Tag Archives: Isata Kanneh-Mason

BBC SSO: Lazarova / Kanneh-Mason

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City Halls, Glasgow

This wasn’t Bulgarian-born Delyana Lazarova’s maiden encounter with the BBC SSO, but Thursday’s concert did represent her first official appearance as the orchestra’s new principal guest conductor. It’s a marginally more relaxed role than chief conductor, but it does enable the incumbent to exert meaningfully something of his or her personality on the orchestral response. What this performance told us was that Lazarova is a disciplined, energetic musician capable of combining such marked precision with interesting musical thought.

At least, that was the majority impression on Thursday, instantly conveyed in Strum, a virile, catchy showpiece for strings (its origins being the composer’s initial 2006 string quintet version) by New Yorker Jessie Montgomery. It’s not new repertoire for the SSO – having performed it outdoors under Marin Alsop and under canvas during Covid times at the 2021 Edinburgh International Festival – but this indoors version bore an infectious immediacy that got the new relationship off to a snappy start.

There was quirkiness in abundance, generated initially by jousting solos, a rock-fuelled riot of strummed rhythms and catchy ostinati gradually building to a full-scale menagerie bearing the heady influence of American folk and dance styles with the heated undercurrent of minimalism. 

Fast forward and the second half pitted a rare Samuel Barber work against the familiar sumptuous seascape that is Debussy’s three symphonic sketches, La Mer. 

Medea’s Dance of Vengeance, adapted from the dance score Barber wrote in the 1940s based on Euripedes’ Medea for the groundbreaking American contemporary dancer and choreographer Martha Graham, unleashes a side to the composer at odds with his more typically Romanticised persona. Dissonant and harsh, at times viciously thrusting, but equally touched by magic and mystery, Lazarova embraced the score’s heaving feverish sentiments to the full, eliciting a performance that journeyed inexorably towards its fulminating conclusion.

Her Debussy was the perfect foil. The richness of its colourings, tidal sweeps loaded with emotive ebb and flow, breathtaking moments of calm, delicacies of touch like the textures of a Turneresque sea-spray, all played their part in defining a consummate performance.

What, then, of Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto, which came earlier in the opening half and featured the British soloist Isata Kanneh-Mason? There was no denying the technical prowess informing her performance, its remarkably articulate finger work and fiery, insistent energy. 

But it was frustratingly self-centred. Those moments where the pianist can lay low and allow the orchestral subtleties to shine through were entirely ignored, even by Lazarova who seemed content to accept the situation, descending into something of a tonal mishmash in heightened parts of the finale. Give and take was not on the menu. 

Even where the piano is firmly in the spotlight, expectations were often dashed, such as Kanneh-Mason’s tone production, its tendency despite honest intentions to flatline across the melodic phrase. The music’s lyrical dimension was weakened as a result. Kanneh-Mason has proven her worth on many occasions, but on this one her understanding of the concerto’s inner depth felt like work in progress. 

Ken Walton

(Photo credit: Martin Shields)

This programme is repeated in Aberdeen tonight (28 Nov) and will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in Concert on Tuesday 20 January, beyond which it  will be available to stream for 30 days on BBC Sounds

BBC SSO / Sanderling

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City Halls, Glasgow

Musical dynasties can be problematic for some, but not, it would seem, in the case of conductor Michael Sanderling, son of Kurt and brother/step brother of fellow conductors Stefan and Thomas. He proved his independent worth, without question, in the driving seat of the BBC SSO last week.

The former cellist – and one of considerable, international prizewinning note before he picked up the baton full time just over a decade ago – established instant chemistry with the orchestra in a relatively youthful symphony by Mozart, his 13th, written mostly in Milan at the age of 15. Sanderling wasted no time sourcing a stylish bite from the players – just horns and oboes in addition to the reduced strings – that captured the music’s exuberant decency.

It was a neat touch reducing the Menuetto’s trio section to solo strings, giving added intimacy to this airborne movement, and in the broader context of a performance that packed no shortage of musical surprises and delights, from the teasing tunefulness of the Andante to the rhythmic dash of the outer movements.

Mozart featured again in this affable afternoon concert, as seen through the thicker lens of heavy-duty German Romantic composer and academic Max Reger, his Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Mozart. The theme in question is the siciliano-like opener from the A Major Sonata, which in Mozart’s hands was already subjected to exhaustive variation. Reger, as you’d expect, deals with it in more circumspect, a times torrid, terms. 

Sanderling never once allowed dark clouds to assert their presence, instead giving a fleetness of foot to Reger’s restless harmonic contortions – some pretty ingenious ones at that – and therefore freer flight to internal chromatic meanderings that, in less-intuitive hands, might so easily have muddied the momentum. Such, too, was the refinement and grace of the orchestral colourings that the journey towards the concluding fugue, and its exultant closing restatement of the Mozart theme, was one of several thrills and much overall satisfaction.

Coming back to musical families, the afternoon’s solo spot was filled by one of the many prodigious Kanneh-Mason siblings currently in circulation. This was Isata, a pianist of growing stature and musical maturity, as witnessed in recent previous appearances in Scotland. She featured this time in Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto, noted for its bristling energy and dynamic physicality, but also for the quintessential mysticism that offers some spellbinding contrast in the central movement.

Kanneh-Mason’s performance was beautifully poised and not without fire. She doesn’t yet have the full shoulder power to fully address the ferocious dimensions of this concerto, but the fiery agility of her finger work compensated, and where gentle reflection was called for she delivered it with poetic perfection.   

Ken Walton

BBC SSO / Wigglesworth

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City Halls, Glasgow

Anyone unfamiliar with Leos Janacek’s Sinfonietta will still have suspected that something big and exhilarating was on the cards for this well-attended afternoon concert – Bohemian Rhapsodies – by the BBC SSO under its chief conductor Ryan Wigglesworth. The clue was in the expectant line of music strands splayed across the rear balcony, a sure sign that an additional grandstanding phalanx of brass would be appearing anytime soon.

But way before that, Wigglesworth opened with something rarer and altogether more populist by Janacek: his Lachian Dances, which arise out of the same rustic nationalist genre as fellow Bohemian Antonin Dvorak’s Slavonic Dances. They are tuneful, picturesque, with exuberant rhythmic surprises that thrill, moodily countered by curious modal colourings that frequently cool the ardour. 

That didn’t prevent the SSO homing in on the music’s overarching optimism, plentiful in the swarthy, celebratory Pozehnany and swaggering Celadensky (Country Bumpkin’s Dance). Wigglesworth generally let them speak for themselves, though a further reining in of the wind and brass would have warranted a better-balanced presence by the strings.

Then came the highlight of the programme, a diversion into the whimsical world of Hungarian composer Erno Dohnanyi and his tongue-in-cheek concerto treatment of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, more quaintly known as his Variations on a Nursery Song. With its sidestepping jibes at all the greats – Liszt, Richard Strauss, Brahms, Bruckner and others – the satirical impact was made all the more effective by the clean, unfussy, matter-of-fact virtuosity of pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason, pitted against Dohnanyi’s sparkling orchestration.

The comic set-up – a growling opening right out of the Wagner-Liszt camp – made its mark, power-driven by Wigglesworth only to be slapped down by the smirky fausse naïveté of Kanneh-Mason’s nursery theme entry. The partnership remained frivolously alert throughout.

The second half opened with four of Dvorak’s Slavonic Dances, their natural ebullience captured equally in spirit and lively content. 

Finally, the massed balcony brass lined up for Janacek’s Sinfonietta, a daring challenge for the City Halls’ limited acoustics, but one well met by the molten, tumultuous quality of the brass ensemble and the overall orchestral spectacle this work exudes. Momentary untidiness in attack and balance issues aside, the overall impression was one of awesome spectacle. For that alone, it was worth waiting for.

Ken Walton

Picture: Isata Kanneh-Mason

PERTH FESTIVAL: Isata Kanneh-Mason

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Perth Concert Hall

The most wonderful moment in a young musician’s career is when they suddenly appear to have cracked it; where maturity and composure hits in and a performance seems more a genuine lived experience than one of technique-masquerading-as-mastery. 

I’m not saying that moment arrived for pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason specifically with Sunday’s release of her gripping online Perth Festival programme. But for those of us experiencing her several recent appearances in Scotland, this was surely the turning point. Have a listen and decide for yourselves. The programme is available on line for 30 days.

She plays Mozart, Chopin, Gershwin and Samuel Barber, and in each case strikes an electrifying balance between stylistic deference and compelling rhetoric. The one advantage of playing in the absence of audience applause is that each piece can be heard in direct, uninterrupted context. Kanneh-Mason uses that opportunity to fully energise her programme, It hardly stops for breath.

Mozart’s C minor Sonata provides the perfect opener, clean and transparent on the one hand, exploiting fully the minor key dramatic potential on the other. Kanneh-Mason plays one against the other, visibly precise and articulate with her finger work, yet ever-aware of the emotional cut and  thrust of the opening movement, or the lyrical suppleness of the ensuing Adagio. There is utter confidence, too, in the extent to which spontaneous nuance gives expressive character to the musical phrase.

The immediate transition into Chopin’s Ballade No 2 is an easy one, given the calm triadic chordal theme with which it opens. But this, too, is music that thrives on the thrill of vying sentiments, this time in the stormy language of the Romantics. Kanneh-Mason unleashes the fiery element of the Chopin with blistering passion, allowing the work’s argument to reach fever point, and the ultimate triumph of reasoning to assert its quiet, restful resolution. 

To follow that immediately with Gershwin’s Three Preludes is to time travel with a ferocious jolt. Published in 1926, they are jazzy to the core. At their heart is a gorgeously bluesy Adagio, where once again Kanneh-Mason finds the supplest and subtlest of touches and expansiveness of tone with which to hone its melancholic lines. Either side, the Allegro ben ritmico and Agitato are set ablaze by electrifying pianism and effusive razzmatazz.

The most exciting piece comes last, Barber’s astringent Piano Sonata in E flat minor, commissioned by Irving Berlin and Richard Rogers, written in 1950 and, from the outset, characterised by a modernity we don’t always associate with the same composer’s Violin Concerto or Adagio our Strings. 

The troubled landscape of the opening bars searching for distant resolution, a bubbling “scherzo” as translucent and nimble as any of Ravel’s, the soulful angularity of the slow movement melodies, and the waspish rigour of the final fugue find Kanneh-Mason in total control of her thoughts and of this difficult music. She nails it in every sense. Here, surely, is a talented musician approaching full bloom.
Ken Walton

Available to view on the Perth festival website.

BBC SSO / Gourlay / Kanneh-Mason

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City Halls, Glasgow

IF conductor Andrew Gourlay was inspired to pursue his career when he was playing trombone with the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester under the baton of Claudio Abbado, he has clearly retained a love of good music for his original instrument.

The first half of this programme was a celebration of the USA’s Thanksgiving Day in 20th Century American music and the slide trombone was to the fore at the start and end of a very thoughtful sequence. Carl Ruggles, an associate of Charles Ives, started proceedings with three ‘bones joining four trumpets in the choir stalls, the sections led by the SSO’s top rank principals, Simon Johnson and Mark O’Keeffe. Far from a fanfare, “Angels” sounded distinctly Ellingtonian on the muted instruments, and, like the work that followed, seemed to have more to say than its brevity allowed.

Ruth Crawford Seeger has been rediscovered as a composer recently (as opposed to Pete and Peggy’s mom) and her arrangement of a string quartet’s slow movement as the Andante for String Orchestra might have been taken to ape Barber’s famous Adagio, if it did not pre-date it by five years – which begs an interesting parallel question. Again, it seems to suggest more than it delivers.

The African-American Julia Perry was a generation younger, but her Short Piece for Orchestra defies easy dating in its soundworld. Here were more thoroughly developed ideas, alongside the introduction of rhythm to the evening’s programme, as well as brass, winds, percussion and celesta. A student with both Boulanger and Dallapiccola, her vast catalogue is surely ripe for investigation; this was a chamber orchestra version of her score, but it was still full of vibrant detail and colour.

A further generation on, Alvin Singleton’s Cara Mia Gwen was commissioned by the Florida Orchestra to mark its 25th anniversary, but personal in inspiration, a memorial to his sister. The trombone had the first and last word here in a work in which the orchestral sections each had their own distinct role, and the chordal voicings again brought to mind the big band arrangements of Duke Ellington.

Perhaps only the SSO, even among the BBC’s orchestras with their varied diets, would have played that first half as a precursor to working with a fashionable young soloist on a repertoire classic. With her own Clara Schumann album selling well, pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason is recognisably more than the cellist’s older sister. Her way with Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto was a bit of a roller-coaster, but an enjoyable one. Her stated intention to be more playful than portentous was certainly fulfilled, and there was a great deal of interpretative individuality in her phrasing, as well as visible attentiveness to conductor and orchestra, rewardingly reciprocated.

There was also some technical imprecision however, alongside the lightness of touch in the faster passages, and a lack elsewhere of the dynamic nuance she had brought to the first movement cadenza.
Keith Bruce