AUTOGRAPHS

The Arts Desk’s Classical Music Reviews For This Week

This week’s classical music reviews from The Arts Desk include the latest classical music CDs, a composition by a 102-year-old, piano recitals and a little light music. 

Richard Nice’s week was made when he joined the audience at the piano recital by the eminent Russian pianist Elisabeth Leonskaja, which was held at the Wigmore Hall. Centred around Schubert, her programme dealt with the often intimidating ‘Wanderer’ Fantasy with remarkable authority and panache, revealing the wise insight and sorrowfulness in his later work. At the Wigmore Hall, Leonskaja conveyed far more than her past animated performances would have suggested to Nice, who already held her in great esteem. He and the rest of the audience were thoroughly captivated throughout.

Already into his 102^nd year, Elliott Carter and his new classical masterpiece caught the limelight on the last night of the Aldeburgh Festival, playing to an audience which contained Igor Toronyi-Lalic. His ‘Conversations,’ which saw Pierre-Laurent Aimard on the piano and Colin Currie on marimba, contradicted the composer’s advanced years, surprising the crowd with its lively, feisty spirit and mood-driven range, swinging from dreamy to dancing to sorrowful with speed. In contrast, to follow were two twenty-something composers – Helen Grime’s piece was the less successful; Charlotte Bray’s violin concerto on the other hand boasted intriguing orchestration that left this reviewer keen to hear it again. The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and their conductor, Oliver Knussen, displayed their proficiency with Stravinsky for the rest of the programme.

Ismene Brown’s evening at the Wigmore Hall, which began with a frightful contemporary dance display, was saved from absolute ruin by a recital of Bach and Shostakovich by pianist Joanna MacGregor. MacGregor played the hall’s Friday late-night programme as if it had been written for electric piano, showing off her vast talent for communication. Nevertheless, Brown eventually departed discontented as the narrow playing missed the depths and natural expression demanded by the pieces, despite its fascinating and detailed quality.

 Over at the Royal Festival Hall David Nice checked out ‘Light Fantastic’, John Wilson’s evening dedicated to his favourite light music composer, Eric Coates. The concert was part of the Southbank Centre’s Festival of Britain celebrations and was recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Other amazing musical offerings included the Forsyte Saga Theme and Edward German’s Romeo and Juliet, as well as music by John Malcolm, Vivian Ellis and Robert Farnon. Despite many excellent tunes and sublime playing, Nice nonetheless, would rather have had a programme dedicated to Coastes alone.

At the same time, Graham Rickson could be found sorting through the week’s releases of classical music on CD. ‘Galatansaray’ by the Turkish-American composer, Kamran Ince, with a Fifth Symphony inspired by Turkey’s renowned football club was found to be too lengthy yet its strains of a Slavic oratorio remained still oddly gripping. The orchestral works that accompany it are nice showpieces, providing some welcome serenity after the grandiose offering that has gone before. The second  complete opera written by André Previn, with its libretto based on Noël Coward’s screenplay for David Lean’s unforgettable film, ‘Brief Encounter,’ is his next choice. Using hints from several of his most-loved composers, such as Bernstein, Walton, Prokofie and Strauss, Previn solemnly reconstructs the story. Finely presented overall, the opera appears to be saturated with the American composer’s pining for the time when he lived in Surrey. Finally this week comes Julia Lezhneva, a young Russian soprano with an astonishingly mature yet bright and flexible voice, which is shown off to great effect in her CD debut of showy Rossini arias. The clever vocal fireworks greatly amused Rickson, who was also awed by the Warsaw Chorus and Marc Minkowski. This is a CD to lighten the mood no end.

Marc Andre Hamelin Plays Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2