Prom 28 - Power/BBC SO/Knussen - Dukas, Turnage, Schuller, and Scriabin, 6 August 2015

Royal Albert Hall

Dukas – L’Apprenti sorcier

Turnage – On Opened Ground
Schuller – Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee
Scriabin – The Poem of Ecstasy

Lawence Power (viola)

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Oliver Knussen (conductor)

 

Try as I might, I could not discern a common theme or line to this programme, although there were certain connections to be made between some of the pieces. No matter: it opened my ears to two new works (new both to me and to the Proms), and was all very well performed.

 

Dukas’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is not heard so often as one might expect. I am not sure I have heard it sound so hard-edged before; ideas of something childish or even childlike were banished on no uncertain terms. Oliver Knussen’s reading began quite deliberately, the opening offering a languor that perhaps drew it a little closer to Debussy. It was full of expectation too, before taking an angular course, which yet remained rather jolly. A strong sense of narrative was imparted throughout, without detracting from the musical substance.

 

Mark-Anthony Turnage’s On Opened Ground was commissioned by the Cleveland Orchestra for Yuri Bashmet; Lawrence Power, who gave the British premiere in 2004, joined the BBC Symphony Orchestra for its first Proms performance. The first movement, ‘Cadenza and Scherzino’, gently upsets preconceived notions of ordering. More important than that, its subtle opening, with quiet accompaniment – had I not known otherwise, its hinting at refractions of the viola might have had me thinking of electronics – captivates, draws one in to an absorbing exploration of the viola and its potential relationships with the symphony orchestra.  Later, the ‘Scherzino’ section dances, hints at post-Bergian blues – Berg’s Violin Concerto more than once came to mind – and, above all, sings in a voice that is recognisably Turnage’s. The stillness of the close proved magical: testament to a fine performance as well as mastery of orchestration. The second of the two movements, ‘Interrupted Song and Chaconne’, begins in rapt fashion I am tempted to call ‘pastoral’ or at least ‘elegiac’. There develops some sense of conflict between soloist and orchestra, as if the latter is determined to thwart the former, but Turnage’s keen sense of drama permits another way, resolving itself through the working out of a chaconne: at times Big Band-ish, at others, frankly Romantic, its Romanticism seemingly arising from the material rather than the easy option beloved of so many neo-tonal composers. I have not always responded warmly to Turnage’s work, but certainly did so on this occasion.

 

The other Proms premiere was of Gunther Schuller’s Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee: suite-like, and full of incident, often quietly surprising. The opening ‘Antique Harmonies’,  hieratic orchestrally as well as harmonically, prepared the way for a delightfully quirky, even capricious ‘Abstract Trio’, played only by three instruments at any one time. ‘Little Blue Devil’ offered a possible connection with Turnage and jazz: very much at home rather than depicting or imitating. ‘The Twittering Machine’, by contrast, seemed to move between other, quite different, 1950s style: a journey, one might say, from swarming to pointillism; or, alternatively, a hint of early Stockhausen (or is it perhaps amused by him?) with a dash of Amériques-like material (albeit with far more sparing use of the orchestra). Flute arabesques from the Gallery, soon joined by other instruments in counterpoint, were the abiding memory of the curiously Orientalist ‘Arab Village’. ‘An Eerie Moment’ is more than a little suggestive of various movements from Schoenberg’s op.16 Five Orchestral Pieces, the contrast with the concluding ‘Pastorale’ perhaps the greatest of all. Klee-like? I am not sure; perhaps I am too wedded to the idea of Webern as the musical manifestation of Klee. But that is neither here nor there, really; I should happily hear more where this came from.

 

Finally, The Poem of Ecstasy. I cannot really take the piece seriously, although many musicians I greatly admire, Knussen amongst them, clearly do. Such music, even if one discounts the composer’s megalomania, tends to have me reflect how economical Wagner is with his climaxes. Scriabin’s meandering is clearly deliberate, but I am never entirely sure to what end. Knussen and the BBC SO nevertheless offered an enjoyable, wholehearted performance, opening with luscious, vibrato-laden languor (a possible connection with the opening of the Dukas?) Although Scriabin’s climaxes come thick and fast, Knussen shaped them with great skill, in as lucid a reading as I can recall. There was some wonderfully evocative afterglow to be experienced, and it is always a joy to hear the Albert Hall organ. Those bells, though…?

Philharmonia/Dohnányi - Bartók, Mozart, and Beethoven, 28 June 2015

Royal Festival Hall

Bartók – Divertimento

Mozart – Sinfonia concertante for violin and viola in E-flat major, KV 364
Beethoven – Symphony no.7 in A major, op.92

Arabella Steinbacher (violin)

Lawrence Power (viola)

Philharmonia Orchestra

Christoph von Dohnányi (conductor) 

 

The Philharmonia’s closing concert of the 2014-15 season showed no sign of winding down, not that one would expect such from a conductor such as Christoph von Dohnányi. This was not the most ‘Hungarian’ of Bartók performances, but it was well considered, and, like any composer worthy of the name, Bartók does not benefit from being defined in nationalistic terms. The first movement offered alert, sometimes even febrile string playing. Climaxes and contrasting intimacies were very well shaped, rhythms not without a tellingly ominous quality. A broad emotional range, then, was traversed, as in the slow movement, whose contours were equally intelligible throughout. In the finale, the solo intrumentalists sounded especially impressive, quite beyond reproach. Counterpoint was admirably clear in a performance which, rightly, looked back to Bachian inspiration without ever losing sight of the composer’s inimitable voice.

Judging by the frequency of performances he has conducted of Mozart’s great E-flat major Sinfonia Concertante, Dohnányi is very fond of the work – and, frankly, who could fail to be? Its greatness, likewise, did not fail to announce itself from the orchestral tone and direction in the opening tutti. ‘Authenticity’ might never have happened; instead, solid, unfashionable, musical virtues were the order of the day. The Philharmonia’s evenness and beauty of tone during a long crescendo were certainly of a golden age. Arabella Steinbacher and Lawrence Power proved equally intelligent, sensitive, and gracious. Mozart is never an arena in which to attempt point-scoring, and it was never attempted here, but there was nothing bland to the performance either; the score was simply, or not so simply, treated with the respect it deserves. Chamber-like collaboration between the soloists was exemplary. Both of them took on, rightly, more of a solo voice in the Andante, which, as a whole, sounded ineffably sad, though never inappropriately bitter. A swift tempo for the finale worked well too; this was Apollonian Mozart, which yet did not lack anything in depth. (As Nietzsche put it, the Greeks ‘were superficial – out of profundity!’ Well, not quite like that, but anyway…) Mozart’s symmetries and his formal dynamism came together as only so fine a performance of his music can possibly suggest.

Nowadays, conducting Beethoven convincingly seems as tall an order as doing so for Mozart. It is good, therefore, to report that Dohnányi passed the test with flying colours – perhaps because he had nothing to prove. The first movement’s introduction offered both weight and delicacy. Although slightly on the slow side for what many are used to today, it was certainly none the worse for that. Crucially, every note sounded necessary. (That ought to go without saying, but alas does not.) Whilst it is doubtless fanciful to think of this too emphatically as Klemperer’s old orchestra, the thought would not quite leave me alone. Dohnányi’s handling of the transition to the exposition was that of an old (in the nicest sense!) pro: almost imperceptible. And then, came true exhilaration; there was no mistaking the vigour in the Philharmonia’s playing, nor its freshness. Form was dynamic, as it must be, and yet so rarely is. Double basses sounded duly weird and goal-oriented in the celebrated coda. When the movement had come to a close, I found myself astonished at its concision, almost as if it had been the first movement of the Fifth. The second movement flowed with a typical lack of showiness, although I could have done without an intervention from mobile telephone. Inevitability – difficult to describe, but impossible to mistake – was the properly Beethovenian characteristic, bar that intervention from another world. The music seemed to encompass tragedy, without being narrowly defined by it. Rhythm offered absolute security for the movement’s foundations, upon which composer and performers could build. The Scherzo was very fast, without sounding harried, its Trio providing relative relief, but no drop in tension. How was that possible? In a word: harmony. Joy won out in the finale, although this was no easy victory. Tradition, not as mere Mahlerian Schlamperei, but understood in a properly Catholic, developmental sense, also proved a victor. So too did Beethoven.

Paul Lewis and friends - Beethoven and Schubert, 22 December 2014

Wigmore Hall

Beethoven – String Trio in C minor, op.9 no.3

Cello Sonata in C major, op.102 no.1

Schubert – Piano Quintet in A major, D 667, ‘The Trout’

Paul Lewis (piano)

Alexander Sitkovetsky (violin)

Lawrence Power (viola)

Bjørg Lewis (cello)

Alois Posch (double bass)

 

This was a delightful pre-Christmas concert, in which a group of very fine musicians came together and offered something more than the sum of their parts and likewise more than the sum of the already appealing programme’s parts. First we heard Beethoven’s op.9 no.3 String Trio in a splendidly alert account, the sense of responsiveness between players at least as great as in a quartet performance. The first movement’s violence registered fully, almost as if this were later Beethoven, but the overall ‘Classical’ line remained intact. Its second subject sounded utterly gorgeous. The development sounded unusually close to Mozart in C minor mode, his piano sonata in that key in particular: perhaps a matter of motivic working? Febrile intensity of playing reminded us that we were also not so very far from Schoenberg – his own String Trio of course one of the very greatest essays in the genre. In the Adagio con espressione, notwithstanding the undoubtedly Beethovenian manner of the melodic ‘surface’, the method rightly underlined the composer’s debt to Haydn. The wonder of the trio texture was fully communicated in gloriously rich tone, though never for its own sake. The third movement sounded as a true scherzo: furious, but with none of that all-too-common sacrifice of harmony to rhythm. (As if in a it were ever a matter of either/or!) The trio again offered Haydnesque reminiscence – up to a point. A duly goal-oriented finale proved anything but inflexible, showing how Beethoven had learned his tragic lessons from Mozart. This was playing of an intensity that would not have shamed a performance of the Fifth Symphony, the scale of Beethoven’s ambition fully realised. Although it seems almost unnecessary to mention this, given the excellence of the performance, Alexander Sitkovetsky was a very late substitute for an indisposed Lisa Batiashvili; one would never have known.

 

Paul and Bjørg Lewis were the artists for the C major Cello Sonata, op.102 no.1. Whatever the presentiments in the Trio, there was no mistaking the real ‘late’ thing here, its distilled simplicity and fathomless profundity already to the fore in the first movement’s introduction. Drama, in whatever sense, asserted itself thereafter through typical ‘late’, dialectical complexity. A concentration worthy of Webern was the reward. The second movement struck uncommonly well that difficult balance, or dialectic, between fragility and sublimity: difficult not least since it is not necessarily the most overt of those relationships. Occasional intonational slips were of minimal import. The concluding Allegro vivace section seemed on the verge of the late piano sonatas and, in its most abrupt outbursts, again on the verge of Webern too. There was of course Bachian counterpoint to be heard, but quite rightly, the realisation of Beethoven’s tonal planning and drama retained, even strengthened, its roots in Haydn and Mozart.

 

All players were on stage for the Trout Quintet. The twin ambitions of work and performance were announced in grand style in the first movement’s opening bars. This was a gloriously big-boned performance, full of life and chiaroscuro. The piano sounded quite different, brighter and avowedly post-Mozartian: a matter of Schubert’s writing, of course, but also of Paul Lewis’s performance. If anything, he sounded still more at home in Schubert than in Beethoven. The performance of the Andante was full of potentiality, offering a fine sense of where Brahms and even Schoenberg might have come from, Brahms especially strongly anticipated in the relish accorded to the movement’s harmonic and melodic richness. The motivic insistence of Alois Posch’s double bass was not the least valued contributor to its progress. Both difference and similarity with respect to Beethoven again registered in the scherzo: this was certainly a more good-humoured note than had been struck in the first half. A beautifully relaxed trio maintained rigour and vigour. The celebrated variations were loved – how could they not be? – but never sentimentalised; this remained a thoroughly vital performance. Unity was the hallmark of the finale, its somewhat problematical form managing nevertheless to bring together the work as a whole. This was decidedly superior Hausmusik.

 

Takács Quartet/Power - Brahms and Haydn, 20 February 2013

Wigmore Hall

Brahms – String Quartet no.2 in A minor, op.51 no.2

Haydn – String Quartet in B-flat major, op.76 no.4, ‘Sunrise’
Brahms – String Quintet in G major, op.111

Edward Dusinberre, Károly Schranz (violins)

Geraldine Walther (viola)

András Fejér (cello)

Lawrence Power (viola)

 

 

The Takács Quartet, Wigmore Hall Associate Artists, is this week offering two concerts in which a Brahms quartet and a Haydn quartet are presented with a Brahms quintet. Friday’s concert will bring Brahms’s op.51 no.1, Haydn’s op.76 no.5, and Brahms’s Piano Quintet (with Charles Owen). This concert had the second of Brahms’s quartets, Haydn’s ‘Sunrise’ Quartet, op.76 no.4, and the G major Quintet, for which the Takács players were joined by violist Lawrence Power.

 

Brahms’s A minor Quartet opened in cultivated fashion, the players offering a flexibility that would pervade the performance as a whole. This was not the most richly Romantic Brahms, and there was perhaps a degree of loss in that, but there were gains too. Certainly that unexaggerated flexibility of tempo in the first movement and beyond seemed consonant in the best, that is un-slavish, sense with what we know of Brahms’s own performing practice in his music. A fine balance was upheld and explored between themes, motifs, and fragments – at times, almost Webern-like – and the longer line, the overall cumulative effect very much that of the ‘developing variation’ Schoenberg discerned in Brahms’s music and his own. Form was properly dynamic in conception and execution. The second movement was again very well-judged, part-way between Schumannesque intermezzo and something ‘later’ – always a concern in Brahms. ‘Dramatic’ outbursts made their point, yet were seamlessly integrated into a greater whole. There was melancholy, to be sure, but not, as in Nietzsche’s cruel jibe, ‘melancholy of impotence’, likewise in the third movement, its opening dramatically pregnant, its later counterpoint handled lightly yet without being underestimated. Counterpoint was afforded greater weight in the finale, in a reading of increasing cumulative power, which, tensions beneath the surface notwithstanding, yet retained a certain Viennese elegance.

 

Haydn’s ‘Sunrise’ Quartet sounded from its opening bars, as it should, as though Haydn were very much part of the same tradition as Brahms and yet in a sense more ‘timely’, less ‘late’, in his exploratory Classicism. The first movement showed admirable display for Haydn’s concision and spirit; if I have heard more extrovert performances, this nevertheless could not help but make me smile. Every note counted, as it must. Interplay between slow opening material – the apparent ‘introduction’ that is actually the beginning of the exposition proper – and what follows proved almost operatic, Mozart not so distant. The slow movement was heard as if in one, immensely variegated, breath, a model of intelligent and inviting Haydn playing. Infectious Schwung characterised the minuet, though its reprise suffered somewhat from imperfect intonation; the trio offered a delightful sense of partially deconstructed rusticity. There was again a Mozartian – well, almost Mozartian – poise to the final movement, but the rigour to the working out was unmistakeably Haydn’s own, as were the surprises.

 

Tuning was, rather to my surprise, a little wayward from the cellist in the opening of Brahms’s G major String Quintet; that had been rectified the second time around. The performance as a whole did not quite seem to hit its stride until the second subject, the opening material sounding slightly forced in its projection. It was a joy throughout, though, to hear that extra richness afforded by the addition of Power’s viola; if ever a composer were likely to benefit from such an opportunity, it was surely Brahms. The flexibility of the opening quartet was once again very much in evidence, especially dring the development and recapitulation. What one might call ‘detailed intensity’ came to the fore in the second movement, which nevertheless retained a sense of overall simplicity, however deceptive, almost akin to a superior ‘song without words’. The febrile quality to the third movement seemed just right: unstable and yet ultimately fulfilling, redolent once again of the worlds of Schoenberg and Webern. However much he might try, Brahms at his ‘late’ juncture cannot recapture Haydn’s unbounded joy. High, if mediated, spirits registered all the same in the finale.

Proms Summer Matinee 3: I Fagiolini/Britten Sinfonia/Wigglesworth - Dowland, Britten, Gesualdo, Dean, Monteverdi, and Olivero, 21 August 2010

Cadogan Hall

Dowland – Flow, my tears
Britten – Lachrymae: Reflections on a song of Dowland, for viola and orchestra
Gesualdo – Responsories of the Office of Tenebrae for Maundy Thursday – II: ‘Tristis est animas mea’
Gesualdo – Sixth Book of Madrigals: ‘Moro, lasso, al mio duolo’
Brett Dean – Carlo
Monteverdi – Madrigali guerreri et amorosi: ‘Lamento della ninfa’
Monteverdi – L’Orfeo – Act II, Messenger Scene
Betty Olivero – Neharot, Neharot (United Kingdom premiere)

Lawrence Power (viola)
Ian Watson (accordion)
I Fagiolini
Robert Hollingworth (director)
Britten Sinfonia
Ryan Wigglesworth (conductor)


Preliminaries out of the way as quickly as possible: first, the innovation of Proms Saturday Matinees at the Cadogan Hall is welcome, and programming appears to have been liberated by the smaller space; second, programme booklets could do with greater attention. Though free of charge, a welcome change from the excessive prices charged at the Royal Albert Hall for what is often little more than a collection of advertisements, that ‘little more’ at the main venue at least includes a modicum of information concerning works and composers. Texts and translations are provided, as are biographical notes on the performers, but it is a controversial hierarchy that considers them more important than works. There is, admittedly, a degree of spoken introduction, but I heard a few members of the audience comment that they would have liked to know who Brett Dean was. It is, moreover, not mere pedantry to wish that Monteverdi’s ‘Lamento della ninfa’ had been ascribed to his eighth book of madrigals, Gesualdo’s madrigal to his sixth book, and so forth.

As I said, the matinee programmes seem more intelligently constructed than some of their ‘big brothers’ in Kensington Gore. This concert examined three twentieth- and twenty-first century responses to ‘early’ or ‘Renaissance’ music: both descriptions beg more questions than they answer, but the same could be said of any categorisation. Dowland’s Flow, my tears thus preceded Britten’s Lachrymae. Clare Wilkinson sang, to Eligio Quinteiro’s sensitive, musicianly accompaniment on theorbo. Indeed, it is probably fair to say that Quinteiro impressed more consistently than his ‘soloist’. Wilkinson adopted a very ‘Early Music’ style of voice: strictly no vibrato, but little modulation in any respect. More worryingly, there were a couple of occasions on which her breath ran out before her words, leading to faltering at the ends of lines. Diction, however, was impeccable, and by the end of the song, we had become attuned to Dowland’s characteristic melancholy.

His tears flowed into Britten’s Lachrymae, which I had heard the Britten Sinfonia perform in Cambridge in 2008. The orchestra has been extremely fortunate in its viola soloists: first Maxim Rysanov, now Lawrence Power. Once again, I was struck by the way in which Britten’s music finds its voice, emerging out of something between nothingness and Dowland’s music. Melancholy has not only transposed but transmuted. I was also again reminded of Britten’s kinship with Berg: not just the Violin Concerto, whose Bach chorale foreshadows the full statement of Dowland at the end of Britten’s work, but also the febrile writing for string orchestra, suggestive of the Lyric Suite, blossoming under the firm yet generous hand of Ryan Wigglesworth. Moments of ecstasy raised the temperature in a gripping, arguably more dramatic account than that I had heard in Cambridge: both were fine performances, with similar and different virtues. There was not a hint of the intonational difficulties that can sometimes plague performances of works such as this. If only all ‘Early Music’ were performed with the passionate commitment devoted to the Britten…

The next pairing was Gesualdo and Dean. Gesualdo was presented in sacred and profane modes: the ‘Tristis est anima mea’ from his Tenebrae Responses, followed by the madrigal, probably to his own vers, ‘Moro, lasso, al mio duolo’. Christ’s words from Gethsemane, heard as the lights go out on Maundy Thursday, were given a very English reading by I Fagiolini. Hints of something more Italianate upon the word ‘fugam’, referring to the disciples’ flight, were more than balanced by a restraint that had more in common with Choral Evensong than Counter-Reformation Catholicism. Many works can take different performing ‘voices’, and I think Gesualdo’s can, but it was perhaps a pity not to hear something more full-blooded. The madrigal was less restrained, though a degree of vibrato would have imparted some sense of the sensuality the performance lacked. Dissonances and weird melodic twists nevertheless made their mark. However, Robert Hollingworth, the group’s director, is not, on the basis of this performance, possessed of the most ingratiating countertenor voice.

Brett Dean’s Carlo (1997, not that one would know from the booklet) followed, its title implying a response to the man and his scandal – at least to modern audiences – as well as to his music. Nevertheless, the work opens and closes straightforwardly with Gesualdo the composer on tape: the madrigal we had just heard. The downward chromaticism of the madrigal’s opening forms a thread through much of the composition, not least at the end of a glorious orchestral blaze, which put me in mind of a dubiously glorious auto da fé. Falling intervals, hand in hand with a beautifully judged diminuendo, prepared the way ultimately for the final statement of Gesualdo himself. But much had gone on between, all superbly realised by the Britten Sinfonia’s strings under Wigglesworth. Here one heard an ensemble of string soloists, not dissimilar to Richard Tognetti’s Australian Chamber Orchestra, for whom the work was written. The fractures of sampled sound provoked disapproval in a woman sitting in front of me, who turned to all and sundry, hoping, it seemed, to elicit a similar response. Fracture led, however, more often to mediated unity than to further fracture, though the breathy sounds heard later on belied the polite Englishness of the earlier performance. I was a little surprised by the reaction of the American woman seated next to me, who had more than once been politely requested to desist from her distracting fanning during the performance. At one point, she exclaimed, ‘total crap!’ It was still more surprising, then, to see her applaud vigorously at the end of the performance: perhaps she changed her mind; perhaps she was as sane as she was considerate. At any rate, this intriguing piece, which I should be keen to hear again, received a splendidly synchronised performance, complementary in the best sense to the Gesualdo on tape.

Monteverdi and the Israeli composer, Betty Olivero, formed the third and final pairing. Whilst there was none of the exhibitionism that characterises certain modern Italian groups in Monteverdi, there was much less inhibition in I Fagiolini’s performance than there had been in Gesualdo. Emma Tring proved a winning nymph in the lament: a pleasing voice, sensitive to the text and to the music with which it is intertwined. The magic of Monteverdi’s ground bass construction won through, from a continuo group comprising harpsichord (Catherine Pierron), theorbo (Quinteiro, again excellent), and organ (Hollingworth). This led on to the Messenger Scene from L’Orfeo. I Fagiolini’s presentation was somewhat puzzling, in that the Shepherds’ parts were shared out between various singers, confusing the two roles the audience would have seen listed in the programme. There seemed no obvious reason for this – and indeed it highlighted the relative weakness of one particular voice. However, Wilkinson really came into her own here as the Messenger, drawing on a considerably more varied vocal palette than she had employed for the Dowland. Nicholas Hurndall Smith’s Orfeo was not on the grand scale, but he proved as attentive to the text as Tring had in the previous piece. Whatever shortcomings there may have been in the performance, however, the sheer genius of Monteverdi shone through. Gesualdo may have the better biography, but Monteverdi has the infinitely more subtle, more ravishing, more truly dramatic music, even in 1607.

Fast-forward four hundred years to 2007, when Betty Olivero’s Neharot, Neharot was first performed. Distressed by scenes of the Israeli military onslaught upon the Lebanon the previous year, Olivero composed a tribute not only to Monteverdi, but to voices of female suffering. Seeking out such voices from Kurdistan, the Yemen, and elsewhere, she had them recorded by professional Israeli mourners, to provide the tape element for this work. ‘Neharot’, she explained, is the Hebrew for ‘rivers’, so Neharot, Neharot, ‘rivers, rivers,’ might be taken to refer to rivers of tears, rivers of blood. (Tears thus took us back to Dowland and Britten.) Solo viola (Powers again) and accordion (Ian Watson) joined the string orchestra for a clearly committed performance. Olivero considers the viola, not unreasonably, the ‘most intimate’ of the stringed instruments, whilst the accordion is a folk-like ‘voice of humanity’. Certainly the soloists’ performances lived up to these expectations, Powers rhapsodic yet purposeful, Watson soulful yet perhaps hopeful too. Here, of course, it was Monteverdi’s turn to be refracted not only across the centuries, but also geographically. The world of the Mediterranean and beyond is the scene for Olivero’s lament, with hints of the Voci of her teacher, Berio, doubtless drawing on Olivero’s Sephardic upbringing. As with the Dean piece, I should hesitate on the basis of a single hearing to hazard further predictions, but equally, I should be interested to hear the work again, and indeed to hear other works by Olivero. There is an interesting interview between the composer and Jessica Duchen in the Jewish Chronicle (click here).

Once again, then, kudos to the Britten Sinfonia for such imaginative and enlightening programming. Symphony orchestras and concert programmers, please take note…

Jerusalem Quartet/Power - Mozart and Janáček, 22 May 2010

Wigmore Hall

Mozart – String Quartet no.20 in D major, KV 499, ‘Hoffmeister’
Janáček – String Quartet no.1, ‘Kreutzer Sonata’
Mozart – String Quintet in C major, KV 515

Alexander Pavlovsky and Sergei Bresler (violins)
Amihai Grosz, Lawrence Power (violas)
Kyril Zlotnikov (violoncello)

What a pleasure it was to welcome the Jerusalem Quartet and Lawrence Power back to the Wigmore Hall. In March, they played a Mozart quartet and quintet alongside the Debussy quartet; this time, Janáček was the ‘second composer’, equally well served.

The Hoffmeister Quartet, KV 499, received a reading that generally balanced – a crucial word with Mozart – elegance and richness of tone, contrapuntal clarity and harmonic direction. Where many players would have been tempted, probably more than tempted, to rush the opening Allegretto, Allegretto is what we heard. Mozart’s sinuous chromaticism beguiled. The vigorous development section truly, purposefully developed the thematic material, bringing to mind the German Durchführung: this section provides proportional balance but there is much more to it than that. I very much liked the throwaway coda: not too much, just enough. The minuet was excellent, its pace and swing permitting Mozart’s chromaticism once again to tell. Tone was properly Viennese, without a hint of the fashionably astringent. After that, the trio provided a proper contrast, its brooding minor-mode character looking forward to Beethoven. It was a relief to greet an Adagio that was an Adagio, rather than a modishly fast movement such as we hear too all often. The key to this is to have the measure of long phrases and of the detailed writing within. There were some beautiful first violin flights of fantasy from Alexander Pavlosvsky and rich-toned duetting between him and Amihai Grosz. Quite rightly, however, shadows were never too distant; I was put in mind of the slow movement to the G major piano concerto, KV 453. I missed a little more sparkle in the finale, but the quartet’s richness of tone compensated, likewise the density of counterpoint that yet never sounded didactic.

That, however, was my sole reservation concerning the evening’s performance. There followed a marvellous account of Janáček’s first string quartet. The opening bar immediately plunges us into the composer’s unmistakeable sound-world. Longing and vitality were two sides of the same musical coin, ever suffused in lyricism. Repetition and modification of short figures formed the cellular basis for greater musical spans. The second movement shared these characteristics but now in the form of a strange, interrupted polka, vehement and tender, albeit with a bias towards the former. Sadness characterised the third movement, again interruptedly so, on this occasion by truly coruscating tremolando playing on the bridge. There was violence here, which miraculously blossomed into songs of ardent love: not unshakeable, and therefore all the more convincing. The passion of the final movement was again utterly credible, not least for its non-romanticised qualification, for there was startling rawness of emotion in the performance, an ever-present sense of decidedly non-folksy Moravian roots. And yet, there was ecstasy too, an ecstasy that connected the quartet with the composer’s operatic writing in The Cunning Little Vixen and Jenůfa. I have not heard a more convincing, all-consuming performance than this.

Lawrence Power once again joined the players for a Mozart quintet, on this occasion KV 515 in C major. The richness of tone previously heard deepened still further, providing a cushion of velvet upon which Mozart’s melodic twists – how he surprises us with the expected! – to be properly loved, likewise the carefully-crafted irregular phrasing. (How he there reassures us with the unexpected!) There was especial joy to be had in the first movement from Kyril Zlotnikov’s rising cello arpeggio figures: sensitively yet ardently voiced, as life-affirming and yet also as prophetic of Schubert as anything in Mozart. The performance was vocal and conversational throughout, without the slightest hint of the routine; always one felt that the music was of supreme importance, which of course it is. Had I been counting, I should have lost track of the number of occasions on which I smiled knowingly, so much was there to relish. By Mozart’s standards, the minuet is a little dour, or perhaps I simply have not learned to appreciate it. At any rate, the passages in thirds showed how much, in more than one sense, the players were truly in harmony with each other. The trio, however, is an utter delight, graceful and sinuous in performance, fun too: this music has it all. Grosz and Pavlovsky once again seized the opportunity to shine in the slow movement, supported and responded to by every other musician. Control of line was impeccable throughout, with none of the short-breathed phrasing – or rather non-phrasing – all the rage in fashionable quarters. If I had entertained the odd doubt about the finale to the Hoffmeister quartet, I had none in this case. The final movement pulsated with life: sounding easy, though it is of course anything but, voiced with a fine tonal quality one could readily take for granted but should not. Pavlovsky provided some ravishing portamenti, though never for their own sake. The movement as a whole had the character of a dashing sonata-rondo, even if the form is a little more tricky to define, for there was a serious developmental side to it that was neither overlooked nor overplayed. Balance again… I am sorely tempted to describe this as a great performance. Let us hope that the Jerusalem Quartet and Power will record this and the other Mozart quintets. Some Janáček too, please!

Jerusalem Quartet/Power - Mozart and Debussy, 27 March 2010

Wigmore Hall

Mozart – String Quartet no.4 in C major, KV 157
Debussy – String Quartet in G minor, op.10
Mozart – String Quintet no.4 in G minor, KV 516

Alexander Pavlovsky and Sergei Bresler (violins)
Amihai Grosz, Lawrence Power (violas)
Kyril Zlotnikov (violoncello)

A surprising mini-renaissance for the early Mozart string quartets: the Zehetmair Quartet gave an excellent performance of the third just a week and a half before; now came an equally fine fourth from the Jerusalem Quartet. Even Hans Keller, who dismissed the early quartets as ‘on the whole, … quite abominable,’ conceded that the C major quartet was a ‘masterly miniature’. So it sounded here, fully on the scale of the oft-underestimated Salzburg symphonies. True Mozartians would know neither to make unduly extravagant claims for the early works, nor to deny the astonishing achievements to be discovered within; only Mozartian nouveaux riches would be so vulgar as to dismiss this work because it is not the Dissonance Quartet. The Jerusalem Quartet did not condescend: KV 157 emerged as far more than the overture its opening bars might initially, winningly suggest. Fundamental to the emergence of something more was the performance, each player listening attentively and responding to his peers: in short, exemplary quartet-playing. I wondered a little about the extent of the ritenuto at the end of the exposition second time around. Was this a little more than the music could take? In any case, if a fault this were, it was a fault that granted the work stature. The slow movement was never rushed, but nor did it drag, and, like the rest of the quartet, it emerged teeming with life, every line counting for something. The Presto finale fizzed, with more than a hint of the opera house, albeit without exceeding its Milanese scale. Most important, the Jerusalem players had discovered the secret of playing fast without sounding hard-driven: all too rare an accomplishment today.

Debussy’s sole quartet followed. Its relatively early date of writing can cause difficulties; those seeking to discover the overtly – or should that, in this composer’s case, read covertly? – impressionistic Debussy should seek elsewhere. Yet, despite Franckian and Russian antecedents, this could only really be Debussy. Not least of the Jerusalem Quartet’s achievements was therefore to place the work in its stylistic context. Tchaikovsky and Borodin were readily apparent influences, without overpowering that sensibility which can only justly be described as Gallic. Implications of the Franckian cyclical inheritance, whatever Debussy may later have said about ‘one of the more notable Flemish composers,’ were seen, or rather heard, through, especially the recurrence and transformation of the opening motto theme. Intimations of the interludes to Pelléas et Mélisande were present without being hammered home: like that work itself, quiet, though not always, in their intensity. The fleetness of the quintuple-time second movement was as noteworthy as the poise of its slow successor: as Debussy requests, Andantino doucement expressif. One could see as well as hear how Sergei Bresler on second violin altered his tone to echo and indeed to develop the veiled opening statement of Amihai Grosz’s viola. Here and elsewhere, a particular joy was to be had from those sections in which Kyril Zlotnikov’s cello led proceedings, the music reverberating from the bottom up. Rameau would have approved…

After the interval, the acknowledged masterpiece: Mozart’s G minor quintet, in which the players were joined by the excellent Lawrence Power as second violist. A natural, properly Mozartian flow was established from the opening bar of the opening Allegro. Mozart’s G minor daemon and its chromatic implications were voiced, but not to the exclusion of the good-natured lyricism of the second subject. A little more possession might have worked, but there is more room for more than one interpretative stance here, and the pay off would come in the recapitulation’s reiteration of the tonic minor, followed by the understated tragedy of the coda. It was a relief not to endure the dreadful exhibitionism that disfigures so much contemporary Mozart performance, likewise in the ensuing minuet and trio, taken at a relatively expansive tempo, and all the better for it in revealing the composer’s ravishing harmonies. The extra viola could truly be relished here. Again, I wondered whether a touch more vehemence might have added something, but this was greatly preferable to overstatement. It was a heaven-sent mercy to hear the slow movement at a tempo that again allowed the music to breathe: how close to Beethoven we stand here! The players furnished dignity and poise, emotion emerging rather than being externally and thus ineffectively applied. Schubert hovered in the introduction to the finale, and then release: a release, however, not infused with haste, but permitting detail to have its motivic place. From Alexander Pavlovksy’s sweet-toned but never sentimental first violin downwards, this Mozart struck a fine balance between urbanity and emotion, the latter present, but never obscuring the work’s structure.