicitly to pay tribute to Marcel Proust in his centenary year, intriguingly playing with conceptions of musical time—and what could be more apt for this of all novelists? I confess to having felt a little scepticism toward Kolesnikov’s claim, cited in the programme note, that Schubert and Proust would ‘merge miraculously’ in an ‘art of stretching time and communicating poignant intensity through what is intimate and even miniscule,’ but was quite won over by what I heard in practice. 

Schubert’s G major Sonata, D 894, opened and closed the recital, indeed stretching time in ways quite unexpected. The first movement, heard at the opening, was spacious and highly, subtly flexible. In some ways, it felt slow, in others not at all; I honestly have no idea how long it took, nor did I feel any desire to find out. It spoke with wounded nobility, without ever tending to the lachrymose or anything otherwise sentimental. It had all manner of colours, whilst only rarely raising its voice. Kolesnikov may have looked as if he were lost in reverie, but this was throughout a directed as well as highly imaginative performance. And then, Schubert transformed into Couperin, Louis Couperin that is, in one of his Unmeasured Preludes, G major transformed into its tonic minor—sort of. I say ‘sort of’ because the use of tonality is as different as other aspects of the writing. One might have spoken of improvisatory ‘style’, but in reality, it was more a matter of creating music out of what had been left, the pianist revelling in apparent weirdness, in clashes of melody and harmony. Whose music, whose memory, is it anyway?

The rest of the first half sequence was given not only to Schubert and Louis Couperin, but also to Reynaldo Hahn (Proust’s lover) and Gabriel Fauré (greatly admired by Hahn and Proust). Hahn’s ‘Les deux écharpes’ emerged from within that Unmeasured Prelude, or so it sounded. Kolesnikov captured flow, chiaroscuro, glitter, and fleetingly something darker below. A Schubert dance, in many ways similar to a waltz—think of Mozart’s various ‘German dances’—and an actual Schubert waltz, more wistful and refined, danced on and off stage. New moods, new vignettes, new boundaries to be blurred—until the subtleties of a Fauré Nocturne were heard, not slowly, yet supremely un-rushed. If I find Hahn’s music charming whilst it lasts, yet always struggle to remember a note of it thereafter, that says its own thing about time, or me, or both. A closing Louis Couperin Sarabande evinced quiet dignity, speaking of a past (real or imagined) from a similar past and present. 

César Franck’s Prélude, choral et fugue opened the second half, in more improvisatory fashion, yet convincingly so, than one might have expected. Whether that were on account of the specific context, or because that is how Kolesnikov hears it anyway, is rather beside the point; it made sense here, interior subjectivity the thing. An appealing, ‘after-dinner’ pedal haze sustained harmonies without loss to purpose. Not that the machine à modulation (Debussy) failed to make that aspect of his presence felt, especially in a ‘Choral’ as Romantic as a ‘Fugue’ that favoured harmony over counterpoint. Hahn offered a wandering interlude, less still than evoking stillness.

And then, back to Schubert. It felt like a shift to another plane, as if a flashback were over (oddly, given much of the chronology, yet it did not feel odd). The ‘Andante’ received a lovely, unsentimental reading even before its sterner turn. The Minuet had a fine spring in its step, more forthright than its sister dances earlier on, enabling its trio to take us once more to a dream-world, albeit a different one. The finale united and set against one another those twin tendencies. Taking its time, it and we enjoyed both the route and diversions from it. It sounded very much like the finale to an evening, not only to a sonata, though Debussy’s ‘La cathédrale engloutie’ made for a strikingly Parsifal-ian encore, reminding us of two further Proustian enthusiasms.

Braunstein/Argerich - Schumann, Prokofiev, and Franck, 22 February 2020

Pierre Boulez Saal

Schumann: Violin Sonata no.1 in A minor, op.105

Prokofiev: Violin Sonata no.2 in D major, op.94a

Franck: Violin Sonata in A major

Guy Braunstein (violin)

Martha Argerich (piano)

Martha Argerich returns to town: for chamber music with Guy Braunstein and for the Ravel G major Piano Concerto with Zubin Mehta (to follow). My heart went out to those in the lengthy queue for returns at the Pierre Boulez Saal, but certainly not so much as to relinquish my ticket. Was it worth it? Yes, as ever. All three sonata performances elicited thoughtful, committed performances from Braunstein and Argerich in this, their first joint recital.

First, though, we heard the first of Schumann’s three late violin sonatas: enigmatic works, for which many seem unable to find the key. (I battled with all of them at one time or another as a student pianist, always finding at least one movement well-nigh impossible to bring off.) From the off, this was clearly a true partnership, well balanced, moving forward together, offering dialogue and contrast as required. All three movements benefited from a rightness of tempo and of tempo variation such as enabled much that can often sound problematical simply to fall into place. Argerich’s piano part in the first put me in mind of a cauldron from which Schumann’s witches’ brew could rise and seep into our consciousness – not, perhaps, entirely unlike Wagner’s contemporaneous conception of the orchestra as Greek Chorus. Motivic working seemed to nod on either side to Beethoven and Brahms, without ever sounding like anyone other than Schumann. The central ‘Allegretto’ was taken swiftly, yet with commendable flexibility. Surprises, modulatory and otherwise, at the ends of phrases registered with all the freshness in the world. If ultimately, the music remained enigmatic – that word again – then so it should. In the finale, fantastic, even impetuous flight and traditional lyricism alike rested on rock-solid foundations, harmonically and rhythmically. With so distinguished exponent of the Piano Concerto at the keyboard, we should not have been surprised, but there was no sense that this was something other than music-making between friends on which we were fortunate to eavesdrop.

Prokofiev’s Second Violin Sonata (the violin transcription of his Flute Sonata) followed. I noticed immediately a difference of voice, not only concerning the composer but also his performers, its first movement speaking with idiomatic bitter-sweetness – such exultant, lyrical sweetness from Braunstein – and romanticised modernism. Mood swings were more abrupt, even cinematic, without compromise to underlying continuity. Potentiality in the piano part, simultaneously vertical and horizontal, was vividly generative. And still there remained some of the composer’s old Fiery Angel bite; perhaps there might have been a little more at times, but relative subtlety had its own rewards. The scherzo spoke more clearly of demonic possession, piano scampering taken up by violin and vice versa. There was plenty of sulphur here, however neoclassicised. Uneasy placidity characterised the side-slipping ‘Andante’, perhaps the movement that went deepest, so long as one listened. The finale proved fantastical, swashbuckling, and not without a little grotesquerie. Argerich’s seductive hammering of Prokofiev’s chords said it all.

Opened the Franck Sonata sounded as if one old friend was greeting another – and it her, a third, Braunstein, responding in kind. Not that the music was taken for granted, but that the score had been thoroughly internalised as material for recreation. Outpouring and subsiding were two sides of the same Argerich coin, sometimes even within the same phrase; its spinning would often find itself caught in magical, almost Brahmsian half-lights, though never for long. Tracing and shaping of the first movement’s contours and indeed those of the rest of the sonata were undoubtedly a dual effort, partnership once again apparent from the outset. The second and third movements both offered intensification and due attention to particular character. There was wonder in their transformation too, not least in the myriad of colours revealed in piano chords and their progressions. Braunstein’s violin recitative in the third movement was eloquent and alluring, Argerich already having forestalled the danger of premature climax at the close of the second by taking this music attacca – and what attack this was! The finale offered refreshment in well-nigh Mozartian response, thereafter taking its own path, our guides both knowledgeable and passionate. As encores we heard not one but two Viennese dances by Fritz Kreisler, played, as Braunstein now informed us, on Kreisler’s own violin: a lilting, poignant Liebesleid and a Schön Rosmarin whose notes flew off the page with all the time in the world.

Scott Brothers Duo - Rossini, Guilmant, Debussy, Franck, Saint-Saëns, Gounod, Scott, and Dukas, 26 November 2019

Apollo Saal, Staatsoper Unter den Linden

Rossini, arr. Jonathan Scott: Il barbiere di Siviglia: Overture

Debussy, arr. J Scott: Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune

Alexandre Guilmant: Scherzo in D minor, op.31

Franck: Prélude, Fugue et Variation, op.16

Saint-Saëns, arr. J Scott: Danse macabre

Saint-Saëns: Six Duos, op.8: ‘Fantasia e fuga’

Gounod, arr. J Scott: Méditation – Ave Maria

Tom Scott: Dances for harmonium and piano

Guilmant: Ariane, op.53: ‘Adagio’ and ‘Danse des songes’

Dukas, arr. J Scott: L’Apprenti sorcier

Jonathan Scott (harmonium)

Tom Scott (piano)

It is not every day one hears a recital for piano and harmonium duo; still less often, I suspect, might one hear such a recital in which novelty of combination and sonority takes second place to captivating quality of performance. Here with arrangements and no fewer than four pieces written originally for the combination were the Scott Brothers Duo, Tom on piano and Jonathan on harmonium, the latter a new Mustel instrument acquired by the Staatsoper Unter den Linden.

A Rossini overture will always prove, performance permitting, a sparkling way to open a concert. Performance here permitted—and it proved an excellent choice in accustoming our ears and, more generally, expectations. The introduction alternated between piano and harmonium playing in concert, sometimes doubled and sometimes complementary, and antiphonal writing, Jonathan Scott’s arrangement here as elsewhere skilful, catching, indeed beguiling. His registration choices proved imaginative without eccentricity and balance never proved a problem in the slightest. Rossini’s music put a smile on one’s face, as it should. Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune is a different kettle of fish, to put it mildly, but Scott’s arrangement proved just as adept. The opening flute solo swelled on his instrument, answered with piano arpeggios. Taken through various, often magical transformations, this was quite an ear-opener, again for the quality of the performances more than the novel instrumentation.

A piece for harmonium solo followed, Alexandre Guilmant’s post-Mendelssohnian Scherzo in D minor, op.31. As fleet as imaginable in performance, Mendelssohn soon took second place to something not unlike Rossini and, less surprisingly, the world of the nineteenth-century French organ. Music by Guilmant for piano and harmonium would appear during the second half. I cannot say that the ‘Adagio’ and ‘Danse des songes’ made me long to hear the rest of his ‘symphony-cantata’, Ariane, but it was pleasant enough for a while, if not without sentimentality. Still, one item to which I struggled to respond in a programme of this kind was pretty good going. Speaking of sentimentality, the Bach-Gounod Ave Maria preceding it was beautifully shaped, both as arrangement and performance; I am not sure I did not prefer it to the vocal ‘original’.

Returning to the first half, Franck’s Prélude, Fugue et Variation, op.18, was the real thing, written with the surest command of the unusual combination of instruments, and performed with flair and security. It had impetus; it grew; and ultimately, there was a fine sense of cyclical return. Perhaps the highpoint for me, though, was Saint-Saëns’s ‘Fantasia e Fuga’ from his Six Duos, op.6, which opened the second half. Opening piano cascades set against harmonium chordal progression? The more one truly listened, the less simple such generalisations were. How, moreover, could one fail to listen in so inviting a performance? Not all fugues are fun—it would be a peculiar, embarrassing description for those in late Beethoven—but this most certainly was. I should have loved to hear more from this collection; leaving an audience wanting more is, however, not an unsound tactic. The remaining piece written expressly for this combination of instruments was Tom Scott’s own Dances for Harmonium and Piano: unapologetically tonal and even, for want of a better word, ‘popular’ in style, a waltz, sarabande, and minimalist (!) gigue were written and performed with typical ease and panache.

Two tone poems completed the two halves: Saint-Saëns’s Danse macabre and Dukas’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Both offered clarity and imagination in arrangement and performance. In the former, one probably heard more strongly than ever the composer’s debt to Liszt. There was a nice death rattle too. In the latter, equally full of rhythmic impetus, one perhaps listened more clearly to Dukas’s often extraordinary harmonies; I was reasonably sure that I heard things I had not noticed before. Not, of course, that registration failed to ring the colouristic changes. Along with winning introductions and commentary throughout—all in German—we were treated to two encores: a virtuosic account of Vittorio Monti’s Csárdás and an intimately expressive Fauré Après un rêve. A lovely evening, then, to which the Apollo Saal audience responded with great enthusiasm.

Tetzlaff/Lonquich - Brahms, Enescu, Webern, and Franck, 16 November 2019

Pierre Boulez Saal

Brahms: Violin Sonata no.2 in A major, op.100

Enescu: Violin Sonata no.2 in F minor, op.6

Webern: Four Pieces for violin and piano, op.7

Franck: Violin Sonata in A major, FWV 8

Christian Teztlaff (violin)

Alexander Lonquich (piano)

What could be more satisfying than a comprehending performance of a Brahms masterwork? Nothing—and this was certainly that. Intimate yet not withdrawn, the opening of the first movement to the A major Violin Sonata—and much else besides—always had much bubbling beneath the surface, sometimes bubbling over, even erupting. Shifting balance between violin (Christian Tetzlaff) and piano (Alexander Lonquich) were managed almost as if this were the work of one player rather than two: a true partnership. Apparently simplicity soon revealed complexity, balance between melody and harmony, horizontal and vertical finely judged, likewise ever shifting. Formal concision and expression were two sides of the same coin. An ‘Andante tranquillo’ whose lyricism again encompassed harmony as much as melody proved the perfect foil for a Vivace section whose shadow games spoke not only of playful melancholy but also the melancholy of play. This second movement’s through-composition was truly felt and expressed, no mere structural ‘feature’. Metrical dislocation in the finale, as elsewhere, told without the slightest exaggeration. Once again, line, tempo, and mood were perfectly judged for music as intense, in its own way, as anything in Schoenberg and as deeply indebted to Beethoven, as revealed here, as anything Brahms wrote. Such things need not be shouted from the rooftops, especially with Brahms.

George Enescu’s 1899 Second—again of three—Violin Sonata was next on the programme, in a similarly absorbing performance. Its first movement, ‘Assez mouvementé’, began to speak from another shadow world with similar command of line, both aspects related to what we had heard in Brahms yet also distinct. Lonquich wore formidable technical demands lightly and without sentimentality, with an elegance one might consider Gallic. Such demands revealed rather than concealed underlying harmonic rhythm. Tetzlaff likewise made light of what he was asked to do, simplicity of utterance, not contrivance, the order of the day. The lyrical trade of the second movement offered something similarly distinctive. ‘Brahms with a French accent’ would sell it quite short, yet as a starting point in this particular recital, it may yet have served a purpose. Here, as elsewhere, contours were expertly, meaningfully shaped. The finale proved as rigorous as it was passionate, the idiom of Enescu’s strange ‘Romanticism’—I think one may just about call it that—judged to a tee. Equally fine in judgement was Teztlaff’s witty sign-off, too consequential merely to be nonchalant, yet momentarily, partially suggestive of that.

If I have heard a superior concert-hall Webern Four Pieces then I must have forgotten—which seems unlikely. Without apparent effort, art concealing art, Teztlaff imparted such meaning to his opening perfect fourth (double-stopped), that by the time Lonquich’s piano chord responded, one might almost have reached the end of a conventional first thematic group. The nine bars of the first piece present an entire drama of their own and were presented as such. Webern’s second piece emerged as a scherzo on acid, each note again the equivalent to a hundred in so much other music. The third announced itself as a drama of pitch and proceeded to be a drama of much else too, almost a Mahlerian world in itself. As in Beethoven, as in Brahms, a Webern finale’s victory needs to be won—and how it was here. All composer and performers asked was that we listen; it is difficult to imagine why, in circumstances so propitious, anyone would have declined.

For the final work on the programme we returned to A major, to César Franck’s Violin Sonata. What struck me most clearly from this sympathetic, refined, often ardent performance was, without disregard to certain affinities, the very different nature of Franck’s formal concerns here. The danger—I am not sure any performance can entirely avoid it—is that the music begins to speak with a certain sameness. Whatever the truth of my suspicion, Teztlaff and Lonquich made a valiant attempt, not through overt effort to be ‘different’, but by attending to different character between movements, by greater yet far from unrelieved intensification in the second and third, and finally by presenting a finale that balanced developmental and cyclical demands. It certainly did not stand still. Nor did the subtle, well-nigh Goethian tragedy—major mode conclusion notwithstanding—of the encore, the final movement from Brahms’s G major Violin Sonata. My only regret was that we had not heard the entire work; next time, perhaps.

Zimmermann/VSO/Hrůša - Beethoven and Franck, 6 June 2017

Grosser Saal, Konzerthaus

Beethoven – Violin Concerto in D major, op.61

Franck – Symphony in D minor

Frank Peter Zimmermann (violin)

Vienna Symphony Orchestra

Jakub Hrůša (director)

What a wonderful surprise! It was not that I had not expected something good; I should hardly have dragged myself to another Beethoven Violin Concerto if not, still less to a performance of a symphony about which I felt decidedly ambivalent (if not nearly so hostile as many seem to). Frank Peter Zimmermann had given, with Bernard Haitink and the LSO, what had been probably the best performance I had ever heard in concert. Moreover, Jakob Hrůša had impressed me last year in Glyndebourne’s Cunning Little Vixen, and I had heard good things about him from others too. Nevertheless, to hear a performance that exceeded my memories of the Haitink, not least on account of a truly astonishing contribution from the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, and an account of Franck’s D minor Symphony that had me wondering, at least until the finale, whether all my doubts concerning the work had been misplaced, came as significantly more than I might dared have hope.

The first movement of the Beethoven was taken swiftly, but never harried (not unlike, indeed, Zimmermann’s performance with Haitink, so I presume this must be his concept). What struck me immediately was the cultivated sound Hrůša drew from the VSO; I really do not think I am merely lapsing into some sort of ‘national’ stereotype when I say that the sound reminded me of the Czech Philharmonic in its heyday, or indeed one of Rafael Kubelík’s bands. There was something Bohemian, to be sure, about the character of the orchestral playing, at least as I heard it; it was certainly not sweetly Viennese, to resort to another caricature. The other striking, indeed surprising, thing about the opening ritornello was Zimmermann’s playing along for parts of it; I am not quite sure why, but it did not detract from his official entry, since one never heard him individually. When that did come, his playing offered a combination of the best of ‘old school’ tone with a variegation that one does not always, rightly or wrongly, associate with some of those hallowed performances of old. A simple – or not so simple – scale could encompass great musical variety, with the emphasis on ‘musical’; this was not variety, nor was it difference, for the sake of it. And all the time, Hrůša emphasised, subtly yet unquestionably, the dynamic process of Beethoven’s motivic working, its generative quality. Woodland woodwind sounded heartbreakingly beautiful; one could almost see Beethoven on one of his countryside walks, hear what he heard, transmuted into gold. Zimmermann’s cadenza did more or less what one would have expected it to do, if not quite always in the way one would have expected: different again, then, without that difference being for its own sake. A coda as autumnal as Brahms offered one brief, final blaze; as so often, at the close, Beethoven says just enough, no more than that.

The slow movement proved the most tender of songs, with multiple soloists, the VSO wind singing with just as great distinction as Zimmermann, bassoon and horns as ravishingly beautiful as any of those instruments more accustomed to the soloistic limelight. If anything, I think these instrumentalists incited Zimmermann to still greater heights. ‘Rapt’ is doubtless a word overused, not least by me, but it seems apt, as it were, here. A masterly transition to the finale was Zimmermann’s doing, of course, but the broader character of the finale was again as much Hrůša’s and the orchestra’s doing as Zimmermann’s. Impish, exhilarating playing had one’s ears on tenterhooks, in the best way. Once again, Hrůša’s subtle yet sure tracing of Beethoven’s motivic dynamism provided the basis for everything else that ensued.

The opening figure of Franck’s D minor Symphony sounded full of Lisztian promise, with lower string tone simply to die for. The violins’ response proved to be of equal distinction, as indeed soon was that of the entire orchestra. Once again, the playing of the VSO, and Hrůša’s conducting sounded – however lame this might sound on the page – as if it were imbued with the very spirit of music. Even when the first movement were driven hard, as sometimes it was, it grew out of what had gone before; indeed, it made me wonder what Wagner from these forces might sound like (not something I say lightly). Even the frankly vulgar passages in Franck’s score made me smile, even shiver a little, rather than frown. This was certainly a superior performance in every way to the over-praised recordings from Leonard Bernstein (which may have done a great deal to put me off the work). For there was delicacy, even tenderness, to be heard too, in a performance that at the very least seemed to reach for Lisztian heights. I do not think, indeed, that I have heard a performance, whether in the concert hall or even on record, in which the music had so clearly been internalised by conductor and orchestra (well, perhaps, Klemperer, but otherwise…)

The Allegretto was inexorable, yes, but charming too, with a wealth of orchestral colour that had me think several times of Berlioz. I was able by now simply to sit back and enjoy, quite convinced that any previous fault had lain with me, not with the work. If I still did not feel that the finale quite came off, it came closer than I could recall, uniting tendencies, not just material, from both previous movements. It wore its workings on its sleeve, of course, but does not Berg’s music, or Stravinsky’s, for that matter, too? There was much, then, for me to think about after the event, even more for me to relish in the moment. This was, in summary, a quite outstanding concert.

Berlin Festtage (5) - Kremer/Kozhukhin: Weinberg, Brahms, and Franck, 1 April 2015

Philharmonie, Berlin

Weinberg – Sonata no.2 for solo violin, op.95

Brahms – Fantasies, op.116

Weinberg – Sonata no.3 for solo violin, op.126

Franck – Sonata in A major, for violin and piano

Gidon Kremer (violin)

Denis Kozhukhin (piano)

 

1 April: I suppose the date should have given it away. Perhaps I am being unduly cynical, but this was the fifth time I had booked to hear Martha Argerich, and the fifth time she had cancelled. At any rate, a ‘feverish flu’ led to her replacement with Denis Kozhukhin and consequent rearrangement of the programme. Out went a Beethoven sonata (op.30 no.3) and one of Mieczysław Weinberg’s sonatas for violin and piano; in came Brahms’s op.116 Fantasien and a second of Weinberg’s sonatas for solo violin.

Frankly, one would have been more than enough, not least given the sometimes shocking performance offered by Gidon Kremer of Weinberg’s op.95. It took until the sixth of its seven movements for the performance to sound like a performance at all; a friend commented that Kremer had often sounded as if he were someone practising in his bedroom, and it was difficult to dissent. Maybe he had been as irritated by the rearrangement of the programme as many others. The poverty of Weinberg’s invention nevertheless came through, the first movement, ‘Monody’, made of the sort of banal figuration with occasional wrong notes Shostakovich would offer with (in a generous reading) irony. With this piece, however, irony was difficult to discern. Likewise, the third movement seemed characterised by sub-Shostakovich impotent anger. Kremer’s somewhat fuller tone – before, only thinness had been striking – was welcome in the final two movements, but that did not, most likely could not, disguise the sense of straining and failing to achieve profundity.

The one-movement Third Sonata, with which the second half started, was much more of a performance, certainly more urgent. Indeed, it was in this that Kremer sounded at his best. Weinberg, perhaps, shows at times a slightly less reactionary language and, more to the point, a stronger sense of development. At best, at least at the beginning, there are some mildly attractive ideas, whose development was over-extended. That, I am afraid, is the greatest enthusiasm I can muster. I think it is time to say that, as with some of the Entartete Musik composers and, more often than not, Shostakovich that an undeniably moving personal story and political persecution do not guarantee convincing, let alone compelling, music.

Denis Kozhukhin’s contributions proved to be stronger than Kremer’s. Kozhukhin’s Brahms is not for me the most appealing; I simply – or perhaps not simply – hear and understand the music differently. However, on its own, Romantic, ‘grand manner’ terms, it worked very well. It is perhaps too easy to describe it as ‘Russian’ Brahms, but there was more than a hint of that. The opening Capriccio showed a great dynamic range: ‘big’ tone, which can certainly be scaled down. If the following Intermezzo might have been intimate in conception, especially to begin with, it was admirably flexible; this remained, however, very ‘public’ Brahms. (One might well argue that a large hall such as the Philharmonie invites such a conception.) A stormy third movement had little sense of Brahms as progenitor of Webern, but certainly held the attention. The succeeding Intermezzo was slower than is perhaps fashionable, but none the worse for that. It was played beautifully, if at times the sound edged a little close to Rachmaninov. Moreover, the central section achieved a beautiful sense of half-lighting. The next Intermezzo, the fifth movement, was meaningfully voiced, though not in a modernist fashion. Its successor was bracingly fast, at least according to pianistic ‘tradition’, but arguably – just about – an ‘Andantino’ nevertheless. Such a reading is preferable to a sentimental one, but was the piece’s heart perhaps lost? The final movement needs to be fast, and it was; it was certainly ‘agitato’ too. Voicing again was a particular strength. And how the poverty of Weinberg’s inspiration was shown up!

As for the Franck Sonata, the only piece in which violinist and pianist appeared together, it was Kozhukhin’s playing that proved by far the more compelling. Even relative understatement, as at the beginning of the first movement, drew one in. Kremer’s wiry tone was disappointing, his poor intonation rather more than that. The performance did not conceal the truth of Debussy’s jibe about Franck as a ‘modulating machine’; the best can. In the second movement, Kozhukhin’s tone, recognisable from his Brahms, offered much to admire, Kremer’s only rarely. Much the same could be said of the very different third movement. Kozhukhin’s legato was pleasing, but in itself could not paper over the cracks of the composer’s vaunted cyclic method. More of the same in the finale – with some breathtaking pianism from Kozhukhin. In replacing Argerich, he saved the day in more than one sense.

 

Joshua Bell and Jeremy Denk, Wigmore Hall, 26 March 2009

Wigmore Hall

Janáček – Sonata for violin and piano
Brahms – Sonata for violin and piano no.3 in D minor, op.108
Ysaÿe – Sonata for solo violin in A minor, op.27 no.2, ‘Obsession’
Franck – Sonata for violin and piano in A major

Joshua Bell (violin)
Jeremy Denk (piano)

Ultimately this proved a frustrating recital. It boasted many good thing, yet not only did they fail to come together as a convincing whole, but one also became aware of a number of artistic limitations, particularly with respect to Joshua Bell’s performance.

Janáček’s violin sonata is, at the best of times, not an easy work to render coherent. Here, Bell often seemed to act more as a soloist than as a chamber musician, which, given his experience in the world of chamber music, came as something of a surprise. He looked at his partner, Jeremy Denk, far more when the violin was silent than when called upon to play, whereas Denk proved extremely attentive. There could be no faulting the technique of either musician but Bell was rather too ready, especially during the opening movement, to employ a seemingly all-purpose Romantic tone. Denk sounded more alert to the idiosyncrasies of the composer’s style. He provided a nicely rippling opening to the following Ballada. Though still somewhat on the Romantic side, Bell now seemed more sensitive to shifts of mood – and Romanticism is probably more appropriate to this movement in any case. Shades of Debussyan harmony were brought out, and with a good dose of passion rather than haze. The third movement was strongly characterised by fragments of distorted dance rhythms, reminiscent of the troika music in Katya Kabanova and looking forward also to the Sinfonietta. Bell’s double-stopping was flawless, although the music did not always seem to have penetrated under his skin. The fourth movement had a real sense of chamber music, the musical ‘lead’ passed between the instruments according to the imperatives of work and performance. I very much liked the musical question marks posed by the uncertain violin interventions, not least that with which the sonata ended. Denk provided arresting piano tremolos, igniting a passionate response from both musicians in an unsuccessful – which is as it should be – attempt to climax.

The third of Brahms’s violin sonatas opened once again with an uncertainty of idiom. Denk’s role here was once again more impressive, presenting clear textures without loss to the piano part’s complex richness. By contrast, Bell’s tone often sounded inappropriately light. At home with the lyrical side of Brahms’s inspiration – Bell can certainly spin a long line – the reading often lacked depth, although the half-light of the first movement’s coda provided subtly menacing shadows. The following Adagio was presented as a song without words: not without a proto-Elgarian nobility but rarely penetrating to the intricacies of Brahms’s serial foreshadowings. The third movement fared better. Its ghostliness was possessed of an unusual serenity, albeit punctuated by truly Romantic outbursts. There was an almost Schumannesque schizophrenia, within certain bounds, rendering the scherzo more of a Romantic ‘character piece’, or perhaps dual character piece, than is usually the case. In the finale, Denk proved adept at reminding us of the echoes of the previous movement. Yet, here the welcome clarity he brought to his part was married to an undue lightness of tone. He sounded a little too Mendelssohnian. Bell’s rendition of the violin part was technically flawless but I wanted a greater rawness, if not of tone, then at least of emotion.

Where Bell really did come into his own was in the solo Ysaÿe sonata. The opening Prélude brought forth immediate echoes of Bach, leading into a duly obsessive hearing of the Dies irae chant. The fascinating second movement, Malinconia, seemed somehow – and without taking the obvious route of eschewing vibrato – to evoke the mid-Baroque world of melancholy Affekt. There was nothing showy to Bell’s performance; indeed, it proved unfailingly musical. The Dies irae here sounded as if refracted through the evocation of a consort of viols. After the sweet pizzicato opening of the following Danse des ombres, there was again something intriguingly alte about the ensuing Musik, a splendid antidote to the glossiness of so many performances of such repertoire. The music then grew into something more Romantic, as if the listener were being taken on a guided tour of the history of the violin, with an appropriate nod to Paganini at the appropriate juncture. This led seamlessly into the final movement, Les Furies, in which Bell could prove himself the very model of a modern violin virtuoso, whilst hinting at a modernism, especially of harmony and its implications, often overlooked in the music of Ysaÿe.

Franck’s sonata proved, like much of what had gone before, something of a curate’s egg. Denk imparted a surprisingly impressionistic tinge to his opening bars, the harmonies sounding stranger than usual. However, the first movement as a whole lacked the necessary security of harmonic direction, veering between those intriguing, if ultimately not quite convincing, hints of Debussy and a somewhat over-the-top Romanticism. One might well say that Franck’s elusive idiom lies somewhere in between the two; perhaps so, but it does not really lie in alternation between them. Bell’s violin often sounded disconnected from the piano part, not in the sense of a lack of synchronisation but rather as if he were playing to a pre-recorded ‘accompaniment’. The second movement opened with a wonderfully Tristan-esque bent to the melodic lines, to some extent prefigured before but now given fuller – and convincing – rein. Romanticism was spot on in this case, although the central section sounded, ironically, more like Brahms in D minor than much of Brahms in D minor had. I liked the improvisatory feeling to the beginning of the Recitative-Fantasia, evocative of the organist ‘preluding’ upon previous given themes. However, even at his most ardent, Bell’s lyricism was not really matched by sufficient depth of tone. If the musicians were not entirely able to mask the repetitive nature of Franck’s cyclical form here and in the finale, the fault is not really theirs. One again had a sense in the final movement of a soloist and accompanist rather than true chamber music. This was not entirely Bell’s fault, for there were times when Denk could have been rather less delicately reticent. As so often in this recital, the whole was not a great deal more than the sum of its variable parts.