Kozhukhin - Widmann, Schubert, Ligeti, and Liszt, 16 May 2024

Pierre Boulez Saal

Widmann: Idyll and Abgrund (Six Schubert Reminiscences for piano)
Schubert: Piano Sonata in G major, D 894
Ligeti: Études, no.13: ‘L’Escalier du diable’
Liszt: Piano Sonata in B minor, S 178

Denis Kozhukhin (piano)

With this intelligently programmed and performed recital, Denis Kozhukhin reminded us what an interesting musician he is. Both halves presented a major piano sonata – two of the most celebrated and, in different ways, difficult in the repertoire – preceded by a more recent work either, in the first case, paying explicit reference to the earlier composer or, in the latter, holding something diabolically transcendental in common. 

Jörg Widmann’s 2009 Idyll and Abgrund, subtitled Six Schubert Reminiscences for piano, opened the programme. If its first ‘reminiscence’ certainly had melodic roots in Schubert, its harmonic world initially seemed closer to late Liszt, before heading in another direction altogether, heavy dissonant interventions in the treble sounding oddly like Schnittke. That composer also came to mind in the mode of expression of the second, though Schubert and indeed Brahms, as well as a more general (typically for the composer) relationship to German musical Romanticism were present. There were here and throughout so many ghosts that I cannot remember them all, and am not sure it would be helpful to list them even if I could. A charming waltz began, only to be partially obscured, yet soon returned to go a little haywire, pianist’s whistle and all. Kozhukhin offered a fine lilt, always idiomatic without sentimentality. There were starker passages. And surely that was Schubert’s final piano sonata I heard in the last movement, just before the close. But so what? Reference, allusion, or kinship were apparent, ‘meaning’ more allusive—and doubtless rightly so. 

Schubert’s own G major Sonata, D 894, followed. The first movement, Molto moderato e cantabile, was taken at no Richter tempo; how – why – would one imitate the inimitable? But it certainly took its lead from Schubert’s marking, as indeed did all four movements, in character as well as mere speed. A sense of sleepwalking, as in Thomas May’s programme note quotation from Alfred Brendel, was apparent, Schubert striding ‘across harmonic abysses as though by compulsion, and we cannot help remembering that sleepwalkers never lose their step’. Kozhukhin’s command of line certainly suggested this. One might, at any one moment, have been forgiven for thinking Schubert was not really in the business of development, but he was, through a stasis that was only apparent yet no less ‘felt’ for that. And he proved just as adept as summoning ghosts, albeit without any compulsion to name them. Form grew out of what we heard rather than being imposed upon it; that said, there was no doubting the moment of tonal return, nor the transformed nature of material thereafter. What a pity, then, that someone’s telephone went off at the first movement’s close, visibly disconcerting pianist and audience alike. The Andante received a similarly ‘interior’ reading, passages turning outwards where called for and not without violence. It made sense, again as if from deep sleep. This music can certainly be understood dialectically, yet it was less clear than with Beethoven that that would be the point. It came from a damaged world, a damaged psyche, Adorno’s Minima moralia coming to my mind, but showed great strength from within. The minuet asked and responded, the difference between question and response meaning all—both to pianist and composer. Its trio offered a vision of something beyond, perhaps heavenly, whilst unable or unwilling to let go of remaining, unbridgeable distance, as if a Bach musette found itself in the world of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, neither party knowing quite what to do. The final movement brought us back to earth, perhaps, whilst remembering what had just passed (and in truth, we had never really left). This was the wayward progress of music that wishes to approach Mozart, yet actually ends up further away. Might Kozhukhin have confronted the abyss more starkly? Perhaps, but his long, unbroken line told its own story. 

The thirteenth and longest of Ligeti’s Etudes, ‘L’Escalier du diable’, offered a strong pictorial sense of its titular inspiration without being bound by it, nor indeed by anything else other than a precision the composer would surely have admired. The craziness of its technical demands and their fulfilment were all part of the challenge—and the fun. Dynamic levels were as rock-solid as rhythm, a big, post-Romantic sound as present where required as interior unwinding. It was probably just my imagination, but I could have sworn a chord emerged, perfectly in keeping, as if from the world of Messiaen. In any case, the final resonance was surely one to rival Stockhausen. 

It made for an ideal curtain raiser to the Liszt B minor Sonata, which began with an almost modest precision that was actually more a case of knowing where the music must lead. That precision remained, as did tautness of conception, again with fine command of line to recall Schubert. There was no haze here, though, in a performance that was bright even when dark, and ever immediate. If there were sleepwalking here, it was of a more nightmarish quality. Kozhukhin did not shy away from rhetoric as such, the first statement of the second subject, for instance, highly declamatory, but form and, even on occasion, a certain formalism were more to the fore. Perhaps the performance, then, sprang from Ligeti in that sense too. Again, it was certainly not that Kozkuhkin could not spin a compelling, even spell-binding cantabile line; he could and did. Integration nonetheless always seemed his ultimate concern. Clarity of texture and purpose was admirable, even if I occasionally missed a little Romantic mystery. (Was that just me trying to have it all? Probably.) There were surprises, though, in the sense that new points of departure, the fugato a case in point, truly sounded as such, even when one ‘knew’. The true recapitulation sounded, again, with all the inevitability one could wish for. It was, perhaps, a more modernistic story than often, but that is inherent to Liszt. And on the very few occasions when the music threatened to escape even the most iron self-control, that is surely part of Liszt and Lisztian performance too. This sonata will never sound ‘perfect’; it is not Mozart and is not trying to be. It was something different from that and all the better for it. 

A moan: must audience members really tell each other loudly what an encore is when a musician begins to play it, or just as bad, give a stage-sigh of satisfaction? Well done: you have recognised Schumann’s Träumerei, one of the most celebrated and likely encores in the piano literature. Fortunately, Kozhukhin gave an honest account, beautifully voiced. To be fair, no one made such noises for the first encore, perhaps because – like me – they did not know what it was. Hymnal and, if I remember correctly, slightly modal, it had melodic and harmonic characteristics I might have guessed to be Russian. I wondered whether it might have ‘meant’ something beyond its notes; at any rate, Kozhukhin clearly believed in and winningly communicated those notes.

Arditti Quartet at 50: Harvey, Milliken, Hosokawa, and Birtwistle, 7 March 2024

Pierre Boulez Saal

Jonathan Harvey: String Quartet no.1 (1977)
Cathy Milliken: In Speak for string quartet (2023, world premiere)
Toshio Hosokawa: Oreksis for piano quintet (2023, world premiere)
Birtwistle: String Quartet: The Tree of Strings (2007)

Irvine Arditti, Ashot Sarkissjan (violins)

Ralf Ehlers (viola)

Lucas Fels (cello) 

Tomoki Kitamura (piano)

On 7 March 1974, the Arditti Quartet gave its first concert at the Royal Academy of Music, music to honour Krzysztof Penderecki on bestowal of an honorary degree. Fifty years later to the day and several changes of personnel later – Irvine Arditti the one constant – the Quartet celebrated at Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Saal its fiftieth birthday, followed by a reception hosted by the Paul Sacher Stiftung, which also hosts the ensemble’s archive . True to its spirit, here was a mixture of new and newer: two Arditti commissions, Jonathan Harvey’s First String Quartet (the first ever) and Harrison Birtwistle’s The Tree of Strings sandwiching two new commissions from Cathy Milliken and Toshio Hosokawa. 

We do not hear enough of Jonathan Harvey’s music. If that was the case before his death in 2012, it is all the more so now. Reminders such as this can do no harm at all. In a single movement, which, to my ears at least, might possibly have been subdivided into three sections of unequal length, it opened with violin (then viola, then cello) harmonics, melting yet also, like snowflakes, flurrying, becoming stronger: something both fragile and yet primal, the latter especially in the unison melody that emerged and seemed to rule over the Quartet as a whole. It felt like embarking on a magical adventure for composer and performers, the latter tracing and projecting the piece’s expressive contours with typical expertise, as the repertoire piece it must be for them, though without a hint of the routine. Sparks flew later, what in the work of another composer we might characterise here as éclat, but here suggesting something deeper, more fundamental, perhaps even Germanic, acknowledging the composer’s crucial encounter with Stockhausen. Material that emerged from the debris developed in any number of other ways, prior to a third section (?) in which a ghost in the machine, a machine in the ghost, or perhaps both propelled the music on its way. Unifying yet further developing, like the ‘tradition’ to which it perhaps still laid claim, the music yet had no ‘return’ in a sign-off of deft brevity. 

Cathy Milliken’s In Speak immediately sounded, perhaps to state the all-too-obvious, as if arising from different cultural concerns, a proper contrast in programming as well as composition. Almost dance-like at times, with unmistakeable ‘human’ interjections of speech, ghostly whistling, and so on, it seemed to take in a more ‘connected’ world (not that there was anything remotely insular about Harvey) and some sort of dramatic-conceptual stimulus arising therefrom, without that being ‘the point’. There was even, I thought, a hint of celebration. ‘Tradition’, if it still exists at all, has moved on considerably in half a century, not least thanks to the Arditti Quartet. ‘I hear different notes emerging’, ‘punchline’, ‘I dragged’, ‘until he was pushed’, ‘finding the right word’, a concatenation of verbal phrases enabled strings to take over again, in turn inaugurating a slower moving, constantly shifting section. Further musical scampering, almost suggesting a ‘classical’ return of material in ternary form – suggesting, not straightforwardly representing – brought the piece to its conclusion.   

The players were joined by pianist Tomoki Kitamura for Toshio Hosokawa’s Oreksis for piano quintet. Again, this was a very different musical world: not only the soundworld, but procedures, preoccupations, everything. Post-‘impressionist’? Perhaps. Post-Debussy? A somewhat stronger perhaps. But it was not only, or principally, post-anything, however helpful such thoughts may be to gain our initial bearings. Centres of gravity proved very different, lines emerging from them, whilst those centres remained obstinately, strangely alluring. The pianist was not a ‘soloist’, yet had a somewhat different role, seemingly growing from the piano’s different instrumental qualities. (That may sound obvious, but it is far from always the case.) Dreamlike in apparent creation of chords, it built slowly to climaxes that seemed always to be pushed a little further into something beyond. Sliding, slithering lines later seemed liberated from whatever it was that had kept them grounded: new ‘air of another planet’ perhaps? There both are, and are not, new things under our sun(s). Music floated with strange precision, upwards once again, into… 

For the final work on the programme, following the interval, we turned to Birtwistle’s 2007 String Quartet: The Tree of Strings. If one might have found a point of comparison with Harvey’s piece in a ‘frozen’ opening, what struck more forcefully again was the difference from all that had been heard before. There was certainly no question who the composer was—nor how great our loss continues to be. These were not so much musical fractals, as some might musically imagine trees, but rather this sounded as music born of an ancient, far from consoling, ‘then’ as seen, or heard, from ‘now’. Melody, harmony, even gesture were as immediate as in stage works such as Gawain or The Minotaur; there was a similarly keen sense of narrative(s) too, without moving into the realm of representation. Even when occasionally more frenetic, it retained a sense of spareness, of everything counting. A not un-Stravinskian candle continued to burn, even to dance, to rock; yet there was a deeper melancholy that seemed to speak of and from remembered or invented landscapes of a Britain beyond its modern towns and cities (not anti-metropolitan, but rather non-metropolitan) as well as memories of Dowland. (How the composer must have hated the snake-oil-salesmen of ‘Brexit’. How wonderful it would have been to see him give Nigel Farage a piece of his mind, not that Farage would have known what to do with it.) 

Strength persisted, intensified, through techniques seeming to cross the centuries without ever truly being ‘of’ them. Was that a mediaevalism there? If so, it was hardly the point. Compelled, so it seemed, by the music’s inherent drama, the players, one by one, moved from centre stage to new stations around the hall, the spatial quality of the musical landscape confirmed and extended. It was no gimmick, as it might have been for many – was there a less gimmicky composer than Birtwistle? – but rather born of an expressive need. Was there a centre any more? That may be the question of musical, and not only musical, modernity, or at least a question. Does it matter? Others left the hall, Lucas Fels’s cello persisting with gruff integrity that came close to overwhelming. It, or rather this, did matter. 

To read my 2009 interview with Irvine Arditti, ahead of two performances at the Edinburgh Festival, please click here.

West-Eastern Divan Ensemble/Barenboim M. - Hindemith, Carter, Hensel, and Beethoven, 9 November 2023

Pierre Boulez Saal

Hindemith: Trauermusik for viola and strings
Fanny Hensel: String Quartet in E-flat major
Carter: Au Quai for bassoon and viola; Duettone for violin and cello
Beethoven: Septet in E-flat major, op.20

Michael Barenboim (violin, viola)

Miriam Manaserhov (viola)

Assif Binness (cello)

David Santos Luque (double bass)

Daniel Gurfinkel (clarinet)

Mor Biron (bassoon)

Ben Goldscheider (horn)

Images: Peter Adamik

9 November is a date full, too full, of resonance for German history. From the proclamation of the Republic in 1918 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, it takes in also the Munich putsch of 1923 and the November pogroms of 1938. At the best of times, whenever they might be, it is impossible not to feel conflicted and at times close to overwhelmed by the imperatives of remembrance; and these, I hardly need add, are anything but the best of times. On the 85^th anniversary of what English-speaking countries still refer to as Kristallnacht, although in Germany the term is now generally held to conceal the full horror of what happened that night, even the West-Eastern Divan Ensemble playing Beethoven might have struggled to impart much in the way of hope. Yet somehow, ultimately, these musicians did: not in the sense that they offered a solution to our world’s cruelty, carnage, and apparently irredeemable darkness, whether then or now, of course not. As Daniel Barenboim, co-founder with Edward Said of the orchestra from which this chamber ensemble draws its members, noted in a typically inspiring piece written for the programme, they ‘never intended … [it] to be a political project. It was always a humanistic one, a call against ignorance. It may have seemed like a utopian idea then and perhaps appears even more so today.’

But that they were still here at all, let alone playing, listening and responding was something—and increasingly so. ‘Here, in this building, this utopia,’ Barenboim continued, ‘is alive every day. Our young musicians, whether they come from Tel Aviv, Ramallah, Damascus, or Cairo, work and study under the same roof and learn to listen to each other, in music just as in daily life—something that is impossible in their home countries. It takes courage for them to be here.’ It does indeed, and their courage as well as their broader example offers an example to the audience too, although it is for us, not for them, to lead our struggle to listen rather than merely to hear.

 

A late addition to the programme was Hindemith’s Trauermusik: in Barenboim’s words, ‘our collective expression of grief, but also of hope’. And so it sounded; so it felt. Indeed, the sadness in the first of its four short movements seemed almost unbearable. Was it ‘there’, in the work, or was it what we brought to it? Impossible to answer, and not the most relevant of questions. Michael Barenboim, leading from solo viola, and a string quartet representing Hindemith’s orchestra inhabited the composer’s universe fully, dignity of craft, ensemble, counterpoint, and harmony, and what they might mean to the fore—and beyond that, the universal musical imperative to listen. Hindemith’s use of music from Mathis der Maler reinforced all the more the importance of witness against fascism, against murderous, antihuman ideology. Crisis tends to reinforce what is essential, if only we will take time to find out. Inner movements’ lyricism in particular grew out of that early material, a necessary, human development. The final chorale, ‘Für deinen Thron tret ich hiermit’, offered not triumph, but modest climax in human fragility. It was met with prolonged silence and, eventually, respectful applause. 

Fanny Hensel’s 1834 E-flat major Quartet was an interesting choice, its first movement, ‘Adagio ma non troppo’, opening again with nobility and dignity. Was the sadness with which it seemed to be imbued…? We have already answered that question, or rather observed that answer there can be none. At any rate, the proportion of time spent in the minor mode seemed fitting. Expansive, without dragging, the quartet, again led by Michael Barenboim, seemed very much to have its measure, subtleties telling without exaggeration. The following Allegretto comes closer to Mendelssohn, though it is perhaps both a little more conventional yet also quirkier. Beethoven too came to mind at times (as he often does in Mendelssohn’s own quartets too). There was scope for considerable virtuosity, well taken, within a collegial framework. An eloquent account of the ‘Romanze’, Barenboim first melodist among equals, again permitted reference to other composers, Mendelssohn and Mozart among them, without ever being reducible to them and their ‘influence’. The finale came as close as anything had yet done to good cheer. Sometimes smiling, sometimes sterner, even vehement, it offered plenty of light and shade in a finely directed performance.

 

Either side of the interval came two short works by Elliott Carter. Barenboim’s viola and Mor Biron’s bassoon were very much equals in Au Quai from 2002, Carter a still relatively young 93 at the time of writing. A game of post-Webern ping-pong led to almost Stravinskian melodic flowering, not that the music ever sounded ‘like’ either. Instead, it emerged as something akin to a reinvention, as it were, of a Bach Two-Part Invention, and was despatched as well as composed with a good deal of dry wit. For Duettone, Barenboim was joined by the similarly excellent cellist Assif Binness. It is perhaps too easy to romanticise, but this little gem from Carter’s 101^st year truly sounded like the distillation of a lifetime’s work, not least with respect to his metrical discoveries and explorations. Within its modest frame – though think again of Webern – it seemed to come close to possessing the weight, contrasts, and journey of a symphony. Every combination of notes, and indeed of other parameters, was both fresh and deeply considered. Here, in two solo lines, was something suggesting comparison with one of Bach’s mirror fugues. 

It is difficult to characterise Beethoven’s Septet without resorting to ‘sunny’, and why try? After all, sun affects us in different ways at different times, and necessarily casts a shadow too. The ‘Adagio’ introduction to the first movement was strikingly expansive, rather as if it were taken ‘after’ Barenboim père, and frankly all the better for it. Neither faster nor slower than it ought to be, the movement as whole offered space for a lightness of touch and responsiveness lying at the heart of ethical and musical challenges alike. Line was present throughout in a performance replete with contrasts and sheer delights. The second movement, taken a little slower than is often the case, again benefited from greater space: heavenly length maybe, heavenly without question. Initially led by Daniel Gurfinkel’s quicksilver, liquid clarinet, it afforded all members of the ensemble opportunities to shine, to support, and as ever to listen and respond. Lilt properly verging on swing, conveyed via excellent textural balance born of such listening and response, characterised the minuet and trio. The ensuing theme and variations, in their transformational variety of instrumental combination similarly proposed a lightly worn moral as well as ‘purely’ musical lesson. Buoyant and in the best sense infectious, the scherzo, led by Ben Goldscheider’s miraculous horn playing, was both directed and collegial. Likewise a finale of stature and character which, like the performance as a whole, never forgot the sheer enjoyment to be had from such music, enjoyment that spilled into an encore performance of the Scherzo from Schubert’s Octet.

 

To return to Daniel Barenboim’s words in the programme, ‘We must, want, and will continue to believe that music can bring us closer together as fellow human beings.’ For all who continue to believe, there is no alternative.

Neuburger/Boulez Ensemble/Roth - Debussy and Manoury, 29 October 2023

Pierre Boulez Saal

Debussy: Sonata for flute, viola, and harp
Manoury: Passacaille pour Tokyo
Debussy: Sonata for cello and piano
Manoury: Grammaires du sonore

Jean-Frédéric Neuburger (piano)

Boulez Ensemble

François-Xavier Roth (conductor)

Images: Jakob Tillmann

Intelligent and revealing programming is always a joy. François-Xavier Roth ranks highly among those conductors regularly offering it. When married to equally intelligent and revealing performances it becomes all the more a joy, such as in this concert from the Boulez Ensemble, founded by Daniel Barenboim to include members of the Staatskapelle Berlin and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. Two ensemble pieces by Philippe Manoury were prefaced by two late Debussy sonatas, the formal implications of which were highly suggestive and felt to be such for the Manoury works. 

First, we heard Debussy’s Sonata for flute, viola, and harp, an extraordinary work I do not think I have ever heard live before. The combination may be unusual, but surely is not that difficult to assemble; even if it were, it would be well worth the effort. Hélène Freyburger (flute), Yulia Deyneka (viola), and Aline Khouri (harp) struck an ideal balance from the outset between solo and ensemble. The first movement in particular was possessed of a magical inscrutability through which secrets were gradually revealed, first among them the quiet radicalism of Debussy’s reinvention of the sonata, quite without resort to what would become (arguably was just becoming) neoclassicism. For Debussy’s treatment of material already began to peer forward to Boulez and even to Manoury. The Interlude, somehow both darker and brighter, registered with proper contrast. Debussy’s use of the harp fascinated all the more in performance, as it encouraged the viola and, perhaps to a slightly lesser extent, the harp to expand their means, and initiated transformations of material and mood. Likewise in the finale, beginning in almost ‘classical’ style before taking other paths, not necessarily sequential: another anticipation of the future, bringing Birtwistle as well as Boulez to my mind.

 

The piano moved centre-stage to Manoury’s 1994 Passacaille pour Tokyo, for piano and seventeen instruments. A similar reinvention of an old form, albeit with more overt éclat, is here founded upon repetition of a note, first E-flat, to which we feel a need to return and indeed continue to hear even when the actual note of repetition has changed. It offers proliferation in a way that recalls Boulez, as it were, from the other end, without the slightest sense of mere imitation. Jean-Frédéric Neuburger’s insistence on the initial E-flat, varying duration and attack, set the scene for an excellent performance of the whole. Manoury’s music glittered and glistened, never glowering, in a fantastical realm of invention. I had a sense of constant transformation even when, on a single hearing, I could not always tell you how, but the relation of this new passacaglia-idea to the old piano device of a pedal-point (or more than one) became clearer as time progressed, all the while as material was thrilling passed between instruments, like high-speed Webern, though in many more directions. The advent of ‘shadow piano’, played offstage by Kyoko Nojima, was arresting in more than a merely spatial sense. Inevitably, perhaps, it died away on a single pitch, on Neuburger’s piano, but the abiding memory was as much of the delightful friction between repetition, even varying repetition, and persistent transformation above.

 

Neuburger was joined by cellist Alexander Kovalev for Debussy’s Cello Sonata, a dark, declamatory piano opening both picked up and transformed by cello playing (and writing) combining strength and elegy. Here was another different conception of the sonata, as if to remind us that Liszt’s declaration that new wine demanded new bottles was the afternoon’s motto; in many ways indeed it was. The variety of expressive articulation offered by both players, even within a single phrase, encapsulated not only a marriage of detail and greater sweep but also the concert’s conception of form springing from material. Pierrot-like whimsy and invention characterised the opening of the ‘Sérénade et Finale’. The mutual approach of instruments, for instance through piano marcato and cello pizzicato, prepared the way for a sense of controlled intoxication; that is, there were certainly limits, yet within those limits, a great deal could and did happen. Not unlike Manoury’s Passacaille, one might say.

 

Barenboim arrived after the interval, with what I assume was the score of the next piece, which he proceeded to follow assiduously seated next to the composer. Manoury’s Grammaires du sonore was premiered by Roth and the Ensemble Intercontemporain last December in Paris. It made a huge impression on me here in Berlin—and, so far as I could tell, on the audience assembled at the Pierre Boulez Saal. A fuller ensemble here seemed not only to reinvent the modern ensemble’s reinvention of the symphony orchestra, but also, more radically, not only to question but magically to cast away its hierarchies in a riot of what went beyond Debussy’s controlled intoxication to post-Boulezian controlled delirium. Here, it seemed, there was a place for all to shine, democratically if you will, one of the first being Nina Janßen-Deinzer on contrabass clarinet, the piece seeming to fulfil or at least to renew a promise serialism had never quite been able to realise. Precision and fantasy were dialectically related, as in Boulez. Particular to the piece rather than a universal (was tonality ever really that in any case?), Manoury’s ‘grammar’ both demonstrated and enabled every note, like every word in a poem, truly to count. The fascination of that idea and the excitement of its putting in practice turned our attention back where it should always have been, to musical notes, their performance, their connection, and our listening. For the expression of musical imagination was both highly dramatic and readily perceptible.

Tuned percussion also brought Boulez, perhaps inevitably, a little to mind, yet Manoury’s writing was quite different: less elliptical, perhaps also freer in its exchanged with untuned fellow citizens. Piano writing and Nojima’s performance were perhaps a little closer to ‘traditional’ expectations than what we had heard in the Passacaille, but that was no failing, no retreat, perhaps rather a sign of confidence in the instrument and its place in the ensemble. Brass, save the Wagner tuba, left the floor and went up to the balconies, ricocheting of notes in a layered spatiality expanding dimensions of the relationship between repeated notes and invention in the earlier work. Strings too seemed liberated by their new role, not as first among equals but simply as equals, scintillating, soulful, and much in between, sometimes merging into other sections in an aesthetic and perhaps not entirely apolitical utopia of sound. One chord seemed almost to approach ‘that’ chord in the Adagio of Mahler’s Tenth Symphony. It was probably just my fancy, to be refuted were I to look at the score or listen again; yet, in the construction of a grammar to what Mahler might have considered a new world in itself, perhaps it was not entirely so. Debussy’s rethinking of form was honoured and extended, but above all this world dazzled and exhilarated. Crucially for us all now, it held out the promise of life, of a future, of the reinvention, reimagining, and rebuilding we desperately need: not through a didactic manifesto, but through music's delight in itself.

Quatuor Diotima - Ligeti, Lachenmann, and Brahms, 19 October 2023

Pierre Boulez Saal

Ligeti: String Quartet no.1, ‘Métamorphoses nocturnes’
Lachenmann: String Quartet no.3, ‘Grido’
Brahms: String Quartet no.2 in A minor, op.51 no.2

Yun-Peng Zhao, Léo Marillier (violins)

Franck Chevalier (viola)

Alexis Descharmes (cello)

Another splendid string quartet recital in Berlin, to rival or better to complement that I heard last week in a different venue, the Philharmonie’s Kammermusiksaal, from the Quatuor Ébène. One of the mysteries of the musical world is the seeming inability of French symphony orchestras to match those who might be their peers in German- and English-speaking countries. (In some ways, French opera orchestras seem to fare better.) One explanation I have often heard lies in French conservatoire training, where orchestral performance plays little or no role, neglected in favour of a more or less exclusive focus on solo and chamber playing. That may or may not be the case; certainly no one has ever claimed France lacked excellent solo and chamber musicians. These two quartets, the Ébène and Diotima are a case in point, unquestionably among the finest ensembles in the world, with approaches to music-making that are anything but off-the-shelf, very much their own, and with programming to match. 

Ligeti is being heard a little more than usual during his centenary, but a work such as his First Quartet, ‘Métamorphoses nocturnes’, would in any case always be central to this ensemble’s repertoire; indeed, a recording was released on Pentatone earlier this year (with the Second Quartet and the earlier Andante and Allegretto). The players immediately conveyed the mood as well as notes of the opening upward slithering, melodies above sounding with Romantic intensity. Bartók’s ghost – Kurtág once called this Bartók’s Seventh Quartet – was often apparent, not least rhythmically—and crucially, in that rhythms were never merely rhythms but rather inseparable from melody. Quicksilver changes of mood, sometimes in transition, sometimes in abrupt cut-off, were vividly characterised: ask someone to guess the marking for the section marked ‘Adagio, mesto’ and that might be just what (s)he would come up with. Silences told in an almost Beckettian fashion, hinting at the necessity yet something at least approaching the impossibility of speaking, singing, or playing freely. Machines came to life. Notes flew off the page with undeniable physical impact. The waltz movement or section emerged with a sardonicism worthy of Prokofiev and, as throughout, such ears for contrasting textures that at times one might almost have fancied a larger ensemble to be playing. The last few minutes brought the piece together and concluded, in an almost ‘traditional’ way, with not only a nod to Bartók but, in their riot of invention, perhaps also to Haydn. 

For all its radicalism, indeed in many ways on account of it, Lachenmann’s Third Quartet could also be heard as taking its place in such a tradition. The Diotima had clearly studied the composer’s notes carefully – without doing so, the piece would surely be unplayable, or at least incomprehensible – whilst also bringing their own imagination and insights. On the one hand, the array of new sounds might give arise to all manner of strange, unworldly associations – extra-terrestrial chatter, perhaps even a game of cosmic table-tennis – or one might, using one’s eyes, less fancifully but with equal incompletion, speak more technically, say of ‘legno flautando whilst moving the bow between the bridge and the left-hand figure’. ‘Gasping’, Lachenmann’s own term, ‘a very strong, almost explosive crescendo up-bow cut off so abruptly by the suddenly intervening application of a left-hand finger to the respective string, lifting the bow at the same time … comparable to a tongue ram on a flute, or a recording of a pizzicato played backwards,’ could not have sounded more like human breath if it had been. Yet not for one moment did this sound as a string of ‘effects’; rather, at-times Stockhausen-like whimsy was projected with Schoenbergian concentration (in more than one sense). And the near silences inevitably brought to mind, without thoughts of imitation, Lachenmann’s own teacher, Nono. Its various sections may not be movements as such, but their structural function was communicated and felt. For if this were almost a textbook case of musique concrète instrumentale, in which one might swear electronics or other means were employed unless one knew they were not, it was highly theatrical too, albeit in the almost classical theatre of the musical imagination. 

With Brahms, so much began; and/or with Beethoven, or Bach, or Monteverdi, or… At any rate, Schoenberg’s now slightly hackneyed yet still necessary ‘Brahms the Progressive’ was represented in an equally gripping account of his Second String Quartet, its first movement febrile and lyrical not only by turn but often simultaneously. Counterpoint, developing variation, and darkly Romantic vehemence when it came gave rise to a not entirely dissimilar sense of metamorphosis such as we had heard in both Ligeti and Lachenmann. A post-Schubertian second movement (the ‘post-’ as important as the Schubert) was no more comfortable than the Ébène’s Schubert had been; the shock of sudden outbursts, themselves owing something to Schubert’s example, was second only to an overarching sense of discovery, tonal areas all possessed of their own character and colour, albeit interconnected. The players captured expertly the unusual character of the third movement, here taking after Mendelssohn as well as Schubert, though with half-lights (perhaps ‘half-darknesses’ would be better?) that could only be Brahms. The central ‘Allegretto vivace’, if close to anyone, would perhaps approach late Beethoven, and so it sounded here. It is tempting to call the sense of purpose in the final movement Beethovenian; certainly, it abounds in dialectical relationships that ultimately strengthen. Equally impressive was the communication of demands both horizontal and vertical, not in some ‘theoretical’ sense, whatever that may mean, but as a temporal drama that foreshadows Schoenberg, Webern, and many others: Brahms the progressive indeed. 

For a refreshing and spirited encore, we returned to Ligeti, to an arrangement for string quartet of the first of his Six Bagatelles for wind quintet.

Aristidou/Widmann/Boulez Ensemble/Barenboim - Schubert, Mozart, Berg, and Widmann, 1 September 2020

Pierre Boulez Saal

Schubert: String Quartet in C minor, D 703, ‘Quartettsatz’
Mozart: Clarinet Quintet in A major, KV 581
Berg: Four Pieces for clarinet and piano, op.5
Widmann: Labyrinth IV, for soprano and ensemble 

Sarah Aristidou (soprano)

Jörg Widmann (clarinet)

Staatskapelle Berlin String Quartet (Wolfram Brandl, Krzysztof Specjal (violins), Yulia Deyneka (viola), Claudius Popp (cello))

Boulez Ensemble

Daniel Barenboim (piano, conductor)


The new season at the Pierre Boulez Saal could hardly have opened in more promising fashion, whether strictly musical or in the hope imparted for the year to come. I was there at its predecessor’s premature close in March; so too was Daniel Barenboim, completing just in time his series of the Beethoven violin sonatas with Pinchas Zukerman. Here we heard Barenboim as pianist and conductor, but as part of a greater ensemble, of which Jörg Widmann was at least as prominent a member.


The first piece featured neither Barenboim nor Widmann, but rather the Staatskapelle Berlin String Quartet, in Schubert’s Quartettsatz. It works splendidly as a quasi-overture, not least to a programme such as this: ‘first’ and ‘second’ Viennese schools, themselves inextricably interlinked, with a contemporary successor who has long gained inspiration from both, as composer and performer. The Staatskapelle players offered a balanced and dynamic reading, alert, even febrile, so as to draw one in not only to this piece but to the programme as a whole. Schubert’s instrumental drama already presented themes that with only a slightly tweak of melody or harmonic context would be at home in Berg. Growing unease led inevitably to the tragedy of a coda whose tragedy seemed also to be that of our present condition, albeit without an ounce of self-pity: rather, fate itself.


Such anxiety, often subtle yet all the more pervasive for it, was to be heard in Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet, for which Widmann joined the quartet. Mozart’s cultivated mastery might mask such feelings to incurious players and listeners, but as we now know very well, masking is a strange and defective thing. There was no question here in the first movement as to the importance of Mozart for his Viennese predecessors, Berg and of course Schoenberg among them. Developing variation and extraordinary balance in complex phrasing—how many even notice?—were miraculously achieved in work and performance, proceeding in unfussy yet variegate fashion at a well-judged tempo. The drama of the development presented instrumental intrigue to rival any operatic ensemble, resolving with equal mastery.


So too in the second movement, which seemed to speak of the Countess a few years on. Detailed playing from all concerned had Widmann first among equals, if that. Why could harmony not have stopped here? It seemed a question as necessary to ask as it was impossible to answer; as the Countess would have told us, time moves on, such being both the comedy and tragedy of the human condition. Cultivated, composed, resolutely unsentimental, the minuet’s view on life was enhanced by trios in tragic, then serenading dialogue with its material, the second seemingly from a world poised between Don Giovanni and La clemenza di Tito, a world that might spin out of control yet never did. Mozart’s balance between joy and melancholy was once more finely judged in a finale of metamorphosis through variation: a message there for all wishing to listen. Inevitability, in which the darkness of the viola-led variation (wonderful playing from Yulia Deyneka) necessarily bubbled over into the high spirits of the next, afforded further immersion in Mozart’s tragicomedy of life.


Melodies from Mozart and Schubert, or reminiscences thereof, however imaginary, haunted the pages of Berg’s Four Pieces for clarinet and piano, in a commanding performance from Widmann and Barenboim, each movement a labyrinth and scena of its own, which yet formed part of greater mysteries. Berg’s alchemy of melody and harmony came as thrilling alive as had Schubert’s and Mozart’s, the frankly erotic charge stronger still. An expressionist chill of fate, culmination of a single yet multifarious breath, brought glowing, glistening, eruption, and death, and not only sequentially. This was a full-scale opera, or at least an instrumental drama, of its own.


Barenboim, the Boulez Ensemble (drawn from members of the Staatskapelle and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra), and Sarah Aristidou gave the premiere of Widmann’s Labyrinth IV last year. I was delighted to hear it and look forward to deepening my acquaintance with a compelling work for soprano and ensemble which, if not quite a song-cycle, suggests elements of that great Schubertian tradition in its setting of texts concerning Ariadne and the Minotaur—no Theseus, no other mediator—from Euripides, Brentano, Nietzsche, and Heine. An opening primal cry signalled much: not least that vocal music, for the first time since March for me, was now also back on the agenda. Instrumental interjections, from double bass to drums to accordion, heightened the sense of a primaeval drama which, if owing no evident debt to Birtwistle, perhaps shared with his music that sense of a violent, unsentimentalised prehistory. In this case, Ariadne must confront her half-brother and indeed her mother, the first number eventually moving to Euripdes’ words: ‘O miserable mother, tell me why did you bear me?’ (in Greek). It was Aeschylus, perhaps, who seemed to speak in the music, though, at least according to the still-influential typology dictated by the author of The Birth of Tragedy (and, of course, his mentor and ultimate, unknowing antagonist, Wagner).


For the following ‘Kinderlied für ein Ungeheuer’, we heard indeed a nursery rhyme for a monster, Aristidou, a born singing-actress, circling the hall on its first level, looking and singing into the orchestral labyrinth itself: again, first music, only latterly with words. A neo-Bachian (via Second Viennese School) canon marked the ‘Gang ins Labyrinth’, Ariadne’s progress delineated by ensemble alone, the labyrinth, in proper Bergian sense felt as much as observed. Were those echoes I heard of the Berg’s Violin Concerto and its inheritance from Bach? Barenboim led a performance of shattering intensity, a scream from above announcing the fourth number, ‘Im Labyrinth’, words from Nietzsche’s Dionysus-Dithyramben. A furious chase, ultimately to the death? In part, but an uneasy stillness and quest for recognition, both of which, as in Berg’s operas, proved as much instrumental and vocal, were equally important. Lyrical reminiscences of a German Romantic world from which a certain distance could yet be retained: could there have been a more in-keeping response to Heine, in the following ‘Traurig schau ich in die Höh’’? Wozzeck-like tread and post-Lulu harmonies continued to suggest a Bergian trail, which may or may not have been the true path through the labyrinth. For the final ‘Tötung des Minotaur’, Widmann, Aristidou, and indeed the ensemble as a whole suggested a revenge at first Ariadne’s, yet ultimately that of Dionysus. Yes, this was Nietzsche again. Blood-red sun above the stage brought visual as well as aural attention to trumpeters proclaiming in triumph glow of death against Ariadne’s white. We were all, however, in the labyrinth now; such is the power of music. Mahlerian explosion and death rattle lingered, even seduced. ‘Ich bin dein Labyrinth …’

Barenboim/Zukerman - Beethoven, 8 March 2020

Pierre Boulez Saal

Violin Sonata no.8 in G major, op.30 no.3

Violin Sonata no.9 in A minor/major, op.47, ‘Kreutzer’

Violin Sonata no.10 in G major, op.96

Pinchas Zukerman (violin)

Daniel Barenboim (piano)

All good things must come to an end. So it was with Daniel Barenboim and Pinchas Zukerman’s anniversary-year survey of the Beethoven violin sonatas, in which the final three sonatas offered a richer selection of stylistic and emotional contrast than any yet heard. A fine tribute, then, to Isaac Stern on his centenary.

The first movement of the op.30 no.3 Sonata was taken faster than I can recall. It never sounded merely fast, though, but impetuous, even tiggerish. Occasional initial smudges, vanished in any case on the exposition repeat, mattered not at all; the spirit was there and was what counted. This was, moreover, a true partnership, bringing out such musical meaning in what might appear on the page, at least to dull souls, mere scales and arpeggios. The development, over before we knew it, had nevertheless changed everything, change which continued throughout the recapitulation. Such freshness was followed by quiet, transformative confidence in the second movement, assuredly ‘molto moderato e grazioso’. It sang with neither need nor desire to exaggerate, Beethoven and his performers able both to emulate Mozart without anxiety of influence, yet also to remain entirely true to themselves. The finale, whilst recognisably in the first movement’s line, proved both grander and more skittish, following the dictates of the material yet transforming them into musical narration.

The eloquence of opening statements, violin and piano, minor and major, offered an exposition to an exposition for the first movement of the Kreutzer. The exposition proper hurtled forward, not always note-perfect in the piano part – but then, neither is Bartók, in his extraordinary recording with Szigeti – yet again with the crucial spirit far too often lacking in contemporary Beethoven. Humanism defiant and unapologetic is what we need, just as much as Beethoven; humanism defiant and unapologetic is what we had, in a performance that had one on the edge of one’s seat, in a good way. It developed, with all that that properly entailed. And it had a scale, a stature, quite different from anything we had heard previously. The slow movement, leisurely yet directed, felt just right: it had space, yet not too much. Within its overall frame, further transformations could unfold: of tempo, melody, rhythm, and ultimately of harmony too. Each variation had its own world, clearly related to and dependent on the whole, yet pointed with individual character. With the minore variation, pathos was felt as necessity, Beethoven’s Mozartian – and Bachian – lessons well learned indeed. The fourth variation immediately following conveyed a sense of wonder, of having passed beyond to a pastoral idyll. Everything was there, so long as one listened in the fullest sense of the word. The finale offered a fine sense of tonal ambiguity. Which mode would win out? This was a battle to be won, no fait accompli. Rhetoric was founded on harmony, not some strange sort of free-floating thing-in-itself, as some would have you believe. With Beethoven, only connect.

The tenth and final sonata, op.96 in G major, is not heard often enough. I am not sure that it could ever be heard enough, not in this fallen world anyway. From the outset, its greater subtlety and complexity registered: never forbidding, but inviting. Barenboim and Zukerman led us by the hand through a first movement whose developmental mastery is so perfect it almost ceases in itself to register. On the cusp of what we know as late Beethoven, it suggests – and certainly did so here – other possibilities, other pathways: related, yet not necessarily quite the same as those eventually travelled. There was no need to display anything on the sleeve, whether here or in the Adagio espressivo. Yet the more one was drawn in, the closer one listened, the more radical the scope and peculiarities of the harmonic field Beethoven and his performers mapped out. Concentration and contrasts in the scherzo came close to suggesting presentiments of Webern. The final movement, then, acted not only as a finale to this sonata but to the series as a whole. It united so many earlier tendencies, introducing a few more for good measure, in a dialectical fashion it was ultimately futile not to think of as ‘late’. Further complications proved as pleasurable as they were necessary. Heroism and mastery take many forms, both in work and performance.

Zukerman/Barenboim - Beethoven, 1 March 2020

Pierre Boulez Saal

Images: Monika Rittershaus

Violin Sonata no.5 in F major, op.24, ‘Spring’

Violin Sonata no.6 in A major, op.30 no.1

Violin Sonata no.7 in C minor, op.30 no.2

Pinchas Zukerman (violin)

Daniel Barenboim (piano)

Elegant yet variegated violin playing announced the opening of Beethoven’s Spring Sonata, one of the loveliest pieces he wrote. The way the piano, or rather the pianist, leaned into his first melodic phrase and then sang – piano song, not vocal, nor for that matter violin song – proved just the ticket in response. We were to be in excellent hands, it seemed, with Pinchas Zukerman and Daniel Barenboim: a partnership whose give-and-take was very much that of equals. The first movement’s tempo was spot on. Rhythms were nicely sprung. Mozart’s utopia may have vanished, yet it seemed close –shadows included, becoming more prominent as the movement progressed. Dialogue that was magical not precious, harmonic as well as melodic, characterised the slow movement. Mysteries were revealed through phrasing and modulation alike. An initially frisky scherzo turned uncomfortable, but even the finest musicians can fall out of sync on occasion; they, like Beethoven, are only human. There was full recovery, in any case, for a finale truly worthy of the name, already of the nineteenth century in dramatic vigour, yet with vernal sweetness and chirpiness that looked back as much as forward.

The first of the op.30 sonatas, that in A major, immediately spoke with greater complexity. Barenboim and Zukerman’s first movement seemed to communicate fully Beethoven’s balance between profusion of material and longer line: no easy thing, be it in Mozart or Beethoven. It was fascinating here and in the slow movement to hear that work itself out in complement and contrast with its dramatic implications. In the latter, the very emergence of melody in both instruments made for absorbing – and far from easy – listening. The opening of the finale initially seemed less enigmatic, both more straightforward and charming. Gathering of pace, however, also afforded gathering of complexity. Here was authentic Beethovenian struggle, brought to us via outstanding playing by any standards.

Barenboim’s communication of harmonic rhythm, ever founded on the bass line, unleashed a stark yet sensitive account of the C minor Sonata. First-movement rhetorical interplay between piano and violin and motivic transformation alike fuelled the dramatic engine, its tumultuous coda the truest of climaxes. The slow movement was songful, soulful, sublime. What one could learn from Barenboim’s voicing of piano chords alone! Not, of course, that one listened to any one aspect in isolation. Dramatic eruptions gained much of their force from integration within a larger whole. The organic may well be a Romantic construct in need of deconstruction; it nevertheless became reality here. Accenting in the scherzo both gave the appearance of spontaneity and spoke of an understanding that left nothing to chance. There were many characters to encounter here, still more in a trio that was, properly, both contrasted and related to its elder sibling. Taken attacca, a finale imbued with fury and pathos made for a duly tragic conclusion both to the sonata and to the recital as a whole.

Zukerman/Barenboim - Beethoven, 29 February 2020

Pierre Boulez Saal

Violin Sonata no.1 in D major, op.12 no.1

Violin Sonata no.2 in A major, op.12 no.2

Violin Sonata no.3 in E-flat major, op.12 no.3

Violin Sonata no.4 in A minor, op.23

Pinchas Zukerman (violin)

Daniel Barenboim (piano). 

Images: Monika Rittershaus

Leap Day concerts do not come around so often: every four years, in fact. With characteristic generosity, then, the Pierre Boulez Saal offered us two. Boulez in the afternoon and Beethoven in the evening: both, of course, great passions of Daniel Barenboim. Here we heard the first of three concerts in which Barenboim, with his old friend Pinchas Zukerman, performs the complete (canonical) violin sonatas. These are works they have lived with for decades, but there was nothing routine to their performance; we heard, rather, a freshness born of internalisation/

Where to begin? Why not at the beginning? There was no sense whatsoever of limbering up. We began in medias res, rather as if this were a return to the hall after an interval, surely a reflection of work as well as performance in the case of the D major Sonata, op.12 no.1. The players’ similar, or rather mutual, conception of phrasing, articulation, and the particular character of early Beethoven shone through. The first movement requires space – and received it. Its brief development section progressed with playful wonder, expanding Haydn’s universe. There was, moreover, a fine sense of return at the dawn of the recapitulation: a second development already, Barenboim showing all the vigour of a thirty-year-old, yet the experience and wisdom that come with greater years. All was founded ultimately – as ever with Barenboim’s Beethoven – on harmony; and that was not restricted to the piano part. Barenboim presented the second movement theme with plain-spoken integrity that truly penetrated to the heart, in every sense, of Beethoven as artist and human being. Lyrical violin response and combination prepared us for a set of variations that would be far more than the sum of its parts. Harmony, once more, and an almost effortless sublimity – the struggling Beethoven is to be found later – showed us, even before the torrential turn to A minor, not only that this mattered, but how and why. The rondo finale benefited from a fine degree of post-Mozartian lilt. That syncopation did its work harmonically as well as melodically and rhythmically, rendering such distinctions justly meaningless. The music smiled and swaggered; again, the distinction did not register. Above all, it had heart.

There was a similar immediacy to the opening of op.12 no.2, albeit in a performance instantly attuned to the work’s different character. That certainly included its A major tonality, nodding to Mozart’s KV 526 but also to Beethoven’s own early piano sonata in the same key, op.2 no.2. This first movement offered mischief that was never mere licence, drama that was never mere display. Every note mattered, without pedantry, the surprises wrought by both development and recapitulation especially captivating. The slow movement unfolded with the dignity and depth of a great seria aria. Here was a pathos Mozart would surely have appreciated. The finale’s kindred yet different syncopation (to and from its counterpart in the first sonata) benefited from similar rhythmic buoyancy, yet also hints of something darker. Beethoven never stands still, nor should his interpreters – which includes us as listeners. Barenboim delivered his final, scene-stealing piano A with perfect timing and attack.

As often seems to happen when Beethoven groups his works in threes, whether intrinsically or through our listening expectations, there was a sense of neoclassical looking back to the third of the op.12 sonatas, perhaps especially in its first movement. Not that there was any doubting the composer’s voice here, in a performance boisterous, rigorous, and lovable. Another aria for the second movement? Perhaps, but this was also rightly taken as an opportunity to show that instruments and instrumentalists can and will do things that the voice and singers cannot and will not. It proved, moreover, developmental to a degree belying Beethoven’s still relatively tender years. Barenboim’s piano bass line explained all, with modulations to make hairs stand on end, in a performance as poised as it was moving. An irrepressible finale became, quite rightly, more complex the more one listened, the truest of joy to be had from counterpoint, harmony, and their combination.

The op.23 sonata offered something undefinably – at least beyond my powers of definition – of A minor to its performance. It was not only its Mozartian inheritance, though that was surely part of it. Whatever the ultimate source and nature, there was above all a rightness to this performance, heard and communicated as if in a single, endlessly divisible breath, grabbing one from the outset. It was a tale of possession, intense in its fury and in its tenderness. The second movement offered strangely restless contrast. Barenboim and Zukerman made no effort to tone down its protean quality, nor did they exaggerate. What we heard was very much that performing ideal, however much a construct, of letting the music ‘speak for itself’, of Beethoven rather than his interpreters rendering Beethoven once again strange. The finale was doubtless haunted by Mozart, yet in that also retained its distance, haunting never being unmediated, thereby enabling something quite different and surprising to unfold. Elements of unforced surprise, whether one ‘knew’ they were coming or not, helped summon this movement’s particular musical, especially formal, qualities into being. The world of the Kreuzer Sonata felt closer than one might have expected. To be continued, then…

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

Pierre Boulez Saal

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

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

Franck: Violin Sonata in A major

Guy Braunstein (violin)

Martha Argerich (piano)

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

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

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

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