Thursday 22nd March Sitkovetsky Trio
Moments to savour in lunchtime concert season
The 2011/12 series of lunchtime concerts has been an unqualified success artistically, and with capacity audiences at every event have demonstrated a thirst for chamber music in the city and county.
Personal highlights have been the song recital given by Emma Bell and her pianist partner Anna Tilbrook, and Craig Ogden's remarkable guitar playing, but all concerts have provided music-making of the highest order with a mix of established international artists and talented younger performers.
The brilliant young Sitkovetsky Piano Trio (Alexander Sitkovetsky, violin, Leonard Elschenbroich, cello and Wu Qian, piano) provided a fitting finale with wonderfully virtuosic performances of Haydn and Beethoven works.
Haydn's Trio in C Major features a demanding piano part, particularly in the outer movements, but Wu Qian proved well up to the task, displaying a sound technique in coping with the sparkling runs and, together with her two colleagues, gave an utterly captivating account of this work.
Beethoven's Archduke trio was written when his deafness was beginning to encroach on his ability as a pianist and influencing his behaviour and moods. Indeed, his erratic playing at the first performance was his last public appearance at the piano.
It is somewhat introspective and the three musicians blended perfectly to give a passionate, and emotional rendition of this complex work.
The 70th season of lunchtime concerts opens on October 4, 2012 with an all-Chopin piano recital given by Adam Neiman.
John Dilleigh Leicester Mercury 24/03/2012
Thursday 23rd February 2012 Waldstein Ensemble
Creating successful accounts of chamber music requires an agreed understanding of the work and a mutual respect and trust between the performers, who will have worked together for years and practised for many hours to finely hone their interpretations.
It was therefore of particular interest to see how the Waldstein Ensemble would cope with the replacement of two of their members in presenting a challenging lunchtime recital.
Joining regulars Guy Ben-Ziony (viola) and Noam Greenberg (piano) were Liza Ferschtman (violin) and Adrian Brendel (cello). Suffice to say the quality, tightness and superb musicality of their performance gave the impression that they had been making music together for a long time.
Their programme commenced with Haydn’s Piano Trio in A major, a delightful piece with a most beautiful and poetic song-like andante and an exciting final movement allegro in which all the playful and brilliant possibilities were exploited to the full.
Completing the recital was Brahms’ Piano Quartet in A, a substantial work which was composed when he was 28.
All four movements are meticulously structured and the players seemed to skilfully merge their artistic identities with differing tone colours and exciting dynamics.
The intimacy and fine acoustic of New Walk Museum was the perfect setting for this exceptional recital.
John Dilleigh Leicester Mercury
Thursday 9 February 2012 Jack Liebeck (violin) Martin Cousin (piano)
Should you – like a certain well-known consulting detective – have recently acquired a Stradivarius violin for 55 shillings and be intent on a career as a virtuoso violinist then this concert was probably not for you. The colours and dynamics that Jack Liebeck conjured up from his lustrous Guadagnini violin would have been so off-putting that you would have thought that even at that price you had not got a bargain.
Brahms first violin sonata was effortlessly played, Martin Cousin allowing the piano part, which might otherwise dominate, to be an equal partner. Based in part on two of Brahms songs this performance sang from first to last.
The Three Myths, Op 30 of the Polish composer Karol Symanowski are evidently a favourite of Liebeck, he played them at Loughborough University last year. This is ideal repertoire for an artist with his range of colour, with Symanowski’s highly perfumed depictions of three Greek myths wondrously varied. At times he appears not to let his bow touch the strings so quiet is the playing. If it is this quiet playing that is so electric, he has more than enough power for the climaxes. One can see why this music on record is often illustrated by Gustav Klimt paintings, gold, scarlets and purples.
Tchaikovsky’s Valse Scherzo might be merely salon music writ large but played with such panache by both artists it was highly relishable. An encore of the refulgent Médiation from Thais left the capacity audience enraptured.
Thursday 26 January 2012 Joy Farrall (clarinet) Min Jung Kym (piano)
Few concerts in the sixty-nine seasons of these concerts can have begun with a communication from Buckingham Palace. This concert was in that small number, with the opening announcement thence that that morning the director of the series and the International Music Festival Nicholas Daniel had been awarded Her Majesty’s Medal for Music for 2011.
Obviously one must presume this award was mainly in recognition for his stalwart efforts for music in Leicester, but also recognised his manifold contributions elsewhere…
The subsequent concert of music for clarinet and piano was an exemplary one.
Gerald Finzi left a mere forty opuses, yet he is a composer where any bar is recognisably in his style. His Five Bagatelles were probably like a lot of his work built up over several years, although he died of leukaemia in his mid-fifties. From a forthright opening movement through a wide range of limpid colours in the middle movements, the work ends in a jazzy fugato movement.
The usual adjective for Brahms late clarinet works is autumnal, but the first sonata effortlessly given here, seldom seems to suggest that word, being both more passionate and lyrical.
The French composer Darius Milhaud whose Scaramouche in its version for this combination of instruments ended the recital, definitely falls into the prolific category, with several hundred works. Originally written for two pianos, it adopts his characteristic exuberance, and infectious dance rhythms from his time in Brazil. Brilliantly played, one found that the tunes had insinuated themselves for hours afterwards.
Thursday 12 January 2012 Carducci String Quartet
The quantity of music produced varies widely between composers. Some are incredibly fecund, producing works by the thousand, whilst others, for various reasons, may write only a handful, even if their lives are not curtailed.
The English Irish composer EJ Moeran, whose Second String Quartet began this splendid concert by the young – and also appositely a mixture of English and Irish players – Carducci Quartet falls definitely into the latter category. Perhaps only his Symphony, Sinfonietta, and Cello Concerto can be claimed as at all well-known, and they are not played as often as they should This quartet was found undated in his papers by his widow after his death, almost exactly 61 years ago. Moeran seems to mix English and Irish folksongs, whether genuine or composed by himself. He has a local connection too as he was educated- and briefly taught after the Great War - at Uppingham.
The Second Quartet by the American composer Phillip Glass was written as accompaniment to Samuel Beckett’s poem, Company. Do you spot a theme? Four short movements where a texture is built up from repeated figuration rather than a tune. The Carducci have recorded Glass’s first four quartets, and this was evident in their mastery of iridescent colours.
Mendelssohn falls decisively into the former category, but in his final quartet, written in pain at the death of his much-loved sister, and in the year of his own death, he seems subtly darker, yet of a piece with his own usual mercurial style.
Malcolm Warner Leicester Mercury
Chamber Music in Leicester : Leicester Mercury's music critic Neil Crutchley previews the second half of the 2011/12 Lunchtime Concerts season
The Museum Lunchtime concerts have been an indispensable part of Leicester’s musical scene since the Second World War and today they are more popular than ever, with full houses and queues for “returns”.
This is not surprising: for two reasons. One is the fact that compared to a decade or two ago, there is far less “live” chamber music in Leicester. Then Leicester University used to promote several concerts each season by the renowned Lindsay Quartet, and it also had its own highly-regarded “in house” chamber ensembles (Archduke Trio and Voces Intimae Quartet) which gave regular lunchtime concerts. There were also frequent vocal and instrumental recitals. All this has gone and we now have just three concerts a season by the celebrated Coull Quartet.
We have also lost Graham Oppenheimer’s short-lived but well supported De Montfort Hall Sunday Coffee Concerts and the regular recitals by his equally short-lived Schidlof Quartet.
The other and main reason is the outstanding quality of the music making at the Museum concerts. The present season is undoubtedly the equal of any in the land – and that includes London. We have artistic director Nicholas Daniel and the concerts team headed by Peter Baker to thank for that. Daniel, one of the world’s leading oboists, seems to attract great artists like a magnet – and once they perform at the Museum, many ask to return. We are amazingly fortunate to have someone of his calibre running both the lunchtime concerts and the city’s International Music Festival.
Here’s proof of the above: On Thursday 12th January the renowned Carducci Quartet will play Moeran, Philip Glass and Mendelssohn; on 26th Joy Farrall and Min Jung Kym play Finzi, Milhaud and Brahms.
International violinist Jack Liebeck and pianist Katya Apekisheva perform Brahms, Szymonowski and Tchaikovsky on 9th February and on 23rd the Waldstein Ensemble play Haydn and Brahms.
Leading guitarist Craig Ogden appears on March 8th and his programme includes three Scarlatti sonatas. Finally on 22nd March the Sitkovetsky Trio plays Haydn and Beethoven.
Be warned – book early! Tickets cost £10 (£9) from Museum Shop, tel (0116) 225 4920.
Thursday 15 December Haffner Wind Ensemble
If you are writing a wind quintet – as one assumes most of you are – you will appreciate that of all the standard combinations of chamber music, music written for wind quintet seems to exhibit the greatest regional variety. A string quartet written by a Russian sounds much closer to a South American one, than do similar wind quintets.
A moment’s reflection suggests a plausible reason: wind instruments are the closest to the human voice, so you get the effect of speaking different languages.
The expert players of Emer McDonough (flute), Nicholas Daniel (oboe), Joy Farrall (clarinet), Sarah Burnett (bassoon), and Stephen Bell (horn) of the Haffner Wind Quintet are all soloists as well as ensemble players, and are all well-known through their performances at the Leicester International Music Festival, so it was no surprise that the art gallery was packed for this mirific concert.
Jackie Bear’s – as Jacques Ibert is affectionately known - Trois Pièces Brèves could not be more insouciantly Gallic. Whilst the less well-known Pavel Haas, who was murdered in Auschwitz, shows some pawky traits of his teachers Martinu and Janacék, this performance proved that his music – sadly, there is too little of it – is extremely worthy of exploration.
Thea Musgrave’s Impromptu No 2 for flute, oboe, and clarinet was perhaps less ingratiating than the other pieces but not at all difficult to follow.
The full ensemble returned for an arrangement of three movements from Ravel’s orchestral Le Tombeau du Couperin, itself an arrangement of a piano suite.
Malcom Warner Leicster Mercury
Thursday 1 December 2011 Natalie Clein (cello), Priya Mitchell (violin), Katya Apeksiheva (piano)
Trio's performance delighted capacity audience
A trio formed especially for the concert comprised Leicester International Music Festival favourites – cellist Natalie Clein, violinist Priya Mitchell and pianist Katya Apekisheva.
The concert began with Astor Piazolla's Grand Tango played by Clein and Apekisheva. A jagged dancing theme began the piece, with Clein using harsh tone to emphasise the music, changing to a much smoother tone as the piece took on a more graceful theme.
The dancing, driving rhythms of the closing theme were played with passion and enjoyment, with the piano part fractionally dominating the ensemble.
The same composer's Café 1930 from Histoire du Tango was given a sensitive performance by Mitchell and Apekisheva, producing a wonderful lingering quality perhaps reminiscent of the lingering aroma of a top-quality coffee.
The trio ended the concert with Tchaikovsky's Trio in A minor. The themes of the first movement passed seamlessly between the three players, the rolling piano accompaniment creating a sense of forward progression towards the second movement; a set of nine exciting variations.
These ranged in mood from passionate to gentle, from indulgent to romantic, all played with passion and beautiful accentuation. All three musicians add emotion to their music through their facial expressions and body language, the music at times seeming to envelop their very beings.
Coupled with their unquestionable musical ability, the capacity audience enjoyed a performance of the highest calibre.
Peter Collett Leicester Mercury
Thursday 17 November Navarra String Quartet
Musical eloquence at its finest
I remember the first Leicester performance of Britten’s third string quartet given shortly after the composer’s death. The music seemed to mesmerise the audience, being a complex mixture of wide-ranging emotions. The closing movement, with its hypnotic tread, appeared to signify all passion spent, yet there was also an underlying feeling that the composer still had so much to say.
That this was a great work there was little doubt; its seemingly diffuse nature appears to lay bare the ailing and frail composer’s state of mind. The 63 year-old Britten’s penultimate work speaks with a disconcerting directness that can leave the listener reeling.
A fine performance still has this unsettling effect, as we heard in a searing account from the award-winning Navarra Quartet. These perceptive young artists gave their emotional all and held the capacity audience spellbound – you could have heard a pin drop.
The technical challenges were amply met: the impeccably delicate line in the central “Solo” movement and the biting, dissonance that open the preceding Ostinato, being two examples. The closing Recitative and Passacaglia has lost none of its power to move and unnerve. The players eloquently captured the ambiguous feeling of the music, which seems to ask, as it fades away: is this an end or a beginning?
The equally unconventional String Quartet in C, Op 54 No.2 by Haydn made a captivating and contrasting opener. It was played with impressive insight, elegance and in the striking Adagio, with its flamboyant arabesques for first violin, stylish virtuosity.
Neil Crutchley Leicester Mercury
Thursday 3 November 2011 Charles Owen (piano)
Compelling performance of fluency and excitement
One of the stalwarts of the Leicester International Music Festival is Charles Owen. He is also "one of the finest British pianists of his generation," according to Gramophone Magazine. A capacity audience at New Walk Museum confirmed his popularity as he presented a lunchtime concert incorporating breathtaking works by Brahms and Schumann.
Owen began with Brahms' Piano Sonata in F sharp minor. This passionate sonata gave pianist and piano a good work-out. Phrasing was poetically timed, with dramatic pauses as important as the notes. The sonata is characterised by constant changes of mood. Owen's well-controlled performance coped with these changes easily, bringing a dramatic turbulence which suited the piece.
Brahms' contemporary, Robert Schumann, wrote Carnaval de Vienne in 1839. The popularity of the Waltz was taking over Viennese social life and the influence of revolutionary France was still being felt. Schumann incorporates a degree of musical humour on both of these subjects and Owen's playing seemed to have a fitting devilishness which conveyed both this and some of the gaiety of Viennese society.
Owen played with passion and energy, resulting in a compelling performance which was fluent and exciting. The appreciative audience encouraged Owen to an encore, which was a gentle rendition of Schumann's Traumerei.
Peter Collett Leicester Mercury
Thursday 20 October 2011 Richard Watkins (French horn) Julius Drake (piano)
Nicholas Daniel, artistic director of the lunchtime concerts, considers Richard Watkins to be 'the finest horn player in the world', and on the evidence of this recital, that statement can’t be far from the truth.
Watkins has a breathtaking technique combined with an exceptional fluency and smoothness of tone that extends throughout the range; as this well-chosen programme, in which he was impeccably partnered by pianist Julius Drake, illustrated.
They began with Beethoven’s youthful Sonata for Horn and Piano Op.17; a work that belies the fact that it was written in great haste. Its classical proportions and predominantly extrovert mood give it considerable charm, which was exploited to the full in this spirited and sensitive account.
The lyrical Notturno by Franz Strauss provided a gentle interlude before Messaien’s Appel Interstellar brought us into the late 20th century with a jolt. Watkins seemed able to twist his tongue into knots for this intriguing piece, which required virtually every effect the horn can offer. It left us marvelling at his stunning musicianship.
After the world premiere of three tuneful short pieces from Prokofiev’s Songs of Our Days, arranged for horn and piano by the late Christopher Palmer, we came to the emotional heart of the programme: Poulenc’s deeply felt Elegy, written in memory of the great horn player, Dennis Brain. The performers caught the work’s sense of sorrow, anger and resignation to searing effect, before lightening the mood in the last item: a dazzling account of Schumann’s passionate Adagio and Allegro.
Neil Crutchley Leicester Mercury
Thursday 6 October 2011 Emma Bell (soprano) Anna Tilbrook (piano)
Soprano Emma Bell and pianist Anna Tilbrook combined forces to give a recital of songs by Strauss, Berg, Barber and Wagner. A programme of less well known songs which went down well with a good sized audience!
The recital began with Richard Strauss’ romantic Das Rosenband; both performers showing an immediate empathy with the music. Bell’s rich soprano tones were balanced beautifully by Tilbrook’s sensitive accompaniment: it was noticeable that the piano lid was just fractionally open, no doubt assisting greatly in the creation of a wonderful performance.
Berg’s Seven Early Songs comprise the work of a variety of poets set to music. Romantic in outlook, the poems speak of countryside scenes and of love. The music is rich and passionate, with gentle moments performed as intensely as the full blooded passages were performed with bravado.
Four songs by Samuel Barber followed, including The Secrets of the Old, which provided a brief rhythmic interlude, typical of Barber’s style.
Bell has a particular passion for the songs of Richard Wagner, citing the wonderful marriage between words and music as being of particular appeal in the Wesendonck Lieder performed today. Wagner set to music five songs written by his soul mate, Mathilde Wesendonck and in words, music and performance the joy, longing and passion of their relationship was paramount.
Two musicians with an obvious passion for what they were presenting produced an intensive and compelling performance.
Peter Collett Leicester Mercury