Andsnes - Vustin, Janáček, Silvestrov, Beethoven, and Dvořak, 21 November 2022

Wigmore Hall

Aleksandr Vustin: Lamento
Janáček: Piano Sonata 1.X.1905, ‘From the Street’
Valentin Silvestrov: Bagatelle, op.1 no.3
Beethoven: Piano Sonata no.31 in A-flat major, op.110
Dvořák: Poetic Tone Pictures, op.85

Leif Ove Andsnes (piano)

Leif Ove Andsnes’s performances are always very well worth hearing; this programme, mixing the familiar and unfamiliar was no exception. The first half offered short pieces by Russian and Ukrainian composers, either side of Janáček’s tribute to František Pavlík, a worker killed demonstrating for a Czech university in Brno, followed by Beethoven’s penultimate sonata: however one considers it, and however clichéd this may sound, a sublime song from and to the human spirit and what it might yet achieve. 

Aleksandr Vustin, invited by Andsnes in 2019 to his Rosendal Chamber Festival, in what was only Vustin’s second journey outside Russia, died the following year, an early victim of the coronavirus pandemic. His Lamento, itself inspired by the funeral of a friend and its sounds, is tonal, yet moves in often surprising ways. Opening two-part left-hand writing soon has a right-hand melody soar above—a recollection, I learned later, of a bird that began to sing at the funeral and would not stop. It made for an interesting prelude to Janáček’s Sonata 1.X.1905, ‘From the Street’, its first movement in Andsnes’s performance both precise and suggestive: like work and composer, one might say. Proudly turbulent in its post-Romanticism, passages of its music seemed almost to acquire proto-filmic character, perhaps in slow motion, in remembrance. The composer’s profound national pride sang forth still more directly in the second movement, the stubbornness of his writing, not least in sheer persistence of figures, transmuted once more into a declaration of spirit, made with a fine sense of musical drama.

One of Valentin Silvestrov’s Bagatelles offered cool contrast, behaving (at least I fancied) not entirely unlike Vustin’s piece. The quiet dignity of Andsnes’s performance again made for an interesting prelude to a sonata, this time Beethoven’s in A-flat major, op.110. Its first movement sang with a simplicity both fragile and strong. Welcome, one might say, to late Beethoven. Fractures were often only implied; this was not the most modernist of accounts, nor was there any reason it should be. Yet implied they were. The turn to the minor was communicated with ineffable sadness, yet never mawkishness. Again, this was Beethoven. The scherzo’s gruff humour did not attempt to conceal the difficulties of the trio. The overriding impression was of shocking concision. Mournful dignity characterised Beethoven’s ‘Klagender Gesang’ in the finale, the fugue first offering release and intensification, its voicing to die for: beautiful, no doubt, yet above all truthful. Contrast and complement of material registered and developed throughout, the inverted fugue enabling yet in no sense guaranteeing ultimate triumph. There was, rightly, no easy path.

The second half was given to Dvořák’s Poetic Tone Pictures, op.85: new, I confess to me, and quite a discovery. Andsnes had explored them during lockdown, welcoming the discovery of ‘life-affirming music of the greatest invention and imagination’. Dvořák can occasionally pale alongside Janáček, but not here. This work emerged as a Schumannesque collection, played with affection, characterisation, and acute understanding. Indeed, the scene-setting of its first piece, ‘Night journey’ immediately brought Schumann to mind: not that it sounded ‘like’ Schumann, but in terms of the role it played in introduction, and its vein of fantasy. Andsnes’s communication of the charm and Romantic snares of this night was finely judged indeed. A wonderful procession of characters, scenes, sketches in a strong sense ensued: not unlike a good novel, or perhaps better, a collection of short stories. ‘At the old castle’ haunted. A vigorous ‘Furiant’ put Andsnes’s fingers duly through their paces. Dances of all kinds, goblins and all, invited us in—not always without danger. Exuberance and introspection informed one another across more elevated canvases and earthier songs. Andsnes’s cantabile in the ‘Serenade’ was just the thing, as was his Lisztian grandiloquence in ‘At a hero’s grave’. Fascinating—and nourishing.

Shadrin/Staatskapelle Berlin/Lyniv - Wagner, Liszt, Silvestrov, and Prokofiev, 30 October 2019

Pierre Boulez Saal

Wagner: Siegfried-Idyll

Liszt: Malédiction, S 121

Valentin Silvestrov: Serenade, for string orchestra

Prokofiev: Symphony no.1 in D major, op.25, ‘Classical’

Yury Shadrin (piano)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Oksana Lyniv (conductor)

Something of a mixed bag, this, in terms of programming and interpretation, but there was no doubting either the excellence of the Staatskapelle Berlin or the technical ability of Oksana Lyniv to secure what she wanted from the players, right down to a diminuendo on the final chord of the Siegfried-Idyll. Lyniv seemed least at home in this piece, although Wagner lies at the heart of the orchestra’s daily endeavours. Its opening moulded to the point of mannerism, the work’s melos, as Wagner would have put it, often felt suffocated, however warm and beautiful the playing. Too often, Lyniv’s interpretative stance amounted to pushing forward and then pulling back, whether within a phrase or paragraph; it was flexible, yes, without the bumpiness and rigidity lesser hands bring to Wagner, but never sounded quite at ease. Extremes of tempo sounded applied to the music rather than arising from within. Still, there were plenty of moments to savour: the sheer beauty of violin trills, blend and character from the wind, richness of cello tone, and so forth.

Yury Shadrin joined the orchestra’s strings, now greater in number, for Liszt’s so-called ‘Malédiction’: more properly the Concerto for piano and strings in E minor, on which Liszt worked throughout the 1830s. In a few preceding words, Shadrin wisely counselled the audience not to approach this curious work from the standpoint of the composer’s later (numbered) piano concertos: masterpieces, of course, and yet masterpieces still denied by Liszt’s cultured despisers. I welcomed the opportunity to hear the work for the first time in concert, though I cannot help but wonder what some in the audience would have made of it. Hearing it, as Shadrin suggested, as the music of a composer making his way in the world was surely the best course of listening. He and Lyniv offered admirable clarity and structural understanding in a gestural performance of a daringly experimental work that convinces more at some times than others. Muscular virtuosity here is a sine qua non; so too, however, is exquisite sensitivity, the intimacy of chamber music: readily heard, for instance, in the piano’s shadowing of the cellos in a strange, recitative-like section, on which so much subsequently depends. If, ultimately, the work as it comes down to us might benefit from an editor, that too is part of its charm. A starkly non-, even anti-Romantic Mendelssohn ‘Spring Song’ followed as an encore, oddly provoking laughter from some in the audience.  

String orchestra, minus piano, returned to the stage after the interval for Valentin Silvestrov’s Serenade. Lyniv clearly believed in this 1978 score, leading what sounded to me a performance as understanding as it was committed; once again, motivic working and broader structure were brought clearly, vividly to life. For me, its slow, gloomy – and then not so gloomy – neo-Romanticism long overstayed its welcome. If you like lengthy series – certainly not in the Schoenbergian sense! – of repeated string chords, this may have been your sort of thing. I found myself waiting for something to happen that never did. Ultimately, it sounded as though it was waiting for its c.1995 Channel 4 television drama to which it might act as a vaguely ‘atmospheric’ accompaniment.


Prokofiev burst onto the scene with much-needed relief from his Classical Symphony. If the first movement was not free of occasional mannerism – a sudden pianissimo that seemed to shout, ‘hear me’ – then that worked perfectly well as idiomatic archness. As precise as it was bubbling with charm, the movement’s formalism was relished, enabling the listener to do so too. Lyniv’s moulding of the second movement again proved in keeping with material and style. Relinquishing the baton here, as she had for the Siegfried-Idyll, led to an inordinately balletic display onstage, which tempted me to shut my eyes. If visually distracting, though, it was not musically so. The minuet went faster than often we hear: not necessarily the worse for it, so long as it is considered straightforwardly jolly rather than subtly grotesque. For the finale, another very fast tempo worked well, breathlessness, for once, no bad thing in the revelation of Prokofiev’s singular brand of neoclassicism. Orchestral playing proved as colourful and as well-drilled as one could have wished for.