Tag Archives: Elisabeth Leonskaja

BBC SSO / Morlot / Leonskaja

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City Halls, Glasgow

Grasping persuasively the conflict of mood and momentum at the start of Sibelius’ challenging Second Symphony is one thing; sustaining that formidable, ambiguous tread through to the bitter end is another. In this performance by the BBC SSO under Ludovic Morlot – returning to the orchestra in his own right after a highly impressive stand-in appearance two seasons ago – what initially promised gold eventually delivered bronze.

In other words, this was a perfectly worthy performance, if not a record-breaking triumph. It got off to a gripping start, the stop-start multiplicity of Sibelius’ opening themes like dramatic fragmentations, yet galvanised by an overarching vision of continuity, grizzly tensions that lingered through the Allegretto’s silences and gear changes, tempi that constantly refreshed the emotional thrust. 

Such qualities again played their part in the ensuing Andante, which felt, as it should, like the symphony’s mindful, but still restive, centrepiece. The spareness of the initially lonesome walking basses cast an immediate aura of introspection, Morlot’s unlaboured pacing avoiding any necessity for knee-jerk tempo shifts later on, letting the heightening inner tussles speak for themselves. The flow of the final movements proved less heated, Morlot’s grip faltering at times, lessening the euphoric arrival and light-giving impact of the final heroic theme.

In all of this, too, was an occasional sense of undernourished, sometimes misjudged, texturing, most noticeably from the woodwind. Where was the abrasive edge that brings Siblelius’ writing so vividly to life, a belligerence so in keeping with the composer’s character? It rarely surfaced in a performance that almost, but didn’t quite, lead the field.

The first half was all Mozart: a relative novelty in the case of five entr’actes composed in the 1770s for Tobias Philipp von Gebler’s heroic play Thamos, King of Egypt; and one of Mozart’s best-known Piano Concertos – No 24 in C minor – with the redoubtable Elisabeth Leonskaja as soloist.

For all that the incidental music bore a certain fascination – its three call-to-attention chords boldly pre-echoing The Magic Flute, and the “theatre” implicit in Mozart’s writing smacking of operatic prototype – there was an overriding sense of a missing dimension. Nor was the performance as tight and together as might have captured more convincingly its stormy thrills and spills.

If such inconsistencies spread to the concerto – some glaringly uncoordinated attacks sadly diminishing its overall preciseness – there was much in Leonskaja’s performance that earned her the adulation her admirers visibly hold. 

She is her own woman, issuing a style of Mozart playing that eschews the intellectualism of, say, the late Alfred Brendel, the sweet lyrical precision of Mitsuko Uchida, or the golden tone-production of a Steven Osborne or Paul Lewis. Her playing offered a sort of resigned simplicity, a performance given to sudden flights of lightning virtuosity (Brahms’ high-calorie cadenza for one) against moments of seemingly detached calm. 

While these were instances to savour, there were equally ones that felt as if the lights had been dimmed and the heat went off, as in Leonskaja’s tendency not always to shape or caress the lyrical line, or simply to mishit notes. Maybe that’s what led to the periodic nervousness emanating from Morlot and the orchestra.

That aside, Leonskaja’s style remains a matter of taste, and a sizeable audience for Thursday’s live BBC Radio 3 broadcast clearly enjoyed it. She responded with smiling gratitude and, as an encore, the charmed innocence of the Andante from Mozart’s Piano Sonata in C, K545.

Ken Walton

This concert was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 beyond which it is available for 30 days on BBC Sounds

RSNO / Leonskaja

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Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

A couple of weeks ago Mahler’s gargantuan ‘Resurrection Symphony required the services of RSNO-Max, a performance contingent filling every available inch of the GRCH stage, choir balcony and off-stage areas, its tumultuous bodycount approaching 300. On Saturday a Classical-dominated programme required only RSNO-Lite, a job for at most around 50 of its musicians. 

The comparison is genuinely fascinating because it highlights an orchestra unfazed by differentiations in playing style, musical delivery and sound worlds appropriate respectively to 20th and 18th century repertoire. Saturday was like listening a completely different orchestra – compact, lithe and intimate in music that encompassed Haydn, French-African composer Chevalier de Saint-Georges and Beethoven. As music director Thomas Søndergård alluded to when addressing Glasgow’s capacity audience, the RSNO’s versatility is something to savour.

It’s a relatively new phenomenon, Søndergård having systematically introduced more Haydn to RSNO programming during his tenure, believing it to contain the “essential grammar” for orchestral development. That it has had effect was evident from the outset of Saint-Georges’  Overture from his opera L’amant anonyme, a performance as delicate as it was agile, its simple virility delivered with impeccable clarity and precision, and plentiful flashes of wit.

In his time – this opéra-comique, premiered in 1780, is the only one of six Saint-Georges operas to survive – the black Guadeloupe-born violinist-turned-composer was a noted figure in Paris. Thus the fortuitous link to the symphony by Haydn that followed, the first of his six Paris Symphonies, known as ‘The Bear’, also dating from the 1780s. Fuelled by the same stylistic sensitivities, Søndergård again drew the most exquisite sounds from his orchestra. 

This Haydn performance was a masterclass in orchestral balance, the strings confidently alive with a sheen of finesse, allowing so many piquant wind textures to shine through meaningfully and naturally. Where grace and poise dominated, there was still ample room for excitement and thrill, not least the drone-supported rustic ebullience of the Finale.

If this was all preparation for the second half’s Beethoven concerto featuring legendary pianist Elisabeth Leonskaja, it did its job splendidly. For here was a vision of the composer’s ‘Emperor” Piano Concerto, dictated by Leonskaja’s old-school reflective approach, that defied current norms. Paradoxically, it was her provocatively reserved rhetoric, her deliberate tempering of the dynamics or lingerings mid-phrase, that injected urgent fascination for the listener.

If any one moment summed this up, it was in the midst of the romping Finale, where Beethoven calms the music to a near standstill – a diminishing duet between piano and timpani – before reigniting it for the final sprint home. Time stood still in this quietly teasing dialogue between Leonskaja and timpanist Paul Philbert. Anticipation filled the air.

Nor was there a lack of warmth and generosity from a soloist whose interaction with the orchestra was as stimulating as it was prescriptive. Søndergård and his players simply expanded the artfulness of their first half performances, responding to Leonskaja’s sometimes questioning poeticism with the same thoughtfulness, eloquence and inspired characterisation. In short, this revelatory performance threw new light on an old favourite.

Ken Walton

East Neuk Festival (2)

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The piano wove a binding thread through Friday’s and Saturday’s programming at last week’s East Neuk Festival. Not at the expense of the Festival’s wider chamber music focus, but nonetheless intriguing for its variously fashioned pianistic styles and interpretations. And that’s before East Neuk veteran Christian Zacharias made his appearance – one of his last public recitals before retirement from solo performance – on Sunday.

There was an aura of elder statesmanship accompanying the presence of septuagenarian Elisabeth Leonskaja, who starred in two recitals at Crail Church. One was collaborative, teaming up with Dutch violinist Liza Ferschtman and French cellist Ivan Karizna; the other a musical soliloquy featuring the final three Piano Sonatas of Beethoven, a grouping that has been expounded brilliantly in recent years by Scots pianist Steven Osborne.

Those used to Osborne’s sublime sophistication and refined eloquence may have found the drier objectivity of Leonskaja’s Beethoven performances unyieldingly phlegmatic. Yes, she commands a focussed authority that approached its breeziest in the Sonata in E, Op 109, the lyrical expressiveness of the final variations a welcome antidote to the stormy Prestissimo, where Leonskaja’s tendency to thunder out octave bass lines first surfaced.

There was alternating distress and luminosity in the mood swings of the A flat Sonata, Op 110, rocked only by lyrical lines that sold short on silken sustainment. In the final C minor Sonata, Op 111, where the impetuosity of the opening movement found Leonskaja in comfortable territory, she most often internalised the emotional opportunities of the concluding variations, even the exuberance that lights up Beethoven’s before-its-time “boogie-woogie” moment.

That same note of reserve effected a stiffness in Schubert’s Trio no 2 in E flat in her collaboration with Ferschtman and Karizna, despite the constant promise of interactive flair and profusion of passion from the string players. 

The earlier part of that Friday recital opened our eyes to the playful duo compatibility of pianists Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy. Tasked with Schubert’s Allegro in A minor, D947, this proved to be a teasing aperitif to their own Saturday showcase programme, which culminated in the four hands version of Stravinsky’s famously paganistic The Rite of Spring.  

The route to the Stravinsky was just as tantalising, firstly in the mischievously physical and musical interplay of Poulenc’s Sonata for Piano 4 Hands, then in a cheeky alternating juxtaposition of Beethoven’s Op 45 Marches (like nuclear prototypes for his bigger symphonic creations) and several of Kurtag’s tongue-in-cheek piano sketches from his Jatekok series. One in particular of the Kurtag – a fitful “argument” over three simple chromatically-spaced notes – raised appreciative sniggers.

Then the main billing, A Rite of Spring that lacked none of the ritualistic venom, fiery virtuosity  and ballistic rhythmic edge normally associated with the full orchestral version. Tsoy and Kolesnikov invested infinite keyboard colour and energy in a performance that was thrillingly hyperactive and acutely precise. 

Boris Giltburg performed with the Pavel Haas Quartet | Neil Hanna Photography

A similar punctiliousness featured in the pianism of Boris Giltburg, whose Saturday evening programme in Crail with the Pavel Haas Quartet was a masterclass in musical synchronicity. They played two well-matched works from the golden days of European Romanticism, Brahms’ rigorously Germanic Piano Quintet in F minor, complemented perfectly by the Bohemian-scented Piano Quintet No 2 by Dvorak.

It was clear from the outset that mere routine was never on the cards. The Brahms opened teasingly slowly, but quickly accelerated into a slick and dramatically crafted performance, rich in texture and wholesome in scope. Giltburg integrated effortlessly with the off-the-shelf quartet, confidently initiating new directions where it mattered. The same unanimity of purpose brought instant warmth to the Dvorak, its fresher melodic invention a complementary foil to the solidness of the Brahms.

One other key event, a piano-less one on Friday at the Bowhouse near St Monans, focussed on a single masterpiece, Schubert’s substantial Octet, for which the Elias String Quartet teamed up with double bassist Philip Nelson and three highly-prized wind players, Alec Frank Gemmill (horn), Robert Pane (clarinet) and Robin O’Neill (bassoon). Neither the clattering above of a momentary downpour, nor the short while it took for the ensemble to calibrate as a homogenous unit, robbed this performance of its joyous thrills, nuanced generosity and internal cut and thrust. You come to East Neuk mostly for a core helping of mainstream chamber music. It rarely fails to deliver.

Ken Walton

Picture of Pavel Kolesnikov & Samson Tsoy by Neil Hanna Photography