Salzburg Festival (3) - ‘Hommage à Kurtág’: Brahms, Kurtág, Schumann, and Ligeti, 22 August 2026

Grosser Saal, Mozarteum

Brahms: Trio for violin, horn, and piano, in E-flat major, op.40
Kurtág: Hommage à R.Sch. for clarinet, viola, and piano, op.15d
Schumann: Märchenerzählungen for clarinet, viola, and piano, op.132
Ligeti: Trio for violin, horn, and piano

Noah Bendix-Bagley (violin)

Tabea Zimmermann (viola)

Daniel Ottensamer (clarinet)

Stefan Dohr (horn)

Kirill Gerstein (piano)

Images: © SF/Marco Borrelli

This is what I call programming. Kirill Gerstein essentially brought together two unusual chamber ensembles, him common to both, to perform works by two celebrated pairs of composers: contemporary master and disciple (though more complicated than that) themselves in some sense responding to their predecessors. Joined by Noah Bendix-Bagley and Stefan Dohr for the Brahms and Ligeti for violin, horn, and piano, and by Tabea Zimmermann and Daniel Ottensamer for works by Kurtág and Schumann, Gerstein wrought a moving centenary tribute to György Kurtág, whose life and work in many ways offer a conspectus of the Western classical tradition, such as one would only find at a festival such as Salzburg’s. 

For the Brahms Horn Trio, opening balance sounded a little odd, or perhaps it was more a matter of my ears adjusting. At any rate, this was a fine performance of a work with nowhere to hide—and no reason to need such a place. The first movement’s metrical and harmonic ambiguities offer difficulties for players and listeners alike, but there was no problem at all on the former side. This is difficult music and should never be thought easy listening, but these were musicians who enabled form to emerge as emotional as well as structural progression. The scherzo came to life as an ebullient, even disturbing homage to Mozart and Beethoven, wild in its Brahmsian discipline and in the occasional hint, never realised, that such discipline might be overruled. Its trio offered darkly Romantic balance and, within, a new world of chiaroscuro, prior to a still more intense reprise of the scherzo. The slow movement was darkly introspective to begin with, developing into defiance rather than merely stating it, whether outwardly fragile or overtly impassioned. More than once, I could not help but notice affinities with Die Walküre, its material as well as its mood. (I must consult the score for myself.) The sense of musical ‘lighting’ – slightly different, I think from shading – offered by all three players was exquisitely expressive, founded in yet never to be reduced to harmonic motion. The release of the finale was no less felt, or more remarkable, for its complexity, striking a keen balance between hints of the cyclical and the developing variation that is the essence of so much Brahms. Here was the culmination of a mighty river’s flow. 

Kurtág’s Hommage à R.Sch. brought the ‘other’ ensemble onstage. The first miniature, ‘(merkwürdige Pirouetten des Kapellmeisters Johannes Kreisler)‘ created a scurrying theatre stage of the mind, unmistakeably in the line of Webern, but equally unmistakeably Kurtág. Semi-whispered, hyper-Romantic confidences in the second effected a beautifully moving synthesis at the close, to be disrupted immediately by Florestan/Schoenberg’s third, equally beautiful in Pierrot-like violence, and further balanced or rather sublated in fourth and fifths movement in which semi-return to the mood of the second was, in nicely Schumannesque fashion, complicated by helter-skelter response. The sixth movement, longer than the first five combined, though still relatively brief, brought a properly Kurtágian haunting in response to Pierrot’s comings and goings, crystalline perfection in work and performance the means to emotional and intellectual integrity and depth. This was the air and indeed landscape of another planet, our revels ending with the unshowiest, yet most certain of drumstrokes from Ottensamer: a soldier’s tale, perhaps. 

After the interval, Gerstein, Zimmermann, and Ottensamer returned for Schumann’s late Märchenerzählungen, the first in context offering a whimsy not unrelated to Kurtág’s. This was unmistakeably a fairy tale opening, the page turned: ‘once upon a time…’, the story told with palpable delight from all concerned, and in as ultimately harmonious a world we can imagine this side of Mozart. Its successor proved similarly touching: this may not be music ‘for children’, but there seemed little doubt they would like and ‘get’ it. The rapt euphony of the third piece was also touching in its simplicity. (Again, few composers after Mozart have had that gift, although Kurtág does.) It brought tears to my eyes. Similarly good-humoured, the fourth and final tale was more overtly fantastical, even Hoffmannesque—which returned us to Kurtág and his homage. 

For the Ligeti Trio, the players seemed more immediately at ease than in the Brahms, their instruments ‘speaking’ and indeed singing eloquently from the off. If any other composer occasionally came to mind, it was first Berg (especially on violin), later Bartók (especially on piano); but in reality it could have been none other than Ligeti—and ‘late’ Ligeti at that.  Every note and every relationship between them enchanted as strongly as Schumann’s or Kurtág’s. Such Mozartian ease with such unusual forces announced in the first movement continued throughout all four, the second offering a riveting walk on the post-Bartókian wildside. Bendix-Balgley’s harmonics, Dohr’s contrapuntal lines, Gerstein’s well, everything combined to mesmerise. Talk about having rhythm, Ligeti included—and harmonic rhythm just as much. The third movement sounded at first as if a response to an imagined Schumann march, before pursuing other, very different, though not less fantastical paths in a directness that again suggested the smiling ghost of Bartók. And if hearing this work in the same concert as Brahms’s Trio for the same forces rightly brought difference rather than kinship more strongly to the fore, there was an undeniable Brahms-like satisfaction in what we heard here, ever more so in the final movement: simply itself and unanswerable. Bells tolled for someone or something: maybe for us. If so, the composer of Le Grand Macabre might have reminded us that it would not have been the first time we had failed to notice.

Bendix-Balgley/Delepelaire/BPO/Sokhiev - Mendelssohn, Brahms, and Berlioz, 27 February 2026

Philharmonie

Mendelssohn: Overture: The Hebrides, op.26
Brahms: Concerto for violin, cello, and orchestra in A minor, op.102
Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique, op.14

Noah Bendix-Balgley (violin)

Bruno Delepelaire (cello)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Tugan Sokhiev (conductor)

Images: Stephan Rabold

How I miss hearing the Berlin Philharmonic more weeks than not. Perhaps absence makes the heart grow fonder, but I have little doubt I should have found this an outstanding concert on matter what. It showed, moreover, how the orchestra, especially under the right conductor, can draw on the best of its great tradition without in any sense being hidebound on it. Mendelssohn’s overture The Hebrides was a case in point. I was surprised to see it had not been performed by the BPO for nearly fifteen years, the last time being in October 2011 under Pablo Heras-Casado. Mendelssohn may be oddly unfashionable, but his music came up as fresh as new in an absorbing performance under Tugan Sokhiev. The opening sounded ‘right’ in every respect: balance; warmth and variegation of orchestral tone; the changing nature of the seas, relatively calm yet with elemental menace in their depth; and tempo, which, whilst slower than usual, worked just as well. Later prominence of bass heightened the drama without overwhelming, though one could say much the same of strings after that. Though were considerable shifts in tempo, they lay within a coherent whole; indeed, they helped form it. First among solo equals was clarinettist Wenzel Fuchs, whose duetting proved just as delectable. It was as fine a Mendelssohn performance as I had heard for some time. 

Noah Bendix-Balgley and Bruno Delepelaire joined their orchestral colleagues for an excellent performance of Brahms’s Double Concerto, showing that surpassing suavity in solo performance need not in any sense preclude depth of response, quite the contrary. Again, an orchestral sound announced itself that, whilst not to be identified directly with that of Karajan (or, in this repertoire, Jochum) suggested tangible relation. Delepelaire’s opening solo statement likewise ‘might’ have been that of a great soloist of the past, save that it was very much of the present, Bendix-Balgley’s response that of an equal. The soloists watched and listened to each other as chamber musicians, making music with each other and their peers, speaking of things, as Mendelssohn put it, that were too definite rather than too vague for words. Drawing-room intimacy both contrasted with and yet grew out of more public statements. Tempi again sounded just right, without being noticeable in themselves. Throughout this first movement, there was plenty of space for the music to unfold, though no loss of urgency, broadening to the moment of recapitulatory return a fine example, unleashing a veritable second development.

A darkly post-Beethovenian reading of the second movement followed: ‘late’, but not too late Brahms. It sang and developed in tandem, very much as chamber music writ large, albeit within a Sophoclean framing of evident kinship with the Fourth Symphony, Nietzsche’s idiotic claim that Brahms’s music spoke with the ‘melancholy of incapacity’ effaced by the melancholy of supreme compositional mastery. The finale ensued with unerring rightness: lighter in one sense, yet anything but carefree. It was more ambiguous and yet also more ‘public’: how is that for ambiguity? The major mode, when it came, moved precisely because it incorporated prior struggles rather than attempting to overcome or even reconcile them. This was not an easy ride, nor should it have been. Too often nowadays, concerto performances are followed by irrelevant encores, serving only to prolong departure from the hall. Bendix-Balgley and Delepelaire judged theirs just right: their own arrangement of a Brahms Hungarian Dance. Alas, I noted down the number incorrectly and am now not sure which one. At any rate, it was spirited, idiomatic, and balanced wienerisch origin with a paprika seasoning of fun. 

It is not only Mendelssohn who seems to be out of fashion; so does Berlioz, doubtless because a number of distinguished champions are no longer with us. Sokhiev and the BPO left us in no doubt what we are missing, with a superlative performance of the Symphonie fantastique, its burning radicalism suggesting even Helmut Lachenmann might yet learn a few tricks from this earlier orchestral master. An augmented orchestra, a larger string section more than matched by considerably more varied as well as larger wind and percussion sections, immediately sounded different, giving the lie to claims that ‘tradition’ somehow makes everything sound the same. It might, but only in the guise of poor playing, which can be old or new. Silkier strings suggested somewhere between opera and ballet, perhaps born of the very different traditions of French theatre music, whilst still honouring the composer’s idiosyncratic yet unmistakeable symphonic ambition. Tension was screwed up in the first movement introduction, exposition release just the thing. Here was form rather than formula, seemingly emerging from the instruments of the orchestra themselves. We never forgot, nor did our guides, that this was Berlioz the Romantic with a capital ‘R’, heir to Byron and Beethoven alike, from double bass growls here to later piccolo shrieking. 

Sokhiev captured to a tee not only the dance of the second movement, but also its subjectivity, islands of unease such as the appearance of the idée fixe included. It and its successors benefited from a beautifully captured sense of scene as a whole and detail within it. Dominik Wollenweber’s cor anglais solo and Albrecht Meyer’s oboe response announced an involving ‘Scène aux champs’, full of musical and dramatic tension, far from always the case in a movement that can readily drag, yet here sounded very much a cousin to the great slow movements of Beethoven. Ghosts of the operatic past – Gluck, Mozart, and Beethoven too – imparted great eloquence to the orchestral ‘speech’. Not that programmatic elements were diminished, far from it. This is not a zero-sum game; different aspects should heighten one another and here did. 

That was certainly also the case in the fourth and fifth movements. Timpani, nicely prefigured in the third, rightly took a different turn on this stage of Berlioz’s trip. I was put in mind of the ‘organised delirium’ of which we heard so much with respect to Pierre Boulez last year. Relish of woodwind grotesquerie characterised both movements, but the whole gang was here: bells from above, Dies irae brass, and the most rumbunctious of fugal writing from all concerned, Sokhiev pointing up aspects of character where necessary, yet also knowing when to leave the orchestra alone. It made for a magnificent ending to a magnificent evening.

BPO/Minasi - Mozart, 27 October 2023

Philharmonie

Così fan tutte, KV 588: Overture
Symphony no.35 in D major, KV 385, ‘Haffner’
Concertone in C major for two violins and orchestra, KV 190/186e
Symphony no.40 in G minor, KV 550

Noah Bendix-Balgley, Thomas Timm (violins)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Riccardo Minasi (conductor)

Images: Stephan Rabold

A wonderful concert, this, in which Riccardo Minasi, making his debut with the Berlin Philharmonic, showed himself a musician who would not only listen to and learn from the orchestra, but also to and from every musician within it; and the orchestra and its musicians in turn listened to and learned from the musician in front of them. To say I am particular with Mozart would be something of an understatement. I hope that I, as a listener, learned too; I certainly enjoyed the evening greatly. I might have done things a little differently in my head, but so what? The last thing one wants is for music-making to become a ritual, the same the world over. That would be the death of performance. This was just the tonic for a beastly October evening and indeed the horrors of the world around us. 

The Overture to Così fan tutte set the tone, as it were, for the concert with warm, almost indescribably beautiful playing from the BPO (strings, as throughout, 12.10.8.6.4). Minasi took it fast, yet far from unreasonably so. There was a little woodwind ornamentation, which I did not mind, but some may have found fussy; coming from a woodwind section of this calibre, it is difficult to object. 

The Haffner Symphony followed, timpani prominent, as indeed they had been in the overture, but underpinning the harmony rather than at the expense of others. This was a collegial performance all round. The first movement’s opening would surely have touched even the most reluctant of hearts—and set pulses racing. I could not help but notice the many benefits brought by modern trumpets (as opposed to the ‘period’ versions curiously employed by the Chamber Orchestra of Europe under Andrew Manze a few days earlier, in an otherwise modern set-up). The development section here can all too readily be overlooked; Minasi took it seriously, imparting to it something of its own, albeit related tintà, harmony and counterpoint admirably clear and directed. The recapitulation was upon us before we knew it, yet all had been changed in a performance that married detail and sweep through the most brilliant of orchestral playing. If the Andante was taken swiftly, it worked, and its detail was again unerringly articulated without pedantry. Here, from all contributors, was affectionate understanding. The Minuet was not only one-to-a-bar but a quick one-to-a-bar at that, yet never sounded rush, maintaining both grace and grandeur. Its flowing trio beguiled. Mozart is far less a Presto animal than Haydn, arguably even than Beethoven. In this finale he is, though. Minasi and the BPO showed with ease how one can take it at quite a lick and yet exude grace, humanity, chiaroscuro, and flexibility. Daniel Barenboim, in a rather different way, has shown in his performances of this and other Mozart symphonies exactly the same. The road that will absolutely never lead to Rome is that of dogmatism.

 

The C major Concertone is a true rarity. I had never heard it live previously, and the BPO had performed it just once before, in Brașov in 1938, conducted by Hans von Benda. (Such information is, by the way, a particular joy of the orchestra’s programmes.) Concertone, should anyone quite reasonably be wondering, is an Italian equivalent, used by Mozart here, for the more common French symphonie concertante, essentially a concerto with more than one soloist, and which in this case has as much in common with the older concerto grosso as it does the contemporary, let alone future, symphony. This is very much the Salzburg Mozart, whose music is in many ways as least as difficult to bring off as that of his Viennese successor, but not always in the same ways. What, in the wrong hands, can sound fussy was here a delight. The sheer profusion of melodic ideas was well served here in a lively and gracious performance, never driven hard. Solo playing, not only from the two violinists Noah Bendix-Balgley and Thomas Timm, but from other members of the BPO, but also oboist Albrecht Mayer (who stood with them), and cellist Ludwig Quant (who doubtless would have done, had he not been a cellist!) was beyond reproach, dialogue and conversation flowing in all directions. Tone was rich but never indulgent, like the finest Egyptian cotton The infectious spring in the step – to mix my metaphors – imparted to the first movement was Minasi’s work and helped propel the music with spirit. Not for nothing is it marked ‘Allegro spiritoso’. 

‘Andantino grazioso’, in character as much as speed, was likewise what we heard in the following movement. There was plenty of space for detail to have its full say, in a reading that breathed the air of a Salzburg summer evening. I could imagine myself at the old, dearly lamented Café Glockenspiel, eating a late, post-performance dinner as musicians played below. Similarly, in the minuet finale, I could almost see the ballroom and be dazzled by it, as if Vienna’s Redoutensaal were both already beckoning Mozart and yet also remained some way distant, this the work of his Salzburg imagination and prhaps occasional visit rather than everyday acquaintance. Here, as elsewhere, the two violinists complemented each other, blending well without losing individual character, Bendix-Balgley almost Grumiaux-like (an ideal for me in Mozart), Timm a little more silver of tone. Mayer, needless to say, was his usual excellent self. The whole orchestra excelled, which is just as it should be. 

Last, we heard the ‘great’ G minor Symphony, its first movement neither forsaking emotion for elegance, nor vice versa; they were two sides to the same coin, showing Schumann’s oft-quoted (and derided) imputation of ‘Grecian lightness and grace’ not so far off the mark as it is generally taken to be. Finely, not fussily, shaded, it also possessed a clear sense of line and trajectory. If not so overtly grounded in harmony as, say, with Barenboim, that necessity was still respected. The shockingly Schoenbergian disorientations of the development disoriented as they should; its moments of fragility frightened, if anything, still more. The same should also be said of the coda. In between, the coming of the recapitulation sounded, quite properly, transformed from initial appearances of its material. Form, then, was dynamic, as it must be. The slow movement flowed gracefully, without skating over anything. Breathtaking passages of inwardness contrasted starkly, indeed with great daring from conductor and players alike, with vehement responses that approached yet never quite reached Beethoven. Were it not for its Schubertian heavenly length, both repeats taken, it might have been even more akin to what Schumann and Brahms would have considered an intermezzo, albeit structurally only ever itself. 

Fast and furious, yet still light on its feet, the Minuet’s insistence sounded still closer to Beethoven—because it is. The trio was lovely, yet just a touch unsteady, its tempo stretched before it had been established. That was a very rare misstep, though, and quite a minor one. Playing remained beyond reproach. The finale, naturally, was still faster and at least as furiously insistent, yet that Schumann Grecian quality persisted. The second group led so ravishingly by first clarinet Wenzel Fuchs, had me especially grateful that Minasi had opted for the second version, with clarinets, of the work. The development showed that form and rhetoric, properly understood, are complementary, not antithetical, Beethovenian strength of purpose uniting all, and perfectly preparing the moment of return, tragic in a way few composers before or since have approached let alone matched. The second repeat was taken, as Barenboim now does too. Both conductors have made sense of something that others do not—and about which I remain a little sceptical ‘on paper’. For Minasi’s ‘recapitulation’ did so much more than recapitulate or repeat; second time around, it proved a ghostly, terrifying experience. 

When Sir Colin Davis became chief conductor of the LSO, he said one of the things he intended to do – and he was true to his word – was have them play more Mozart and Haydn, not only as a good in itself but also for what it would do for the orchestra’s string tone in particular. The Berlin Philharmonic hardly needs help in that department, but all orchestras need to maintain, indeed to extend, their capabilities in this and every other regard. I cannot offhand think of a single symphony orchestra that does not at present at least slightly neglect these composers. All would benefit from doing so, not least since the Western symphonic tradition stands on their shoulders; and if, somehow, they find themselves at a loss for someone to lead them in this music, on this basis they could do far worse than engage Riccardo Minasi as a guest conductor.

Members of the BPO - Takemitsu, Strauss, Prokofiev, and Bruch, 18 December 2017

Pierre Boulez Saal

Takemitsu: Le son calligraphié I-III

Strauss: Metamorphosen, in version for string septet by Rudolf Leopold

Prokofiev Sonata for Two Violins in C major, op.56

Bruch: Octet in B-flat major, op. posth.

Daishin Kashimoto, Noah Bendix-Balgley, Luiz Felipe Coelho, Christophe Horak (violins)

Amihai Grosz, Naoko Shimizu (violas)

Ludwig Quandt, Bruno Delepelaire (cellos)

Matthew McDonald (double bass)

It is doubtless in the nature of such varied programmes, in which the emphasis seems to lie upon variety in itself rather than on a unifying theme, that some works will appeal to any one listener more than others. In that respect, I should count myself fortunate that only – doubtless predictably – Max Bruch’s musically anonymous late string octet that failed to intrigue me. (If, as a Bruch fanatic, should such a thing exist, you prefer: I failed to be intrigued by it.) The date of composition, although it apparently is based upon earlier materials, beggars belief: 1920. It is not so much that it was written eight years after Pierrot lunaire, as that it sounds rather like a talented, yet uninspired attempt to imitate the young, and I mean very young, Mendelssohn. Not that the eight players – all of those listed above, save for Matthew McDonald on double bass – in any sense failed it. Quite the contrary: I cannot imagine it receiving a more committed, enlightened performance, determined to make the most of its craftsmanship, without attempting to turn it into something it is not. The spirit and cultivation of the playing were, from the opening of the first of its three movements, undeniable: far more thrilling than the material itself. It was surely to that, quite rightly, that the audience so warmly responded. There were darker moments (relatively speaking) too, especially in the central Adagio-Andante con molto di moto. And if even these players could not quite convince one that the generic character and/or form of a finale were transformed into something more than that, they did their very best. No one should begrudge such pieces an occasional outing – and who knows? Maybe others heard something in the piece I did not.

Written for the same forces, Tōru Takemitsu’s three early Son calligraphié works (1958-60), proved more fascinating, at least to me. If their miniature status and their spare directness of utterance perhaps inevitably brought to mind Webern and – from the future – Kurtág, the harmonic language, especially in so warm, yet never over-egged a performance proved more suggestive of Berg. It might seem contradictory, and perhaps it is, to speak of spare directness and then to mention languor, but there seemed to be plenty of space, however considered, for that too, timbres often suggestive of a more Gallic sensibility. The wholeness of the players’ conception, combined with attention to (Japanese?) ‘calligraphic’ detail, might have had one think these pieces repertoire works. There seemed to me, at least on a first hearing, no good reason why they should not be.

Strauss’s Metamorphosen is, unquestionably, although not necessarily in this form, the version for string septet by Rudolf Leopold, made following rediscovery of Strauss’s short score and first performed in 1994. The players turned around so as to face in the opposite direction for this, following in the footsteps of many musicians, Daniel Barenboim included, eager to play the hall, even its audience, as a living instrument rather than a mere space for performance. Not for nothing is the Pierre Boulez Saal’s motto ‘music for the thinking ear’. Seven strings will never sound the same as twenty-three. Nor should they attempt to; for, if that were the aim, why not use twenty-three? Here there is, almost by definition, a greater sense of chamber music, but it was a greater sense in performance too, the players seemingly relishing the opportunity to play with the difference, although never to be different merely for the sake of it. What I noticed earlier on was an apparently slower tempo than often one hears. (I say apparently, since it sounded to be as much a matter of holding back harmonically, and have no idea whether it was in terms of accursed metronome beats.) Such was not how it was to be all along, though, for lighter, even relatively brighter passages seemed to gain momentum, both in terms of tempo and harmonic rhythm. (Are the two in fact distinct?) This was a Metamorphosen which, perhaps unusually, had more of late Strauss’s typical Mozartian sonata form balance and dynamism, vis-à-vis dark Wagnerism. It was not, however, a case of one against the other, but of dramatic conflict. Likewise, the balance and generative conflict between harmony and counterpoint sounded almost as if born of a Mozart quintet, rendering transitional passages – yes, I know the whole work is essentially transitional… – especially interesting. The cultivated gravity of return led to a soft-spoken sense of approaching yet never reaching suspension. And yes, the Eroica moment spoke as eloquently as ever, in its new yet old setting: a metaphor perhaps for the performance as a whole.

Prokofiev’s Sonata for Two Violins, played by concertmasters Daishin Kashimoto and Noah Bendix-Balgley, fared wonderfully well, in a performance as dramatic, even aspirantly balletic, as it was razor-sharp of intonation. The bitter-sweet post-Romantic intertwining and separation of instruments in the first movement proved a masterclass, performative as well as compositional, in two-part writing. Bartókian fury, soon transmuted into something else, which in turn was soon transformed, and so on, characterised a powerfully yet never pedantically developmental second movement. Sweetly, songfully enigmatic, the simple, side-slipping pleasures of the third movement delighted. What I thought of as the sincere tricksterism of the finale did so too, in its very different way. It offered both a sense of uniting the work’s strands and yet also questioning them. Strauss was far from the only composer of this period to don compositional mask upon mask.