Polish greats

Violinist Giovanni Guzzo

It might be that seeing a great view from the top of a mountain is ehanced by there being no one else there.  I think the opposite is true of concerts, as I found out at Cadogan Hall on Tuesday when the RPO gave a terrific performance of Polish classical music to an almost empty auditorium.  Shame.  Read my review at Classicalsource, including my report on two brillint young string players who, if there's any justice, will be stars soon.

The violinists' violinist

The Guardian has asked a number of eminent violinists to choose their number one fiddler.  Interestingly, there are two mentions apiece for Ida Haendel, Pinchas Zukerman and Gidon Kremer, but no Oistrakh, Heifetz, Milstein, Szigeti, etc, etc.  I would have chosen Oistrakh myself, and Julia Fischer from the crop of current violinists.  Who would you choose?  Let us know in the comments section.

Herwig Zack: 4 Strings Only

4 Strings Only: A Recital for Solo Violin

Bloch

Bach

Ben-Haim

Berio

Herwig Zack (violin)

AVIE AV2189

Several themes run through this album of solo violin music from German violinist Herwig Zack.  Four of the works suggest a broadening of the repertoire in the shadow of the fifth; Bach’s violin works, after all, being so dominant in the repertoire.  Three of them were composed for Yehudi Menuhin, a prolific commissioner of new music, while Menuhin’s Bach remains one of his most important legacies.  And, perhaps more trivially, this disc reminds us that besides Bach, plenty of other Bs wrote solo violin music.

Zack’s recital gives us the two Suites by Bloch, in reverse order and separated by a sample of Bach’s mighty example of violin writing.  Bloch’s Suites for solo violin, composed for Menuhin, date from quite late in the composer’s life (both written in 1958) and maybe their close proximity makes them sound like two sides of a musical coin.  The Suites’ language is lonely, anguished, and at times quite angular.  If anything, the First Suite in more introspective than the Second, though its initial upward stab makes for a striking and combative opening.  At its heart is a brief Andante, just two lines long in the score, which evokes the more simple tonality of Bach.  Zach underscores this link by paring back his tone and vibrato, a technique also deployed in the Bach Second Sonata.

The Second Suite occasionally slips into a Bartokian sound world, and perhaps its most striking moment is a series of declamatory chords in the moderato second movement.  These are both intriguing works, but I must admit that despite having listened to them a number of times, I’ve struggled to retain the sound of them in my memory.  Zack’s intonation is always precise, but he’s let down, particularly in these works, by the recording’s lack of dynamic contrast; fortissimo moments are often little varied from pianos that follow them, though I sense that this is not Zack’s fault.  The dynamic issues are less of a problem in Bach’s Second Sonata, BWV 1003, in which Zack’s borrows period simplicity with minimal vibrato and sustain.  He adapts his sound very well, though a less self consciously stylised performance might have made more of the lines of the Fuga or of the famous andante.  

The last two works on the disc turn out to be the most appealing.  Paul Ben-Haim’s Sonata of 1951 makes a great play of Jewish elements, such as a distinctive harmony and single note drones maintained beneath modal flourishes.  Zack is at his very best in Berio’s Sequenza VIII, which plays with the idea of closely pitched clusters of notes and, in a brilliant central section, a ghostly toccata of smudged semi quavers.  At one point, Zack excels himself by continuing the toccata while interjecting four-note chords into their flow without ever loosing the thread of the underlying semi quavers.  It’s a bravura moment from a very impressive violinist.

This review originally appeared at Musicweb-International.

British Composer Awards 2011

Here's the shortlist for the British Composer Awards, as selected by the British Academy of Songwriters, Compsoers and Authors (BASCA).  The winners will be announced on November 30th, and Radio 3 will be airing a special programme about the awards on 4th December.

FULL SHORTLIST:

Instrumental Solo or Duo

Oliver Knussen: Ophelia's Last Dance
Thomas Simaku: Soliloquy IV for Bass Clarinet
William Sweeney: Sonata for Cello & Piano

Chamber

David Matthews: Horn Quintet
Anthony Payne: String Quartet No. 2
Martin Suckling: To See the Dark Between

Vocal

Dai Fujikura: away we play
Martin Suckling: What Shall I Give?
Huw Watkins: Five Larkin Songs

Choral

Alexander Campkin: O magnum mysterium

Francis Pott: Mass in Eight Parts
Michael Zev Gordon: Allele

Wind Band or Brass Band

Tom Davoren: Looking In

Emily Howard: Obsidian
Lucy Pankhurst: In Pitch Black

Orchestral

Julian Anderson: Fantasias

Simon Bainbridge: Concerti Grossi
Huw Watkins: Violin Concerto

Stage Works

Orlando Gough: A Ring A Lamp A Thing
Tim Minchin: Matilda
Joby Talbot: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Liturgical

Julian Anderson: Bell Mass
Francis Grier: Missa Spiritus Sancti
Gabriel Jackson: The Glory of the Lord

Sonic Art

No Award

Contemporary Jazz Composition

Tommy Evans: The Green Seagull
Martin Kershaw: Closing In
Sid Peacock: Hallucinogenic Garden

Community or Educational Project

John Barber: Consider the Lilies

David Bedford: The Wreck of the Titanic
Anna Meredith: Night Shift

Making Music Award

Richard Bullen: I can't find brumm...

Kirsty Devaney: Hadal Zone
Tim Sutton: The Seven Joys

International Award

Gerald Barry: La Plus Forte

Brett Dean: Epitaphs
Bent Sørensen: La Mattina

Outreach

Mira Calix / Orlando Gough / Emily Hall / Andy Mellon / Paul Sartin: Fables - A Film Opera

Graham Fitkin: PK
Julian Joseph: Shadowball

Liszt on the violin

This is a bit bonkers.  Noam Sivan has transcribed Liszt's mighty B minor Piano Sonata for solo violin and it's performed here by Giora Schmidt.  The Sonata is one of Liszt most formidable works, one which eschews the flashy virtuosity that Liszt's works can suffer from.  This arrangement doesn't really work, but it's a really admirable attempt at reducing a dense score onto an instrument that doesn't really do harmony.  It's also very well played here by Schmidt. 

Takács Bartok round 1



Photo: Richard Houghton

 Over at Classicalsource, I review the first part of the Takács Quartet's Bartok cycle at Queen Elizabeth's Hall, London.  Read the review here, and UK readers can listen to the concert for a week on iplayer.

Classic Turetzky

Read my review of Bertrum Turetzky's classic album of new music for double bass at Classicalsource.

Rostropovich: The Genius of the Cello

When Mstislav Rostropovich died in 2007, one of the last great connections to a generation of remarkable composers was lost.  Rostropovich was celebrated internationally as the greatest cellist of his age, but he was also the man who coaxed the finest cello music of the Twentieth Century from its towering composers.  Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Britten, Lutoslawski, Penderecki, Dutilleux - these are just a few, though it was the first three with whom Rostropovich's name become inextricably linked.  John Bridcut's excellent documentary, broadcast last Friday on BBC4, touched on these special relationships and culminated in the first glimpse of newly discovered footage of the premiere, in Moscow, of Britten's Cello Symphony. 

Here was a man of enormous energy, who inspired love and a certain degree of fear in his students and colleagues.  Unlike many of his Soviet contemporaries, Rostropovich was sometimes outspoken in his criticisms of the authorities and their actions and it ultimately forced his exile from his homeland for almost two decades.  Bridcut's documentary ties Rostropovich's story together with this story of political conscience, beginning with the story of his famous 1968 Proms appearance, playing Dvorak on the day Soviet tanks rolled into Prague, and ending with his dramatic intervention in the fall of the Soviet Union, two decades later.  Hopefully, a DVD will follow this broadcast, with all of the footage from the Britten premiere.

Best CD cover of the month

You just want one, don't you.

Capuçon's Mendelssohn

Click here for my full review of Renaud Capuçon's Mendelssohn Violin Concerto at The Anvil, Basingstoke.

Proms Gothic gets CD release

It seemed a sensible idea to release it on CD, but at the time of this year's Proms performance of Havergal Brian's gigantic Gothic Symphony, there was no word of it.  It has now been announced that the live performance will be released by Hyperion Records in time for Christmas.  Smart folks, those Hyperion people.  Read what I thought about the performance at the time and go to Hyperion's site for a few clips of the performance.

Rostropovich on BBC4 tomorrow

Viewers in the UK will get to see John Bridcut's documentary on the late cellist, Mistislav Rostropovich.  It's on BBC4 at 7.30PM on Friday and I for one hope it's on iplayer there after as I'll be out at the time.

Would you like some Boulez with your Boulez?

Wall to wall Boulez at the weekend proved to be a mind expanding but exhausting experience.  Read my report for Classicalsource.com.  Then have a look at Boulezian's extensive write up, Classical Iconoclast's always interesting view and Colin Anderson's review of the big finish, Pli selon pli.  And, if you want to hear some for yourself, here's a link to a video of an earlier stop on the Pli selon pli tour.

Interview: Belceas take on Beethoven

Boulez isn't the only B in town.  Across at Wigmore Hall, the Belcea Quartet are beginning a year long cycle of Beethoven's string quartets, starting tonight with Op18/3, Op74 and Op130 (without Grosse Fuge).  I spoke to the quartet's violist, Krzysztof Chorzelski, for Classicalsource.com about this new project.  You can read the full interview here.  Tickets for this evenings concert are sold out, but the concert is broadcast live on Radio 3 at 7.30pm and will be available for 7 days on BBC iplayer.