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.

Salzburg Easter Festival (2): BPO/Harding - Haydn, 5 April 2026

 

Grosses Festspielhaus

The Creation, Hob.XXI:2

Hanna-Elisabeth Müller (soprano)

Andrew Staples (tenor)

Konstantin Krimmel (baritone)

Bavarian Radio Chorus (director: Peter Dijkstra)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Daniel Harding (conductor)

Images: Monika Rittershaus

One might, somewhat fancifully, think of Haydn’s two late oratorios, The Creation and The Seasons, as the counterparts of their time to Mahler’s Eighth Symphony. That thought briefly entered my mind prior to this Easter Sunday performance of The Creation, if only because the Salzburg Easter Festival had given Mahler’s work two days earlier. A more meaningful comparison would lie with Handel’s oratorios, especially as given a little while after the composer’s death in Handel ‘Commemorations’ at Westminster Abbey from 1784 onwards. Haydn attended the sixth of these, ‘by command and under the patronage of their Majesties’ in 1791, boasting more than a thousand performers (more, then, than the perennially misnamed ‘Symphony of a Thousand’. According to an early, albeit not especially reliable biographer, Giuseppe Carpani, Haydn ‘confessed … that when he heard the music of Hendl [sic] in London, he was struck as if he had been put back to the beginning of his studies … He meditated on every note and drew from these most learned scores the essence of true musical grandeur.’  It is at any rate likely that Haydn then resolved to write a successor work, which he did in collaboration with Gottfried van Swieten back in Vienna in 1797 and 1798. Both oratorios exist in German and English forms. (See here for further discussion.) This Salzburg performance, naturally, was given in German as Die Schöpfung and with musical forces on the smaller side from the premiere, although sizes of chorus and orchestra varied significantly during his lifetime, including performances in which one way or another he participated.

 

The opening ’Representation of Chaos’ sounded duly radical and rigorous in the hands Daniel Harding and the Berlin Philharmonic. It is not entirely without precedent, especially when considers the introductions to Haydn’s London Symphonies, but this is on quite a different scale, of duration and harmonic adventure, as befits the oratorio’s scale and subject—and so it sounded here, darkly mysterious, with teeming anticipations of potential life from the ever-outstanding Berlin woodwind emanating from and sinking back into the terror of the void. I have heard broader, more beautiful introductions, not least in classic recorded form from this orchestra under Herbert von Karajan, but it is an open question whether should Chaos sound beautiful. Raphael’s opening recitative lacked nothing in broadness, imparting a fine sense of suspense. The coming of Light did all that it should, fitting indeed on the day of Resurrection, followed by a ringing ‘Und Gott sah das Licht…’ from Andrew Staples as Uriel. Spring, it seemed, was here—as, at last, it had been outside earlier in the day. Fallen angels had their moment, orchestral as well as choral, in the number to come, strings’ slithering descent especially worthy of note, and Staples’s shading, like that of all soloists, was finely gauged without pedantry, momentary darkness evoked on the word ‘Schatten’. On the second day, Konstantin Krimmel and the orchestra had us feel as well as hear in their opening recitative storms, rain, snow and other consequences of the Almighty’s creative division of the waters. Hanna-Elisabeth Müller’s vibrato in Gabriel’s ensuing ‘Mit Staunen sieht das Wunderwerk‘, taken slower than usual and with an interesting old-Handelian sturdiness, was a little on the broad side, but my ears soon adjusted and that ceased to be an issue after this number.

Our three angels announced in their announcing, we could enjoy the delights to come, Krimmel in particular offering an outstandingly keen sense of narration, at times confidingly so, in fine partnership with the orchestra and Harding. Nothing we heard was ever less than vividly communicative and lyrical. Gear changes such as that towards the end of ‘Rollend in schäumenden Wellen’ might on paper have seemed a little odd, but the transformation in atmosphere effected worked very well in practice, with ample justification in the libretto. Likewise Harding’s tempo shift in the trio ‘In holder Anmut steh’n’ for Raphael’s darting of fish. Ornamentation was stylish from all concerned, orchestral soloists included. Indeed, there was at least much to savour from the Berlin Philharmonic – Wenzel Fuchs’s delectable clarinet in ‘Auf starkem Fittiche’, cellos to die for in ‘Mit Würd und Hoheit angetan’, those three flutes of Eden at the opening of the Third Part led by Emmanuel Pahud, and so on – as from anywhere else. The Bavarian Radio Chorus was irreproachable, irresistible throughout, echoing Handel in ‘Vollendet ist das große Werk’, whilst ravishing woodwind reminded us this was a post-Mozartian world.

 

A sense of wonder in literal awakening was unmistakeably evoked in the Third Part, further awakening to be heard, equally unmistakeable yet without any crude exaggeration, in the duet of Adam (Krimmel) and Eve (Müller). The world created had come truly into its prelapsarian, if precarious own. There were surprises throughout, even here, as for instance in Harding’s slow tempo for the opening of that duet, sustained throughout. There is, more often than not, no ‘right’ answer to such questions; different performances offer different pathways. Here, kinship with The Magic Flute was readily, meaningfully communicated. In the only secco recitative of any length in the entire work – we are in the realm of humans – the luxury of hearing a cellist of the stature of Bruno Delepelaire alongside the also excellent fortepianist Florian Birsak was almost worth the price of admission alone. Ultimately, it was of course Haydn’s invention, its optimism far from naïve but rather that of a good Catholic who had seen and heard it all and knew something still lay beyond the wars ravaging his Europe, that offered the greatest balm. Amidst the carnage of 2026, we must hope that Haydn, his co-creator Swieten, and all those voices, musical, literary, and theological, who helped shape this enduring masterpiece may yet have a point. That we could hope at all suggests that may just be so.

Takács Quartet: Haydn, Assad, and Debussy, 24 March 2026

Wigmore Hall

Haydn: String Quartet in G minor, op.74 no.3, ‘Rider’
Clarice Assad: Nexus (London premiere)
Debussy: String Quartet in G minor, op.10

Edward Dusinberre, Harumi Rhodes (violins)

Richard O’Neill (viola)

András Fejér (cello)

Contrary to some rumours I have seen spread, the Takács Quartet is not about to disband. Instead, at the end of this season, it will say goodbye to András Féjer, the last member of the founding group of players, after fifty-one years as its cellist. There was not the slightest sign of dimming powers at this Wigmore Hall concert; quite the contrary. At times, Féjer seemed almost to rise to first among equals, but then so, at other times, did his colleagues. Indeed, both programming and performance might have been designed to illustrate the many lives, within one greater life, of the string quartet as genre and the Takács Quartet in particular.

It always, of course, comes back to Haydn, here in the guise of his ‘Rider’ Quartet, op.74 no.3. The six opp. 71 and 74 quartets written in 1793 mark a watershed in the idea of quartet performance: the first the ‘father’ of, though not quite the first composer in, the genre composed with the idea of public performance at least partly in mind, as would be the case the following year on his second visit to London, in the Hanover Square Rooms (a very short walk away from the Wigmore Hall). There was no questioning the engagement of this concert audience—as, I suspect, there was not 232 years previously. The sense of musical character(s) increasingly formative and generative in Haydn’s parallel public-symphonic writing was vividly apparent in the Takács’s performance of the first and indeed subsequent movements here, a slightly tipsy, Jahreszeiten-presaging first violin part (Eduard Dusinberre the latest incarnation of the great Johann Peter Salomon) included. Féjer looked as well as sounded very much at home, though never too comfortable. Haydn’s latest play with sonata form proved every inch an intellectual challenge and joy. The slow movement sang and developed in gripping fashion, proto-Beethovenian – it is, of course, the other way around really – violin ‘ornamentation’ ornate, yes, but as fundamental to line as it would be in Bach, Beethoven, or Schoenberg. The concision marking the whole quartet was especially apparent in the minuet and trio, typically Classical play between tonic minor and major a microcosm of the Quartet as a whole. And the finale was all it should be, a thrilling ‘ride’ for the so-called ‘Rider’. 

Debussy’s early String Quartet marks in some ways a further step in the idea of public performance, in that it is very clearly a concert work written by a composer with a deep appreciation for string instruments but not a string player himself (which would have verged on the incomprehensible to Haydn). Debussy was neither the first nor the last composer in that category, but his Quartet is a characteristic work in that development, all the more so if – I repeat ‘if’ – one takes on board Hans Keller’s typically provocative claim that ‘you can come to understand a symphony by listening to it, but you cannot completely understand a string quartet without playing it,’ the string quartet being ‘the esoteric symphony,’ with a ‘more absolute need for … immediate experience’. One might say a string player rather than, say, conductor or orchestral musician would say that, would he not, but let us leave that (and Mandy Rice-Davies) alone for now.

Concision was again a hallmark of the performance, albeit naturally of a different kind, just as its development was. (I do not find the word ‘cyclical’ very helpful here, though many do.) The rich, variegated tone we heard from the outset was never present for its own sake, but as a means of expressing the idea – even the Idea – of the work. Each movement’s form was unerringly communicated, not as a formula, but as the revelation of its musical content in time. For that, detail must be just as clear—and it was, as, for instance, in the thrilling pizzicato of the second movement. The slow movement seemed to speak of the ambiguities to come of Allemonde, on the threshold, as it were, of Pelléas et Mélisande. You think this is malevolence; and surely it is. But is it? At any rate, it moved into a rapturous fourth movement, with more than a little of Tristan to it at times—as well, of course, as a reinvention of that G minor/major tension heard in Haydn too. I honestly did not find the Quartet’s conclusion any more convincing than I have before, but perhaps I am being too German. For the rest, it was a wonderful performance I should readily have heard again immediately. 

Sadly, I could not say the same for the intervening work, Clarice Assad’s Nexus. There was no concision on display here, though I suspect it lasted for roughly the same time as the Haydn and Debussy works. Treated as a conceptual view of what might be involved in chamber music performance, as the ‘search for connection’ signalled in Dusinberre’s significantly more interesting spoken introduction, it offered something, I suppose. I imagine it took its place in this programme on that basis, but I am speculating. The problem was that its three movements, ‘(Dis)connection’, ‘Connection’, and ‘Synchronization’, came across as merely descriptive rather than analytical or exploratory. I gleaned nothing from them I should not have done from a string quartet with more interesting musical material. At best diffuse, the content was mostly gestural: walking on and off stage, stamping of feet, actorly expressions, acts of imitation, and so on. (There lay some mild interest in trying to guess which expressions were ‘natural’ and which were part of the work.) Playing was beyond compare; players seemed to be having fun; much of the audience seemed to be doing so too. If only the music ‘itself’ had not been more akin to a television soundtrack, vaguely modal, and relying on extraneous meta-activities for anything that might approaching interest.

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!

LSO/Hannigan - Khayam, Haydn, Vivier, Debussy, Sibelius, and Bartók, 20 March 2025

Barbican Hall

Golfam Khayam: Je ne suis pas une fable à conter (UK premiere)

Haydn: Symphony no.39 in G minor

Claude Vivier: Orion

Debussy: Syrinx

Sibelius: Luonnotar

Bartók: The Miraculous Mandarin: Suite

Gareth Davies (flute)
London Symphony Orchestra
Barbara Hannigan (soprano/conductor)

The second of Barbara Hannigan’s two March LSO concerts opened with a UK premiere: Golfam Khayam’s Je ne suis pas une fable à conter, which Hannigan commissioned and has already performed with the Iceland Symphony, Radio France Philharmonic, and Gothenburg Symphony orchestras. Khayam being unable to travel to after hearing hearing her speak on Iranian music, receiving a reply and offer a collaboration within two hours of sending her message. They settled on a poem by Ahmed Shamlou. There are, it seems, elements of improvisation, though without knowing the work it is impossible to know how much. Opening with cellos and double basses, joined by other, deep-pile LSO strings, the piece effects, especially after voice and flute entry, an ‘east-west’ encounter in vocal and instrumental arabesques, and in combination of tonal and modal (at least to my ears) writing. It seemed to suggest eventual passage from mourning to light, or perhaps better, to glimpse it almost Janáček-like, at the end of our current tunnel. Not that it sounded in any way like Janáček, but perhaps there something in that sensibility was held in common. Perhaps it was no coincidence that here the words turned from French to Farsi. 

Haydn’s Symphony no.39 received a fine reading, Hannigan revelling in its quirks and surprises—considerably more so, it seemed to me, than her slightly disappointing way with the so-called ‘London’ Symphony no.104 last week (an altogether more Classical concern). From the off, she and the LSO relished its Sturm und Drang energy, silence as much part of its activity as sound in the first movement. It developed and returned, almost in a flash, yet certainly not without our knowing that it had. Here and in the ensuing Andante, there was nothing generic to form and process, deeply rooted as they were in Haydn’s particularities. And what a joy it was to hear the LSO in such music, unburdened by ‘period’ affectation. In her programme note, Kate Hopkins described the minuet as stately. It might have done with being a little statelier here, or at least sterner. Still, in its more flowing though not rushed way, it ‘spoke’ clearly, just as its delectable trio sang. The finale, full of incident, might in some ways sound ‘theatrical’ but proved, quite rightly, above all symphonic. 

Claude Vivier’s Orion followed, essentially a theme and five variations. Throughout, it was characterised by a strong sense of liminality, doubtless born, as Tim Rutherford-Johnson’s helpful note pointed out, of Vivier’s preceding opera on death and the afterlife, Kopernikus, and its foretelling; ‘You will hear the music of Orion and the mystical seven sages.’ Distinct echoes of various music – the Stravinsky of the early ballets, Messiaen, Grisey (or was that the Wagner of the Rheingold Prelude) – sounded both too close not to be intentional, yet also too fully integrated to be the point. Above all, it seemed to refer only to itself and, in the two percussionist cries of ‘hé-o’ to the mystery of human subjectivity set against something implacably cosmic. 

The second half opened with a solo from above (at least in the Stalls), Gareth Davies in a beautifully free yet coherent performance of Debussy’s flute Syrinx. Hannigan again led for Sibelius’s Luonnotar. But of course she can sing Finnish whilst conducting… It made for a fascinating combination, the Sibelius possessed of a keen narrative thrust born of words and music alike, all the drama of the ballad rooted in febrile LSO strings. It emerged as a kindred spirit to Mahler’s Das klagende Lied, albeit in (relative) miniature. 

Bartók’s Miraculous Mandarin Suite rounded off an eclectic programme. For me, it is one of those cases in which I always regret the loss of material. Habits of early encounters with Boulez doubtless die hard. Nonetheless, on its own terms, there was much to ‘enjoy’, if that be the right word. Hannigan and the LSO seemed more focused on the harder edged elements to the score: a steely frame that seemed to invite comparisons with more or less contemporary Prokofiev (Le Pas d’acier and even the later Fiery Angel). Occasionally ear-splitting in the Barbican’s awkward acoustic, it danced its way to a final, ever wilder climax.

Degout/LSO/Hannigan - Roussel, Ravel, Britten, and Haydn, 13 March 2025

Barbican Hall

Images: Mark Allan

Roussel: Le Festin de l’araignée (symphonic fragments)
Ravel, arr. Anthony Girard: Histoires naturelles
Britten: Les Illuminations
Haydn: Symphony no.104, ‘London’

Stéphane Degout (baritone)
London Symphony Orchestra
Barbara Hannigan (soprano/conductor)

Barbara Hannigan is unquestionably a star in today’s musical firmament. Anyone who has heard (and seen) her Ligeti Mysteries of the Macabre, live or recorded, would neither doubt nor forget that. I have been an admirer, even a devotee since I first heard her, singing songs by Berg and Webern with the Scharoun Ensemble and none other than Pierre Boulez in 2008. Her more recent, yet by now established, forays into conducting, often in combination with song, have never failed to interest and to excite. And she clearly has a deep fondness for Haydn, regularly conducting symphonies from across his œuvre. What, then, is not to like, especially in combination with the LSO and another outstanding artist, Stéphane Degout? 

Very little, in fact, though I found myself somewhat disappointed by the Haydn symphony this time around, it seeming not yet really to have settled. Proceedings nonetheless got off to a fine start with the suite, once popular yet now somewhat out of fashion, from Roussel’s 1913 Diaghilev ballet Le Festin de l’araignée. The parade of animal victims for the spider in his web had a keen narrative thrust, full of character, and vividly but far from only pictorial. Hannigan and the LSO above all imparted a sense of how it ‘moved’, even without dancers. It may not have the magic of, say, Ravel and Debussy, but it charmed, without overstaying its welcome. However different it may be in most respects from more celebrated Ballet russes commissions, there was kinship to be sensed, both in work and performance. It was far-sighted, moreover, of Roussel wittily to write a part for mobile telephone to coincide with nightfall on the lonely garden. Who would have imagined? To quote Edward Bhesania’s programme note on the music itself, ‘Nothing has changed and yet everything has changed.’ 

A piece Ravel did not orchestrate will probably always be too tempting for composers to resist, even if others have had a shot before them. I wish I could say Anthony Girard’s orchestration of Histoire naturelles offered revelations, but it sounded more workaday than that. It was skilful enough and could hardly fail when it came closer to what Ravel himself might have done, but the somewhat heavy string writing (doubtless a sense of mock-gravity to depict the peacock, but was it quite the right sense?) at the opening of the first song, ‘Le Paon’) gave a distinctly odd impression, especially given Degout’s seemingly effortless way with words and music alike. Indeed, his performance offered a masterclass in French song, all the supposed difficulties (they are real enough) with the language melting away. Again, I could hear Girard’s intent in the percussive clatter of ‘Le Grillon’, but it did not seem quite right. I was more persuaded by the closing guinea-fowl song, whose orchestration seemed genuinely to have one see, even to feel, with her. So too of course did Degout’s vividly communicative vocalism: not a million miles from the theatre, yet subtly distinct. 

Hannigan both sang and conducted for Britten’s Les Illuminations, the Rimbaud text making it seem more at home with its predecessors than otherwise it might have done. Lucy Walker’s point, in her programme note, that ‘perhaps sheltered by the non-English language here, Britten seems to be letting his hair down and channelling some of Rimbaud’s … spirit,’ seemed to me very well captured by the performance, Hannigan clearly inspired rather than inhibited by the exigencies of her dual role. The LSO, never less than very good, seemed a few notches more incisive here, doubtless partly as a result. From the opening bars, richness of string sound seemed to take us to a different level. Hannigan as soloist proved just as communicative as Degout, as were other, instrumental soloists, first among equals leader Benjamin Gilmore in ‘Phrase et Antique’. Rhythms were tight or swung, as required. A well-nigh operatic ‘Marine’ proved key to necessary transformation of mood. ‘Being Beauteous’ captured its particular qualities, not least the sense of a young heart racing. Throughout, Britten and his interpreters permitted Rimbaud to speak: not unmediated, for that would be a nonsense, but heightened, or at least a little transformed. ‘Assez connu. Les arrêts de la vie. Ô Rumeurs et Visions! Départ dans l’affection et le bruit neufs!’ Indeed. 

The first movement of Haydn’s final London Symphony, no.104, augured well. It had grandeur in its introduction, nowadays too often missed, as if Hannigan recalled Boulez’s extraordinary recording with the Vienna Philharmonic. (Perhaps she did.) It had no tedious mannerisms and was very well balanced, inner string parts sounding as if in a quartet. Tempo – not only speed, but mood – was similarly well judged. A dignified account of the slow movement offered generally good command of line and detail, held nicely in balance, though there were a couple of occasions in which tempo seemed to slip rather than to be knowingly modified. The minuet, taken fast, had a fine swagger. Alas, an excessive, almost endless holding back at the beginning of the trio and in several cognate passages made a mess of that (at least for me). The finale seemed to me just too fast, lacking in that grandeur that older conductors, not only Boulez, brought to the work. Playing, though, was excellent, and Haydn’s invention could still be relished.

Lowe/Fisher/Mozartists/Page - Ordonez, Hasse, Mozart, Haydn, and Benda, 29 January 2025

Cadogan Hall

 

Karl von Ordonez: Symphony in G minor, Gm8
Hasse: La Danza: ‘Se tu non vedi’
Mozart: ‘Si mosra la sorte’, KV 209; ‘Con ossequio, con rispetto’, KV 210; ‘Voi avete un cor fedele’, KV 217
Haydn: Il ritorno di Tobia: ‘Quando mi dona un cenno’
Georg Anton Benda: Medea: extract
Haydn: Symphony no.67 in F major

Alexandra Lowe (soprano)

Alessandro Fisher (tenor)

The Mozartists

Ian Page (conductor)

Unable to attend this year's Salzburg Mozartwoche, I caught instead this fascinating concert of music from 1775 by The Mozartists (formerly Classical Opera Company) and their artist director Ian Page, joined by soprano Alexandra Lowe and tenor Alessandro Fisher at London’s Cadogan Hall. Chelsea is not Salzburg, although the site of the Mozarts’ home for a few weeks eleven years earlier on Ebury Street – then ‘Fivefields Row’, now Mozart Terrace – stands less than ten minutes’ walk away. 

It made for an enlightening alternative, though, nowhere more so than in a G minor symphony by the Viennese violinist and composer (both pursuits of his spare time) Karl von Ordonez. The first movement’s material was characterful and consequent; here, unquestionably, was someone who understood symphonic form rather than simply using it by default. Page’s chosen tempo sounded ideal. Work and performance alike showed counterpoint and harmony in excellent balance and interrelationship; one could well imagine the composer playing second violin, as remarked upon by Charles Burney, for Haydn quartets at the home of the British Ambassador a few years earlier. A warmly expressive Andante was not rushed, as is so often the case today. Indeed, it was difficult not to find many of these accomplished performances considerably more sympathetic than those of the ‘period style on modern instruments’ crowd, which have a tendency, not always but often, to offer the worst of both worlds. A duet for two solo violas made for an appealing surprise. The fast – but not too fast – and furious finale was closer to Haydn than Mozart, but certainly not to be reduced to or merely likened to him. The Mozartists’ unshowy rhetoric, properly rooted in Classical style, made a fine case for Ordonez, from whom I should be keen to hear more. Might we even hope one day for one of his two operas, or some sacred music?   

A sequence of arias followed: first, one of two from Hasse’s late cantata La Danza, to a text by Metastasio previously set by Giuseppe Bonno (1744) and, in extended form, Gluck as a one-act opera in 1755. Hasse’s final opera, Il Ruggiero, had a few years earlier (1771) been eclipsed by Mozart’s Ascanio in Alba at the Archduke Ferdinand’s wedding to Maria Beatrice d’Este. It was difficult not to hear some of the younger composer’s influence – yes, even at so tender an age – in this aural glimpse of Hasse’s Venetian retirement. Pastoral, though not generically so, the performance was again stylistically well situated, enabling Lowe’s character, Nice, to step forward from the text even in excerpted form. Her vibrato focused attention on the line rather than obscuring it, the Mozartists proved lively and supportive throughout. Should the aria be a little over-extended for some modern tastes, so much the worse for them; it held my attention throughout and, again, made me keen to hear more. 

The three Mozart arias are naturally better known, if hardly everyday encounters. The first two are tenor insertion arias from May 1775, the destination of ‘Si mostra la sorte’ still unknown. If the Hasse aria had come surprisingly close to Mozart, here was the real thing—and it sounded like it in music whose drama and lyricism were far from confined to Italianate performance of the vocal line, wooden flutes offering balm of their own. ‘Con ossequio, con rispetto,’ for Niccolò Piccinni ‘s L’astratto, fizzed in energetic contrast, again highly operatic in its creation of character. Lowe returned for ‘Voi avete un cor fedele’, written for Baldassare Galuppi’s Le nozze di Dorina, revealing writing that gave a remarkable impression of a greater drama and characterisation at least as striking as anything in the preceding Il re pastore. With splendidly expressive coloratura, this was rightly a performance on the grand scale. Haydn’s ‘Quando mi dona un cenno’ offered a rare, edifying opportunity to hear music from his ‘other’ oratorio, Il ritorno di Tobia and Fisher the chance, beautifully taken, to turn inward to expressivity of a different nature in a sweetly sung performance of striking emotional sincerity and estimable stylistic command.

Georg Anton Benda’s three melodramas are frequently cited in music histories, yet seldom heard in the concert hall. The English-language excerpt from Medea, Benda’s second, opened the second half. Lowe again showed herself a fine actress – I recalled a Pierrot lunaire from 2022 – from the offset: ‘I am still Medea…’. Stillness and horror prior to ‘It is done’ said it all, against a somewhat Gluck-like (for instance, the Don Juan music) musical cauldron. Here was another work I should love to encounter in full in the concert hall. 

Haydn’s received a performance of admirable clarity and purpose, only sometimes lacking a little in warmth. Its minuet was a little on the rushed and acetic sides and perhaps lacking in the harmonic grounding one finds in, say, Antal Doráti, although the lovely surprise (even when one ‘knows’) of the trio’s viola duet, in delightful echo of Ordonez, will surely have warmed many a heart. Similarly delightful was the element of surprise in the first movement’s development section, the exposition having done precisely what the term implies: delineating material and character in duly consequent fashion. ‘Hunting’ elements delighted in a dramatic, energetic account that exuded grace. If I am often sceptical of the value of employing natural horns, here their use brooked no argument. The second movement was likewise familiar—until one listened. Rhetorical flourishes were given their due without exaggeration. Certain characteristics seemed close to late Mozart, though of course it is the other way around. If I have heard performances of stronger ‘line’ in the finale, it brimmed with character, twists and turns generally well traced. Strings, led by Matthew Truscott, used and varied vibrato expressively. Whatever my odd cavil, here was a performance of numerous delights to conclude a concert of many more.

Takács Quartet: Haydn, Britten, and Beethoven, 12 November 2024

Wigmore Hall

Haydn: String Quartet in C major, op.54 no.2, Hob.III:57
Britten: String Quartet no.2 in C major, op.36
Beethoven: String Quartet no.16 in F major, op.135

Eduard Dusinberre, Harumi Rhodes (violins)

Richard O’Neill (viola)

András Féjer (cello)

It is always a joy to hear the Takács Quartet and, in my case, it had been a little while, so was all the more welcome. This Wigmore Hall recital opened with an outstanding performance of the second of Haydn’s ‘Tost’ Quartets, totally ‘inside’ the music from the off, presentation and subsequent development of Haydn’s ideas making that abundantly clear. Surprises duly registered, however often one might have heard them before: not through exaggeration, but through sound musical means, delivered as fresh as the day they were born. Haydn’s invention truly spoke throughout this first movement and beyond, structure becoming form in real time. A gravely beautiful Adagio and its flights of first violin fantasy as brought to life as Eduard Dusinberre cast shadows back into the Baroque and forward to Beethoven and beyond. It led directly into a spirited yet graceful minuet, its trio sternly impassioned as if developing sentiments from the slow movement as well as responding to its sibling. The finale’s formal experimentation again seemed to look forward to Beethoven, late Beethoven at that, its first and third sections elegant and heartfelt, full of harmonic tension and clear of direction. The brief Presto interlude achieved the paradox of skittish rigour, Haydn’s quizzical enigma enhanced. 

I have no doubt Britten’s Second Quartet received a performance of similar commitment and excellence, though the work itself pales beside Haydn (and Beethoven), suggesting, as the composer’s instrumental music often does, that words and, in many cases, a stage were necessary if not to ignite then to discipline his compositional imagination. It was certainly a very different tradition from Haydn’s that came to mind in the first two movements, that of relatively recent Russian music: Prokofiev at his more discursive more than Shostakovich, though the latter’s hysterical tendencies exhibited themselves from time to time. The Takács players imbued their performance with character and rigour, and the second movement at least did not outstay its welcome. For all the talk of Purcell – and indeed the overt attempt at homage – the chacony finale seemed lacking in his spirit or much of any other. This performance made as good sense of it as any, but to me it remained grey music, without much in the way of the Peter Grimes-like dramatic leavening of the first movement’s opening. 

Where the rot set in was Britten’s notorious verdict on Beethoven. Give me that rot any day, especially in so all-encompassing a performance as that of the Takács Quartet of his final quartet, op.135. Its opening was inviting, good-humoured, and mysterious in equal measure. That sense of productive, generative balance was typical of the first movement as a whole, imbued with the character as well as the tempo of an Allegretto, ever developing in a reading as spacious as it was intense. It very much felt as if it picked up where Haydn and also the Beethoven of the Eighth Symphony had left off. The ensuing Vivace similarly balanced control and freedom, regularity and the danger of careering out of control. Deeply felt and beautifully sung, the slow movement’s balance between introversion and extroversion was inevitably weighted toward the former, yet outward expression told in the moment, both at micro- and macro-levels. It was played and thus heard as if in a single breath. Following a questing introduction, sad and vehement, seeming both to confront the terrible, tragic truth of existence and yet also to move on, Meistersinger-like, to cope with it in complexity, the finale seemed to hark back to earlier Beethoven, the Razumovsky quartets in particular, yet also to know that it could not merely return. And yet, it persisted. Such, after all, is our lot. If our world is going to end, then let it be here.

Salzburg Mozartwoche (5) - Hagen Quartet, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, 30 January 2024

Grosser Saal, Mozarteum

Haydn: String Quartet in D minor, op.76 no.2, Hob. III:76, ‘Fifths’
Mozart: String Quartet in D minor, KV 421/417b
Beethoven: String Quartet in C-sharp minor, op.131

Lukas Hagen, Rainer Schmidt (violins)

Veronika Hagen (viola)

Clemens Hagen (cello)

Image: Wolfgang Lienbacher

Three string quartets in minor keys, two of them in the same minor key, might sound like an overload of misery, or at least darkness, but matters were more mixed in this Hagen Quartet Mozartwoche recital. It was not exactly full of the joys of spring, but then we have some way to go in our Winterreise before we reach such joys. More to the point, we could enjoy a cornucopia of invention from three of the supreme masters of the genre, Mozart rightly at the centre. 

Haydn was, of course, as close to the inventor of the string quartet as makes little matter, certainly its ‘father’ in a way he was not, as once was claimed, of the symphony. He was represented by his ‘Fifths’ Quartet, written at least five years after Mozart’s death, but his voice arguably seemed the oldest here, not least with respect to a surprising approach towards ‘early music’ sound at its opening. Whatever the issues of ‘style’, motivic integrity and emotional intensity are the crucial things for the first movement; they were certainly to be found here. The development’s very particular course was vividly communicated, bringing us to a recapitulation of drama, both on the motivic and the broader harmonic levels, midway between the High Baroque and Beethoven. Melodic grace and expressive depth characterised the second movement variations, major/minor oscillation key to their progress. Vigour and rigour were insistently common to both minuet and trio, as well as to the finale. We tend to associate the daemonic with Mozart and Beethoven in this key, but Haydn here made his claim just as strong, through material and sheer originality in its working that could be only his. This was a fine mental work-out, moving in equal measure: that is, first-rate Haydn. 

Mozart in D minor followed: the second of his quartets dedicated to Haydn. Not that it did not possess many of the qualities ascribed above to Haydn, but what struck me immediately was the greater, more personal pathos, inviting one in to a drama whose subjectivity suggested this might actually be ‘Mozart’s’ drama too, albeit with a question mark such as one would never sense, rightly or wrongly, with Beethoven. The Hagen Quartet made no apologies for the complexity of the first movement, greatly admired by Schoenberg, its development counterpoint Janus-faced in protomodernism and archaism—or so one could fancy. The turn to the minor for the recapitulation’s second group was echt-Mozart, of course, and so it sounded here. The Andante first breathed a warm consolation that was yet fragile, followed by a vehemence sometimes tragic, sometimes merely stark: terms were thus set, to be properly developed. There was no doubting the vehemence of the minuet either, nor the necessary contrast of memories of Salzburg serenading in its trio. If the finale seemed to suggest Schubert, it often does on the page too. The idiocy one often hears about Classical variation form somehow being lesser than that of the Baroque or Romanticism was once again so utterly confounded as to have one wonder how anyone might have thought such a thing in the first place. Perhaps the Hagens might have exercised a tighter grip at times, but there was virtue in not pressing too hard. 

By the end of that first half, my ears were ready for a new key. Beethoven offered that – and not only that – in the advent and unfolding of his C-sharp minor Quartet. The ineffable sadness of the first-movement fugue, so moving and prophetic for Wagner, was expressed without exaggeration, material apparently speaking ‘for itself’, albeit with a (relatively) gentle sforzando nudge for the final note of the subject during the exposition. Everything, it seemed, came from its first statement. As Webern once put it, ‘To develop everything … from one principal idea! That’s the strongest unity… But in what form? That’s where art comes in!’ Art certainly came in here, at its rarest and most sublime. For whilst this is undoubtedly holy ground, it was so not because we have designated as such, but through intense, honest, ultimately radiant expression: Beethoven’s, above all, but also surely that of the performers. 

A quizzical second movement and good-natured third led us to twin complexity and simplicity in the central fourth. Depth and direction were prey to ‘late’ instability, yet were never quite defeated, that instability transformed into a guiding principle for the scherzo whose manic rigour seemed to take us all the way to Bartók, even Schoenberg, and perhaps even beyond. It may, even though one ‘knew’ otherwise, have seemed to be hurtling towards a conclusion, but serene intervention in the guise of the sixth movement and something approaching tragedy in the finale ensured there were no easy answers—or even questions. This final movement hallowed both ‘old’ and ‘new’, again posing the question ‘how to end it all?’ A signal strength of the Hagens’ performance was that, again irrespective of whether one ‘knew’, one felt that all was in the balance until the very end.

Lisiecki/COE/Manze - Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn, 24 October 2023

Kammermusiksaal

Beethoven: Overture: Coriolan, op.62
Mozart: Piano Concerto no.21 in C major, KV 467
Haydn: Symphony no.98 in B-flat major

Jan Lisiecki (piano)

Chamber Orchestra of Europe

Andrew Manze (conductor)

In some ways, this concert proved a mixed bag, but it was well planned and it came right where ultimately it mattered most. Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture was the weakest of the three performances. The symphonic Beethoven continues to elude not only, it seems, the grasp of most though not all contemporary conductors; this seems often to hold for audiences too, seemingly unaware as they lap up the latest fads of what they are missing. Was ever there a time when we needed Beethoven more? Not since the 1940s when, ironically, such music seemed better able to speak. Listen to Furtwängler in this overture, and the tragic impulse will never have felt more immanent. Alas, justified postwar suspicion of totalities has now degenerated into a weird mixture of circumscribing dogmatism and neoliberal pick-and-mix. 

That, to be fair, was not what we heard here. Andrew Manze comes from the ‘period’ side of the tracks, but his work now is mostly with modern orchestras and he seems genuinely interested to discover what can be achieved with them. Not for him, nor indeed for the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, some perverse and unsuccessful attempt to imitate a ‘period’ ensemble (save for natural trumpets). The COE was handed no vibrato-Verbot; rather it sounded a little bright of tone and lacked, even in a small hall and on a very small stage, heft, strings a somewhat un-Beethovenian 9.8.6.5.3. We heard great precision, urgency, and a good sense of line; there was certainly none of that unphrased choppiness that passes for ‘rhetoric’ in certain quarters. The clue to what was missing lay in the second group. It did not yield or melt, let alone console; it simply continued, in strangely similar vein. Raised in genuinely non- and even anti-Romantic Neue Sachlichkeit, a conductor such as Klemperer would have had no need to slow here either. Carving into granite rather than channelling Furtwängler’s volcanic lava, he nonetheless conveyed what was at stake. This seemed ‘only’ to be a superior curtain-raiser; at least for poor, Romantic old me, it lacked meaning. 

With Mozart, we were on surer ground. A Mozart piano concerto – more than a Mozart symphony – can unfold dramatically with greater ease from a small orchestra. Much of the writing, after all, truly is chamber music—and there is a sense of chamber music writ large, albeit in combination with symphonism, that is less evident in his symphonies, let alone those of Haydn and Beethoven. Manze is, on this evidence, a fine accompanist, as of course is the orchestra in general, sounding both polished and warm. The orchestra yielded a little more, especially when it came to woodwind passages. And Jan Lisiecki Lisiecki’s singing tone and command of chiaroscuro marked him out as a fine Mozartian as well as a fine pianist. His entry came very much from within the orchestra; he was one of them, primus inter pares, at least to begin with, playing muscular yet sensitive. Balance was excellent throughout; everyone was listening to each other. (Yes, that should go without saying, but does not always.) With that, came a freedom that had eluded the Beethoven performance. The COE strings played as if their lives depended on it; Lisiecki in turn serenaded them as if his did. Ironically, it sounded closer to Beethoven, whilst still very much being Mozart, than Coriolan had. Both cadenzas were unfamiliar to him: perhaps Lisiecki’s own? They slightly nudged the stylistic envelope, whilst remaining faithful in material: very much what one might hope for, surprises well-crafted rather than shocking. And here in the first movement, as elsewhere, Mozart’s major-minor polarity properly told. 

As with the rest of the concerto, indeed the rest of the concert, the slow movement’s tempo was well chosen—and well established. It provided a framework for melody, harmony, and of course deep sadness, as well as twin resignation and joy in its face, all to combine. Piano cross-rhythms tugged at the heartstrings, as did woodwind chromatic inflections. All was greater than the sum of its parts. The finale was characterful, possessed of enough weight without the slightest heaviness. Performance from all was detailed without preciousness. It was, all in all, a lovely performance, to which Lisiecki added some Chopin in its vein. 

Haydn’s Symphony no.98 fell somewhere in between. I could not help but feel it would have benefited from a larger orchestra; this music only sounds close to Beethoven because it is. Playing, however, was excellent throughout; the problem, some might argue, lay with my taste (or lack thereof). I think there was something more to it than that, though, especially in the first movement. What ensued lacked a sense of dialectical necessity, or indeed dialectics at all. There was much to admire, though, the development (perhaps surprisingly, given what I have just said) coming off best, with great clarity and fury, indeed opening with a sense of confusion or even chaos to peer forward to Haydn’s ‘Representation’ thereof in The Creation, as soon to come. Likewise, we heard a fine sense of exultation to the coda, however odd I may find the sound of natural trumpets; it just needed to be more evidently and harder won. 

Manze’s tempo for the Adagio again, quite simply, worked. Perhaps a little faster than once we might have heard, it nonetheless sounded with the character of an ‘Adagio’, never shading in that respect into an ‘Andante’. Colours, not least those of a darker complexion, were well painted. And the movement as a whole developed in a way only the central section of the first movement had. I did not especially care for harpsichord continuo tinkling here or elsewhere, but it is difficult to argue against it in this symphony, given the written-out keyboard part in the finale. That had nothing to do, I should add, with Matthew Fletcher’s sensitive, astute realisation of Haydn’s bass; I just do not find it added much or ever does. The minuet was properly dance-like whilst maintaining both rigour and vigour. Its trio charmed: for me a highlight to the whole performance, strings and woodwind equally excellent. 

Manze knew how to impart movement character once more, this time for the finale: emphatically a ‘Haydn finale’. Variety in articulation was always expressive rather than applied for its own, ear-catching sake. Haydn’s tonal map was well communicated too; a modulation could really be heard and felt in musicodramatic terms. Some, though not all, of its twists and turns might have been more theatrically conveyed—but then I might have complained about exaggeration. At any rate, all was present and correct, and Marieke Blankestijn offered Johann Peter Salomon’s violin part with warm understanding. Fletcher prepared well for his moment in the sun—and then: out of nowhere (at least I had not noticed him arrive on stage) Lisiecki played the keyboard part on the piano, which I had noticed moved to the side of the stage rather than disappeared. It was a true coup de théâtre, as well as luxury casting, and had me forget any minor reservations. I left, as I am sure did those on and off stage, with a smile on my face. Haydn, I have no doubt, would have approved and applauded.

Quatuor Ébène: Haydn, Bartók, and Schubert, 10 October 2023

Kammermusiksaal

Haydn: String Quartet in G minor, Hob. III:33, op.20 no.3
Bartók: String Quartet no.3, Sz 85
Schubert: String Quartet no.15 in G major, D 887

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

This was an outstanding concert: three masterpieces of the string quartet repertoire in performances that were not only of the highest quality but also, especially in Schubert’s case, constantly (in a good way) surprising. The Quatuor Ébène, here with Yuya Okamato substituting for regular cellist Raphaël Merlin, is of course one of the world’s leading chamber ensembles; I doubt anyone would question that. But there was absolutely no resting on laurels.

If a Death on the Maiden I heard from this quartet fourteen years ago had announced a Schubert raging against the dying of the light, this G major Quartet took such tendencies further. Not only was this anything but a comfortable, Biedermeier Schubert, it was perhaps the most brazenly modernistic incarnation of the composer I have heard: certainly so when it comes to quartet-playing. There were times when I might have thought this music from a century later, especially coming as it did after Bartók’s Third Quartet, although then I remembered late Beethoven—and appreciated just how much vehement strength of purpose was shared between the two composers. Not that lyricism, whether in the first movement or elsewhere, was absent, but it was never merely lyrical, never a chance for repose. This is not how I should always like to hear Schubert, but that is not the point. Its compelling instability, within an overarching command of form and structure, had it make sense, almost like never before. A disconcerting combination of nervous energy and E minor melancholy characterised the second movement. Ferocious, grandly rhetorical outbursts to rival anything in Winterreise, made their point both in themselves but also, crucially, in relation to the music surrounding them. The scherzo was similarly febrile and full of startling dynamic contrasts. Even its Trio afforded little in the way of relaxation. Deeply ambiguous, heard as if through the haze of an uncomfortable summer night, its dreams seemed to tend towards a delirium carried through into a finale whose tipsy mood swings might charm yet could never console.

That 2009 Wigmore Hall concert had featured the same Bartók quartet. My memory is far too faded to attempt a comparison; suffice it to say that I was mightily impressed on both occasions. The first of its four parts vividly set out a number of dialectical contrasts and connections. Bartók does that, of course, but he needs his players to do so too. This they did in a performance as intent on making every note count as if it had been Webern, though the sheer profusion of melody on offer put me in mind of Mozart and Schoenberg too. The transition to the second part, as to each of the four parts, was splendidly handled: not only convincing but thrilling. Cello pizzicato having incited an infernal dance, themes could be turned upside down, inside out: always themselves, yet always new, a veritable homage to Bach. The ‘Ricapitulazione della prima parte’ again combined the desolate and the welcoming, the ensuing Coda having its mysteries unlocked through recognition that gesture and motivic transformation were dependent on one another, even two sides to the same coin.

First on the programme was Haydn’s G minor Quartet, op.20 no.3. Just as much as in the Bartók that followed, the players ensured that every note and its connections to what had gone and what would follow truly mattered. The freshness announced in the first movement, with a continuous development at least to rival that to be heard in the two later works spoke – and sang – in a Sturm und Drang manner that served as a meeting-point for what, with the broadest brush, we might think of as ‘Baroque’ and ‘Classical’ tendencies. There was no attempt to smooth the dissonances of the Menuetto; rather they registered fully within a euphonious balance that permitted the richness of Haydn’s inner parts to have their say. The slow movement was similarly rich, as it were, in its plain-spokenness, again characterised by something close to Schoenbergian developing variation. A tonal surprise to take one’s breath away such as one might expect from Schubert was as perfectly prepared as it was executed. The finale benefited from a different yet equal variety of intensity, suited to its character and function, replete with unexpected turns that, once heard, could never have been otherwise. The Quatuor Ébène brought all these to life in a vivid theatre of the imagination.

Jerusalem Quartet - Mozart, Prokofiev, and Brahms - 30 May 2023

Wigmore Hall

Mozart: String Quartet no.21 in D major, KV 575
Prokofiev: String Quartet no.2 in F major, Op.92
Brahms: String Quartet no.1 in C minor, op.51 no.1

Alexander Pavolvsky, Sergei Bressler (violins)

Ori Kam (viola)

Kyril Zlotnikov (cello)

 

A wonderful concert from beginning to end. The Jerusalem Quartet treated Mozart as he should be treated: the players’ tone rich and cultivated. Opening tone would not have been taken for the Amadeus Quartet, yet would surely have been recognised by them. Fineness of tone was certainly no end in itself, though; it enlivened and enabled Mozart’s structures from the first movement onward in coming to life as form. There was rhetoric, where required, but this again was properly integrated, not as far too often a substitute for formal communication. For above all, every phrase was imbued with a sense of life and was formally directed. The cliché of the Classical string quartet as conversation may be too worn by now, but it seemed born anew, rejuvenated by a true sense of the operatic solo, duet, trio, and of course quartet. The Andante breathed the evening air of Mozart’s Salzburg serenades, albeit refracted through a late(r) combination of the vital and the reflective: Così-like, one might say. Kyril Zlotnikov eagerly rose to the regal challenge of Frederick William II’s part: first among equals; or, as his uncle might have had it, first servant of the ensemble. That was all the more so in a stylish minuet, propelled both harmonically and rhythmically, both of the eighteenth century and peering beyond it. Brief withdrawal of vibrato in the finale, for expressive rather than dogmatic reasons, made its point in an account as full of life as I have ever heard. Intimations of Beethoven were clear, emerging from score and performance in the most natural, effortless way imaginable. 

The first movement of Prokofiev’s Second Quartet sounded strikingly folk-influenced, which was not to say folklike (an important distinction, I think, both in work and performance). Origins, putative or imaginary, were relished and yet transformed into something new. Prokofiev trademarks were all there: melodic profusion, side-slipping, even the occasional grotesquerie of old, in a performance that evidently relished the composer, his language, and his individual approach to this hallowed genre. A rapt, even visionary opening to the central Adagio emerged from the intensity of the players’ encounter with the score. The second section’s oddball humour came as release, final darkness offering similarly consequent contrast. The finale likewise emerged out of, yet also in, its predecessor’s shadows, in almost operatic fashion, perhaps filmic too. One could almost see the scenes, of whatever kind, the music might have portrayed—not unlike, say, Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements. Superficial similarities with Bartók served mostly – rightly, in my view – to underline how different his music is. Zlotnikov’s extraordinary cadenza incited a truly impassioned climax from all, before the composer led them on a quite different path – how typical of him – to conclusion. 

Taut urgency, not least in more lyrical passages, was apparent from the outset of Brahms’s First Quartet. One felt his struggle in the first movement and beyond, not least his struggle with Beethoven, motivic and otherwise. This is C minor, after all. The intensity of its close was as if I had never heard it before, prior to subsiding to the uneasiest of peace. There was more rapt, if far from untroubled, lyricism to be heard in Brahms’s second movement. Arguably more idiomatic than Prokofiev’s, it is certainly more typical, if such writing can ever truly be considered ‘typical’. Haunted by a host of German Romantic ghosts, musical and perhaps extramusical, it now placed Schubert first among equals. If that were decidedly ambiguous consolation, the post-Schumann darkness of the scherzo led in the opposite direction, to a chiaroscuro the more wondrous the closer one listened. Its trio offered relief of sorts, yet such relief was immediately complicated, not least metrically, presenting Haydn as an ‘as if…’. Further turns of the screw in the finale ushered in a torrential and ultimately tragic outpouring of absolute finality. 

As an encore, the Adagio from Haydn’s String Quartet in F minor, op.20 no.5, provided sunny contrast, albeit a ray of winter sunshine on the cusp of spring. Poise proved the key, rather than a contrast, to its expressive riches.