The programme was Louise Farrenc’s Overture No.1 in E minor, followed by Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, and then Schumann’s Symphony No.1, ‘Spring’. The Halle was conducted by Tomáš Hanus, and the violinist was the indefatigable Alina Ibragimova, who stepped in at short notice to replace a self-isolating Chloe Hanslip.

Louise Farrenc was recognised as an outstanding concert pianist, a gifted composer, inspirational teacher and distinguished scholar in her day. She was professor of piano at the Paris Conservatoire for 30 years, the only woman in the 19th century to hold such a position. I have to say this overture wasn’t particularly interesting – it was sort of sub-Schumann, and, reflecting in tranquillity, there’s not much I can say more than that. Before 2000, its last performance seemed to be in 1840…..

The Mendelssohn was a very good performance indeed – Alina Ibragimova has the gift of really giving a personal touch to the music she plays without seeming to make that overdone or egotistical. There were beautiful touches to her playing – the way the second subject of the first movement was phrased for instance, and some of the transition passages were delicately done, plus she gave us some beautifully soft sustained high notes – while at the same time there was a zest, an energy that made the performance really exciting as well. Alina got a big ovation at the end, deservedly. I had previously thought, among modern players, that the performance I’d heard a few years ago by Isabelle Faust was the benchmark, but this one supplanted that. I do actually enjoy the Mendelssohn concerto – it has a wider mood range than some of his works. Norman Lebrecht once argued, I seem to recall, that the first movement’s main theme had influences from Eastern European Jewish music and was disturbingly angst-ridden.

The Schumann 1 I enjoyed (and I don’t think I’ve heard a live performance of this in 50 years of concert-going)  but I think Schumann’s symphonies really need a conductor of quite unusual interpretative skills and insight to really make them live: a Furtwangler, a Bernstein; I heard a very impressive 2^nd Symphony conducted by Haitink a few years ago. My favourite has always been No 3, the Rhenish, and indeed originally the Halle were going to play this. This performance of the 1st wasn’t really in the Bernstein etc class, and I am afraid to say my attention drifted a little at points. But it was a perfectly decent performance, well played by the Halle and, as I say, I enjoyed it thoroughly

The final event of my weekend in London was an unexpected delight. The Aquinas Piano Trio were performing Haydn’s Piano Trio Op. 40, completed during the final few weeks of Haydn’s second and last trip to London in 1795. The other work was Smetana’s only Piano Trio.

It is always exciting to hear a work for the first time which makes an immediate impact. In 1854 – 55, the Smetanas lost two daughters in quick succession to tuberculosis and scarlet fever.  The Trio was one product of Smetana’s reaction to the losses – he wrote “The loss of my eldest daughter, that extraordinarily gifted child, inspired me to write the Trio in G minor in 1855.” I thought this was a wonderful work – sweepingly emotional, a haunting melody – and the Aquinas Piano Trio really dug into the work, particularly in the last movement. I’ve made an immediate note to myself to buy an MP3 recording of it.

There’s so much chamber music I have yet to discover. When I think that I could be dead in 5 years quite easily, and that some of the works I am hearing now I may never hear again in live performance before I die, it does provoke me to hear more and more!

The other work, the Haydn, was, as usual, engaging and fun, but the Smetana was a real knock-out. They offered a small encore, a melancholy tango-ish piece by the Argentinian composer Piazzola.

Sorry, this is a bit of a grumble. Yes, I know these are difficult times and that we should be grateful for any live music happening anywhere, but this was still – by the recent standards of the Halle, CBSO and LSO – a remarkably short concert  – just over an hour’s music, Beethoven 2 and the first Mendelssohn Piano Concerto. And, I’m sorry to say, I don’t like the majority of Mendelssohn’s music. ‘Music flows from Mendelssohn like water from a public fountain’ said Wagner, somewhere, and while he might have had a particular animus about him, I can sort of see the point, though the Midsummer Night’s Dream music is wonderful and despite myself I do enjoy the violin concerto.  The hall wasn’t full, even by socially distanced standards and it all had a rather depressing feel. The LMP played well enough in the Beethoven, and had I not heard Tabita Berglund’s Beethoven two weeks earlier I might have been more excited, but I felt this was an under-characterised performance that didn’t do much for me.  The pianist in the Mendelssohn was Isata Kenneh-Mason, who I think is very special – I heard her in one of the Halle Orchestra’s live-streamed Winter concerts performing Beethoven’s 3^rd piano concerto and thought that was an excellent sensitive performance. Here in the Mendelssohn she introduced many little touches of colour, as well as offering some spectacularly nimble playing in the jolly (up to a point) last movement of the Mendelssohn. She was great, but the piano concerto didn’t really deserve her! (grumble over, and I might have been influenced by the fact that for some reason I was sitting at the extreme left of the stage at the front so could see really very little, next to over-prominent strings!)   

I had been intending to go to a performance at Kings Place of the Bach B Minor mass in the evening but that got postponed till October a few days earlier, so I was scrabbling around for other things to go to on Saturday at the last minute. Though I would never have gone to it in a million years before lockdown, I thought I should go to a ‘Vivaldi by Candelight’ late afternoon concert at St James’ Piccadilly. They were performing Pachelbel’s Canon, obviously Vivaldi;s Four Seasons and Bach’s  Piano concerto no.4 BWV 1055.

And these are the guys at the sharp end of lockdown, I guess – free-lance musicians, not a salaried furloughed group like some of the big orchestras (OK, I know some are free-lancers, like the LSO), and probably no-one’s making a packet exactly in normal times – these were good musicians who have had a very tough time over the last 18 months. Apparently the Piccadilly Sinfonietta was formed only three years ago and had a packed schedule of concerts in 2019-20 in London, Manchester and further afield. I had actually – I realised – missed an opportunity to hear them in Sheffield Cathedral when I was at ‘Fidelio’. Anyway, I am glad they are working and that there was a decent crowd for the first of two concerts they were giving in London. The pianist was  Warren Mailley-Smith, who heads up the group and they had a guest leader, Matthew Jones

Strangely, I don’t think I have ever sat down and listened to the Four Seasons, let alone heard it live in the concert hall, and I have to say I really enjoyed it – I hadn’t realised quite what a big role the lead violin has, and Matthew Jones was really very good. There were one or two momentary blips in ensemble, but really, this was a thoroughly enjoyable, thoroughly competent performance that made me enjoy this work afresh. I was glad I went. The slow movement of Winter’ I put alongside the ‘theme’ of the Goldbergs in my head as I walked across from Piccadilly to my next concert at the Cadogan Hall.

I have never as far as I can remember ever heard the Goldberg Variations played on a harpsichord, though clearly that was the instrument for which it was presumably originally written. It is a very different experience to hear the work played on a piano by, say, Glenn Gould or Andras Schiff (whom I heard play it in Manchester about 3 /4 years ago) – the piano can provide subtle shades, soft touches and enhance that sense of grave melancholy which at times pervades Bach’s music; the harpsichord by contrast emphasises the prodigy and energy of invention in this piece, the multitude of voices within each bar. On the whole I prefer to hear it on the piano but, really, it is lovely to hear it live in any shape or form. Who knows what Bach would have preferred had he the modern plethora of options……? (I believe he did indeed hear the fortepiano in an early form and indeed set himself up as an agent to sell them in the ?1740’s? So maybe he hear the work when playing it himself on the fortepiano?)

Steven Devine was the player on this occasion – not a name I’d come across before but clearly well-up on contemporary views about Baroque playing, with a lot of decorations and odd juddering halts or missteps which I assume are about Baroque performance practice and not just his not keeping time properly! He was very moved, and the audience with him, to be playing in front of an audience for the first time in 15 months. He gave a very good introduction to the work – I think it’s really important more artists do this, to explain the works they’re playing and engage with the audience

I thought the least successful of the variations was the central Andante, the still heart of the piece, which because of the jangling harpsichord and the possibly slightly too swift tempo Mr Devine took didn’t have the reflective quality it should have done – but elsewhere there was sparkle, wit and energy. It is a wonderful experience just to sit in a hall for 70 minutes or so and be exposed to this constant level of invention and activity. One of the great things about the Goldberg is that, with the opening theme lodged in your head, it is fairly easy to see how all the different variations connect with it – much more so, to my mind, than with the Diabelli Variations for instance. And…whether on piano or harpsichord, this piece does feel like a journey, from innocent youth to quiet old age.

I really enjoyed this and the Goldberg theme followed me around in my head for the rest of the day.

This was a world-class concert. Last week the two concerts scheduled by the CBSO had to be cancelled because a member of the orchestra tested positively for Covid. It had earlier been announced that Mirga was ill! This week though everyone was present and correct – and it was a pretty large orchestra (strings had clearly been cut back but there were 7 horns and triple trombones and trumpets – some hope then for Bruckner and Mahler symphonies in the not too distant future). The programme was Weinberg’s Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes, Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder and Weinberg’s Symphony No.3. The Weinberg Rhapsody was a riotous piece that put the orchestra through its paces, with Mirga offering almost demonic direction, hands and arms whirling at a terrific rate. I fail to see why this piece is not played more often and it is baffling that it seems to be much less well-known than the very similar Enescu piece. The CBSO sounded fantastic – some particularly excellent oboe playing. 

I was less convinced by the Mahler. Maybe it was my position in the hall – 5^th row in the Circle – but Karen Cargill’s voice didn’t seem to project very well – though there was some beautifully soft singing in the last song which came across very well. I didn’t hear enough light and shade in the voice and variation of phrasing and a tonal response to the words – but there was some beautiful woodwind playing. Given that the critics all raved about this performance I think I am in a minority, but I was far more moved by Elizabeth Llewellyn’s performance of the same songs at the Wigmore Hall last September. 

The Weinberg Symphony I seem to remember hearing from the Proms in 2019 when I was listening to them in a hotel in Jerusalem towards the end of August that year. It’s a very impressive work which I hope to hear again, and which I need to buy a CD or MP3 of. I think Weinberg had a Prokofiev gift for melody and the first two movements have very haunting themes in them. The slow movement and the finale will need some more listening to get my head properly round them. Again, the CBSO and Mirga made the very best case for the work, and it is so good to hear a high-quality piece I hardly know.  There is so much of Weinberg’s work I want to explore – I have about 6 CD’s but there is masses to explore

I am getting a bit embarrassed at all my positive reviews – no doubt in part because of 15 months of lockdown and the absence of live music – but the Opera North performance of Fidelio I saw in Nottingham on June 19^th really was quite something! I had originally meant to see it in Salford at the Lowry Theatre. I then switched to Nottingham to avoid too much travel into Manchester, as instructed by HMG – though Interestingly even if I had decided to go I wouldn’t have made it….. on the day of the Lowry performance I was returning from London on a train that was meant to get into Manchester at 1727, and from then I would have gone to the Lowry by tram, had I been going. Sadly, someone threw themselves in front of a train at Milford Keynes, so I didn’t arrive in Manchester until 19.40 – I would have missed the performance anyway!

The Nottingham show was very special!! It was a concert performance with no spoken dialogue (instead, some linking read-outs from Don Fernando) but the fact that all the singers were well-versed in their parts and able to interact as if they were on stage, plus the way they were ‘into’ their characters and showed their varying moods and feelings fully and clearly to the audience, meant that this was as intense an experience as if it were a staged performance. Apart from the conductor Paul Daniel, the impressive cast of internationally-well-known singers including Rachel Nicholls (Halle and Longborough Brunnhilde), Toby Spence (who I last saw in ROHCG’s Billy Budd), Robert Hayward (Opera North’s ex-Wotan) and Brindley Sherratt (ROHCG Hagen/Fafner/Hunding) were all in the performance live streamed in November 2020. I was very enthusiastic then – see blog around that time, below – but it was even more affecting to see it face to face. Paul Daniel’s pacing of the opera was swift but the Opera North orchestra coped fantastically well with the challenges of this piece (the horns in Abscheulicher’ for instance were secure and confident, and kudos to the timpanist throughout) and they gave a seat-grippingly tight and powerful performance. Rachel Nicholls’ large voice for Leonore was wonderfully flexible (she in fact started off working as a Baroque specialist) and she was very moving in the ‘Abscheulicher’ aria and in the second Act. Toby Spence was surprisingly loud and forthright as Florestan and sounded like a heldentenor – his opening ‘Gott’, moving from pianissimo to fortissimo was very impressive! Brindley Sherratt made Rocco a much more complex character than usual. There were no weak links in the casting, and the whole experience was completely absorbing. It is a long time since I have been so moved in the opera house

The programme was Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, Osvaldo Golijov’s Last Round, and Beethoven 7 with Tabita Berglund conducting the Halle. I thought this was a very, very good concert. The connection between the pieces was, I guess, the progress from the meditation and stillness of the Wagner to two different manifestations of dance and movement (and of course Wagner called Beethoven 7 the ‘apotheosis of the dance’).

Perhaps the least successful item was the Wagner. I thought the opening tempo was too fast. The Halle played ravishingly at times in the piece, with a lovely idiomatic string sound, and sensitive horn and woodwind playing, but somehow it never cohered, and the piece seemed rather more episodic than I think I’ve heard it under some other conductors (eg Reginald Goodall who conducted it with the LSO in 1969 – there is a recording on Youtube). I got slightly lost at points.

The Golijov piece was excellent. I’ve heard of him as a composer but this is the first work of his I’ve listened to. The piece is a commemoration of the death of the tango composer Piazzolla, and involves two string groups playing in opposition to each other much like two tango partners. The first section is a whirling dance of death – very exciting and accessible; the second “a final, seemingly endless opening sigh”, to quote the composer. I thought this was a really interesting piece. The composer requires the orchestral players to stand so that there is also a visual impact as well as an aural one from the jagged bow strokes

The Beethoven was quite superb – one of the best performances I have heard. The tempi used were all on the fast side but, for once, Ms Berglund justified their use, and the Halle’s sound was tight, disciplined and absolutely able to cope with some hair-raising speeds, particularly in the finale, which was very exciting and almost on a par with the ne plus ultra performance of the finale of Beethoven 7 with Theodor Currentzis, who gave it as an encore with his Musica Aeterna band at the Proms in 2018. There was also some beautifully sensitive and rich playing in the slow movement. I felt that I was hearing this work afresh…..

Ms Berglund is clearly quite a force. Like ‘Mirga’ she is a powerhouse and the Halle seemed to really enjoy working with her. I hope they have a chance to work with her again soon

Another great concert (I’m sure I’ll come across some duds at some point, but this wasn’t one of them). The Chiarascuro Quartet was playing two works – the Haydn String Quartet in B minor, Op. 33 No. 1, and the Beethoven String Quartet No. 13 in B flat, Op. 130 (so, one of the ‘late quartets – the one that was originally meant to end with the Gross Fuge but which formidable movement Beethoven eventually set aside for a gentler less awe-inspiring ending).

I had heard of – but not heard live  – the Quartet, but I was surprised to see they are quite old-stagers, starting life as a quartet in 2005. The things that’s really interesting about the way they play is that they are using period instruments, with gut strings and historical bows. This does make a real difference to the way they sound – they seem, I thought, to be able to create marvellously soft , whispered, pianissimos, and the balance of the instruments sounded somehow warmer and some of the textures more transparently beautiful than with conventional instruments. I was right at the front of the audience with the first violin, Alina Ibragimova, very nearby, and therefore the sound wasn’t necessarily as balanced as other people might have heard it, but I was very struck by the sheer virtuosity and leadership Ms Ibragimova gave to the quartet– she is of course a well known soloist as well as playing chamber music.

The Haydn quartet was, as I have said about others of his quartets, always quirky and interesting. Nothing is ever quite what you expect – the second movement is a scherzo in this particular quartet, rather than a slow movement, and the third movement is a D major Andante, but which also retains something of this sense of the traditional scherzo as well. And the finale is quite dark and edgy, rather than a light-hearted scamper. The Chiarascuro Quartet played it brilliantly, I thought.

With the Beethoven Op 130, the Quartet seemed to make more sense of this work than any other performance I have heard – I think the way they played the complex first movement made me understand the structure a lot more clearly, and in fact the programme booklet was quite helpful in suggesting that the origins of the form of these last quartets could lie in the ‘Divertimento’ tradition much used by Mozart rather than the more traditional form used by Haydn and indeed Beethoven in his earlier quartets. This made me fuss less about having essentially two scherzos and two slow movements in this work and wondering about how each movement related to the others. The playing in the wonderful ‘Cavatina’ was quite beautiful – and helped by the soft tones of those period instruments.

And, poor things – because of social distancing, and having played energetically and with all their hearts and minds for us for 80 minutes, they had to play the same programme again 20 minutes after they’d finished performing for us!! The picture below has a male who wasn’t actually playing as second violin – I am not sure who this was (but she was very good!)

This was a recital of piano music by Knussen, Mozart, Prokofiev and Schubert. Ms Suhanova is a Latvian, UK-trained, pianist in the early stages of her career. None of these works were familiar to me, except the Schubert. I particularly enjoyed the Mozart (K311), which was graceful and fairly swift – there were interesting quirks to the musical flow in the first movement which Ms Suhanova brought out well and she didn’t try to over-romanticise the piece – there are angsty moments in Mozart, but they musn’t be overdone; her phrasing had many little touches of sensitivity and colour. The Schubert Impromptu (D935 no 3) I thought was the least successfully done of the four pieces she played – the initial tempo was too fast and the resulting variations/sub-themes were over–clangorous and without that melancholy and introspection – whether occasioned by his sexuality, disease, or just the sense of an impending early death – which all Schubert piano music must have. I was reminded of a maxim I made up myself, but which I read the other day also in Humphrey Burton’s memoirs ’In My Own Time’ – the maxim being, ‘most music sounds better when played a little slower than you initially think it should be played’. The Prokofiev Op 94 sonata was really a bit too much to take in on a first hearing but certainly sounded a significant and powerful work, and one which, as far as I could tell, Ms Suhanova played well  – I’d like to hear it again. Finally the Stuart Knussen piece about prayer bells seemed sonorous and impressive.

An interesting recital – I’m glad I went